The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [172]
For now Jamie was surprised at the sense of peace he felt in the stable. It wasn’t homecoming, precisely—this place would never be home to him—but it was a place he knew, familiar in its daily rhythms, and with open air and the calm sweet presence of the horses always there at the bottom of it, no matter what the people were like.
He took his string of horses out along the road past the mere, then up a little way—not onto the fells but beyond the outer paddocks, where a grassy track led the way up and over a series of small hills. He paused at the summit of the highest, to breathe the horses and to look down over Helwater. It was a view he liked, when the weather was clear enough to see it: the big old house couched comfortably in its grove of copper beeches, the silver of the water beyond, rippling in the wind, its lacy edging of cattails spattered with blackbirds in spring and summer, their clear high song reaching him if the breeze lay right.
Just now there were no birds visible save a small hawk circling below the crest of the hill, alert for mice in the dead grass. There were tiny figures coming out along the drive, though; two men, mounted—Lord Dunsany and Lord John. He recognized the first by his stooped shoulders and the way his head jutted forward, the second by his square, solid seat and his easy, one-handed way with the reins.
“God be with ye, Englishman,” he said. Whatever John Grey had thought of Jamie’s announcement that he meant to court Betty Mitchell—Jamie grinned to himself at memory of Lord John’s face, comically trying to suppress his astonishment in the name of courtesy—he’d brought Jamie back to Helwater.
Grey would leave in a few days, he supposed. He wondered if they would speak again before that happened, and, if so, how. The odd half-friendship they had forged from necessity could not in justice be forgotten—but neither could the resumption of their present positions as, essentially, master and slave. Was there any ground that would let them meet again as equals?
“A posse ad esse,” he muttered to himself. From possibility to actuality. And, gathering up his leading rein, shouted, “Hup!” to the horses, and they thundered happily down the hill toward home.
THE DAY WAS COLD and windy but bright, and leaves from the copper beeches flew past in wild flurries, as though pursued. Grey had worried momentarily when Dunsany suggested a ride, for the old man was very frail, noticeably more so than on Grey’s last visit. The giddy flights of sun, wind, and leaves lent the day a sense of mild excitement, though, which seemed to communicate itself to Dunsany, for his face took on a faint glow and his hands seemed strong enough on the reins. Nonetheless, Grey took care to keep their pace moderate and one eye on his ancient friend.
Once out of the drive, they took the lake road. It was muddy—Grey had never known it not—and the churned earth showed numerous hoof hollows slowly filling with water; a number of horses had passed this way not long before. Grey felt the small spurt of excitement that he had been experiencing whenever horses or stables were mentioned at Helwater—a more or less hourly occurrence—though he knew that encountering Jamie Fraser out with a horse was a long shot, there being other grooms on the estate. Still, he couldn’t help a quick glance ahead.
The road lay empty before them, though, and he bent his attention to Lord Dunsany, who had slowed his horse to a walk.
“Has he picked up a stone?” he asked, reining in and preparing to dismount and attend to it.
“No, no.” Dunsany waved him back into his saddle. “I wished to talk with you, Lord John. Privately, you know.”
“Oh. Yes, of course,” he said, cautiously. “Er … about Fraser?”
Dunsany looked surprised, but then considered.
“Well, no. But since you mention him, do you wish to … make other arrangements for him?”
Grey bit the inside of his cheek. “No,” he said carefully. “Not for the present.”
Dunsany nodded, not seeming bothered at the prospect. “He’s a very good groom,” he said.