A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [615]
She threw her weight against the bars of the window for the dozenth time, and for the dozenth time found them solidly set and unyielding. Again, in a month, she might contrive to sharpen the spoon’s end by grinding it against the chimney bricks, then use it as a chisel to chip away enough of the frame to dislodge one or two bars. But she didn’t have a month.
They’d taken away the fouled dress, and left her in shift and stays. Well, that was something. She pulled off the stays, and by picking at the ends of the stitching, extracted the busk—a flat, twelve-inch strip of ivory that ran from sternum to navel. A better weapon than a hairbrush, she thought. She took it over to the chimney, and began to rasp the end against the brick, sharpening its point.
Could she stab someone with it? Oh, yes, she thought fiercely. And please let it be Emmanuel.
108
DAMN TALL
ROGER WAITED IN THE COVER of the thick bayberry bushes near the shore; a little way beyond, Ian and Jamie lay likewise in wait.
The second ship had arrived in the morning, coming to anchor a fastidious distance beyond the slaver. Sloshing nets over the side of Roarke’s ship in the guise of fishermen, they had been able to watch as first the captain of the slaver went ashore, and then, an hour later, a boat from the second ship was lowered and rowed ashore, with two men—and a small chest—in it.
“A gentleman,” Claire had reported, scanning them through the telescope. “Wig, nicely dressed. The other man’s a servant of some kind—is the gentleman one of Bonnet’s customers, do you think?”
“I do,” Jamie had said, watching the boat pull to the shore. “Take us a bit to the north, if ye please, Mr. Roarke; we’ll go ashore.”
The three of them had landed half a mile from the beach and worked their way down through the wood, then took up their positions in the shrubbery and settled down to wait. The sun was hot, but so close to the shore, there was a fresh breeze, and it was not uncomfortable in the shade, bar the insects. For the hundredth time, Roger brushed away something crawling on his neck.
The waiting was making him jumpy. His skin itched with salt, and the scent of the tidal forest, with its peculiar mix of aromatic pine and distant seaweed, the crunch of shell and needle beneath his feet, brought back to him in vivid detail the day he had killed Lillington.
He had gone then—as now—with the intent of killing Stephen Bonnet. But the elusive pirate had been warned, and an ambush laid. It had been by the will of God—and the skill of Jamie Fraser—that he hadn’t left his own carcass in a similar forest, bones scattered by wild pigs, bleaching among the gleam of dry needles and the white of empty shells.
His throat was tight again, but he couldn’t shout or sing to loosen it.
He should pray, he thought, but could not. Even the constant litany that had echoed through his heart since the night he had learned she was gone—Lord, that she might be safe—even that small petition had somehow dried up. His present thought—Lord, that I might kill him—he couldn’t voice that, even to himself.
The deliberate intent and desire to murder—surely he couldn’t expect such a prayer to be heard.
For a moment, he envied Jamie and Ian their faith in gods of wrath and vengeance. While Roarke and Moses had brought the fishing boat in, he had heard Jamie murmur to Claire and take her hands in his. And heard her then bless him in the Gaelic, with the invocation to Michael of the red domain, the blessing of a warrior on his way to battle.
Ian had merely sat, cross-legged and silent, watching the shore draw nearer, his face remote. If he prayed, there was no telling to whom. When they landed, though, he had paused on the bank of one of the myriad inlets, and scooping up mud in his fingers, had carefully painted his face, drawing a line from forehead to chin, then four parallel