“So it is not only serious, but a private matter to the slave, too,” Jamie said. “Otherwise, my aunt would have written, or Duncan sent word.” His two stiff fingers tapped once, softly, against his thigh.
We stood around the table, staring at the note as though it were a small white slab of dy***ite. The scent of boiling sausages filled the cold air, warm and comforting.
“Why you?” Roger asked, looking up at me. “Do you think it might be a medical matter? If she were ill, say—or pregnant?”
“Not illness,” I said. “Too urgent.” It was a week’s ride to River Run at least—in good weather, and barring accident. Heaven knew how long it had taken the note to make its way up to Fraser’s Ridge.
“But if she was pregnant? Maybe.” Brianna pursed her lips, still frowning at the paper. “I think she thinks of Mama as a friend. She’d tell you before she’d tell Aunt Jocasta, I think.”
I nodded, but reluctantly. Friendship was too strong a word; people situated as Phaedre and I could not be friends. Liking was constrained by too many things—suspicion, mistrust, the vast chasm of difference that slavery imposed.
And yet there was a certain feeling of sympathy between us, that much was true. I had worked with her, side by side, planting herbs and harvesting them, making simples for the stillroom, explaining their uses. We had buried a dead girl together and plotted to protect a runaway slave accused of her murder. She had a certain talent with the sick, did Phaedre, and some knowledge of herbs. Any minor matter, she could deal with herself. But something like an unexpected pregnancy . . .
“What does she think I could do, though, I wonder?” I was thinking out loud, and my fingertips felt cold in contemplation. An unexpected child born to a slave would be of no concern to an owner—to the contrary, it would be welcomed as additional property; but I had heard stories of slave women who killed a child at birth, rather than have the babe brought up in slavery. Phaedre was a house slave, though, well-treated, and Jocasta did not separate slave families, I knew that. If it were that, Phaedre’s situation was surely not so dire—and yet, who was I to judge?
I blew out a cloud of smoky breath, uncertain.
“I just can’t see why—I mean, she couldn’t possibly expect that I’d help her to get rid of a child. And for anything else . . . why me? There are midwives and healers much closer. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“What if—” Brianna said, and stopped. She pursed her lips in speculation, looking from me to Jamie and back. “What if,” she said carefully, “she was pregnant, but the father was . . . someone it shouldn’t be?”
A wary but humorous speculation sprang up in Jamie’s eyes, increasing the resemblance between him and Brianna.
“Who, lass?” he said. “Farquard Campbell?”
I laughed out loud at the thought, and Brianna snorted with mirth, white wisps of breath floating round her head. The notion of the very upright—and quite elderly—Farquard Campbell seducing a house slave was . . .
“Well, no,” Brianna said. “Though he does have all those children. But I just thought suddenly—what if it was Duncan?”
Jamie cleared his throat, and avoided catching my eye. I bit my lip, feeling my face start to go red. Duncan had confessed his chronic impotence to Jamie before Duncan’s wedding to Jocasta—but Brianna didn’t know.
“Oh, I shouldna think it likely,” Jamie said, sounding a trifle choked. He coughed, and fanned smoke from the brazier away from his face. “What gives ye that notion, lass?”
“Nothing about Duncan,” she assured him. “But Aunt Jocasta is—well, old. And you know what men can be like.”
“No, what?” asked Roger blandly, making me cough with the effort to suppress a laugh.
Jamie eyed her with a certain amount of cynicism.
“A good deal better than you do, a nighean. And while I wouldna wager much on some men, I think I should feel safe in laying odds that Duncan Innes isna the man to be breaking his marriage vows with his wife’s black slave.”
I made a small noise, and Roger lifted one eyebrow at me.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine,” I said, sounding strangled. “Just—fine.” I put a corner of the shawl over my no-doubt purple face and coughed ostentatiously. “It’s . . . smoky in here, isn’t it?”
“Maybe so,” Brianna conceded, addressing Jamie. “It might not be that at all. It’s just that Phaedre sent the note to ‘the healer,’ probably because she didn’t want to use Mama’s name, in case anybody saw the note before it got here. I just thought, maybe it wasn’t really Mama she wants—maybe it’s you.”
That sobered both Jamie and me, and we glanced at each other. It was a definite possibility, and one that hadn’t occurred to either of us.
“She couldn’t send a note direct to you without rousing all kinds of curiosity,” Bree went on, frowning at the note. “But she could say ‘the healer’ without putting a name on it. And she’d know that if Mama came, you’d probably come with her, at this time of year. Or if you didn’t, Mama could send for you openly.”
“It’s a thought,” Jamie said slowly. “But why in God’s name might she want me?”
“Only one way to find out,” said Roger, practical. He looked at Jamie. “Most of the outside work is done; the crops and the hay are in, the slaughtering’s finished. We can manage here, if you want to go.”
Jamie stood still for a moment, frowning in thought, then crossed to the window and raised the sash. A cold wind blew into the room, and Bree pinned the fluttering note to the table to keep it from taking wing. The coals in the small brazier smoked and flamed higher, and the bunches of dried herbs rustled uneasily overhead.
Jamie thrust his head out the window and breathed in deeply, eyes closed like one savoring the bouquet of fine wine.
“Cold and clear,” he announced, drawing in his head and closing the window. “Clear weather for three days, at least. We could be off the mountain by that time, and we ride briskly.” He smiled at me; the tip of his nose was red with the cold. “In the meantime, d’ye think those sausages are ready yet?”
72
BETRAYALS
A SLAVE I DIDN’T RECOGNIZE opened the door to us, a broad-built woman in a yellow turban. She eyed us severely, but Jamie gave her no chance to speak, pushing rudely past her into the hall.
“He’s Mrs. Cameron’s nephew,” I felt obliged to explain to her, as I followed him.
“I can see that,” she muttered, in a lilt that came from Barbados. She glared after him, making it evident that she detected a family resemblance in terms of high-handedness, as well as physique.
“I’m his wife,” I added, overcoming the reflexive urge to shake her hand, and bowing slightly instead. “Claire Fraser. Nice to meet you.”
She blinked, disconcerted, but before she could reply, I had whisked past her, following Jamie toward the small drawing room where Jocasta was inclined to sit in the afternoons.
The door to the drawing room was closed, and as Jamie set his hand on the knob, a sharp yelp came from inside—the prelude to a barrage of frenzied barking as the door swung wide.
Stopped in his tracks, Jamie paused, hand on the door, frowning at the small brown bundle of fur that leaped to and fro at his feet, eyes bulging in hysteria as it barked its head off.
“What is that?” he said, edging his way into the room as the creature made abortive dashes at his boots, still yapping.
“It’s a wee dog, what d’ye think?” Jocasta said acerbically. She lifted herself from her chair, frowning in the direction of the noise. “Sheas, Samson.”
“Samson? Oh, to be sure. The hair.” Smiling despite himself, Jamie squatted and extended a closed fist toward the dog. Throttling back to a low growl, the dog extended a suspicious nose toward his knuckles.
“Where’s Delilah?” I asked, edging into the room behind him.
“Ah, ye’ve come, as well, Claire?” Jocasta’s face swiveled in my direction, lit by a smile. “A rare treat, to have the both of ye. I dinna suppose Brianna or the bittie lad have come along—no, I would have heard them.” Dismissing that, she sat down again, and waved toward the hearth.
“As for Delilah, the lazy creature’s asleep by the fire; I can hear her snoring.”
Delilah was a large whitish hound of indeterminate breed but plentiful skin; it drooped around her in folds of relaxation as she lay on her back, paws curled over a freckled belly. Hearing her name, she snorted briefly, opened one eye a crack, then closed it again.
“I see ye’ve had a few changes since I was last here,” Jamie observed, rising to his feet. “Where is Duncan? And Ulysses?”
“Gone. Looking for Phaedre.” Jocasta had lost weight; the high MacKenzie cheekbones stood out sharp, and her skin looked thin and creased.
“Looking for her?” Jamie glanced sharply at her. “What’s become of the lass?”
“Run away.” She spoke with her usual self-possession, but her voice was bleak.
“Run away? But—are you sure?” Her workbox had been upset, the contents spilled on the floor. I knelt and began to tidy the confusion, picking up the scattered reels of thread.
“Weel, she’s gone,” Jocasta said with some acerbity. “Either she’s run, or someone’s stolen her. And I canna think who would have the gall or the skill to snatch her from my house, and no one seeing.”
I exchanged a quick glance with Jamie, who shook his head, frowning. Jocasta was rubbing a fold of her skirt between thumb and forefinger; I could see small worn spots in the nap of the fabric near her hand, where she had done it repeatedly. Jamie saw it, too.
“When did she go, Auntie?” he asked quietly.
“Four weeks past. Duncan and Ulysses have been gone for two.”
That fitted well enough with the arrival of the note. No telling how long before her disappearance the note had actually been written, given the vagaries of delivery.
“I see Duncan took pains to leave ye some company,” Jamie observed. Samson had abandoned his watchdog role, and was sniffing assiduously at Jamie’s boots. Delilah rolled onto her side with a luxurious groan and opened two luminous brown eyes, through which she regarded me with utmost tranquillity.
“Oh, aye, they’re that.” Half-grudgingly, Jocasta leaned out from her chair and located the hound’s head, scratching behind the long, floppy ears. “Though Duncan meant them for my protection, or so he said.”
“A sensible precaution,” Jamie said mildly. It was; we had had no further word of Stephen Bonnet, nor had Jocasta heard the voice of the masked man again. But lacking the concrete reassurance of a corpse, either one could presumably pop up at any time.
“Why would the lassie run, Aunt?” Jamie asked. His tone was still mild, but persistent.
Jocasta shook her head, lips compressed.
“I dinna ken at all, Nephew.”