The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [70]
The charges are proved false, though, and Jamie and Brianna are allowed to leave for Fraser’s Ridge—and Claire.
THE REUNION IS EVERYTHING Claire might have dared to wish; her beloved daughter is with her again, and Jamie and Brianna take a shy but obvious delight in each other, that delights Claire as well. The only fly in the ointment is the absence of Roger Wakefield. Brianna has told her parents about Roger’s following her, their argument, and about his quest for gemstones to ensure safe passage. But days— and weeks—pass, and there is no sign of Roger.
Has something happened to him? Or has he decided not to come back, angered and wounded by Brianna’s words? There is no telling—and no word of the missing Wakefield, though Jamie has made inquiries everywhere.
One day a visitor does come to the Ridge, though. Young Ian and Lizzie are at the flour mill when a man comes asking for directions to Fraser’s Ridge—a man Lizzie recognizes as the man called MacKenzie. Terrified that he has come to claim Brianna, Lizzie tells Young Ian, and the two young people take steps to delay Roger, then rush home to warn Jamie of the danger.
Lizzie tells a shocked Jamie of their encounter with the “wicked MacKenzie” in Wilmington, of her discovery that Brianna had—she thinks—been assaulted by MacKenzie, and her much more recent discovery—that Brianna is pregnant.
Thus it is that when Roger reaches a clearing below the Ridge, he finds a welcoming party, composed of Jamie and Young Ian. Confused by their evident hostility, Roger admits that his name is indeed MacKenzie, and tells them that he has come for his wife. Further, upon Ian’s taunting, Roger is stung into admitting that he has indeed taken Brianna’s maidenhead. This being all Jamie needs to hear, he promptly beats Roger insensible, and takes further steps to be sure that this threat to his daughter is safely removed.
Meanwhile, Claire has taken Brianna mushroom-hunting, in order to gain sufficient privacy to question her daughter. Observing small physical changes, Claire has reached her own conclusions, which Brianna verifies. She is indeed pregnant.
Claire’s immediate concern for Brianna’s well-being gives way to another pressing worry; it is well into the autumn now, nearly past the time of year when ships will set sail for Europe. Brianna must leave at once, Claire exclaims, putting aside her own fear and grief. She must go back to Scotland now; she can return through the stones pregnant—Claire herself did it while pregnant with Brianna— but no one in their right mind would undertake the journey through the stones with a small child. Brianna has only three choices—go back through the stones at once, without waiting for Roger to appear; bear her child in the dangerous conditions of the eighteenth century and then abandon it there—or stay forever, trapped in the past.
Brianna rejects the first two possibilities, insisting that she must stay and find Roger; if he is in trouble, she can’t leave him alone in the past. Claire reluctantly concedes, only to face further shock when Brianna reveals that there is in fact another small problem—the baby is quite possibly not Roger’s.
With a firm grip on her own shaky emotions, she tells her mother what happened aboard Stephen Bonnet’s ship in Wilmington. Bonnet callously raped her, but did then carelessly give her the thing she had come for—Claire’s wedding ring, which Brianna now returns to her shocked and grieving mother. She will tell Jamie, Brianna agrees, but in her own time.
When Jamie arrives that evening, with his hands scraped and damaged—from building a chimney, he says—he forestalls her confession, making it clear that he already knows about the child. She need not worry, he tells Brianna, he will take care of her, and her baby. However, as the days pass and there is still no sign of Roger Wakefield, Jamie becomes worried about Brianna’s prospects, and goads Young Ian into proposing marriage to her—at least she will have a kind husband, and one who will have