The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [442]
Jamie said something obscene, very softly, under his breath in Gaelic.
“Do you really think they did this?” I asked, equally softly. The pulse thumped and shuddered under my thumb, struggling.
He nodded, looking down at Morton.
“I shouldna have let them go,” he said, as though to himself. Morton and Alicia Brown, he meant.
“You couldn’t have stopped them.” I reached my free hand toward him, to touch him in reassurance, but couldn’t quite reach him, tethered as I was to Morton’s pulse.
Gerald Forbes was looking at me in puzzlement.
“Mr. Morton . . . eloped with the daughter of a man named Brown,” I explained delicately. “The Browns weren’t happy about it.”
“Oh, I see.” Forbes nodded understandingly. He glanced down at Morton’s body and clicked his tongue, a sound mingling reproof with sympathy. “The Browns—do you know which company they belong to, Fraser?”
“Mine,” Jamie said shortly. “Or they did. I havena seen either of them, since the end of the battle.” He turned to me. “Is there aught to do for him, Sassenach?”
I shook my head, but didn’t let go of his wrist. The pulse hadn’t improved, but it hadn’t gotten worse, either.
“No. I thought he might be gone already, but he isn’t sinking yet. The ball must not have struck a major vessel. Even so . . .” I shook my head again.
Jamie sighed deeply and nodded.
“Aye. Will ye stay with him, then, until . . .?”
“Yes, of course. Will you go back to our tent, though, and make sure everything’s under control there? If Roger—I mean, come and fetch me if I’m needed.”
He nodded once more and left. Gerald Forbes came near, and put a tentative hand on Morton’s shoulder.
“His wife—I shall see that she has help. If he should come round again, will you tell him that?”
“Yes, of course,” I said again, but my hesitation made him look up, brows raised.
“It’s just that he . . . um . . . has two wives,” I explained. “He was already married when he eloped with Alicia Brown. Hence the difficulty with her family, you see.”
Forbes’s face went comically blank.
“I see,” he said, and blinked. “The . . . ah . . . first Mrs. Morton. Do you know her name?”
“No, I’m afraid I—”
“Jessie.”
The word was barely more than a whisper, but it might have been a gunshot, for its effect in stopping the conversation.
“What?” My grip on Morton’s wrist must have tightened, for he flinched slightly, and I loosened it.
His face was still dead white, but his eyes were open, fogged with pain but definitely conscious.
“Jessie . . .” he whispered again. “Jeze . . . bel. Jessie Hatfield. Water?”
“Wat—oh, yes!” I let go of his wrist and reached at once for the water jug. He would have glugged it, but I let him have only small sips, for the present.
“Jezebel Hatfield, and Alicia Brown,” Forbes said carefully, evidently noting the names in his neatly-docketed lawyer’s mind. “That is correct? And where do these women live?”
Morton took a breath, coughed, and interrupted the cough abruptly with a gasp of pain. He struggled for a moment, then found speech.
“Jessie—in Granite Falls. Ally’s—in Greenboro.” He breathed very shallowly, gasping between words. And yet I heard no gurgling of blood in his throat, saw none oozing from nose or mouth. I could still hear the sucking sound from the wound in his back, and moved by inspiration, I pulled him slightly forward and jerked back the pieces of his shirt.
“Mr. Forbes, have you a sheet of paper?”
“Why . . . yes. I . . . that is . . .” Forbes had thrust his hand into his coat in automatic response, and come out with a folded sheet of paper. I snatched this from him, unfolded it, poured water over it, and plastered it flat against the small hole beneath Morton’s shoulder blade. The ink mixed with blood and ran in little dark runnels over the pasty skin, but the sucking noise abruptly stopped.
Holding the paper in place with my hand,