Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)(60)

She was terrified, and indignant, too. But now that she’d calmed down a wee bit, she thought that she wasn’t really afraid of him, and that seemed odd. Surely she should be?

But she’d believed him when he said he meant her no harm. He hadn’t threatened her or tried to frighten her. But if that was true…what did he want of her?

He likely wants to know what ye meant by rushing up to him in the market and telling him not to do it, her common sense—lamentably absent to this point—remarked.

“Oh,” she said aloud. That made some sense. Naturally, he’d be curious about that.

She got up again and explored the room, thinking. She couldn’t tell him any more than she had, though; that was the thing. Would he believe her, about the voices? Even if so, he’d try to find out more, and there wasn’t any more to find out. What then?

Don’t wait about to see, advised her common sense.

Having already come to this conclusion, she didn’t bother replying. She’d found a heavy marble mortar and pestle; that might do. Wrapping the mortar in her apron, she went to the window that overlooked the street. She’d break the glass, then shriek ’til she got someone’s attention. Even so high up, she thought, someone would hear. Pity it was a quiet street. But—

She stiffened like a bird dog. A coach was stopped outside one of the houses opposite, and Michael Murray was getting out of it! He was just putting on his hat—no mistaking that flaming red hair.

“Michael!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. But he didn’t look up; the sound wouldn’t pierce glass. She swung the cloth-wrapped mortar at the window, but it bounced off the bars with a ringing clang! She took a deep breath and a better aim; this time, she hit one of the panes and cracked it. Encouraged, she tried again, with all the strength of muscular arms and shoulders, and was rewarded with a small crash, a shower of glass, and a rush of mud-scented air from the river.

“Michael!” But he had disappeared. A servant’s face showed briefly in the open door of the house opposite, then vanished as the door closed. Through a red haze of frustration, she noticed the swag of black crepe hanging from the knob. Who was dead?



CHARLES’S WIFE, EULALIE, was in the small parlor, surrounded by a huddle of women. All of them turned to see who had come, many of them lifting their handkerchiefs automatically in preparation for a fresh outbreak of tears. All of them blinked at Michael, then turned to Eulalie, as though for an explanation.

Eulalie’s eyes were red but dry. She looked as though she had been dried in an oven, all the moisture and color sucked out of her, her face paper-white and drawn tight over her bones. She, too, looked at Michael, but without much interest. He thought she was too much shocked for anything to matter much. He knew how she felt.

“Monsieur Murray,” she said tonelessly, as he bowed over her hand. “How kind of you to call.”

“I…offer my condolences, madame, mine and my cousin’s. I hadn’t…heard. Of your grievous loss.” He was almost stuttering, trying to grasp the reality of the situation. What the devil had happened to Charles?

Eulalie’s mouth twisted.

“Grievous loss,” she repeated. “Yes. Thank you.” Then her dull self-absorption cracked a little and she looked at him more sharply. “You hadn’t heard. You mean—you didn’t know? You came to see Charles?”

“Er…yes, madame,” he said awkwardly. A couple of the women gasped, but Eulalie was already on her feet.

“Well, you might as well see him, then,” she said, and walked out of the room, leaving him with no choice but to follow her.

“They’ve cleaned him up,” she remarked, opening the door to the large parlor across the hall. She might have been talking about a messy domestic incident in the kitchen.

Michael thought it must in fact have been very messy. Charles lay on the large dining table, this adorned with a cloth and wreaths of greenery and flowers. A woman clad in gray was sitting by the table, weaving more wreaths from a basket of leaves and grasses; she glanced up, her eyes going from Eulalie to Michael and back.

“Leave,” said Eulalie with a flip of the hand, and the woman got up at once and went out. Michael saw that she’d been making a wreath of laurel leaves and had the sudden absurd thought that she meant to crown Charles with it, in the manner of a Greek hero.

“He cut his throat,” Eulalie said. “The coward.” She spoke with an eerie calmness, and Michael wondered what might happen when the shock that surrounded her began to dissipate.

He made a respectful sort of noise in his throat and, touching her arm gently, went past her to look down at his friend.

“Tell him not to do it.”

The dead man didn’t look peaceful. There were lines of stress in his countenance that hadn’t yet smoothed out, and he appeared to be frowning. The undertaker’s people had cleaned the body and dressed him in a slightly worn suit of dark blue; Michael thought that it was probably the only thing he’d owned that was in any way appropriate in which to appear dead, and suddenly missed his friend’s frivolity with a surge that brought unexpected tears to his eyes.

“Tell him not to do it.” He hadn’t come in time. If I’d come right away, when she told me—would it have stopped him?

He could smell the blood, a rusty, sickly smell that seeped through the freshness of the flowers and leaves. The undertaker had tied a white neckcloth for Charles—he’d used an old-fashioned knot, nothing that Charles himself would have worn for a moment. The black stitches showed above it, though, the wound harsh against the dead man’s livid skin.