A Breath of Snow and Ashes (169 page)

“They both know, yes.”

“How old is he?” Roger asked abruptly. Lord John shot him a sharp glance.

“Eighteen. And to save your counting backward, it was 1758. In a place called Helwater, in the Lake District.”

Brianna took another breath, finding this one came a little easier.

“Okay. So it—he—it was before my mother . . . came back.”

“Yes. From France, supposedly. Where, I gather, you were born and raised.” He gave her a gimlet look; he knew she spoke no more than bastard French.

She could feel the blood rushing to her face.

“This is no time for secrets,” she said. “If you want to know about my mother and me, I’ll tell you—but
you’re
going to tell me about
him.
” She jerked her head angrily backward, toward the tavern. “About my brother!”

Lord John pursed his lips, regarding her through narrowed eyes as he thought. Finally he nodded.

“I see no help for it. One thing, though—are your parents here, in Wilmington?”

“Yes. In fact . . .” She looked upward, trying to make out the position of the sun through the thin coastal haze. It hung just above the horizon, a disc of burning gold. “We were going to meet them for supper.”

“Here?”

“Yes.”

Lord John swung round to Roger.

“Mr. MacKenzie. You will very much oblige me, sir, if you will go at once to find your father-in-law, and apprise him of the presence of the ninth Earl of Ellesmere. Tell him that I trust his good judgment will dictate an immediate removal from Wilmington upon receipt of this news.”

Roger stared at him for a moment, brows quirked in interest.

“The Earl of Ellesmere? How the hell did he manage that?”

Lord John had recovered all his natural color, and a bit more. He was distinctly pink in the face.

“Never mind! Will you go? Jamie must leave the town, at once, before they meet by inadvertence—or before someone sees the two of them separately and begins to speculate aloud.”

“I doubt Jamie will leave,” Roger said, looking at Lord John with a certain degree of speculation himself. “Not before tomorrow, in any case.”

“Why not?” Lord John demanded, looking from one to the other. “Why are you all here in the first place? It isn’t the exe—oh, good Lord, don’t tell me.” He clapped a hand to his face, and dragged it slowly down, glaring through his fingers with the expression of a man tried beyond bearing.

Brianna bit her lower lip. When she spotted Lord John, she had been not only pleased but relieved of a small bit of her burden of worry, counting on him to help in her plan. With this new complication, though, she felt torn in two, unable to cope with either situation, or even to think about them coherently. She looked over at Roger, seeking advice.

He met her eyes in one of those long, unspoken marital exchanges. Then he nodded, making the decision for her.

“I’ll go find Jamie. You have a bit of a chat with his Lordship, eh?”

He bent and kissed her, hard, then turned and strode away down the dock, walking in a way that made people draw unconsciously aside, avoiding the touch of his garments.

Lord John had closed his eyes, and appeared to be praying—presumably for strength. She gripped him by the arm and his eyes sprang open, startled as though he had been bitten by a horse.

“Is it as striking as I think?” she said. “Him and me?” The word felt funny on her tongue.
Him.

Lord John looked at her, fair brow furrowed in troubled concentration as he searched her face, feature by feature.

“I think so,” he said slowly. “To me, certainly. To a casual observer, perhaps much less so. There is the difference of coloring, to be sure, and of sex; his uniform . . . but, my dear, you know that your own appearance is so striking—” So freakish, he meant. She sighed, taking his meaning.

“People stare at me anyway,” she finished for him. She pulled down the brim of her hat, drawing it far enough forward to hide not only hair but face, as well, and glowered at him from its shadow. “Then we’d better go where no one who knows him will see me, hadn’t we?”

THE QUAY AND THE market streets were thronged. Every public house in town—and not a few private ones—would soon be full of quartered soldiers. Her father and Jem were with Alexander Lillington, her mother and Mandy at Dr. Fentiman’s, both places centers of business and gossip, and she had declared that she possessed no intention of going near either parent in any case—not until she knew all there was to know. Lord John thought that might be rather more than he was himself prepared to tell her, but this was not a time for quibbles.

Still, the exigencies of privacy left them a choice of graveyard or the deserted racetrack, and Brianna said—a marked edge in her voice—that under the circumstances, she wanted no heavy-handed reminders of mortality.

“These mortal circumstances,” he said carefully, leading her around a large puddle. “You refer to tomorrow’s execution? It
is
Stephen Bonnet, I collect?”

“Yes,” she said, distracted. “That can wait, though. You aren’t engaged for supper, are you?”

“No. But—”

“William,” she said, eyes on her shoes as they paced slowly round the sandy oval. “William, ninth Earl of Ellesmere, you said?”

“William Clarence Henry George,” Lord John agreed. “Viscount Ashness, Master of Helwater, Baron Derwent, and, yes, ninth Earl of Ellesmere.”

She pursed her lips.

“Which would sort of indicate that the world at large thinks his father is somebody else. Not Jamie Fraser, I mean.”

“
Was
somebody else,” he corrected. “One Ludovic, eighth Earl of Ellesmere, to be precise. I understand that the eighth earl unfortunately died on the day his . . . er . . . his heir was born.”

“Died of what? Shock?” She was clearly in a dangerous mood; he was interested to note both her father’s manner of controlled ferocity and her mother’s sharp tongue at work—the combination was both fascinating and alarming. He hadn’t any intention of allowing her to run this interview on her own terms, though.

“Gunshot,” he said with affected cheerfulness. “Your father shot him.”

She made a small choking noise and stopped dead.

“That is not, by the way, common knowledge,” he said, affecting not to notice her reaction. “The coroner’s court returned a verdict of death by misadventure—which was not incorrect, I believe.”

“Not incorrect,” she murmured, sounding a trifle dazed. “I guess being shot is pretty misadventurous, all right.”

“Of course there was talk,” he said, offhanded, taking her arm and urging her forward again. “But the only witness, aside from William’s grandparents, was an Irish coachman, who was rather quickly pensioned off to County Sligo, following the incident. The child’s mother having also died that day, gossip was inclined to consider his lordship’s death as—”

“His mother’s dead, too?” She didn’t stop this time, but turned to give him a penetrating glance from those deep blue eyes. Lord John had had sufficient practice in withstanding Fraser cat looks, though, and was not discomposed.

“Her name was Geneva Dunsany. She died shortly after William’s birth—of an entirely natural hemorrhage,” he assured her.

“Entirely natural,” she muttered, half under her breath. She shot him another look. “This Geneva—she was married to the earl? When she and Da . . .” The words seemed to stick in her throat; he could see doubt and repugnance struggling with her memories of William’s undeniable face—and her knowledge of her father’s character.

“He has not told me, and I would in no circumstance ask him,” he said firmly. She gave him another of those looks, which he returned with interest. “Whatever the nature of Jamie’s relations with Geneva Dunsany, I cannot conceive of his committing an act of such dishonor as to deceive another man in his marriage.”

She relaxed fractionally, though her grip on his arm remained.

“Neither can I,” she said, rather grudgingly. “But—” Her lips compressed, relaxed. “Was he in love with her, do you think?” she blurted.

What startled him was not the question, but the realization that it had never once occurred to him to ask it—certainly not of Jamie, but not even of himself. Why not? he wondered. He had no right to jealousy, and if he was fool enough to suffer it, it would have been considerably
ex post facto
in the case of Geneva Dunsany; he had had no inkling of William’s origins until several years after the girl’s death.

“I have no idea,” he said shortly.

Brianna’s fingers drummed restlessly on his arm; she would have pulled free, but he put a hand on hers to still her.

“Damn,” she muttered, but ceased fidgeting, and walked on, matching the length of his shorter stride. Weeds had sprung up in the oval, were sprouting through the sand of the track. She kicked at a clump of wild rye grass, sending a spray of dry seeds flying.

“If they were in love, why didn’t he marry her?” she asked at last.

He laughed, in sheer incredulity at the notion.

“Marry her! My dear girl, he was the family groom!”

A look of puzzlement flashed in her eye—he would have sworn that if she had spoken, the word would have been
“So?”

“Where in the name of God were you raised?” he demanded, stopping dead.

He could see things moving in her eyes; she had Jamie’s trick of keeping her face a mask, but her mother’s transparency still shone from within. He saw the decision in her eyes, a moment before the slow smile touched her lips.

“Boston,” she said. “I’m an American. But you knew I was a barbarian already, didn’t you?”

He grunted in response.

“That does go some distance toward explaining your remarkably republican attitudes,” he replied very dryly. “Though I would strongly suggest that you disguise these dangerous sentiments, for the sake of your family. Your father is in sufficient trouble on his own account. However, you may accept my assurance that it would not be possible for the daughter of a baronet to marry a groom, no matter how exigent the nature of their emotions.”

Her turn to grunt at that; a highly expressive, if totally unfeminine sound. He sighed, and took her hand again, tucking it in the curve of his elbow for safekeeping.

“He was a paroled prisoner, too—a Jacobite, a traitor. Believe me, marriage would not have occurred to either of them.”

The damp air was misting on her skin, clinging to the down hairs on her cheeks.

“But that was in another country,”
she quoted softly.
“And besides, the wench is dead.”

“Very true,” he said quietly.

They scuffed silently through the damp sand for a few moments, each alone in thought. At last Brianna heaved a sigh, deep enough that he felt as well as heard it.

“Well, she’s dead, anyway, and the earl—do you know
why
Da killed him? Did he tell you that?”

“Your father has never spoken of the matter—of Geneva, of the earl, or even directly of William’s parentage—to me.” He spoke precisely, eyes fixed on a pair of gulls probing the sand near a clump of saw grass. “But I know, yes.”

He glanced at her.

“William is
my
son, after all. In the sense of common usage, at least.” In a great deal more than that, but that was not a matter he chose to discuss with Jamie’s daughter.

Her eyebrows rose.

“Yes. How did that happen?”

“As I told you, both of William’s parents—his putative parents—died on the day of his birth. His father—the earl, I mean—had no close kin, so the boy was left to the guardianship of his grandfather, Lord Dunsany. Geneva’s sister, Isobel, became William’s mother in all but fact. And I—” He shrugged, nonchalant. “I married Isobel. I became William’s guardian, with Dunsany’s consent, and he has regarded me as his stepfather since he was six years old—he is my son.”

“You? You
married
?” She was goggling down at him, with an air of incredulity that he found offensive.

“You have the most peculiar notions concerning marriage,” he said crossly. “It was an eminently suitable match.”

One red eyebrow went up in a gesture that was Jamie to the life.

“Did your wife think so?” she asked, in an uncanny echo of her mother’s voice, asking the same question. When her mother had asked it, he had been nonplussed. This time, he was prepared.

“That,” he said tersely, “was in another country. And Isobel . . .” As he had hoped, that silenced her.

A fire was burning at the far end of the sandy oval, where travelers had made a rough camp. People come downriver to see the execution, he wondered? Men seeking to enlist in the rebel militias? A figure moved, dimly seen through the haze of smoke, and he turned, leading Brianna back along the way they had come. This conversation was sufficiently awkward, without the risk of interruption.

“You asked about Ellesmere,” he said, taking control of the conversation once more. “The story given to the coroner’s court by Lord Dunsany was that Ellesmere had been showing him a new pistol, which discharged by accident. It was the sort of story that is told in order to be disbelieved—giving the impression that in reality the earl had shot himself, doubtless from grief at the death of his wife, but that the Dunsanys wished to avoid the stigma of suicide, for the sake of the child. The coroner naturally perceived both the falsity of the story and the wisdom of allowing it to stand.”