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He studied her for a long lanced at him, nodded briefly, and drank, then held out her empty cup for more
"I’m--I was--afraid to look," she said, eyes fixed on the stream of whisky
"It’s not just him--it’s her, too I mean, I know his stories, Jamie Fraser’s; she told me a lot about him A lot more than I’ll ever find in historical records," she added with a feeble attempt at a smile She took a deep breath
"But Maone, like on a trip And then when I couldn’t do that any, froer reached for the tea towel hanging by the stove and shoved it across the table to her
"She isn’t, though" She picked up the towel and wiped angrily at her nose "That’s the trouble! I have to ain, but she isn’t even dead! How can I mourn for her, when I think--when I hope--she’s happy where she is, when I htly, and got her breath She fixed Roger with a dark blue glare, as though he were to blaht? I want to find her--find the maybe I don’t want to find out, because what if I find out she’s not all right, what if I find out so horrible? What if I find out she’s dead, or he is--well, that wouldn’t matter so much, maybe, because he already is dead anyway, or he was, or--but I have to, I know I have to!"
She banged her cup down on the table in front of hiood bit ed his mind He shut his mouth and poured
She didn’t wait for hie s, and another She coughed, sputtered, and set the cup down, eyes watering
"So I’ Or I was When I saw Daddy’s books, and his handwriting, though…it all see woefully at hiently "It’s not wrong You’re right, you’ve got to know I’ll help you" He stood up and, taking her under the arht now, I think you should ot her up the stairs and halfway down the hall, when she suddenly broke free and darted into the bathroo patiently until she staggered out again, her face the color of the aged plaster above the wainscoting
"Waste of Glen Morangie, that," he said, taking her by the shoulders and steering her into the bedrooiven you the cheap stuff"
She collapsed on the bed, and allowed him to take off her shoes and socks She rolled onto her stous cradled in the crook of her arm
"I told you I didn’t like tea," she er worked for an hour or two by hi cartons It was a quiet, dark afternoon, with no sound but a soft patter of rain and the occasional whoosh of a car’s tires on the street outside When the light began to fail, he turned on the larie pot ofon the back of the cooker What had Fiona said to do about that? Turn it up? Turn it off? Throw things into it? He peered dubiously into the pot and decided to leave well enough alone
He tidied up the remains of their i them carefully from their hooks in the cupboard They were remnants of the oldpattern set the Reverend had had for as long as Roger could remented by odd bits of ill-assorted crockery acquired from jumble sales
Fiona would have all new, of course She’d forced theazine pictures of china and crystal and flatware Brianna had lassy from boredom He supposed the old stuff would all end up at the juht still be useful to someone
On impulse, he took down the two cups he’d washed, wrapped them in a clean tea towel, and took them to the study, where he tucked thehly foolish, but at the sa study, quite bare now save for the single sheet of paper on the cork-lined wall
So your hoo, hadn’t he?
Yeah, it bothered him A lot more than he’d let on to Brianna, in fact That hy it had taken so bloody long to finish clearing out the manse, if he was honest about it True, it was a monster task, true, he had his own job to do at Oxford, and true, the thousands of books had had to be sorted with care--but he could have done it faster If he’d wanted
With the house standing vacant, he ot the job finished But with the impetus of Fiona behind, and the lure of Brianna before…he sht of the two of the Likely it took woh
With a sense of somber ceremony, he unpinned the corners of the yellowed sheet of paper and took it down froical chart made out in the Reverend’s neat round hand
MacKenzies and ht lately of taking back the na After all, with Dad gone he didn’t mean to come back much more to Inverness, where folk would know hiy, after all; that Roger shouldn’t forget who he was
Dad had known a few individual stories, but no more than the names for most of the people on the list And he hadn’t known even that, for the er saw each ood reason
Roger’s finger stopped near the top of the chart There he was, the changeling--Williah MacKenzie Given to foster parents to raise, the illegiti of the war chieftain of clan MacKenzie, and of a witch condeal MacKenzie and the witch Geillis Duncan
Not a witch at all, of course, but soerous He had her eyes--or so Claire said Had he inherited so ability to travel through the stones passed down unsuspected through generations of respectable boatwrights and herdsht of it each time he saw the chart now--and for that reason, tried not to look He appreciated Brianna’s ae between fear and curiosity, the pull between the need to know and the fear of finding out