So It Once Was and So It Shall Be Again
Information technology is a brutal occupation,he wrote, and God assist me, if I am no hero, I am damned skillful at information technology. You understand, I think, for I know you are the same.
The quill had left marks on his fingers, so tightly equally he'd gripped it. He laid it down briefly, rubbing his hand, so took it up again.
God assist me further,he wrote, more slowly. I am afraid.
Afraid of what?
Some arsehole panicked….
I am afraid of everything. Agape of what I may have done, unknowing—of what I might do. I am agape of death, of mutilation, incapacity—just whatever soldier fears these things, and fights regardless. I take done it, and—
He wished to write firmly, and will do it again.Instead, the words formed below his quill as they formed in his listen; he could not help but write them.
I am afraid that I might find myself unable. Not just unable to fight, but to command.He looked at that for a moment, and put pen tentatively to the paper over again.
Have you known this fear, I wonder? I cannot think information technology, from your outward aspect.
That outward aspect was vivid in his heed; Fraser was a human being who would never pass unnoticed. Fifty-fifty during their nigh relaxed and cordial moments, Fraser had never lost his air of command, and when Grey had watched the Scottish prisoners at their work, it was plain that they regarded Fraser as their natural leader, all turning to him equally a thing of grade.
And then, there had been the matter of the scrap of tartan. He felt hot blood launder through him and his tum clench with shame and anger. Felt the startling thud of a true cat-o'-nine-tails on bare mankind, felt information technology in the pit of his breadbasket, searing the skin betwixt his shoulders.
He shut his optics in reflex, fingers clenching then tightly on the quill that information technology croaky and aptitude. He dropped the ruined plume and sabbatum still a moment, breathing, then opened his optics and reached for another.
Forgive me,he wrote. And then, inappreciably pausing, And yet why should I beg your forgiveness? God knows that it was your doing, every bit much as mine. Between your actions and my duty…But Fraser, too, had acted from duty, even if in that location was more than to the affair. He sighed, crossed out the concluding bit, and put a flow after the words Forgive me.
We are soldiers, you lot and I. Despite what has lain between the states in the past, I trust that…
That we understand 1 some other.The words spoke themselves in his heed, but what he saw was non the understanding of the burdens of command, nor withal a sharing of the unspoken fears that haunted him, precipitous as the sliver of metal adjacent his eye.
What he saw was that one frightful glimpse of nakedness he had surprised in Fraser'south face, naked in a fashion he would wish to run into no man naked, let solitary a man such as this.
"I understand," he said softly, the sound of the words surprising him. "I wish it were not so."
He looked down at the muddled mess of paper before him, blotched and crumpled, marked with spider blots of confusion and regret. Information technology reminded him of that terse notation, written with a burnt stick. Despite everything, Fraser had given him help when he asked it.
Might he ever see Jamie Fraser once more? There was a good chance he would not. If take a chance did not kill him, cowardice might.
The mania of confession was on him; best make the most of it. His quill had dried; he did non dip it once more.
I love y'all,he wrote, the strokes light and fast, making scarcely a mark upon the paper, with no ink. I wish it were not so.
Then he rose, scooped upward the scribbled papers, and, crushing them into a ball, threw them into the fire.
He was unfortunately notexpressionless when he woke in the forenoon, merely wished he were. Every musculus in his body ached, and the ghastly residue of everything he had drunk clung like dusty fur to the within of his throbbing head.
Tom Byrd brought him a tray, paused to view the remains, and shook his head in a resigned manner, merely said nothing.
Oddly enough, his hands did not milkshake. Yet, he clasped them carefully round his teacup and raised it charily to his lips. Every bit he did so, he noticed a letter on the tray, sealed with a blob of ruby-red wax, in which the initials SC were incised. Simon Coles.
He sat upwards, narrowly avoiding spilling the tea, and fumbled open up the missive, which proved to contain a brief note from the lawyer and a sheet of newspaper containing several drawings, with penciled descriptions written tidily below. Descriptions of the bits of jewelry that Anne Thackeray had taken with her when she eloped with Philip Lister.
"Tom," Grey croaked.
"Yeah, me lord?"
"Get tell the stable lad to ready the horses, and so pack. We'll leave in an hour."
Both Tom'southward eyebrows lifted, but he bowed.
"Very proficient, me lord."
He had hoped to escape from Blackthorn Hall unnoticed, and was in the act of depositing a gracious note of thanks—pleading urgent business as alibi for his abrupt removal—on Edgar's desk, when a vocalisation spoke suddenly backside him.
"John!"
He whirled, guilt stamped upon his features, to discover Maude in the doorway, a garden trug over ane arm, filled with what looked like onions but were probably daffodil bulbs or something agricultural of the sort.
"Oh. Maude. How pleased I am to see y'all. I thought I should accept to accept my leave without expressing my thanks for your kindness. How fortunate—"
"You're leaving u.s., John? So soon?"
She was a tall adult female, and handsome, her dark good looks a proper match for Edgar's. Maude's eyes, however, were not those of a poetess. Something more in the nature of a gorgon's, he had always felt; riveting the attention of her auditors, even though all instinct bade them flee.
"I…yes. Yeah. I received a alphabetic character—" He had Coles'due south note with him, and flourished it equally evidence. "I must—"
"Oh, from Mr. Coles, of course. The butler told me he had brought y'all a note, when he brought me mine."
She was looking at him with a most unaccustomed fondness, which gave him a small-scale chill upwards the back. This increased when she moved all of a sudden toward him, setting aside her trug, and cupped a manus backside his caput, looking searchingly into his eyes. Her breath was warm on his cheek, smelling of fried egg.
"Are you sure you are quite well enough to travel, my dear?"
"Ahh…aye," he said. "Quite. Quite sure." God in sky, did she mean to buss him?
Thank God, she did not. Afterward examining his face feature past characteristic, she released him.
"You should have told united states, you know," she said reproachfully.
He managed a vaguely interrogative noise in answer to this, and she nodded toward the desk. Where, he now saw, the newspaper cutting referring to him as the Hero of Crefeld was displayed in all its celebrity, along with a notation in Simon Coles'south handwriting.
"Oh," he said. "Ah. That. It actually—"
"We had not the slightest thought," she said, looking at him with what in a lesser adult female would have passed for doe-eyed respect. "Y'all are and so modest, John! To recall of all you have suffered—it shows so clearly upon your haggard countenance—and to say not a word, even to your family!"
It was a cold day and the library fire had not been lit, but he was beginning to experience very warm. He coughed.
"There is, of course, a certain caste of exaggeration—"
"Nonsense, nonsense. But of course, your natural nobility of character causes you to shun public acclaim, I understand entirely."
"I knew you would," Grey said, giving up. They beamed at each other for a few seconds; then he coughed over again and made purposefully to pass her.
Source: https://litlife.club/books/171204/read?page=53
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