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“I don’t,” Rachel said. “What?”
Dorothea looked from one to the other. “I have been to a Quaker meeting. Two, in fact. I know how it’s done. Let us hold a meeting and ask the Lord to guide us.”
De
“That—” he began, sounding stu
“Is an excellent idea,” Rachel said, already dragging another chair near to the fire.
De
They all settled slowly, shifting a bit for comfort, and lapsed into silence. Rachel closed her eyes, seeing the warm redness of the fire inside her lids, feeling the comfort of it on her hands and feet. She gave silent thanks for it, remembering the constant griping of cold in the camp, the nails of her fingers and toes on fire with it, and the continual shivering that lessened but did not stop when she huddled into her blankets at night and left her muscles fatigued and sore. It was no wonder De
Did Lady Dorothea have any idea what it would be like? she wondered, and opened her eyes. Dorothea sat quiet but upright, graceful hands folded in her lap. She supposed De
Dorothea’s eyes were shadowed by her lids, but Rachel was sure she was looking at De
Had she been listening herself? In all honesty, she was forced to admit that she had not. And she knew why: out of a disinclination to hear what she was afraid she must—that she must turn away from Ian Murray and abandon the thoughts of him that warmed her body and heated her dreams in the freezing forest, so she woke sometimes sure that if she put out her hand to the falling snow, it would hiss and vanish from her palm.
She swallowed hard and closed her eyes, trying to open herself to the truth but trembling in fear of hearing it.
All she heard, though, was a steady panting noise, and an instant later Rollo’s wet nose nudged her hand. Disconcerted, she scratched his ears. Surely it wasn’t seemly to be doing that in meeting, but he would keep nudging her until she complied, she knew. He half-closed his yellow eyes in pleasure and rested his heavy head upon her knee.
The dog loves him, she thought, rubbing gently through the thick, coarse fur. Can he be a bad man, if that is so? It wasn’t God she heard in reply but her brother, who would certainly say, “While dogs are worthy creatures, I think they are perhaps no judge of character.”
But I am, she thought to herself. I know what he is—and I know him for what he might be, too. She looked at Dorothea, motionless in her gray bag of a dress. Lady Dorothea Grey was prepared to abandon her former life, and very likely her family, to become a Friend, for De
Well, there is a proud thought, she scolded herself. What sort of power does thee think thee has, Rachel Mary Hunter? No one has that sort of power, save the Lord.
But the Lord did have it. And if the Lord should be so inclined, anything was possible. Rollo’s tail moved gently, thumping thrice upon the floor.
Denzell Hunter straightened a little on his stool. It was the slightest movement, but coming as it did out of utter stillness, it surprised both the women, who lifted their heads like startled birds.
“I love thee, Dorothea,” he said. He spoke very quietly, but his soft eyes burned behind his spectacles, and Rachel felt her chest ache. “Will thee marry me?”
SEVERANCE AND REUNION
April 20, 1778
AS TRANSATLANTIC VOYAGES went—and after our adventures with Captains Roberts, Hickman, and Stebbings, I considered myself something of a co
Half my mind was on the future: Marsali and Fergus’s precarious situation, the danger of Henri-Christian’s condition, and the logistics of dealing with it. The other half—well, to be fair, seven-eighths—was still at Lallybroch with Jamie.
I felt raw and bruised. Severed in some vital part, as always when parted from Jamie for very long, but also as though I had been violently ejected from my home, like a barnacle ripped from its rock and heedlessly tossed into boiling surf.
The greater part of that, I thought, was Ian’s impending death. Ian was so much a part of Lallybroch, his presence there so much a constant and a comfort to Jamie all these years, that the sense of his loss was in a way the loss of Lallybroch itself. Oddly enough, Je
But there was a further sense of loss—and a further nagging guilt—in the fact that I could not be there when Ian died, that I had had to leave him for the last time knowing that I would not see him again, unable to offer comfort to him, or to be with Jamie or his family when the blow fell, or even simply to bear witness to his passing.
Young Ian felt this, too, to an even greater degree. I often found him sitting near the stern, staring into the ship’s wake with troubled eyes.
“D’ye think he’s gone yet?” he asked me abruptly on one occasion when I’d come to sit beside him there. “Da?”
“I don’t know,” I told him honestly. “I’d think so, on the basis of how ill he was—but people do sometimes hang on amazingly. When is his birthday, do you know?”
He stared at me in bafflement. “It’s in May sometime, near Uncle Jamie’s. Why?”
I shrugged and pulled my shawl tighter against the chill of the wind.
“Often people who are very ill, but are near their birthday, seem to wait until it’s passed before dying. I read a study of it once. For some reason, it’s more likely if the person is famous or well known.”
That made him laugh, though painfully.
“Da’s never been that.” He sighed. “Right now I wish I’d stayed for him. I know he said to go—and I wanted to go,” he added fairly. “But I feel bad that I did.”
I sighed, too. “So do I.”
“But you had to go,” he protested. “Ye couldna let poor wee Henri-Christian choke. Da would understand that. I know he did.”
I smiled at his earnest attempt to make me feel better.