A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [85]
I took a quick glance at the porch, where Mr. Wemyss and his companion still sat, heads close in conversation. I thought Mr. Wemyss was probably the only man still conscious, bar the Major himself. The lady was plainly a German, but not, I thought, a Moravian; they very seldom married outside their community, nor did the women often travel far.
“Unless you think the Presbyterians have formed a gang for the purpose of purging the countryside of Papists and Lutherans—and you don’t think that, do you?”
He smiled briefly at that, though without much humor.
“No. But then, I was raised Presbyterian myself, mum.”
“Oh,” I said. “Er . . . a drop more cider, Major?”
He held out his cup without demur.
“The other burning—that seems much like the others,” he said, graciously choosing to overlook my remark. “An isolated homestead. A man living alone. But this one was just over the Treaty Line.”
This last was said with a significant glance, and I looked involuntarily at Jamie. He’d told me that the Cherokee were upset about settlers intruding into their territory.
“I shall ask your husband in the morning, of course, mum,” MacDonald said, correctly interpreting my glance. “But perhaps ye’d ken whether he’s heard any references . . . ?”
“Veiled threats from a Snowbird chief,” I confessed. “He wrote to John Stuart about them. But nothing specific. When did this latest burning happen?”
He shrugged.
“No telling. I heard of it three weeks ago, but the man who told me had heard of it a month before that—and he’d not seen it, only heard from someone else.”
He scratched thoughtfully at his jaw.
“Someone should go and inspect the place, perhaps.”
“Mm,” I said, not bothering to hide the skepticism in my voice. “And you think it’s Jamie’s job, do you?”
“I shouldna be so presumptuous as to instruct Mr. Fraser in his duties, mum,” he said, with the hint of a smile. “But I will suggest to him that the situation may be of interest, aye?”
“Yes, you do that,” I muttered. Jamie had planned another quick trip to the Snowbird villages, squeezed in between harvesting and the onset of the cold weather. The notion of marching into the village and quizzing Bird-who-sings-in-the-morning about a burned homestead seemed more than slightly risky, viewed from my perspective.
A slight chill made me shiver, and I gulped the rest of my own cider, wishing suddenly that it was hot. The sun was fully set now, and the air had grown cool, but that wasn’t what was cooling my blood.
What if MacDonald’s suspicions were right? If the Cherokee had been burning homesteads? And if Jamie were to show up, asking inconvenient questions . . . .
I looked at the house, standing solid and serene, its windows glowing with candlelight, a pale bulwark against the darkening woods beyond.
It is with grief that the news is received of the deaths by fire of James MacKenzie Fraser and his wife, Claire Fraser, in a conflagration that destroyed their house. . . .
The fireflies were coming out, drifting like cool green sparks in the shadows, and I looked upward involuntarily, to see a spray of red and yellow ones from the chimney. Whenever I thought of that gruesome clipping—and I tried not to, nor to count the days between now and January 21 of 1776—I had thought of the fire as occurring by accident. Such accidents were more than common, ranging from hearth fires run amok and candlesticks tipped over, to blazes caused by the summer lightning storms. It hadn’t consciously occurred to me before that it might be a deliberate act—an act of murder.
I moved my foot enough to nudge Jamie. He stirred in his sleep, reached out one hand, and clasped it warmly round my ankle, then subsided with a contented groan.
“Stand between me and all things grisly,” I said, half-under my breath.
“Slàinte,” said the Major, and drained his cup again.
20
DANGEROUS GIFTS
PROPELLED BY MAJOR MACDONALD’S news, Jamie and Ian departed two days later for a quick visit to Bird-who-sings-in-the-morning, and