A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [627]
The butler looked down for a moment, eyes hooded against the light.
“I could choose Jo—or freedom. I chose her.”
“Aye, verra romantic,” Jamie said with extreme dryness—though in fact, he was not unaffected by the statement. Jocasta MacKenzie had married for duty, and duty again—and he thought she had had little happiness in any of her marriages until finding some measure of contentment with Duncan. He was shocked at her choice, disapproving of her adultery, and very angry indeed at her deception of Duncan, but some part of him—the MacKenzie part, doubtless—could not but admire her boldness in taking happiness where she could.
He sighed deeply. The rain was easing now; the thundering on the roof had dwindled to a soft pattering.
“Well, then. I have one question more.”
Ulysses inclined his head gravely, in a gesture Jamie had seen a thousand times. At your service, sir, it said—and that was done with more irony than there was in anything the man had said.
“Where is the gold?”
Ulysses’s head jerked up, eyes wide with startlement. For the first time, Jamie felt a shred of doubt.
“You think I took it?” the butler said incredulously. But then his mouth twisted to one side. “I suppose you would, after all.” He rubbed a hand under his nose, looking worried and unhappy—as well he might, Jamie reflected.
They stood regarding each other in silence for some time, at an impasse. Jamie did not have the feeling that the other was attempting to deceive him—and God knew the man was good at that, he thought cynically.
At last, Ulysses heaved his wide shoulders, and let them drop in helplessness.
“I cannot prove that I did not,” he said. “I can offer nothing save my word of honor—and I am not entitled to have such a thing.” For the first time, bitterness rang in his voice.
Jamie suddenly felt very tired. The horses and mules had long since gone back to their drowse, and he wanted nothing so much as his own bed, and his wife beside him. He also wanted Ulysses to be gone, long before Duncan discovered his perfidy. And while Ulysses was patently the most obvious person to have taken the gold, the fact remained that he could have taken it anytime in the last twenty years, with a good deal less danger. Why now?
“Will ye swear on my aunt’s head?” he asked abruptly. Ulysses’s eyes were sharp, shining in the lantern light, but steady.
“Yes,” he said at last, quietly. “I do so swear.”
Jamie was about to dismiss him, when one last thought occurred to him.
“Do you have children?” he asked.
Indecision crossed the chiseled face; surprise and wariness, mingled with something else.
“None I would claim,” he said at last, and Jamie saw what it was—scorn, mixed with shame. His jaw tensed, and his chin rose slightly. “Why do you ask me that?”
Jamie met his gaze for a moment, thinking of Brianna growing heavy with child.
“Because,” he said at last, “it is only the hope of betterment for my children, and theirs, that gives me the courage to do what must be done here.” Ulysses’s face had gone blank; it gleamed black and impassive in the light.
“If you have no stake in the future, you have no reason to suffer for it. Such children as you may have—”
“They are slaves, born of slave women. What can they be, to me?” Ulysses’s hands were clenched, pressed against his thighs.
“Then go,” Jamie said softly, and stood aside, gesturing toward the door with the barrel of his pistol. “Die free, at least.”
111
JANUARY TWENTY-FIRST
January 21, 1776
JANUARY 21 WAS THE COLDEST DAY of the year. Snow had fallen a few days before, but now the air was like cut crystal, the dawn sky so pale it looked white, and the packed snow chirped like crickets under our boots. Snow, snow-shrouded trees, the icicles that hung from the eaves of the house—the whole world seemed blue with cold. All of the stock had been put up the night before in stable or barn, with the exception of the white sow, who appeared to be hibernating under the house.
I peered dubiously at