Страница 69 из 282
Roger’s mind was divided between the task in front of him and the feel of the letter under his hand. The feel of the paper and the look of the ink reminded him vividly of the wooden box, filled with Jamie’s and Claire’s letters. He had to stop himself from glancing at the shelf where it would be kept when this room was his.
They’d been rationing the letters, reading them slowly—but when Jem was taken, all bets were off. They’d rushed through the whole of the box, looking for any mention of Jem, any indication that he might have escaped from Cameron and found his way to the safety of his grandparents. Not a word about Jem. Not one.
They’d been so distraught that they’d scarcely noticed anything else the letters said, but occasional phrases and images floated up in his mind, quite randomly—some of them distinctly disturbing—Bria
They weren’t anything he wanted to think about now, either.
“Will your son be studying the law, then, in Paris?” Roger asked abruptly. He picked up the fresh dram Brian had poured for him and took a sip.
“Aye, well, he’d maybe make a decent lawyer,” Fraser admitted. “He could argue ye into the ground, I’ll say that for him. But I think he hasna got the patience for law or politics.” He smiled suddenly. “Jamie sees at once what he thinks should be done and ca
Roger laughed ruefully.
“I understand the urge,” he said.
“Oh, indeed.” Fraser nodded, leaning back a little in his chair. “And I’ll no say as that’s not a necessary thing to do on occasion. Especially in the Highlands.” He grimaced but not without humor.
“So, then. Why do ye think this Cameron has stolen your lad?” Fraser asked bluntly.
Roger wasn’t surprised. As well as they’d been getting on together, he’d known Fraser had to be wondering just how much Roger was telling and how truthful he was. Well, he’d been ready for that question—and the answer was at least a version of the truth.
“We lived for a time in America,” he said, and felt a pang with the saying of it. For an instant, their snug cabin on the Ridge was around him, Bria
“America!” Fraser exclaimed in astonishment. “Where, then?”
“The colony of North Carolina. A good place,” Roger hastened to add, “but not without its dangers.”
“Name me one that is,” Fraser said, but waved that aside. “And these dangers made ye come back?”
Roger shook his head, a tightness in his throat at the memory.
“No, it was our wee lass—Mandy, Amanda, she’s called. She was born with a thing wrong with her heart, and there was no physician there who could treat it. So we came … back, and while we were in Scotland, my wife inherited some land, and so we stayed. But …” He hesitated, thinking how to put the rest, but knowing what he did of Fraser’s antecedents and his history with the MacKenzies of Leoch, the man probably wouldn’t be overly disturbed at his story.
“My wife’s father,” he said carefully, “is a good man—a very good man—but the sort who … draws attention. A leader of men, and one that other men … Well, he told me once that his own father had said to him that, since he was a large man, other men would try him—and they do.”
He watched Brian Fraser’s face carefully at this, but, beyond the twitch of an eyebrow, there was no apparent response.
“I’ll not go into all the history of it”—since it hasn’t happened yet—“but the long and the short of it is that my father-in-law was left in possession of a large sum in gold. He doesna regard it as his own property but as something held in trust. Still, there it is. And while it’s been kept secret so far as possible …”
Fraser made a sympathetic sound, acknowledging the difficulties of secrecy in such conditions.
“So this Cameron learned of the treasure, did he? And thought to extort it from your father-in-law by taking the bairn captive?” Fraser’s dark brow lowered at the thought.
“That may be in his mind. But beyond that—my son kens where the gold is hidden. He was with his grandfather when it was put away safe. Only the two of them ken the whereabouts—but Cameron learned that my son knew the place.”
“Ah.” Brian sat for a moment staring into his whisky, thinking. Finally he cleared his throat and looked up, meeting Roger’s eyes. “I maybe shouldna say such a thing, but it may be in your own mind already. If he’s taken the boy only because the lad kens where yon treasure is … well, was I a wicked man with no scruples, I think I might force the information out of the lad, so soon as I had him alone.”
Roger felt the cold slide of the suggestion down into the pit of his belly. It was something that had been at the back of his own mind, though he hadn’t admitted it to himself.
“Make him tell—and then kill him, you mean.”
Fraser grimaced unhappily.
“I di
“Yes,” Roger said, and stopped to breathe. “Yes. Well … he didn’t. I—I know the man, a little. I don’t think he’d do that, mur—” His throat closed suddenly, and he coughed violently. “Murder a child,” he finished hoarsely. “He wouldn’t.”

THEY GAVE HIM a room at the end of the hallway on the second floor. When his family would live here, this would be the children’s playroom. He undressed to his shirt, put out the candle, and got into bed, resolutely ignoring the shadows in the corners that held the ghosts of giant cardboard building blocks, of dollhouses, six-guns, and chalkboards. The fringed skirt of Mandy’s A
He ached from follicles to toenails, inside and out, but the panic engendered by his arrival had passed. How he felt didn’t matter, though; the question was—what now? They hadn’t gone where they thought, he and Buck, but he had to assume that they had ended up in the right place. The place where Jem was.
How else could they have come here? Perhaps Rob Cameron knew more now about how the traveling worked, could control it, and had deliberately brought Jem to this time, in order to frustrate pursuit?
He was too exhausted to keep hold of his thoughts, let alone string them into coherence. He pushed everything out of his mind, so far as he could, and lay still, staring into the dark, seeing the shine of a rocking horse’s eyes.
Then he got out of bed, knelt on the cold boards, and prayed.

“FOR MANY MEN WHO STUMBLE AT THE THRESHOLD ARE WELL FORETOLD THAT DANGER LURKS WITHIN”
Lallybroch
October 31, 1980
BRIANNA COULDN’T open her own front door. She kept trying, rattling the big iron key all over the escutcheon plate, until the WPC took it from her shaking hand and got it into the keyhole. She hadn’t started to shake until the police car turned up the lane to Lallybroch.
“Rather an old lock,” the police constable observed, giving it a dubious look. “Original to the house, is it?” She lifted her head, peering up the white-harled front of the house, pursing her lips at sight of the lintel, with its carved date.
“I don’t know. We don’t usually lock the door. We’ve never had burglars.” Bria