“He got it from me,” I said softly. “I told him that—when he was setting out to steal Prince Charles’s port.”
“I remembered.” Roger nodded, eyes shining with excitement. “But it’s a quote from Burns,” I said, frowning suddenly. “Perhaps the writer got it there—wasn’t Burns alive then?”
“He was,” said Bree smugly, forestalling Roger. “But Robert Burns was six years old in 1765.”
“And Jamie would be forty-four.” Suddenly, it all seemed real. He was alive—had been alive, I corrected myself, trying to keep my emotions in check. I laid my fingers flat against the manuscript pages, trembling.
“And if—” I said, and had to stop to swallow again.
“And if time goes on in parallel, as we think it does—” Roger stopped, too, looking at me. Then his eyes shifted to Brianna.
She had gone quite pale, but both lips and eyes were steady, and her fingers were warm when she touched my hand.
“Then you can go back, Mama,” she said softly. “You can find him.”
* * *
The plastic hangers rattled against the steel tubing of the dress rack as I thumbed my way slowly through the available selection.
“Can I be helpin’ ye at all, miss?” The salesgirl peered up at me like a helpful Pekingese, blue-ringed eyes barely visible through bangs that brushed the top of her nose.
“Have you got any more of these old-fashioned sorts of dresses?” I gestured at the rack before me, thick with examples of the current craze—laced-bodiced, long-skirted dresses in gingham cotton and velveteen.
The salesgirl’s mouth was caked so thickly that I expected the white lipstick to crack when she smiled, but it didn’t.
“Oh, aye,” she said. “Got a new lot o’ the Jessica Gutenburgs in just today. Aren’t they the grooviest, these old-style gowns?” She ran an admiring finger over a brown velvet sleeve, then whirled on her ballet flats and pointed toward the center of the store. “Just there, aye? Where it says, on the sign.”
The sign, stuck on the top of a circular rack, said CAPTURE THE CHARM OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY in large white letters across the top. Just below, in curlicue script, was the signature, Jessica Gutenburg.
Reflecting on the basic improbability of anyone actually being named Jessica Gutenburg, I waded through the contents of the rack, pausing at a truly stunning number in cream velvet, with satin inserts and a good deal of lace.
“Look lovely on, that would.” The Pekingese was back, pug nose sniffing hopefully for a sale.
“Maybe so,” I said, “but not very practical. You’d get filthy just walking out of the store.” I pushed the white dress away with some regret, proceeding to the next size ten.
“Oh, I just love the red ones!” The girl clasped her hands in ecstasy at the brilliant garnet fabric.
“So do I,” I murmured, “but we don’t want to look too garish. Wouldn’t do to be taken for a prostitute, would it?” The Peke gave me a startled look through the thickets, then decided I was joking, and giggled appreciatively.
“Now, that one,” she said decisively, reaching past me, “that’s perfect, that is. That’s your color, here.”
Actually, it was almost perfect. Floor-length, with three-quarter sleeves edged with lace. A deep, tawny gold, with shimmers of brown and amber and sherry in the heavy silk.
I lifted it carefully off the rack and held it up to examine it. A trifle fancy, but it might do. The construction seemed halfway decent; no loose threads or unraveling seams. The machine-made lace on the bodice was just tacked on, but that would be easy enough to reinforce.
“Want to try it on? The dressing rooms are just over there.” The Peke was frisking about near my elbow, encouraged by my interest. Taking a quick look at the price tag, I could see why; she must work on commission. I took a deep breath at the figure, which would cover a month’s rent on a London flat, but then shrugged. After all, what did I need money for?
Still, I hesitated.
“I don’t know …” I said doubtfully, “it is lovely. But …”
“Oh, don’t worry a bit about it’s being too young for you,” the Pekingese reassured me earnestly. “You don’t look a day over twenty-five! Well … maybe thirty,” she concluded lamely, after a quick glance at my face.
“Thanks,” I said dryly. “I wasn’t worried about that, though. I don’t suppose you have any without zippers, do you?”
“Zippers?” Her small round face went quite blank beneath the makeup. “Erm … no. Don’t think we do.”
“Well, not to worry,” I said, taking the dress over my arm and turning toward the dressing room. “If I go through with this, zippers will be the least of it.”
22
ALL HALLOWS’ EVE
Two golden guineas, six sovereigns, twenty-three shillings, eighteen florins ninepence, ten halfpence, and … twelve farthings.” Roger dropped the last coin on the tinkling pile, then dug into his shirt pocket, lean face absorbed as he searched. “Oh, here.” He brought out a small plastic bag and carefully poured a handful of tiny copper coins into a pile alongside the other money.
“Doits,” he explained. “The smallest denomination of Scottish coinage of the time. I got as many as I could, because that’s likely what you’d use most of the time. You wouldn’t use the large coins unless you had to buy a horse or something.”
“I know.” I picked up a couple of sovereigns and tilted them in my hand, letting them clink together. They were heavy—gold coins, nearly an inch in diameter. It had taken Roger and Bree four days in London, going from one rare-coin dealer to the next, to assemble the small fortune gleaming in the lamplight before me.
“You know, it’s funny; these coins are worth a lot more now than their face value,” I said, picking up a golden guinea, “but in terms of what they’ll buy, they were worth then just about as much as now. This is six months’ income for a small farmer.”
“I was forgetting,” Roger said, “that you know all this already; what things were worth and how they were sold.”
“It’s easy to forget,” I said, eyes still on the money. From the corner of my vision, I saw Bree draw suddenly close to Roger, and his hand go out to her automatically.
I took a deep breath and looked up from the tiny heaps of gold and silver. “Well, that’s that. Shall we go and have some dinner?”
* * *
Dinner—at one of the pubs on River Street—was a largely silent affair. Claire and Brianna sat side by side on the banquette, with Roger opposite. They barely looked at each other while they ate, but Roger could see the frequent small touches, the tiny nudges of shoulder and hip, the brushing of fingers that went on.
How would he manage, he wondered to himself. If it were his choice, or his parent? Separation came to all families, but most often it was death that intervened, to sever the ties between parent and child. It was the element of choice here that made it so difficult—not that it could ever be easy, he thought, forking in a mouthful of hot shepherd’s pie.
As they rose to leave after supper, he laid a hand on Claire’s arm.
“Just for the sake of nothing,” he said, “will you try something for me?”
“I expect so,” she said, smiling. “What is it?”
He nodded at the door. “Close your eyes and step out of the door. When you’re outside, open them. Then come in and tell me what’s the first thing you saw.”
Her mouth twitched with amusement. “All right. We’ll hope the first thing I see isn’t a policeman, or you’ll have to come bail me out of jail for being drunk and disorderly.”
“So long as it isn’t a duck.”
Claire gave him a queer look, but obediently turned toward the door of the pub and closed her eyes. Brianna watched her mother disappear through the door, hand extended to the paneling of the entry to keep her bearings. She turned to Roger, copper eyebrows raised.
“What are you up to, Roger? Ducks?”
“Nothing,” he said, eyes still fixed
on the empty entrance. “It’s just an old custom. Samhain—Hallowe’en, you know?—that’s one of the feasts when it was customary to try to divine the future. And one of the ways of divination was to walk to the end of the house, and then step outside with your eyes closed. The first thing you see when you open them is an omen for the near future.”
“Ducks are bad omens?”
“Depends what they’re doing,” he said absently, still watching the entry. “If they have their heads under their wings, that’s death. What’s keeping her?”
“Maybe we’d better go see,” Brianna said nervously. “I don’t expect there are a lot of sleeping ducks in downtown Inverness, but with the river so close …”
Just as they reached the door, though, its stained-glass window darkened and it swung open to reveal Claire, looking mildly flustered.
“You’ll never believe what’s the first thing I saw,” she said, laughing as she saw them.
“Not a duck with its head under its wing?” asked Brianna anxiously.
“No,” her mother said, giving her a puzzled look. “A policeman. I turned to the right and ran smack into him.”
“He was coming toward you, then?” Roger felt inexplicably relieved.
“Well, he was until I ran into him,” she said. “Then we waltzed round the pavement a bit, clutching each other.” She laughed, looking flushed and pretty, with her brown-sherry eyes sparkling in the amber pub lights. “Why?”
“That’s good luck,” Roger said, smiling. “To see a man coming toward you on Samhain means you’ll find what you seek.”
“Does it?” Her eyes rested on his, quizzical, then her face lit with a sudden smile. “Wonderful! Let’s go home and celebrate, shall we?”
The anxious constraint that had lain on them over dinner seemed suddenly to have vanished, to be replaced with a sort of manic excitement, and they laughed and joked on the trip back to the manse, where they drank toasts to past and future—Loch Minneaig Scotch for Claire and Roger, Coca-Cola for Brianna—and talked excitedly about the plans for the next day. Brianna had insisted on carving a pumpkin into a jack-o’-lantern, which sat on the sideboard, grinning benevolently on the proceedings.
“You’ve got the money, now,” Roger said, for the tenth time.
“And your cloak,” Brianna chimed in.
“Yes, yes, yes,” Claire said impatiently. “Everything I need—or everything I can manage, at least,” she amended. She paused, then impulsively reached out and took both Bree and Roger by the hand.
“Thank you both,” she said, squeezing their hands. Her eyes shone moist, and her voice was suddenly husky. “Thank you. I can’t say what I feel. I can’t. But—oh, my dears, I will miss you!”
Then she and Bree were in each other’s arms, Claire’s head tucked into her daughter’s neck, the both of them hugged tight, as though simple force could somehow express the depth of feeling between them.
Then they broke apart, eyes wet, and Claire laid a hand on her daughter’s cheek. “I’d better go up now,” she whispered. “There are things to do, still. I’ll see you in the morning, Baby.” She rose on tiptoe to plant a kiss on her daughter’s nose, then turned and hurried from the room.
After her mother’s exit, Brianna sat down again with her glass of Coke, and heaved a deep sigh. She didn’t speak, but sat looking into the fire, turning the glass slowly between her hands.
Roger busied himself, setting the room to rights for the night, closing the windows, tidying the desk, putting away the reference books he had used to help Claire prepare for her journey. He paused by the jack-o’-lantern, but it looked so jolly, with the candlelight streaming from its slanted eyes and jagged mouth, that he couldn’t bring himself to blow it out.
“I shouldn’t think it’s likely to set anything on fire,” he remarked. “Shall we leave it?”
There was no answer. When he glanced at Brianna, he found her sitting still as stone, eyes fixed on the hearth. She hadn’t heard him. He sat down beside her and took her hand.
“She might be able to come back,” he said gently. “We don’t know.”
Brianna shook her head slowly, not taking her eyes from the leaping flames.
“I don’t think so,” she said softly. “She told you what it was like. She may not even make it through.” Long fingers drummed restlessly on a denimed thigh.
Roger glanced at the door, to be sure that Claire was safely upstairs, then sat down on the sofa next to Brianna.
“She belongs with him, Bree,” he said. “Can ye not see it? When she speaks of him?”
“I see it. I know she needs him.” The full lower lip trembled slightly. “But … I need her!” Brianna’s hands clenched suddenly tight on her knees, and she bent forward, as though trying to contain some sudden pain.
Roger stroked her hair, marveling at the softness of the glowing strands that slid through his fingers. He wanted to take her into his arms, as much for the feel of her as to offer comfort, but she was rigid and unresponsive.
“You’re grown, Bree,” he said softly. “You live on your own now, don’t you? You may love her, but you don’t need her anymore—not the way you did when you were small. Has she no right to her own joy?”
“Yes. But … Roger, you don’t understand!” she burst out. She pressed her lips tight together and swallowed hard, then turned to him, eyes dark with distress.
“She’s all that’s left, Roger! The only one who really knows me. She and Daddy—Frank”—she corrected herself—“they were the ones who knew me from the beginning, the ones who saw me learn to walk and were proud of me when I did something good in school, and who—” She broke off, and the tears overflowed, leaving gleaming tracks in the firelight.
“This sounds really dumb,” she said with sudden violence. “Really, really dumb! But it’s—” she groped, helpless, then sprang to her feet, unable to stay still.
“It’s like—there are all these things I don’t even know!” she said, pacing with quick, angry steps. “Do you think I remember what I looked like, learning to walk, or what the first word I said was? No, but Mama does! And that’s so stupid, because what difference does it make, it doesn’t make any difference at all, but it’s important, it matters because she thought it was, and … oh, Roger, if she’s gone, there won’t be a soul left in the world who cares what I’m like, or thinks I’m special not because of anything, but just because I’m me! She’s the only person in the world who really, really cares I was born, and if she’s gone …” She stood still on the hearthrug, hands clenched at her sides, and mouth twisted with the effort to control herself, tears wet on her cheeks. Then her shoulders slumped and the tension went out of her tall figure.
“And that’s just really dumb and selfish,” she said, in a quietly reasonable tone. “And you don’t understand, and you think I’m awful.”
“No,” Roger said quietly. “I think maybe not.” He stood and came behind her, putting his arms around her waist, urging her to lean back against him. She resisted at first, stiff in his arms, but then yielded to the need for physical comfort and relaxed, his chin propped on her shoulder, head tilted to touch her own.
“I never realized,” he said. “Not ’til now. D’ye remember all those boxes in the garage?”
“Which ones?” she said, with a sniffling attempt at a laugh. “There are hundreds.”
“The ones that say ‘Roger’ on them.” He gave her a slight squeeze and brought his arms up, crisscrossed on her chest, holding her snug against himself.
“They’re full of my parents’ old clobber,” he said. “Pictures and letters and baby clothes and books and old bits of rubbish. The Reverend packed them up when he took me to live with him. Treated them just like his most precious historical documents—double-boxing, and mothproofing and all that.”
He rocked slowly back and forth, swaying from side to side, carrying her with him as he watched the fire over her shoulder.
“I asked him once why he bothered to keep them
—I didn’t want any of it, didn’t care. But he said we’d keep it just the same; it was my history, he said—and everyone needs a history.”
Brianna sighed, and her body seemed to relax still further, joining him in his rhythmic, half-unconscious sway.
“Did you ever look inside them?”
He shook his head. “It isn’t important what’s in them,” he said. “Only that they’re there.”
He let go of her then, and stepped back so that she turned to face him. Her face was blotched and her long, elegant nose a little swollen.
“You’re wrong, you know,” he said softly, and held out his hand to her. “It isn’t only your mother who cares.”
* * *
Brianna had gone to bed long since, but Roger sat on in the study, watching the flames die down in the hearth. Hallowe’en had always seemed to him a restless night, alive with waking spirits. Tonight was even more so, with the knowledge of what would happen in the morning. The jack-o’-lantern on the desk grinned in anticipation, filling the room with the homely scent of baking pies.
The sound of a footfall on the stair roused him from his thoughts. He had thought it might be Brianna, unable to sleep, but the visitor was Claire.
“I thought you might still be awake,” she said. She was in her nightdress, a pale glimmer of white satin against the dark hallway.
He smiled and stretched out a hand, inviting her in. “No. I never could sleep on All Hallows’. Not after all the stories my father told me; I always thought I could hear ghosts talking outside my window.”
She smiled, coming into the firelight. “And what did they say?”
“ ‘See’st thou this great gray head, with jaws which have no meat?’ ” Roger quoted. “You know the story? The little tailor who spent the night in a haunted church, and met the hungry ghost?”
“I do. I think if I’d heard that outside my window, I’d have spent the rest of the night hiding under the bedclothes.”
The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle Page 229
