A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [586]
It was Warren Lee—tall and gangly by starlight, the Reverend Doctor McCorkle’s secretary, erstwhile militiaman.
“Thought I’d take a bit of air,” Lee said, his voice hardly audible above the hiss of the sea.
“Aye, well, there’s a lot of it, and it’s free,” Roger said as amiably as he could. Lee chuckled briefly in response, but luckily didn’t seem disposed to talk.
They stood for some time, watching the fishing boats. Then, by unspoken consent, turned to go back. The house was dark, the porch deserted. A single candle burned in the window, though, lighting them home.
“That officer, the one I shot,” Lee blurted suddenly. “I pray for him. Every night.”
Lee shut up abruptly, embarrassed. Roger breathed slow and deep, feeling the jerk of his own heart. Had he ever prayed for Lillington, or Boble?
“I will, too,” he said.
“Thank you,” said Lee very softly, and side by side, they made their way back up the beach, pausing to pick up their shoes, going back barefooted, sand drying on their feet.
They had sat down on the steps to brush it off before going in, when the door behind them opened.
“Mr. MacKenzie?” said the Reverend McMillan, and something in his voice pulled Roger to his feet, heart pounding. “You have a visitor.”
He saw the tall silhouette behind McMillan, and knew, even before Jamie Fraser’s pale, fierce face appeared, eyes black in the candlelight.
“He’s taken Brianna,” Jamie said without preamble. “Ye’ll come.”
102
Anemone
FEET TRAMPLED BACK AND FORTH OVERHEAD, and she could hear voices, but most of the words were too muffled to make out. There was a chorus of jovial shouts on the side nearest shore, and cordial feminine shrieks in reply.
The cabin had a wide, paned window—did you call it a window on a ship, she wondered, or had it some special nautical name?—that ran behind the bunk, raked back with the angle of the stern. It was made in small, thick panes, set in leading. No hope there of escape, but it did offer the possibility of air, and perhaps information regarding their whereabouts.
Repressing a qualm of nauseated distaste, she clambered across the stained and rumpled sheets of the bed. She pressed close to the window and pushed her face into one of the open panes, taking deep breaths to dispel the aromas of the cabin, though the smell of the harbor was no great improvement, rife as it was with the smell of dead fish, sewage, and baking mud.
She could see a small dock, and moving figures on it. A fire was burning on the shore outside a low, whitewashed building roofed with palmetto leaves. It was too dark to see what, if anything, lay beyond the building. There must be at least a small town, though, judging from the noise of the people on the dock.
There were voices outside the cabin door, coming closer. “. . . meet him on Ocracoke, the dark o’ the moon,” said one, to which the other replied in an indistinct mumble, before the door flew open.
“Care to join the party, sweetheart? Or have ye started without me?”
She whirled on her knees, heart hammering in her throat. Stephen Bonnet stood inside the door to the cabin, a bottle in one hand and a slight smile on his face. She took a deep breath to quell the shock, and nearly gagged on the stale scent of sex that wafted from the sheets under her knees. She scrambled off the bed, heedless of her clothes, and felt a rip at the waist as her knee caught in her skirt.
“Where are we?” she demanded. Her voice sounded shrill, panicked to her own ears.
“On the Anemone,” he said patiently, still smiling.
“You know that isn’t what I mean!” The neck of her gown and chemise had torn in the struggle when the men pulled her from her horse, and most of one breast was exposed; she put up a hand, pushing the fabric back in place.
“Do I?” He set the bottle on the desk, and reached to unfasten the stock from his neck. “Ah, that’s better.” He rubbed at the dark red line across his throat, and she had a sudden, piercing vision of Roger’s throat, with its ragged scar.
“I wish to know what this town is called,” she said, deepening