Sadie was regarding me with respect, mingled with a slight revulsion.

“That’s the messiest business I ever did see,” she said. “Heavens above, is it always like that?”

“More or less. Haven’t you ever seen a child born? You’ve never had one yourself?” I asked curiously. She shook her head vigorously, and made the sign of the horns, which made me laugh, giddy as I was.

“Had I ever been disposed to let a man near me, the thought of that would dissuade me,” she assured me fervently.

“Oh, yes?” I said, belatedly recalling her overtures of the night before. It wasn’t merely comfort she’d been offering, then. “And what about Mister Ferguson?”

She gave me a demure look, blinking through her spectacles.

“Oh, he was a farmer—much older than I. Dead of the pleurisy, these five years gone.”

And totally fictitious, I was inclined to think. But a widow had a great deal more freedom than did a maid or a wife, and if ever I saw a woman capable of taking care of herself …

I had been paying no attention to the sounds in the kitchen, but at this point, there was a heavy crash and the sheriff’s voice, cursing. No sound of the child or Mrs. Tolliver.

“Taking the black bitch back to her quarters,” Sadie said, with such a hostile intonation that I glanced at her in amazement.

“Didn’t you know?” she said, seeing my surprise. “She’s killed her babies. They can hang her, now she’s borne this one.”

“Oh,” I said a little blankly. “No. I didn’t know.” The noises in the kitchen receded, and I sat staring at the rush dip, the sense of life still moving in my hands.

91



A REASONABLY

NEAT SCHEME

WATER LAPPED JUST UNDER JAMIE’S EAR, Jamie’s ear, the mere sound of it making him feel queasy. The reek of decaying mud and dead fish didn’t help, nor did the dunt he’d taken when he fell against the wall.

He shifted, trying to find some position that would ease head, stomach, or both. They’d trussed him like a boiled fowl, but he managed with some effort to roll onto his side and bring his knees up, which helped a bit.

He was in a dilapidated boat shed of some sort; he’d seen it in the last of the twilight, when they’d brought him down to the shore—he’d thought at first they meant to drown him—and carried him inside, dropping him on the floor like a sack of flour.

“Hurry up, Ian,” he muttered, shifting again, in increasing discomfort. “I’m a great deal too old for this sort of nonsense.”

He could only hope his nephew had been close enough when Brown moved to have been able to follow, and to have some notion where he was now; certainly the lad would be looking. The shore where the shed stood was open, no cover, but there was plenty among the brush below Fort Johnston, standing on the headland a little way above him.

The back of his head throbbed dully, giving him a nasty taste in the back of the mouth, and a disquieting echo of the shattering headaches he used to suffer in the wake of an ax wound that had cracked his skull, many years before. He was shocked at how easily the recollection of those headaches came back; it had happened a lifetime ago, and he had thought even the memory of it dead and buried. His skull clearly had a much more vivid memory of its own, though, and was determined to make him sick by way of revenge for his forgetfulness.

The moon was up, and bright; the light shone soft through the cracks between the crude boards of the wall. Dim as it was, it seemed to shift, wavering in a disturbingly qualmish fashion, and he shut his eyes, concentrating grimly on what he might do to Richard Brown, and he got the man alone someday.

Where in the name of Michael and all the saints had he taken Claire, and why? Jamie’s only comfort was that Tom Christie had gone with them. He was fairly sure that Christie wouldn’t let them kill her—and if Jamie could find him, he would lead him to her.

A sound reached him above the nauseating lapping of the tide. Faint whistling—then singing. He could just make out the words, and smiled a little, in spite of everything. “Marry me, marry me, minister—or else I’ll be your priest, your priest—or else I’ll be your priest.”

He shouted, though it hurt his head, and within a few moments, Ian, the dear wee lad, was beside him, cutting through the ropes. He rolled over, unable for a moment to make his cramped muscles work, then managed to get his hands under him and rise enough to vomit.

“All right, Uncle Jamie?” Ian sounded vaguely amused, damn him.

“I’ll do. D’ye ken where Claire is?” He got to his feet, swaying, and was fumbling at his breeches; his fingers felt like sausages, and the broken one was throbbing, the pins and needles of returning circulation stabbing through the jagged ends of bone. All discomfort was forgotten for an instant, though, in the rush of overwhelming relief.

“Jesus, Uncle Jamie,” Ian said, impressed. “Aye, I do. They’ve taken her to New Bern. There’s a sheriff there that Forbes says might take her.”

“Forbes?” He swung round in his astonishment, and nearly fell, saving himself with a hand on the creaking wood wall. “Neil Forbes?”

“The very same.” Ian caught him with a hand beneath his elbow to steady him; the flimsy board had cracked under his weight. “Brown went here and there and talked to this one and that—but it was Forbes he did business with at last, in Cross Creek.”

“Ye heard what they said?”

“I heard.” Ian’s voice was casual, but with an underlying excitement—and no little pride in his accomplishment.

Brown’s aim was simple at this point—to rid himself of the encumbrance the Frasers had become. He knew of Forbes and his relations with Jamie, owing to all the gossip after the tar incident in the summer of last year, and the confrontation at Mecklenberg in May. And so he offered to hand the two of them over to Forbes, for what use the lawyer might make of the situation.

“So he strode to and fro a bit, thinking—Forbes, I mean—they were in his warehouse, ken, by the river, and me hiding behind the barrels o’ tar. And then he laughs, as though he’s just thought of something clever.”

Forbes’s suggestion was that Brown’s men should take Jamie, suitably bound, to a small landing that he owned, near Brunswick. From there, he would be taken onto a ship headed for England, and thus safely removed from interference in the affairs of either Forbes or Brown—and, incidentally, rendered unable to defend his wife.

Claire, meanwhile, should be committed to the mercies of the law. If she were to be found guilty, well, that would be the end of her. If not, the scandal attendant upon a trial would both occupy the attention of anyone connected to her and destroy any influence they might have—thus leaving Fraser’s Ridge ripe for the pickings, and Neil Forbes a clear field toward claiming leadership of the Scottish Whigs in the colony.

Jamie listened to this in silence, torn between anger and a reluctant admiration.

“A reasonably neat scheme,” he said. He was feeling steadier now, the queasiness disappearing with the cleansing flow of anger through his blood.

“Oh, it gets better, Uncle,” Ian assured him. “Ye recall a gentleman named Stephen Bonnet?”

“I do. What about him?”

“It’s Mr. Bonnet’s ship, Uncle, that’s to take ye to England.” Amusement was beginning to show in his nephew’s voice again. “It seems Lawyer Forbes has had a verra profitable partnership with Bonnet for some time—him and some merchant friends in Wilmington. They’ve shares in both the ship and its cargoes. And since the English blockade, the profits have been greater still; I take it that our Mr. Bonnet is a most experienced smuggler.”

Jamie said something extremely foul in French, and went quickly to look out of the shed. The water lay calm and beautiful, a moon path stretching silver out to sea. There was a ship out there; small and black and perfect as a spider on a sheet of paper. Bonnet’s?