The Space Between (Outlander, #7.5)(28)

The child … He wondered what he would have done had she come to him and told him the truth, asked him to marry her for the sake of the child. But she hadn’t. And she wasn’t asking now.

It would be best—or at least easiest—were she to lose the child. And she might yet.

“I couldn’t wait, you see,” she said, as though continuing a conversation. “I would have tried to find someone else, but I thought she knew. She’d tell you as soon as she could manage to see you. So I had to, you see, before you found out.”

“She? Who? Tell me what?”

“The nun,” Léonie said, and sighed deeply, as though losing interest. “She saw me in the market and rushed up to me. She said she had to talk to you—that she had something important to tell you. I saw her look into my basket, though, and her face … thought she must realize …”

Her eyelids were fluttering, whether from drugs or fatigue, he couldn’t tell. She smiled faintly, but not at him; she seemed to be looking at something a long way off.

“So funny,” she murmured. “Charles said it would solve everything—that the comte would pay him such a lot for her, it would solve everything. But how can you solve a baby?”

Michael jerked as though her words had stabbed him.

“What? Pay for whom?”

“The nun.”

He grabbed her by the shoulders.

“Sister Joan? What do you mean, pay for her? What did Charles tell you?”

She made a whiny sound of protest. Michael wanted to shake her hard enough to break her neck but forced himself to withdraw his hand. She settled into the pillow like a bladder losing air, flattening under the bedclothes. Her eyes were closed, but he bent down, speaking directly into her ear.

“The comte, Léonie. What is his name? Tell me his name.”

A faint frown rippled the flesh of her brow, then passed.

“St. Germain,” she murmured, scarcely loud enough to be heard. “The Comte St. Germain.”

* * *

He went instantly to Rosenwald and, by dint of badgering and the promise of extra payment, got him to finish the engraving on the chalice at once. Michael waited impatiently while it was done and, scarcely pausing for the cup and paten to be wrapped in brown paper, flung money to the goldsmith and made for les Couvent des Anges, almost running.

With great difficulty, he restrained himself while making the presentation of the chalice, and with great humility, he inquired whether he might ask the great favor of seeing Sister Gregory, that he might convey a message to her from her family in the Highlands. Sister Eustacia looked surprised and somewhat disapproving—postulants were not normally permitted visits—but after all … in view of Monsieur Murray’s and Monsieur Fraser’s great generosity to the convent … perhaps just a few moments, in the visitor’s parlor, and in the presence of Sister herself …

* * *

He turned and blinked once, his mouth opening a little. He looked shocked. Did she look so different in her robe and veil?

“It’s me,” Joan said, and tried to smile reassuringly. “I mean … still me.”

His eyes fixed on her face, and he let out a deep breath and smiled, as if she’d been lost and he’d found her again.

“Aye, so it is,” he said softly. “I was afraid it was Sister Gregory. I mean, the … er …” He made a sketchy, awkward gesture indicating her gray robes and white postulant’s veil.

“It’s only clothes,” she said, and put a hand to her chest, defensive.

“Well, no,” he said, looking her over carefully, “I dinna think it is, quite. It’s more like a soldier’s uniform, no? Ye’re doing your job when ye wear it, and everybody as sees it kens what ye are and knows what ye do.”

Kens what I am. I suppose I should be pleased it doesn’t show, she thought, a little wildly.

“Well.… aye, I suppose.” She fingered the rosary at her belt. She coughed. “In a way, at least.”

Ye’ve got to tell him. It wasn’t one of the voices, just the voice of her own conscience, but that was demanding enough. She could feel her heart beating, so hard that she thought the bumping must show through the front of her habit.

He smiled encouragingly at her.

“Léonie told me ye wanted to see me.”

“Michael … can I tell ye something?” she blurted.

He seemed surprised. “Well, of course ye can,” he said. “Whyever not?”

“Whyever not,” she said, half under her breath. She glanced over his shoulder, but Sister Eustacia was on the far side of the room, talking to a very young, frightened-looking French girl and her parents.

“Well, it’s like this, see,” she said, in a determined voice. “I hear voices.”

She stole a look at him, but he didn’t appear shocked. Not yet.

“In my head, I mean.”

“Aye?” He sounded cautious. “Um … what do they say, then?”

She realized she was holding her breath, and let a little of it out.

“Ah … different things. But they now and then tell me something’s going to happen. More often, they tell me I should say thus-and-so to someone.”

“Thus-and-so,” he repeated attentively, watching her face. “What … sort of thus-and-so?”