Diana Gabaldon - Written in My Own Heart’s Blood

“How long will it take, do you think? To get back to the Ridge?”

“Too long to make it before the snow, Sassenach,” he said gently, running a hand down my back. “Even if I manage the money and find a ship to take us down to North Carolina—and I’d rather do that—”

“You would?” I blurted, astonished. “You? Take a ship? I thought you’d sworn you’d never set foot on one again unless it was the ship taking your coffin back to Scotland.”

“Mmphm. Aye, well. If it was only me, then, aye, I’d rather walk to North Carolina barefoot over hot coals. But it’s not. It’s you, and—”

“Me?” I sat up straight, angry. “What do you mean by that? Ahhh!” I clutched my hair and dived into his lap, for the bat had zoomed within inches of my head; I actually heard its faint squeaking and the leathery flap of wings.

Jamie laughed, but with a faint edge to it. As I sat up again, he ran a hand down my right side and rested two fingers over the fresh scar there.

“I mean that, Sassenach,” he said, and pressed. Very gently, and I kept myself from flinching at the touch—but the scar was still red and tender.

“I’m fine,” I said, as firmly as possible.

“I’ve been shot, Sassenach,” he said, very dryly. “More than once. I ken what it feels like—and how long it takes to get your full strength back. Ye nearly fell over in the street today, and—”

“I hadn’t eaten anything; I was hungry, and—”

“I’m no taking ye overland,” he said, in a tone that brooked no argument. “And it’s not only you—though it’s mostly you,” he added, in a softer tone, smoothing the hair off my face. “But there are the wee bairns, as well, and now Marsali, if she’s wi’ child . . . It’s a hard journey, lass, and dangerous, forbye. Did ye not say the duke told ye the British mean to take the South now?”

“Hmph,” I said, but allowed him to pull me down next to him. “Yes, he did. But I’ve no idea what that might actually mean, in terms of where they are or what they’re doing. The only battles I’d actually heard of, beyond Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill, are Saratoga and Yorktown—that’s where it ends, Yorktown,” I added. “Obviously a few things must happen in between, though.”

“Obviously,” he said. “Aye. Well, I’ll buy another sword when we get to North Carolina and I’ve money again.”

He did in fact have considerable assets—in North Carolina. But there was no way of retrieving any of the gold hidden in the Spaniard’s Cave there—even if he had trusted anyone to do so, no one knew where the cave was, save him and Jemmy—and the aging whisky (almost as valuable as the gold, if brought to the coast for sale) was in the same place.

“I suppose the price of a good sword isn’t quite enough for ship’s passage for nine people—no, eleven, if Ian and Rachel come, too—is it?”

“No,” he said thoughtfully. “I said to Fergus that he might consider selling his press. He doesna own the premises, ken—but the press is his.” He made a small gesture, encompassing the building around us. “There’s my Bonnie in Wilmington, after all.”

“Your—oh, your press. Of course.” I hid a smile in his biceps. He invariably spoke of . . . well, her . . . with a certain possessive affection. Come to think, I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard him talk about me that way. . . .

“Aye. Fergus has his mind set that he’ll go on bein’ a printer, and I think that’s wise. Germain’s not yet big enough to plow—and poor wee Henri-Christian never will be.”

I suppressed my speculations as to just what Germain’s reaction might be if forcibly removed from the environs of a thriving city and plunked down behind a plow. He might remember the Ridge fondly, but that didn’t mean he wanted to be a farmer.

“What about Richard Bell?” Bell was the Loyalist who had been forcibly deported from his North Carolina home and sent, penniless and friendless, to England, ending up eventually in Edinburgh, where he had found employment as a printer—and where Jamie had encountered him and made the bargain whereby Richard would bring Bonnie to North Carolina and look after her in return for his passage home.

“I dinna ken,” Jamie said reflectively. “I wrote to him, to say we were coming to Wilmington and that we must make some arrangement . . . but I’ve had no reply.” This didn’t necessarily mean anything; letters frequently were lost or late. Jamie shrugged a little and shifted, stretching as he resettled himself. “Aye, well; let that bide. We’ll see when we see. How’s our wee friend?”

“Our—oh.” I looked up, scanning the low ceiling, but saw no trace of the bat. I didn’t hear any whining mosquitoes, either. “Well done, bat,” I said appreciatively.

Jamie laughed, low in his throat.

“Remember sittin’ on the stoop and watching the bats come out in the summer evenings on the Ridge?”

“I do,” I said softly, and turned on my side to embrace him lightly, hand on the curly hairs of his chest. I did remember. The Ridge. The cabin Jamie and Ian had built for shelter when we first came there, and the white piglet we’d bought, who had become the fearsome white sow, terror of the entire neighborhood. Our friends, Jamie’s tenants, Lizzie and the Beardsley twins . . . My heart squeezed at some of the memories.

Malva Christie. Poor doomed child. And the Bugs—Jamie’s trusted factor and his wife—who had proven a good deal less than trustworthy. And the Big House, our house, gone up in flames, and our life there with it.

“I’ll need to build the new house first thing,” he said thoughtfully. He laid his own hand on mine and squeezed it. “And I’ll make ye a new garden. Ye can have half the money I got for my sword, to buy seeds.”

September 10, 1778

New York

HAL GAVE A MILD snort. “I don’t like your going alone,” he said.

“I don’t like it, either,” John said matter-of-factly, corking his hip flask. “But the only person who could effectively go with me is you, and you can’t, because of the regiment, so . . . God, I miss Tom Byrd,” he said impulsively.

“Your erstwhile valet?” Hal smiled, despite the worry of the situation. “How long has it been since you’ve seen him? Ten years at least, surely?”

“At least that.” Thought of Tom still gave him a slight pang. Tom had left his employment—with deep regret on both sides—in order to marry, and had become a successful publican in Southwark, his wife having inherited a thriving public house from her father. Grey couldn’t begrudge him his happiness, but he still sorely missed Byrd, with his sharp eyes, quick mind, and anxious care for Grey’s person as well as his clothes.

He glanced down at himself; his current valet managed to keep him decent—a task that he himself admitted to be Sisyphean—but lacked both imagination and conversation.

“You should take Marks, regardless,” Hal said, having evidently followed his train of thought without difficulty. “Someone’s got to keep you in order.” He gave John’s uniform a critical look.

“I can dress myself, you know,” John said mildly. “As for the uniform—” He glanced down and shrugged. “Bit of a brush-off, clean shirt, spare stockings . . . it’s not as though I mean to be calling on General Washington.”

“We can only hope.” Hal’s lips pressed together. He’d already expressed his reservations—if anything so violently explicit could be described in such terms—regarding Grey’s intent to travel as himself, in uniform.

“I’ve had quite enough of being arrested as a spy, thank you,” John replied. “Beyond the risk of being hanged out-of-hand, the Americans’ sense of hospitality . . . though come to think, I’d meant to ask: do you know a Watson Smith? Used to be a captain in the Twenty-second, I think.”

Hal frowned in concentration, but his brow cleared almost immediately.

“I do,” he said. “A very good officer; did well at Crefeld and Zorndorf.” He cocked his head to one side, brows raised. “Why?”

“He’s turned his coat; he’s now a colonel in the Continental army. I was his involuntary guest for a short time. Nice fellow,” Grey added fairly. “Got me drunk on applejack.”

“Doubtless with the intent of extracting intelligence from you?” Hal’s expression made it clear that he doubted there had been much in that line for Smith to extract.

“No,” Grey said thoughtfully. “I don’t think so. We just got drunk together. Nice fellow,” he repeated. “I was going to express the hope that I wouldn’t meet him again—shouldn’t like to have to kill him, I mean—but I suppose it isn’t beyond belief that I might run into him somewhere.” The thought gave him a small, pleasant clench low down in the belly that rather surprised him.

“Anyway,” he added, “I’m going in uniform, even if grubby uniform. It won’t necessarily keep me from arrest, imprisonment, starvation, and torture, but it will save me from being hanged.”

“Torture?” Hal gave him a look.

“I had in mind waking up after the applejack,” John told him. “And the singing. Have you any idea how many verses the Americans have for ‘Yankee Doodle’?”

Hal grunted in response to this and took out a leather folder, from which he extracted a thin sheaf of documents.

“Here are your bona fides,” he said, handing them over. “They may help—assuming firstly that you’re captured or detained, rather than shot on sight, and secondly that your captors take the time to read them.”

Grey didn’t trouble to reply to this, being occupied in thumbing through the documents. A copy of his warrant of commission; a note from Hal as Colonel of the Regiment, detaching Lieutenant Colonel John Grey temporarily from service and desiring him to undertake the task of locating and assisting one Mrs. Benjamin Grey (née Amaranthus Cowden), widow of Captain Benjamin Grey, late of the Thirty-fourth Foot; a “To Whom It May Concern” letter from Clinton, formally recognizing Grey’s mission and requesting that every courtesy and assistance be provided him in consequence thereof; several bills of exchange drawn on Coutts’ bank in New York (“Just in case,” Hal told him. “In case of what?” “In case you get knocked over and relieved of your gold, halfwit.” “Oh.”); and . . . Benedict Arnold’s note, granting the Duke of Pardloe and his brother, Lord John Grey, permission to abide temporarily in Philadelphia for the purpose of searching for the duke’s nephew.

“Really?” Grey said, raising his brows at this last. “Under what circumstances do you think this might be helpful?”

Hal shrugged and straightened his waistcoat. “The fact that you and I are known to General Arnold is worth something. The note doesn’t give his opinion of us, after all.”

Grey gave the note a critical eye, but, in fact, Arnold had refrained from personalities and had not codified his threats regarding rails and tar and feathers.

“All right.” He closed the folder and put it down, laying his hat on it to ensure against walking off without it. “That’s that, then. What’s for supper?”

* * *

JOHN GREY WAS enjoying a confused but pleasant dream involving spring rain, his dachshund Roscoe, Colonel Watson Smith, and a great deal of mud, when he gradually became aware that the raindrops on his face were real.

He opened his eyes, blinking, to discover his niece, Dottie, holding his pitcher in one hand and sprinkling water from her fingertips onto his face.

“Good morning, Uncle John,” she said cheerily. “Rise and shine!”

“The last person injudicious enough to say that to me in the morning came to a most unpleasant end,” he said, struggling upright and rubbing the sleeve of his nightshirt across his face.

“Really? What happened to him? Or was it a him?” She dimpled at him and set down the pitcher, wiping her wet fingers on her skirt.

“What an improper question,” he said, eyeing her.

“Well, I am a married woman now, you know,” she said, sitting down with an air of extreme self-possession. “I am allowed to know that men and women occasionally share a bed, even outwith the bonds of matrimony.”

“Outwith? Where did you pick up that barbarous construction? Have you been speaking to Scotchmen?”

“Constantly,” she said. “But what happened to the unfortunate person who tried to roust you from your slumbers?”

“Oh, him.” He rubbed a hand over his head, still surprised at feeling the hair so short, though it had at least grown enough to fall over and lie somewhat flat, rather than sticking straight up like a shaving brush. “He was scalped by red Indians.”