The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [57]
“Give me the third bottle from the left, second row,” I said.
The third bottle from the left contains aconite, a quick and deadly poison.
One-fiftieth grain will kill a sparrow in a few seconds. One-tenth grain, a rabbit in five minutes … I tried to hear nothing, feel nothing, know nothing but the jerky beat beneath my fingers. I tried with all my might to shut out the voices overhead, the murmur nearby, the heat and dust and stink of blood, to forget where I was, and what I was doing.
Claire returns to River Run with Jamie, troubled not only by the experience at the sawmill but by her growing realization that Jamie’s bonds of kinship make him indeed a part of this society, with all its capacity for injustice, violence, and terror, as well as its promises of wealth and adventure. What Farquard Campbell has told them is true; Jocasta needs a man to deal with the harsh exigencies of the plantation’s affairs—and Jamie is, by blood and obligation—the natural choice.
To complicate matters further, Lieutenant Wolff, who negotiates the quarterly Naval contracts, has offered marriage to Jocasta—not, as she tartly observes, from desire of her person, but rather in order to become master of River Run. So far, she has evaded the Lieutenant’s attempts, with the help of her old friend Farquard Campbell—but the Lieutenant is pressing hard, pointing out that Jocasta cannot run the plantation without a man, and threatening loss of the valuable Naval contracts.
Caught in this delicate situation, Jocasta perceives Jamie’s arrival as the answer to prayer—and soon forms a plan. She will have a great party, she declares, to make her nephew and his wife known to the Scottish community of Cape Fear. To this end, every influential person in the area is summoned to River Run, and Claire and Jamie are outfitted with great splendor— though not without arousing some suspicions.
Jamie clearly suspects that Jocasta is up to something; he tells Claire to stay alert, ready to create a diversion, should he signal to her during the dinner. However, Jocasta’s arrival forestalls his explanation, leaving Claire alert—but not knowing why.
In the event, a diversion is provided, but not by Claire; the dinner party is interrupted by the dramatic arrival of Duncan Innes with John Quincy Myers—the mountain man having achieved a majestic state of drunkenness in anticipation of Claire’s performing surgery on his hernia. Faced with the prostrate form of her prospective patient, Claire is dubious about the wisdom of doing surgery with the assistance of whisky-induced anesthesia, but is persuaded. As Jamie observes, “He may ne’er have the nerve or the money to get that drunk again.”
Performing a hernia repair on the dinner table, before the cream of Cape Fear society, may possibly not have been precisely what Jocasta Cameron had in mind by way of presenting her new niece socially, but it does make an impression—and effectively, if only temporarily, prevents the announcement of whatever scheme Jocasta may have had in mind herself.
That scheme is shortly revealed; Jamie takes Claire outside to talk, leaving the unconscious Mr. Myers recovering in the care of a slave. The butler, Ulysses, had told Jamie what his mistress intended, just before dinner; with Jamie garbed in his dead uncle’s Highland dress, and sitting in Hector Cameron’s place at the head of the table, Jocasta meant to rise and announce before the assembled company that she was making Jamie her heir—laird of River Run.
The prospect is glittering … but also daunting. River Run’s prosperity depends on the work of slaves, and Claire recoils from the prospect of being a slave owner— the more so when Jamie explains that they could not legally free the slaves of River Run, even after Jocasta’s death; in fear of an armed uprising, the North Carolina Assembly allows slaves to be manumitted only one at a time, and only by approval of the Assembly.
Claire doesn’t see how she can possibly live as a slave owner, but keeps quiet for the moment, unwilling to impose her own moral concerns on Jamie