A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [582]
“Hector was careful, aye?” Duncan explained. “He lived as a rich man, but always within such means as a place like this”—he waved his one hand around, indicating the grounds and messuages of River Run—“might provide. He spent a thousand pound acquiring the land and building the house, then over the years, another thousand in slaves, cattle, and the like. And a thousand pound he put to the bankers—Jo said he couldna bear the thought of all that money sitting, earning nay interest”—he gave her a small, wry smile—“though he was too clever to attract attention by putting it all out. I suppose he meant, maybe, to invest the rest, a bit at a time—but he died before that was done.”
Leaving Jocasta as a very wealthy widow—but even more cautious than her husband had been about attracting undue attention. And so the gold had sat, safe in its hiding place, save for the one ingot being gradually whittled away and disposed of by Ulysses. Which had disappeared, she remembered with a qualm. Someone knew there was gold here.
Perhaps whoever had taken that ingot had guessed that there was more—and hunted, quietly, patiently, until they found it.
But now—
“Ye’ll have heard about General MacDonald?”
She’d heard the name frequently of late, in conversation—he was a Scottish general, more or less retired, she’d assumed—who had been staying here and there, the guest of various prominent families. She hadn’t heard of his purpose, though.
“He means to raise men—three thousand, four—among the Highlanders, to march to the coast. The Governor’s sent for aid; troopships are coming. So the General’s men will come down through the Cape Fear valley”—he made a graceful swooping gesture with his hand—“meet the Governor and his troops—and pincer the rebel militias that are a-building.”
“And you meant to give him the gold—or no,” she corrected herself. “You meant to give him arms and powder.”
He nodded and chewed his mustaches, looking unhappy.
“A man named Dunkling; Alexander knows him. Lord Dunsmore is gathering a great store of powder and arms in Virginia, and Dunkling is one of his lieutenants—and willing to give up some of that store, in return for gold.”
“Which is now gone.” She took a deep breath, feeling sweat trickle down between her breasts, further dampening her shift.
“Which is now gone,” he agreed bleakly. “And I’m left to wonder what about this ghost of wee Jem’s, aye?”
Ghost, indeed. For someone to have entered a place like River Run, teeming with people, and to have moved several hundred pounds by weight of gold, completely unnoticed . . .
The sound of feet on the stairs caused Duncan to jerk his head sharply toward the door, but it was only Josh, one of the black grooms, his hat in his hand.
“Best we be going, Miss Bree,” he said, bowing respectfully. “If ye be wanting the light, like?”
For her drawings, he meant. It was a good hour’s trip into Cross Creek to lawyer Forbes’s house, and the sun was rising fast toward noon.
She glanced at her green-smeared fingers, and recalled the hair straggling untidily down from its makeshift bun; she’d have to tidy herself a bit first.
“Go, lass.” Duncan waved her toward the door, his lean face still creased with worry but lightened a little by having shared it.
She kissed him affectionately on the forehead and went down after Josh. She was worried, and not only about missing gold and prowling ghosts. General MacDonald, indeed. For if he meant to raise fighting men among the Highlanders, one of the natural places for him to go was to her father.
As Roger had noted to her sometime earlier, “Jamie can walk the tightrope between Whigs and Tories better than any man I know—but when push comes to shove . . . he’ll have to jump.”
The push had come at Mecklenberg. But shove, she thought, was named MacDonald.
100
A TRIP TO THE SEASIDE
NEIL FORBES, thinking it prudent