The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [64]
Back on Fraser’s Ridge, Claire is nursing two sick men—Young Ian having also contracted the measles—and wrestling with her own resentments of John Grey. She finds these tempered, though, by a reluctantly growing liking for the man that is answered by his own for her—equally reluctant.
Edgy and jealous of each other, Lord John and Claire at last come to a grudging recognition of what they have in common; not only a love for Jamie Fraser, but a deep honesty that forces each to admit the other’s virtues, and see what it is that Jamie values in each of them. Presuming on this honesty, Claire asks bluntly why Lord John has come.
“You ASKED ME why I came; you questioned my motives; you accused me of jealousy. Perhaps you don’t want to know, because if you did, you could not keep thinking of me as you choose to.”
“And how the hell do you know what I choose to think of you?”
His mouth twisted in an expression that might have been a sneer on a less handsome face.
“Don’t I?”
I looked him full in the face for a minute, not troubling to hide anything at all.
“You did mention jealousy,” he said quietly, after a moment.
“So I did. So did you.”
He turned his head away, but continued after a moment.
“When I heard that Isobel was dead… it meant nothing to me. We had lived together for years, though we had not seen each other for nearly two years. We shared a bed; we shared a life, I thought. I should have cared. But I didn’t.”
He took a deep breath. I saw the bedclothes stir as he settled himself.
“You mentioned generosity. It wasn’t that. I came to see… whether I can still feel,” he said. His head was still turned away, staring at the hide-covered window, grown dark with the night. There was plenty of the infusion left. I poured another cup and held it out to Lord John. Surprised, he sat upright and took it from me.
“And now that you’ve come, and seen him—do you still have feelings?” I said.
He stared at me for a moment, eyes unblinking in the candlelight.
“I do, yes.” Hand steady as a rock, he picked up the cup and drank. “God help me,” he added, so casual as almost to seem offhand.
JAMIE AND WILLIE reach the Tuscarora village of Anna Ooka, but something is wrong; the village is in flames, the houses half-burnt and the people gone. Leaving Willie in hiding, Jamie goes cautiously in search of the inhabitants, who he finds encamped not far away. It is not a raid, not war; they have packed their belongings for an orderly withdrawal.
Sickness, replies Nacognaweto, when asked what has happened. Measles has come into the village, killing nearly half the people. The survivors are leaving, intending to take refuge in another village to the north. Without their shaman, their singer, there was no cure for the sickness. Has Jamie seen her, Nacognaweto asks? Nayawenne had gone to the forest, seeking a vision to help the stricken village, attended by Gabrielle and her daughter, Berthe; none of the women has returned.
Jamie has no knowledge of the women; there is nothing he can do to help, and his original mission has been lost in the enormity of the catastrophe that has overtaken the Indians.
He went, the grief of the place clinging to him like the smoke that permeated clothes and hair. And within his charred heart as he left the camp sprang a small green shoot of selfishness, relief that the grief was—for this time—not his own. His woman still lived. His children were safe.
OR AT LEAST he thinks they are. Willie will go on to his new life in Virginia with Lord John, but in the future, Brianna has been making her own plans.
A letter from Bree cancels plans for the summer, telling Roger she intends instead to go to Sri Lanka for a conference, and nearly convincing him that all is lost. At once enraged and depressed at the news, he accepts an offer himself, to lead a seminar in Oxford, rather than returning to the Highlands, where Brianna’s absence