The scent of Rachel’s wet hair was strong in his memory—and the sight of it, dark and straggling in tails down her back, the wet making her worn shift transparent in spots, with shadows of her soft pale skin beneath.
“What? I mean—I beg your pardon?”
Manoke had said something to him, and the smell of rain vanished, replaced by hickory smoke, fried cornmeal, and fish.
Manoke gave him an amused look but obligingly repeated himself.
“I said, have you come to stay? Because if so, maybe you want to fix the chimney.”
William glanced over his shoulder; the vine-shrouded rubble was just visible, past the edge of the porch.
“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging. Manoke nodded and went back to his conversation with Cinnamon; the two of them were speaking French. William couldn’t make the effort to listen, suddenly overcome by a tiredness that sank to the marrow of his bones.
Would he stay? Not now; but maybe later, when he’d done his work, when he’d found either his cousin Ben or absolute proof of his death. Maybe he’d come back. He didn’t know what he’d intended by coming here now; it was just the only place he could go where he could think in peace and wouldn’t be obliged to make constant explanations. His stepmother—though he’d always thought of her as simply Mother Isobel—had left the place to him. He wondered suddenly whether she had ever seen it.
He’d found more of the Virginia militiamen who’d been at Middlebrook Encampment while Ben was a prisoner there. Most of them had never heard of Captain Benjamin Grey, and those few who had knew only that he was dead.
Except he wasn’t. William clung stubbornly to that conviction. Or if he was, it wasn’t from the ague or pox, as reported by the Americans.
He was going to find out what had happened to his cousin. Once he had … well, there were other things to be thought about then. He needed to clear his mind. Make sense of things, decide what to do. First, of course, Ben. But then he’d need to rise up and take action, to make things right.
“Right,” he said under his breath. “Hell and death.” Nothing could be made right.
Rachel was married now, to bloody Ian Murray—a man who was something between a Highlander and a Mohawk, and was also William’s bloody cousin, just to rub salt into the wound. That couldn’t be fixed.
Jane … His mind shied away from his last sight of Jane. That couldn’t be fixed, either—nor erased from his memory. Jane was a small, hard pebble that rattled sometimes in the chambers of his heart.
Nor could the thousand-spiked fact of William’s true paternity be fixed. Brought face-to-face with Jamie Fraser, having spent a hellish night with him in the futile hope of rescuing Jane … there was no possible way to deny the truth. He’d been sired by a Jacobite traitor, a Scottish criminal … a goddamned groom, for God’s sake. But. Ye’ve a claim to my help for any venture ye deem worthy, the Scot had said.
And Fraser had given that help, hadn’t he? At once and without question. Not only for Jane, but for her little sister, Frances.
William had barely been able to speak when they’d buried Jane. Remembered grief clutched him now and he bent his head over the half-eaten chunk of fish in his hand.
William had just thrust little Frances into Fraser’s arms and walked off. And now, for the first time, wondered why he’d done that. Lord John had been there, too, attending at the sad, tiny funeral. His own father—he could certainly have given Fanny safely into Lord John’s keeping. But he hadn’t. Hadn’t even thought about it.
No. No, I am not sorry. The words echoed in his ear, and the touch of a big, warm hand cupped his cheek for an instant. An overlooked fish bone caught in his throat and he choked, coughed, choked again.
Manoke looked briefly at him, but William waved a hand and the Indian returned to his intense Algonquian conversation with John Cinnamon. William got up and went, coughing, round the corner of the house to the well.
The water was sweet and cold, and with a little effort he dislodged the bone and drank, then poured water over his head. As he sluiced the dirt from his face, he felt a gradual sense of calm come over him. Not peace, not even resignation, but a realization that if everything couldn’t be settled right now … perhaps it didn’t need to be. He was twenty-one now, had come into his majority, but the Ellesmere estate was still administered by factors and lawyers; all those tenants and farms were still someone else’s responsibility. Until he returned to England to claim and deal with them. If he did. Or … or what?
It was deep twilight now, one of his favorite times of day here. The forest settled with the dying of the light, but the air rose, shedding the burden of the day’s heat, passing cool as a spirit through the murmuring leaves, touching his own hot skin with its peace.
He would stay here, he thought, wiping a hand over his wet face. For a little while. Not think. Not struggle. Just be still for a little while. Perhaps things would begin to sort themselves in his mind.
He ambled back to the porch, to find both Manoke and Cinnamon looking at him oddly.
“What?” he said, passing a self-conscious hand over the crown of his head. “Have I got burrs stuck in my hair?”
“Yes,” said Manoke, “but it doesn’t matter. Our friend has something to say to you, though.”
William glanced at Cinnamon in surprise. It was too dark to see if the man was blushing, but he rather thought so, given Cinnamon’s hunched shoulders and overall look of belligerent embarrassment.
“Go on,” Manoke urged, nudging Cinnamon gently. “You have to tell him sometime. Now is a good time.”
“Tell me what?” William sat down, cross-legged, to meet Cinnamon’s eyes on a level. The man’s lips were pressed thin, but he did meet William’s eyes straight on.
“What I said,” he blurted. “Before. About why I’m here. I came in case— I thought perhaps—well, it was the only place I knew to start looking.”
“Looking for what?” William asked, baffled.
“For Lord John Grey,” Cinnamon said, and William saw the broad throat move as he swallowed. “For my father.”
MANOKE DIDN’T HUNT much, but was a good fisherman; he’d taught William to make a fish trap, to cast a line, and even to grabble a catfish by boldly thrusting his hand into holes in the banks of the muddy water where they lived, then yanking the fish out bodily when it clamped onto his hand.
An echo of this sensation came back to William now, a brief ripple up his spine and the sense of turbid water rolling cold and sluggish over his head, fingers tingling at thought of the sudden iron clamp of unseen jaws.
“Your father,” he said carefully.
“Yes,” said John Cinnamon. His head was down, eyes focused on the corn fritter he’d been eating.
William looked at Manoke, feeling as though someone had hit him behind the ear with a stuffed eel skin. The older Indian nodded; his expression was serious, but he looked happy.
“Indeed,” William said politely, though his stomach had congealed into a hard mass beneath his ribs. “I congratulate you.”
No one said anything further for several minutes following Cinnamon’s bombshell, Cinnamon seeming nearly as shocked by it as William.