Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)(63)

Joan’s rosary was also in that pocket; he took it out and wound it round his left hand, holding the beads for comfort—he was too distracted to pray, beyond the words he repeated silently over and over, hardly noticing what he said.

Let me find her in time!



“TELL ME,” THE COMTE asked curiously, “why did you speak to me in the market that day?”

“I wish I hadn’t,” Joan replied briefly. She didn’t trust him an inch—still less since he’d offered her the brandy. It hadn’t struck her before that that he really might be one of the Auld Ones. They could walk about, looking just like people. Her own mother had been convinced for years—and even some of the Murrays thought so—that Da’s wife, Claire, was one. She herself wasn’t sure; Claire had been kind to her, but no one said the Folk couldn’t be kind if they wanted to.

Da’s wife. A sudden thought paralyzed her: the memory of her first meeting with Mother Hildegarde, when she’d given the Reverend Mother Claire’s letter. She’d said, “ma mère,” unable to think of a word that might mean “stepmother.” It hadn’t seemed to matter; why should anyone care?

“Claire Fraser,” she said aloud, watching the comte carefully. “Do you know her?”

His eyes widened, showing white in the gloaming. Oh, aye, he kent her, all right!

“I do,” he said, leaning forward. “Your mother, is she not?”

“No!” Joan said, with great force, and repeated it in French, several times for emphasis. “No, she’s not!”

But she observed, with a sinking heart, that her force had been misplaced. He didn’t believe her; she could tell by the eagerness in his face. He thought she was lying to put him off.

“I told you what I did in the market because the voices told me to!” she blurted, desperate for anything that might distract him from the horrifying notion that she was one of the Folk. Though if he was one, her common sense pointed out, he ought to be able to recognize her. Oh, Jesus, Lamb of God—that’s what he’d been trying to do, holding her hands so tight and staring into her face.

“Voices?” he said, looking rather blank. “What voices?”

“The ones in my head,” she said, heaving an internal sigh of exasperation. “They tell me things now and then. About other people, I mean. You know,” she went on, encouraging him, “I’m a—a”—St. Jerome on a bannock, what was the word?!?—“someone who sees the future,” she ended weakly. “Er…some of it. Sometimes. Not always.”

The comte was rubbing a finger over his upper lip; she didn’t know if he was expressing doubt or trying not to laugh, but either way it made her angry.

“So one of them told me to tell ye that, and I did!” she said, lapsing into Scots. “I dinna ken what it is ye’re no supposed to do, but I’d advise ye not to do it!”

It occurred to her belatedly that perhaps killing her was the thing he wasn’t supposed to do, and she was about to put this notion to him, but by the time she had disentangled enough grammar to have a go at it, the coach was slowing, bumping from side to side as it turned off the main road. A sickly smell seeped into the air, and she sat up straight, her heart in her throat.

“Mary, Joseph, and Bride,” she said, her voice no more than a squeak. “Where are we?”



MICHAEL LEAPT FROM the coach almost before it had stopped moving. He daren’t let them get too far ahead of him; his driver had nearly missed the turning, as it was, and the comte’s coach had come to a halt minutes before his own reached it.

“Talk to the other driver,” he shouted at his own, half visible on the box. “Find out why the comte has come here! Find out what he’s doing!”

Nothing good. He was sure of that. Though he couldn’t imagine why anyone would kidnap a nun and drag her out of Paris in the dark, only to stop at the edge of a public cemetery. Unless…half-heard rumors of depraved men who murdered and dismembered their victims, even those who ate…His wame rose and he nearly vomited, but it wasn’t possible to vomit and run at the same time, and he could see a pale splotch on the darkness that he thought—he hoped, he feared—must be Joan.

Suddenly the night burst into flower. A huge puff of green fire bloomed in the darkness, and by its eerie glow he saw her clearly, her hair flying in the wind.

He opened his mouth to shout, to call out to her, but he had no breath, and before he could recover it she vanished into the ground, the comte following her, torch in hand.

He reached the shaft moments later, and he saw below the faintest green glow, just vanishing down a tunnel. Without an instant’s hesitation, he flung himself down the ladder.



“DO YOU HEAR anything?” the comte kept asking her as they stumbled along the white-walled tunnels, he grasping her so hard by the arm that he’d surely leave bruises on her skin.

“No,” she gasped. “What…am I listening for?”

He merely shook his head in a displeased way, but more as though he was listening for something himself than because he was angry with her for not hearing it.

She had some hopes that he’d meant what he said and would take her back. He did mean to go back himself; he’d lit several torches and left them burning along their way. So he wasn’t about to disappear into the hill altogether, taking her with him to the lighted ballroom where people danced all night with the Fine Folk, unaware that their own world slipped past beyond the stones of the hill.