Excerpt from An Echo in the Bone

[In an inn in Wilmington.]

There was a single tap on the door, and he halted abruptly. My eyes went at once to the sewing basket, but Jamie shook his head.

"They wouldn't knock," he said, and rising, went to open it. Small as the room was, I could see the door from where I sat; to my surprise, it was filled with what appeared to be a deputation of women--the corridor was a sea of white caps, floating in the dimness like jelly-fish.

"Mr. Fraser?" One of the caps bobbed briefly. "I am Mrs. Bell. My daughters--" she turned, and I caught a glimpse of a strained white face, "--Lillian and Letitia." The other two caps --yes, there were only three, after all--bobbed in turn. "May we speak with you?"

Jamie bowed and ushered them into the room, raising his eyebrows at me as he followed them in.

"My wife," he said, nodding as I rose, murmuring pleasantries. There was only the bed and one stool, so we all remained standing, awkwardly smiling and bobbing at one another.

Mrs. Bell was short and rather stout, and had probably once been as pretty as her daughters. Her once-plump cheeks now sagged, though, as though she had lost weight suddenly, and her skin was creased with worry. Her daughters looked worried, too; one was twisting her hands in her apron, and the other kept stealing glances at Jamie from downcast eyes, as though afraid he might do something violent if gazed at too directly.

"I beg your pardon, sir, for coming to you in this bold way." Mrs. Bell's lips were trembling; she had to stop and compress them briefly before continuing. "I--I hear that you are looking for a ship bound to Scotland."

Jamie nodded warily, plainly wondering where this woman had learned of it. He'd said everyone in the town would know within a day or two--evidently he'd been right about that.

"Do ye ken someone with such a voyage in view?" he asked politely.

"No. Not exactly. I--that is...perhaps--it is my husband," she blurted, but the speaking of the word made her voice break, and she clapped a handful of apron to her mouth. One of the daughters, a dark-haired girl, took her mother gently by the elbow and drew her aside, standing up bravely to face the fearsome Mr. Fraser herself.

"My father is in Scotland, Mr. Fraser," she said. "My mother is in hopes that you might find him, when you go there, and assist him to return to us."

"Ah," Jamie said. "And your father would be...?"

"Oh! Mr. Robert Bell, sir." She curtsied hastily, as though further politeness would help to make her case. "He is--he was--"

"He is!" her sister hissed, low-voiced but emphatic, and the first sister, the dark one, gave her a glare.

"My father was a merchant here, Mr. Fraser. He had considerable business interests, and in the course of his business, he...had reason to have contact with various British officers, who came to him for supplies. It was entirely a matter of business!" she assured him.

"But business in these dreadful times is never only business." Mrs. Bell had got hold of herself, and came to stand shoulder to shoulder with her daughter. "They said--my husband's enemies--they put it about that he was a Loyalist."

"Only because he was," put in the second sister. This one--fair-haired and brown-eyed--wasn't trembling; she faced Jamie with a lifted chin and blazing eyes. "My father was true to his King! I for one do not think that is something to be excused and apologized for! Nor do I think it right to pretend otherwise, only to get the help of a man who has broken every oath--"

"Oh, Lettie!" said her sister, exasperated. "Could you not keep quiet for one second? Now you've spoilt everything!"

"I haven't," Lettie snapped. "Or if I have, it wasn't ever going to work in the first place! Why should someone like him hel--"

"Yes, it would! Mr. Forbes said--"

"Oh, bother Mr. Forbes! What would he know?"

Mrs. Bell moaned softly into her apron.

"Why did your father go to Scotland?" Jamie asked, cutting through the confusion.

Taken by surprise, Letitia Bell actually answered him.

"He didn't go to Scotland. He was abducted in the street and thrust onto a ship bound for Southampton."

"By whom?" I asked, wiggling my way through the obstructing forest of skirts on my way to the door. "And why?"

I stuck my head out into the corridor and gestured to the boy cleaning boots on the landing that he should go down to the taproom and bring up a jug of wine. Given the apparent state of the Bells, I thought something to restore the social amenities might be a good idea.

I popped back inside in time to hear Miss Lillian Bell explaining that they didn't actually know who had abducted her father.

"Or not by name, at least," she said, face flushed with fury at the telling. "The villains wore hoods over their heads. But it was the Sons of Liberty, I know it!"

"Yes, it was," Miss Letitia said decidedly. "Father had had threats from them--notes pinned to the door, a dead fish wrapped in a bit of red flannel and left upon the porch to make a stink. That sort of thing."

The matter had gone beyond threats at the end of last [September]. Mr. Bell had been on his way to his warehouse, when a group of hooded men had rushed out from an alleyway, seized him and carried him down the quay, then flung him bodily aboard a ship that had just cast off its hawser, sails filling as it drew slowly away.

I had heard of troublesome Loyalists being summarily "deported" in this manner, but hadn't run into an actual occurrence of the practice before.

"If the ship was bound for England," I inquired, "how did he end up in Scotland?"

There was a certain amount of confusion as all three Bells tried to explain at once what had happened, but Letitia won out once again.

"He arrived in England penniless, of course, with no more than the clothes on his back, and owing money for food and passage on the ship. But the ship's captain had befriended him, and took him from Southampton to London, where he knew some men with whom he had done business in the past. One of these advanced him a small sum to cover his indebtedness to the captain, and promised him passage to Georgia, if he would oversee the cargo on a voyage from Edinburgh to the Indies, thence to America.

"So he traveled to Edinburgh under the auspices of his patron, only to discover there that the intended cargo to be picked up in the Indies was a shipload of Negroes."

"My husband is an abolitionist, Mr. Fraser," Mrs. Bell put in, with timid pride. "He said he could not countenance slavery, nor assist in its practice, no matter what the cost to himself."

"And Mr. Forbes told us what you had done for that woman--Mrs. Cameron's body-slave--" Lillian put in, anxious-faced. "So we thought--even if you were..." She trailed off, embarrassed.

"An oath-breaking rebel, aye," Jamie said dryly. "I see. Mr. Forbes...this would be...Neil Forbes, the lawyer?" He sounded faintly incredulous, and with good reason.

Some years before, Forbes had been a suitor for Brianna's hand--encouraged by Jocasta Cameron, Jamie's aunt. Bree had rejected him, none too gently, and he had taken his revenge by having her abducted by a notorious pirate. A very messy state of affairs had ensued, involving Jamie's reciprocal abduction of Forbes's elderly mother--the old lady had loved the adventure--and the cutting off of Forbes's ear by Young Ian. Time might have healed his external wounds, but I couldn't imagine anyone less likely to have been singing Jamie's praises.

"Yes," said Letitia, but I didn't miss the uncertain look that passed between Mrs. Bell and Lillian.

"What, exactly, did Mr. Forbes say about me?" Jamie asked. All three of them went pale, and his eyebrows went up.

"What?" he repeated, with a definite edge. He said it directly to Mrs. Bell, whom he had instantly identified as the weakest link in the family chain.

"He said what a good thing it was that you were dead," that lady replied faintly. Whereupon her eyes rolled up into her head and she slumped to the floor like a bag of barleycorn.

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