George Vanlandingham, Esq. The Honorable Phillip Menzies. Joseph William Roscoe. Not for the first time, Roger found himself wondering about those dead heroes and what they had been like. Since meeting Brianna and her mother, he’d found that the past too often wore a disturbingly human face.
“Here you are, Mr. Wakefield.” Martin leaned beaming across the counter, holding out a thin sheaf of letters. “One from the States today,” he added, with a broad wink.
Roger felt an answering grin break out on his face, and a warm glow spread at once from his chest through his limbs, dispelling the chill of the rainy day.
“Will we be seeing your young woman up soon, Mr. Wakefield?” Martin craned his neck, peering frankly at the letter with its U.S. stamps. The porter had met Brianna when she had come down with Roger just before Christmas, and had fallen under her spell.
“I hope so. Perhaps in the summer. Thanks!”
He turned toward his staircase, tucking the letters carefully into the sleeve of his gown while he groped for his key. He felt a mingled sense of elation and dismay at thought of the summer. She’d said she’d come in July—but July was still four months away. In some moods, he didn’t think he’d last four days.
* * *
Roger folded the letter again and tucked it into his inside pocket, next to his heart. She wrote every few days, from brief notes to long screeds, and each of her letters left him with a small warm glow that lasted usually until the next arrived.
At the same time, her letters were faintly unsatisfactory these days. Still warmly affectionate, always signed “Love,” always saying she missed him and wanted him with her. No longer the sort of thing that burned the page, though.
Perhaps it was natural; a normal progression as they knew each other longer; no one could go on writing passionate missives day after day, not with any honesty.
No doubt it was only his imagination that Brianna seemed to hold back a bit in her letters. He could do without the excesses of one friend’s girl, who had clipped bits of her pubic hair and included them in a letter—though he rather admired the sentiment behind the gesture.
He took a bite of his sandwich and chewed absentmindedly, thinking of the latest article Fiona had showed him. Now married, Fiona considered herself an expert on matters matrimonial, and took a sisterly interest in the bumpy course of Roger’s love affair.
She was constantly clipping helpful tips from women’s magazines and mailing them to him. The latest had been a piece from My Weekly, entitled “How to Intrigue a Man.” Sauce for the gander, Fiona had written pointedly in the margin.
“Share his interests,” one tip advised. “If you think football’s a loss, but he’s dead keen, sit down beside him and ask about Arsenal’s chances the week. If football’s boring, he isn’t.”
Roger smiled a little grimly. He’d been sharing Brianna’s interests, all right, if tracking her bloody parents through their hair-raising history counted as a pastime. Damn little of that he could share with her, though.
“Be coy,” said another of the magazine’s tips. “Nothing piques a man’s interest more than an air of reserve. Don’t let him get too close, too soon.”
It occurred to Roger to wonder whether Brianna had been reading similar advice in American magazines, but he dismissed the thought. She wasn’t above reading fashion magazines—he had seen her do it on occasion—but Brianna Randall was as incapable of playing that sort of silly game as he was himself.
No, she wouldn’t put him off just to raise his interest in her; what would be the point? Surely she knew just how much he cared about her.
Did she, though? With a qualm of uneasiness, Roger recalled another of My Weekly’s tips to the lovelorn.
“Don’t assume he can read your mind,” the article said. “Give him a hint of how you feel.”
Roger took a random bite of the sandwich and chewed, oblivious to its contents. Well, he’d hinted, all right. Come out and bared his bloody soul. And she’d promptly leapt into a plane and buggered off to Boston.
“Don’t be too aggressive,” he murmured, quoting Tip #14, and snorted. The woman don next to him edged slightly away.
Roger sighed and deposited the bitten sandwich distastefully on the plastic tray. He picked up the cup of what the dining hall was pleased to call coffee, but didn’t drink it, merely sat with it between his hands, absorbing its meager warmth.
The trouble was that while he thought he had succeeded in deflecting Brianna’s attention from the past, he had been unable to ignore it himself. Claire and that bloody Highlander of hers obsessed him; they might as well have been his own family, for the fascination they held.
“Always be honest.” Tip #3. If he had been, if he’d helped her to find out everything, perhaps the ghost of Jamie Fraser would be laid now—and so would Roger.
“Oh, bugger!” he muttered to himself.
The woman next to him crashed her coffee cup onto her tray and stood up suddenly.
“Go bugger yourself!” she said crisply, and walked off.
Roger stared after her for a moment.
“No fear,” he said. “I think maybe I already have.”
25
ENTER A SERPENT
October 1768
In principle, I had no objection to snakes. They ate rats, which was laudable of them, some were ornamental, and most of them were wise enough to keep out of my way. Live and let live was my basic attitude.
On the other hand, that was theory. In practice, I had any number of objections to the huge snake curled up on the seat of the privy. Beyond the fact that he was gravely discommoding me at present, he wasn’t usefully eating rats and he wasn’t aesthetically pleasing, either, being a sort of drab gray with darker splotches.
My major objection to him, though, was the fact that he was a rattlesnake. I supposed that in a way it was fortunate that he was; it was only the heartstopping buzz of his rattles that had prevented me sitting on him in the dawn’s early light.
The first sound froze me in place, just inside the tiny privy. I extended one foot behind me, groping gingerly for the doorsill. The snake didn’t like that; I froze again as the warning buzz increased in volume. I could see the vibrating tip of his tail, sticking up like a thick yellow finger, rudely pointing from the heap of coils.
My mouth had gone dry as paper; I bit the inside of my cheek, trying to summon a little saliva.
How long was he? I seemed to recall Brianna’s telling me—from her Girl Scout handbook—that rattlesnakes were capable of striking at a distance up to one-third their own body length. No more than two feet separated my nightgown-covered thighs from the nasty flat head with its lidless eyes.
Was he six feet long? It was impossible to tell, but the squirm of coils looked unpleasantly massive, the rounded body thick with scaled muscle. He was a bloody big snake, and the fear of being ignominiously bitten in the crotch if I moved was enough to make me stand still.
I couldn’t stand still forever, though. Other considerations aside, the shock of seeing the snake hadn’t decreased the urgency of my bodily functions in the slightest.
I had some vague notion that snakes were deaf; perhaps I could shout for help. But what if they weren’t? There was that Sherlock Holmes story about the snake who responded to a whistle. Perhaps the snake would find whistling inoffensive, at least. Cautiously, I pursed my lips and blew. Nothing came out but a thin stream of air.