The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [279]
A look of determination was hardening Brianna’s mouth, and she settled herself more solidly in the chair.
“I’ll bloody discourage him,” she said.
I gave her a look, considering. If anyone had the necessary stubbornness and force of character to sway Jamie from his chosen path, it would be his daughter. That was, however, a very large “if.”
“You can try,” I said, a little dubiously.
“Don’t I have the right?” Her initial shock had vanished, and her features were back under control, her expression cold and hard. “Isn’t it for me to say whether I want . . . what I want?”
“Yes,” I agreed, a twinge of uneasiness rippling down my back. Fathers were inclined to think they had rights, too. So were husbands. But perhaps that was better left unsaid.
A momentary silence fell between us, broken only by Jemmy’s noises, and the calling of crows outside. Almost by impulse, I asked the question that had risen to the surface of my mind.
“Brianna. What do you want? Do you want Stephen Bonnet dead?”
She glanced at me, then away, looking out the window while she patted Jemmy’s back. She didn’t blink. Finally, her eyes closed briefly, then opened to meet mine.
“I can’t,” she said, low-voiced. “I’m afraid if I ever let that thought in my mind . . . I’d never be able to think about anything else, I’d want it so much. And I will be damned if I’ll let . . . him . . . ruin my life that way.”
Jemmy gave a resounding belch, and spit up a little milk. Bree had an old linen towel across her shoulder, and deftly wiped his chin with it. Calmer now, he had lost his look of vexed incomprehension, and was concentrating intently on something over his mother’s shoulder. Following the direction of his clear blue gaze, I saw the shadow of a spiderweb, high up in the corner of the window. A gust of wind shook the window frame, and a tiny spot moved in the center of the web, very slightly.
“Yeah,” Brianna said, very softly. “I do want him dead. But I want Da and Roger alive, more.”
38
THE DREAMTIME
ROGER HAD GONE to sing for Joel MacLeod’s nephew’s wedding, as arranged at the Gathering, and come home with a new prize, which he was anxious to commit to paper before it should escape.
He left his muddy boots in the kitchen, accepted a cup of tea and a raisin tart from Mrs. Bug, and went directly to the study. Jamie was there, writing letters; he glanced up with an absent murmur of acknowledgment, but then returned to his composition, a slight frown between his heavy brows as he formed the letters, hand cramped and awkward on the quill.
There was a small, three-shelf bookcase in Jamie’s study, which held the entire library of Fraser’s Ridge. The serious works occupied the top shelf: a volume of Latin poetry, Caesar’s Commentaries, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, a few other classic works, Dr. Brickell’s Natural History of North Carolina, lent by the Governor and never returned, and a schoolbook on mathematics, much abused, with Ian Murray the Younger written on the flyleaf in a staggering hand.
The middle shelf was given over to more light-minded reading: a small selection of romances, slightly ragged with much reading, featuring Robinson Crusoe; Tom Jones, in a set of seven small, leather-covered volumes; Roderick Random, in four volumes; and Sir Henry Richardson’s monstrous Pamela, done in two gigantic octavo bindings—the first of these decorated with multiple bookmarks, ranging from a ragged dried maple leaf to a folded penwiper, these indicating the points which various readers had reached before giving up, either temporarily or permanently. A copy of Don Quixote in Spanish, ratty, but much less worn, since only Jamie could read it.
The bottom shelf held a copy of Dr. Sam. Johnson’s Dictionary, Jamie’s ledgers and account books, several of Brianna’s sketchbooks, and the slender