Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [512]
She felt a hand on her shoulder, and whirled, looking up into Bonnet’s face.
“I’ve a ship waiting,” he said. “A little way upriver. Will you come with me, then?”
She shook her head. She still held the gun, but didn’t need it now. He was no threat to her.
Still he didn’t go, but lingered, staring down at her, a small frown between his brows. His face was gaunt, hollowed and shadowed by the distant fire. The surface of the river was aflame now, small tongues of fire flickering from the dark water as a slick of turpentine spread across it.
“Is it true?” he asked abruptly. He asked no permission, but set his hands on her belly. It tightened at his touch, rounding in another of those breathless, painless squeezes, and a look of astonishment crossed his face.
She jerked away from his touch, pulling her cloak together, and nodded, unable to speak.
He seized her chin in his hand and peered into her face—assessing her truthfulness, perhaps? Then he let go, and stuck a finger into his mouth, groping in the recesses of his cheek.
He took her hand, and put something wet and hard in her palm.
“For his maintenance, then,” he said, and grinned at her. “Take care of him, sweetheart!”
And then he was gone, bounding long-legged up the riverbank, silhouetted like a demon in the flickering light. The turpentine flowing into the water had caught fire, and roiling billows of scarlet light shot upward, floating pillars of fire that lit the riverbank bright as day.
She half raised the musket, finger on the trigger. He was no more than twenty yards away, a perfect shot. Not by your hand. She lowered the gun, and let him go.
The warehouse was fully ablaze by now; the heat from it beat against her cheeks and blew the hair back from her face.
“I have a ship upriver,” he’d said. She squinted into the glare. The fire had nearly filled the river, a great floating slick that bloomed from bank to bank in a fiery garden of unfolding flames. Nothing could come through that blinding wall of light.
Her other fist was still closed around the object he had given her. She opened her hand and looked down at the wet black diamond that gleamed in her palm, the fire glowing red and bloody in its facets.
PART TWELVE
Je T’Aime
63
FORGIVENESS
River Run, May 1770
“That is the most stubborn woman I have ever met!” Brianna huffed into the room like a ship in full sail, and subsided onto the love seat by the bed, billowing.
Lord John Grey opened one eye, bloodshot under his turban of bandages.
“Your aunt?”
“Who else?”
“You have a looking glass in your room, do you not?” His mouth curved, and after a reluctant moment, so did hers.
“It’s her bloody will. I told her I don’t want River Run, I can’t own slaves—but she won’t change it! She just smiles as though I were a six-year-old having a tantrum and says by the time it happens, I’ll be glad of it. Glad of it!” She snorted and flounced into a more comfortable position. “What am I going to do?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” She turned the force of her displeasure on him. “How can I do nothing?”
“To begin with, I should be extremely surprised if your aunt were not immortal; several of that particular race of Scots seem to be. However”—he waved a hand in dismissal—“should this prove untrue, and should she persist in her delusions that you would prove a good mistress to River Run—”
“What makes you think I wouldn’t?” she said, pride stung.
“You cannot run a plantation of this size without slaves, and you decline to own them for reasons of conscience, or so I was given to understand. Though a less likely Quaker I have never seen.” He narrowed his open eye, indicating the immense tent of purple-striped muslin in which she was swathed. “Returning to the point at issue—or one of them—should you find yourself the unwilling recipient of a number of slaves, arrangements can undoubtedly be made to free them.”
“Not in