She pursed her lips.
“Which would sort of indicate that the world at large thinks his father is somebody else. Not Jamie Fraser, I mean.”
“Was somebody else,” he corrected. “One Ludovic, eighth Earl of Ellesmere, to be precise. I understand that the eighth earl unfortunately died on the day his . . . er . . . his heir was born.”
“Died of what? Shock?” She was clearly in a dangerous mood; he was interested to note both her father’s manner of controlled ferocity and her mother’s sharp tongue at work—the combination was both fascinating and alarming. He hadn’t any intention of allowing her to run this interview on her own terms, though.
“Gunshot,” he said with affected cheerfulness. “Your father shot him.”
She made a small choking noise and stopped dead.
“That is not, by the way, common knowledge,” he said, affecting not to notice her reaction. “The coroner’s court returned a verdict of death by misadventure—which was not incorrect, I believe.”
“Not incorrect,” she murmured, sounding a trifle dazed. “I guess being shot is pretty misadventurous, all right.”
“Of course there was talk,” he said, offhanded, taking her arm and urging her forward again. “But the only witness, aside from William’s grandparents, was an Irish coachman, who was rather quickly pensioned off to County Sligo, following the incident. The child’s mother having also died that day, gossip was inclined to consider his lordship’s death as—”
“His mother’s dead, too?” She didn’t stop this time, but turned to give him a penetrating glance from those deep blue eyes. Lord John had had sufficient practice in withstanding Fraser cat looks, though, and was not discomposed.
“Her name was Geneva Dunsany. She died shortly after William’s birth—of an entirely natural hemorrhage,” he assured her.
“Entirely natural,” she muttered, half under her breath. She shot him another look. “This Geneva—she was married to the earl? When she and Da . . .” The words seemed to stick in her throat; he could see doubt and repugnance struggling with her memories of William’s undeniable face—and her knowledge of her father’s character.
“He has not told me, and I would in no circumstance ask him,” he said firmly. She gave him another of those looks, which he returned with interest. “Whatever the nature of Jamie’s relations with Geneva Dunsany, I cannot conceive of his committing an act of such dishonor as to deceive another man in his marriage.”
She relaxed fractionally, though her grip on his arm remained.
“Neither can I,” she said, rather grudgingly. “But—” Her lips compressed, relaxed. “Was he in love with her, do you think?” she blurted.
What startled him was not the question, but the realization that it had never once occurred to him to ask it—certainly not of Jamie, but not even of himself. Why not? he wondered. He had no right to jealousy, and if he was fool enough to suffer it, it would have been considerably ex post facto in the case of Geneva Dunsany; he had had no inkling of William’s origins until several years after the girl’s death.
“I have no idea,” he said shortly.
Brianna’s fingers drummed restlessly on his arm; she would have pulled free, but he put a hand on hers to still her.
“Damn,” she muttered, but ceased fidgeting, and walked on, matching the length of his shorter stride. Weeds had sprung up in the oval, were sprouting through the sand of the track. She kicked at a clump of wild rye grass, sending a spray of dry seeds flying.
“If they were in love, why didn’t he marry her?” she asked at last.
He laughed, in sheer incredulity at the notion.
“Marry her! My dear girl, he was the family groom!”
A look of puzzlement flashed in her eye—he would have sworn that if she had spoken, the word would have been “So?”
“Where in the name of God were you raised?” he demanded, stopping dead.
He could see things moving in her eyes; she had Jamie’s trick of keeping her face a mask, but her mother’s transparency still shone from within. He saw the decision in her eyes, a moment before the slow smile touched her lips.
“Boston,” she said. “I’m an American. But you knew I was a barbarian already, didn’t you?”
He grunted in response.
“That does go some distance toward explaining your remarkably republican attitudes,” he replied very dryly. “Though I would strongly suggest that you disguise these dangerous sentiments, for the sake of your family. Your father is in sufficient trouble on his own account. However, you may accept my assurance that it would not be possible for the daughter of a baronet to marry a groom, no matter how exigent the nature of their emotions.”
Her turn to grunt at that; a highly expressive, if totally unfeminine sound. He sighed, and took her hand again, tucking it in the curve of his elbow for safekeeping.
“He was a paroled prisoner, too—a Jacobite, a traitor. Believe me, marriage would not have occurred to either of them.”
The damp air was misting on her skin, clinging to the down hairs on her cheeks.
“But that was in another country,” she quoted softly. “And besides, the wench is dead.”
“Very true,” he said quietly.
They scuffed silently through the damp sand for a few moments, each alone in thought. At last Brianna heaved a sigh, deep enough that he felt as well as heard it.
“Well, she’s dead, anyway, and the earl—do you know why Da killed him? Did he tell you that?”
“Your father has never spoken of the matter—of Geneva, of the earl, or even directly of William’s parentage—to me.” He spoke precisely, eyes fixed on a pair of gulls probing the sand near a clump of saw grass. “But I know, yes.”
He glanced at her.
“William is my son, after all. In the sense of common usage, at least.” In a great deal more than that, but that was not a matter he chose to discuss with Jamie’s daughter.
Her eyebrows rose.
“Yes. How did that happen?”
“As I told you, both of William’s parents—his putative parents—died on the day of his birth. His father—the earl, I mean—had no close kin, so the boy was left to the guardianship of his grandfather, Lord Dunsany. Geneva’s sister, Isobel, became William’s mother in all but fact. And I—” He shrugged, nonchalant. “I married Isobel. I became William’s guardian, with Dunsany’s consent, and he has regarded me as his stepfather since he was six years old—he is my son.”
“You? You married?” She was goggling down at him, with an air of incredulity that he found offensive.
“You have the most peculiar notions concerning marriage,” he said crossly. “It was an eminently suitable match.”
One red eyebrow went up in a gesture that was Jamie to the life.
“Did your wife think so?” she asked, in an uncanny echo of her mother’s voice, asking the same question. When her mother had asked it, he had been nonplussed. This time, he was prepared.
“That,” he said tersely, “was in another country. And Isobel . . .” As he had hoped, that silenced her.
A fire was burning at the far end of the sandy oval, where travelers had made a rough camp. People come downriver to see the execution, he wondered? Men seeking to enlist in the rebel militias? A figure moved, dimly seen through the haze of smoke, and he turned, leading Brianna back along the way they had come. This conversation was sufficiently awkward, without the risk of interruption.
“You asked about Ellesmere,” he said, taking control of the conversation once more. “The story given to the coroner’s court by Lord Dunsany was that Ellesmere had been showing him a new pistol, which discharged by accident. It was the sort of story that is told in order to be disbelieved—giving the impression that in reality the earl had shot himself, doubtless from grief at the death of his wife, but that the Dunsanys wished to avoid the stigma of suicide, for the sake of the child. The coroner naturally perceived both the falsity of the story and the wisdom of allowing it to stand.”
“That’s not what I asked,” she said, a noticeable edge in her voice. “I asked why my father shot him.”
He sighed. She could have found gainful employment with the Spanish Inquisition, he thought ruefully; no chance of escape or evasion.
“I understand that his Lordship, apprehending that the newborn infant was in fact not of his blood, intended to expunge the stain upon his honor by dropping the child out of the window, onto the slates in the courtyard thirty feet below,” he said bluntly.
Her face had paled perceptibly.
“How did he find out?” she demanded. “And if Da was a groom, why was he there? Did the earl know he was—responsible?” She shuddered, plainly envisioning a scene in which Jamie was summoned to the earl’s presence, to witness the death of his illegitimate offspring before facing a similar fate himself. John had no difficulty in discerning her imagination; he had envisioned such a scene himself, more than once.
“An acute choice of words,” he replied dryly. “Jamie Fraser is ‘responsible’ for more than any man I know. As to the rest, I have no idea. I know the essentials of what happened, because Isobel knew; her mother was present and presumably told her only the briefest outline of the incident.”
“Huh.” She kicked a small stone, deliberately. It skittered across the packed sand in front of her, ending a few feet away. “And you never asked Da about it?”
The stone lay in his line of march; he kicked it neatly as he walked, rolling it back into her path.
“I have never spoken to your father regarding Geneva, Ellesmere, or William himself—save to inform him of my marriage to Isobel and to assure him that I would fulfill my responsibilities as William’s guardian to the best of my ability.”
She set her foot on the stone, driving it into the soft sand, and stopped.
“You never said anything to him? What did he say to you?” she demanded.
“Nothing.” He returned her stare.
“Why did you marry Isobel?”
He sighed, but there was no point in evasion.
“In order to take care of William.”
The thick red brows nearly touched her hairline.
“So you got married, in spite of—I mean, you turned your whole life upside down, just to take care of Jamie Fraser’s illegitimate son? And neither one of you ever talked about it?”
“No,” he said, baffled. “Of course not.”
Slowly, the brows came down again, and she shook her head.
“Men,” she said cryptically. She glanced back toward the town. The air was calm, and a haze from the chimneys of Wilmington lay heavy above the trees. No roofs showed; it might have been a dragon that lay sleeping on the shore, for all that could be seen. The low, rumbling noise was not a reptilian snore, though; a small but constant stream of people had been passing by the track, headed for the town, and the reverberations of an increasing crowd were clearly audible, whenever the wind was right.