“And I understand what you’re telling me, too,” she said, “I do.” And met his gaze straight on. “The thing is, though, I can usually make even men back up a little, or at least stop for a moment, and then I can either steer them into something else or make them go away. I mean—” She looked down her body and waved a hand. “I’m taller than most men, and I’m strong. When I’ve had trouble with some man on the Ridge, I’ve been able to face them down. So when that didn’t work this afternoon, I was—I didn’t expect that,” she ended abruptly.
It wasn’t a situation where tact would be helpful. He’d got a grip on his own fury; he couldn’t do anything about the boys—unless he saw the little bastards, and God help them if he did—but Brianna … he could maybe do something for her.
“On the Ridge,” he said carefully, “it’s not just your own physical presence—intimidating as that is to some men,” he said, with a brief grin. “When a man backs down, sometimes it’s down to you, all right—but sometimes it’s because your da is standing behind you.” He shrugged, careful not to add or me. “Metaphorically, I mean.”
She flushed red, her face drawing inward, and he made a conscious effort not to start back. A Fraser in an unleashed temper was a substance to be treated with caution, whether it was Mandy or Jamie. Easier if they were small enough that you could pick them up and take them somewhere quiet, of course, and/or threaten to smack their bottoms …
Luckily, while Jamie and Claire were as distinctive as night and day in terms of their personalities, both of them were logical and fair-minded, and their daughter had inherited both those traits.
She made a soft rumbling noise in her throat and drew a deep breath, her face relaxing.
“I know that,” she said, and raised her brows in brief apology. “I knew it, I mean. I hadn’t thought about it, though.”
“You did kill Stephen Bonnet,” he pointed out, in palliation. “He wasn’t afraid of your da.”
“Yes, after you and Da caught him and tied him up for me and the good citizens of Wilmington staked him out in the river.” She snorted. “It wouldn’t have mattered if I was scared stiff.”
“You were,” he said. “I was there.” He’d rowed her out over the shimmering brown water, in the early afternoon, in a small boat smeared with fish scales and the mud that made the river brown.
She’d sat across from him, the pistol in her pocket, and he could see her arm in memory, rigid as iron as she’d clutched the gun, and the small pulse in her throat, beating like a hummingbird’s. He’d wanted urgently to tell her again that she didn’t have to do this; that if she couldn’t bear the idea of Stephen Bonnet drowning, then he’d do it for her. But she’d made up her mind, and he knew she would never turn back from a job she thought was hers. And so they’d rowed out into the harbor, in a silence louder than the screams of waterbirds and the lap of the incoming tide and the echo of a gunshot not yet fired.
“Thank you,” she said softly, and he saw that her eyes glistened with tears that she wouldn’t let fall because she hated to be weak. “You didn’t try to stop me.”
“I would have, if I thought there was any chance ye’d listen,” he said gruffly, but both of them knew it wasn’t true, and she squeezed his hand, then let go and took a deep breath.
“Then there was Rob Cameron,” she said, “and the nutters who were lying in wait at Lallybroch, wanting to take the kids. I couldn’t have fought off the nutters all by myself—and thank God for Ernie Buchan and Lionel Menzies! But I did smack Rob on the head with a junior cricket bat and laid him out cold.” She glanced at him with the flicker of a real smile. “So there.”
“Well done,” he said softly, and managed with some effort to suppress both his resurgent rage at Cameron and his guilt for not being there. “My braw lass.”
She laughed, and wiped her nose on the back of her free hand.
“I already knew you were a good husband,” she said. “But you’ll be a great minister.”
She leaned forward then and he took her in his arms, feeling her weight warm and heavy with her trust.
“Thanks,” he said softly, against her hair. It was smooth and warm on his lips. “But I can’t be either one of those things alone, aye?”
For a moment, she was silent. Then she pulled back enough to look at him, her face tear-streaked but solemn now, and beautiful.
“You won’t be alone,” she said. “Even if God’s not there when you need Him, I’ll be there—standing just behind you.”
74
The Face of Evil
ROGER CLIMBED THE LADDER to the loft, surprising his wife, who was crawling about on her hands and knees.
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
“Mandy’s sock,” she replied, sitting back on her heels with a small groan. “You know how people say something or other is a backbreaking job? That’s not hyperbole when it comes to laundry. What are you looking for?”
“You.” He glanced over his shoulder, but the printshop below was vacant at the moment, though he could hear voices in the kitchen. “Fergus asked me to go with him on an errand, and he asked me to bring a knife. So I thought I’d give you this for safekeeping—you know, in case we’re going to meet a highway robber and get his life story for the front page,” he added, trying to make a feeble joke of it. His wife was having none of his humors, and heaved herself to her feet with a hand on a barrel of varnish, her eyes fixing him with a look of dark-blue suspicion.
She kept her eyes on him while taking the paper from his hand and unfolding it, glancing away only to read it.
“What is this?”
“It’s a warehouse certificate. You’ve seen them before, surely? Your da has a fistful of them in his strongbox.”
“I have,” she said, giving him a pointed look. “Why do you have a warehouse certificate to a warehouse in Charlotte?”
“Because so far as either I or Frank Randall knows, there won’t be any significant fighting in Charlotte. That’s where I sent the, um, guano. I thought nobody would notice, and nobody did.”
She gave the certificate a careful look, and he saw her note that he’d put her name on it as well as his. Under the circumstances, she didn’t seem to find that comforting.
“So,” he said heartily, “we’ll be back before supper. Oh—and Mandy’s sock is over there, under the candle snuffer.”
FEELING THAT IT didn’t behoove a not-quite-ordained minister to walk about in a black coat with a large knife on his belt in plain view, Roger put on his second-best coat, this being a rather shabby brown number with a visible mend in the sleeve and wooden buttons. Fergus viewed this with approval.
“Yes, very good,” he said. “You look as though you could do business.” The tone of his voice made it clear what kind of business he meant, but Roger assumed this to be a joke.
“Oh, so I’m meant to be your henchman?” He fell into step next to Fergus, who was wearing the same clothes he wore for printing, but with a blue coat little better than Roger’s over them.