An Echo in the Bone Read Online Free PDF Page B

already wondering to whom he should take this offer. Not Sir George Germain. Lord North’s office? That could wait, though.
    “And your personal interests?” he asked, with an edge. He knew Percy Wainwright well enough to know that there would be some aspect of the affair to Percy’s personal benefit.
    “Ah, that.” Percy sipped at his wine, then lowered the glass and gazed limpidly at Grey across it.
    “Very simple, really. I am commissioned to find a man. Do you know a Scottish gentleman named James Fraser?”
    Grey felt the stem of his glass crack. He went on holding it, though, and sipped the wine carefully, thanking God, firstly, that he had never told Percy Jamie Fraser’s name and, secondly, that Fraser had left Wilmington that afternoon.
    “No,” he said calmly. “What do you want with this Mr. Fraser?”
    Percy shrugged, and smiled.
    “Only a question or two.”
    Grey could feel blood seeping from his lacerated palm. Holding the cracked glass carefully together, he drank the rest of his wine. Percy was quiet, drinking with him.
    “My condolences upon the loss of your wife,” Percy said quietly. “I know that she—”
    “You know nothing,” Grey said roughly. He leaned over and set the broken glass on the table; the bowl rolled crazily, the lees of wine washing the glass. “Not one thing. About my wife, or about me.”
    Percy lifted his shoulders in the faintest of Gallic shrugs. As you like , it said. And yet his eyes—they were still beautiful, damn him, dark and soft—rested on Grey with what seemed a genuine sympathy.
    Grey sighed. Doubtless it was genuine. Percy could not be trusted—not ever—but what he’d done had been done from weakness, not from malice, or even lack of feeling.
    “What do you want?” he repeated.
    “Your son—” Percy began, and Grey turned suddenly on him. He gripped Percy’s shoulder, hard enough that the man gave a little gasp and stiffened. Grey leaned down, looking into Wainwright’s—sorry, Beauchamp’s— face, so close that he felt the warmth of the man’s breath on his cheek and smelled his cologne. He was getting blood on Wainwright’s coat.
    “The last time I saw you,” Grey said, very quietly, “I came within an inch of putting a bullet through your head. Don’t give me cause to regret my restraint.”
    He let go and stood up.
    “Stay away from my son—stay away from me. And if you will take a well-meant bit of advice—go back to France. Quickly.”
    Turning on his heel, he went out, shutting the door firmly behind him. He was halfway down the street before he realized that he had left Percy in his own room.
    “The devil with it,” he muttered, and stamped off to beg a billet for the night from Sergeant Cutter. In the morning, he would make sure that the Fraser family and William were all safely out of Wilmington.

    AND SOMETIMES THEY AREN’T
    Lallybroch
    Inverness-shire, Scotland
    September 1980
    WE ARE ALIVE,” Brianna MacKenzie repeated, her voice tremulous. She looked up at Roger, the paper pressed to her chest with both hands. Her face streamed with tears, but a glorious light glowed in her blue eyes. “Alive!”
    “Let me see.” His heart was hammering so hard in his chest that he could barely hear his own words. He reached out a hand, and reluctantly she surrendered the paper to him, coming at once to press herself against him, clinging to his arm as he read, unable to take her eyes off the bit of ancient paper.
    It was pleasantly rough under his fingers, handmade paper with the ghosts of leaves and flowers pressed into its fibers. Yellowed with age, but still tough and surprisingly flexible. Bree had made it herself—more than two hundred years before.
    Roger became aware that his hands were trembling, the paper shaking so that the sprawling, difficult hand was hard to read, faded as the ink was.
    December 31, 1776
    My dear daughter,
    As you will see if ever you receive this, we are alive …
    His own eyes blurred, and he