The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [241]
“I wish I was dead,” she whispered again, in tones of such fierce despair that I set both eyes on her, startled. She sat hunched, hair hanging limply beneath her cap, her hands fisted and crossed protectively over her belly.
“Oh, dear,” I said. Given her pallor, the circumstances, and her behavior toward the Beardsley baby, that particular gesture made it no great leap to the obvious conclusion. “Do your parents know?”
She gave me a quick look, but didn’t bother asking how I knew.
“Mama and Aunt do.”
She was breathing through her mouth, with intermittent wet snuffles.
“I thought—I thought Papa would have to let me wed him, if—”
I never had thought blackmail a very successful basis for marriage, but this seemed the wrong time to say so.
“Mmm,” I said instead. “And does Mr. Morton know about it?”
She shook her head, disconsolate.
“Does he—does his wife have children, do you know?”
“I’ve no idea.” I turned my head, listening. I could hear men’s voices in the distance, carried on the wind. So could she; she gripped my arm with surprising strength, wet brown eyes spike-lashed and urgent.
“I heard Mr. MacKenzie and the men talking last night. They said you were a healer, Mrs. Fraser—one said you were a conjure woman. About babies. Do you know how—”
“Someone’s coming.” I pulled away from her, interrupting before she could finish. “Here, take care of the baby. I need to—to stir the stew.”
I thrust the child unceremoniously into her arms and rose. When the door opened to admit a blast of wind and snow along with a large number of men, I was standing at the hearth, spoon in hand, eyes fixed on the pot and my mind bubbling as vigorously as the stew.
She hadn’t had time to ask explicitly, but I knew what she’d been about to say. Conjure woman, she’d called me. She wanted my help to get rid of the child, almost certainly. How? I wondered. How could a woman think of such a thing, with a living child in her arms, less than a day out of the womb?
But she was very young. Very young, and suffering from the shock of hearing that her lover was untrue. Not yet far enough advanced in pregnancy to show, either; if she hadn’t yet felt her own child move, no doubt it seemed quite unreal to her. She’d seen it only as a means of forcing her father’s consent; now it likely seemed a trap that had closed suddenly upon her.
No wonder if she was distraught, looking frantically for escape. Give her a little time to recover, I thought, glancing at the settle, where the shadows hid her. I should talk to her mother, to her aunt. . . .
Jamie appeared suddenly beside me, rubbing reddened hands over the fire, snow melting from the folds of his clothes. He looked extremely cheerful, in spite of his cold, the complications of Isaiah Morton’s love life, and the storm going on outside.
“How is it, Sassenach?” he asked hoarsely, and without waiting for me to reply, took the spoon from my hand, put one hard, cold arm around me, and pulled me off my feet and up into a hearty kiss, made the more startling by the fact that his half-sprouted beard was thickly encrusted with snow.
Emerging slightly dazed from this stimulating embrace, I realized that the general attitude of the men in the room was similarly jolly. Backs were being slapped, boots stamped, and coats shaken to the accompaniment of the sort of hoots and roaring noises men make when feeling particularly exuberant.
“What is it?” I asked, looking round in surprise. To my astonishment, Joseph Wemyss stood in the center of the crowd. The tip of his nose was red with cold, and he was being knocked half off his feet by men smacking him on the back in congratulations. “What’s happened?”
Jamie gave me a brilliant smile, teeth gleaming in the frozen wilderness of his face, and thrust a limp crumple of wet paper into my hand, fragments of red wax still clinging to it.
The ink had run with the wet, but I could make out the relevant words. Hearing of General Waddell’s intended approach, the Regulators had decided that