The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [73]
Concluding that Otter-Tooth harbored a malign spirit, and was likely a sorcerer himself, the Mohawk tried once more to thrust him out of the village, and failing this, decided to kill him. Tortured and left bound, Otter-Tooth succeeded in escaping, and was pursued to the south by the men of the village, who eventually caught up with him and killed him.
To prevent his spirit from following them home, the men cut off his head and buried it, together with the great opal that Otter-Tooth carried. He called the stone his tika-ba, Tewaktenyonh tells Claire. The Indians have no notion what this term meant, but Claire thinks she does— the opal was his “ticket back”—the means of return for a time-traveler.
Meanwhile, Jamie and Young Ian have celebrated a successful ceilidh, and the Frasers retire, hopeful of an early escape from the village.
AT RIVER RUN, Brianna is physically thriving, abloom with pregnancy. Her emotions are in a less flourishing state, however. Fear for her parents and Roger, loneliness and guilt, give way to astonishment and anger, when she learns that Jocasta, eager to protect River Run, has decided both to make Brianna her heir— and to find her a suitable husband, to be enticed by the rich promise of her inheritance.
Brianna protests that she cannot possibly own slaves, does not want to marry in any case … but as Jocasta’s body servant, Phaedre, observes, “Well, like I say—it ain’t so much what you want. It’s what Miss Jo wants. Now, let’s try this dress.”
Successful in rebuffing the advances of the local suitors, Brianna is slightly more wary of a new arrival—Lord John William Grey, of Mount Josiah plantation in Virginia, who is, she is informed, not only a rich man and a lord—eminently suitable, in other words—but an old friend of her father’s.
To her surprise, Lord John is kind, personable, witty, and honorable. He is also homosexual, a fact she discovers by accident one night. The discovery supplies her with a means to solve the problem plaguing her.
She cannot in good conscience marry a man she doesn’t love; at the same time, she doesn’t want Roger to marry her out of a sense of obligation—feeling that even though his sense of honor may compel him to stay with her, he will resent being permanently trapped in the past. This, added to the doubt about the impending baby’s paternity, seems too much to ask of him, and an unfair burden with which to begin a marriage. If he returns to find her unmarried, though, he may feel that he has no choice.
Brianna therefore implements her plan—blackmailing Lord John into marriage. She explains her reasoning to him; since he would not in any case desire her in a wifely fashion, she wouldn’t be depriving him of the physical love she can’t give. At the same time, Roger would be relieved of both choice and obligation. And if Lord John does not choose to acquiesce … she takes a deep breath and threatens to expose him as a pederast.
Lord John’s response to this remarkable threat is, “Child, you would make an angel weep, and God knows I am no angel!”
Reluctantly, he is obliged to reveal the background of his relationship with Jamie Fraser, a tale to which Brianna listens with mingled horror and fascination. Lord John convinces her that she must at least allow Roger to make his own choice, and further, that she must forgive her father for his part in her troubles. Firmly declining to go along with her plan, he suggests that they pretend to an engagement that will at least temporarily relieve her of the unwanted attentions of Jocasta’s horde of suitors.
IMPRISONED IN HIS SMALL HUT, Roger has no inkling of the arrival of a ransom party. He has no notion what the Indians mean to do with him, but his fears are not allayed by their treatment of the priest. Father Alexandre is stripped, removed from the hut, and returned some hours later, minus one ear. The priest tells Roger that he is sure the Mohawk mean to kill him,