Squelching noises announced the hesitant approach of Cyrus, and Roger looked up at him, tall, gangly, and dripping, his face dead white.
“Mistress …” he said, and swallowed, having no idea how to go on.
“It’s no your fault, a bhalaich,” Roger began, but Cyrus shook off the halting words and collapsed to his knees in front of Fanny.
“Mistress …” he said again, tentative. Fanny ignored him completely, but he reached out his closed hand and opened it slowly under her nose.
The paper was little more than a soggy, crumpled ball in his palm. Roger heard him swallow again.
Fanny made a sound as though he’d driven a spike into her belly, snatched the remnant of paper from him, and cradled it against her chest, sobbing as though her heart would break.
I suppose it already is broken, poor little thing …
“Mo chridhe bristeadh,” Cyrus whispered, his face crumpled with misery. “B’fhearr gu robh mi air bathadh mus do thachair an cron tha seo ort.” Shattering is my heart. I would that I had drowned before I allowed such evil to come upon you.
Fanny made no answer and wouldn’t move. Roger exchanged a helpless look with Cyrus, but before he could try again to move Fanny, the boys had arrived, full of shocked questions. Germain had the flannel cloth with the rest of Fanny’s treasures, picked up from the creek bank and bundled in his hand.
“Cousin …？” he said tentatively, his hand with the bundle hovering between Fanny and Roger. Fanny didn’t move to take it, so Roger nodded at him.
“Thanks, Germain. Take it to the house, will ye?” He rose, his knees stiff, cold wet stockings puddling round his ankles. “Jem? Take Mandy and the boys and go along to the house with Germain. We’ll … be up directly.”
The boys all nodded, round-eyed with concern, and left with Mandy, glancing over their shoulders and beginning to murmur to one another.
Cyrus was beginning to shiver, the cold wind passing through the wet thin cloth of his shirt and breeks. Roger put a hand on his bent head—even kneeling, his head reached well above Roger’s waist.
“It will be all right,” he said in Gaelic. “You did no wrong. Go home now.”
Cyrus looked up at Roger, then helplessly at Fanny’s bowed head. After a moment, he nodded jerkily, got up, and bowed to her before turning and walking slowly away, glancing back, his face full of trouble.
Roger sighed, and after a moment’s hesitation, he sat down on the ground and gathered Fanny into his arms. He rocked the girl slowly, patting her back as though she were a small child. He felt like a bystander in a place where a bomb has just exploded, and neither ambulance nor police have yet arrived.
Ambulance and police … aye, that would be Claire and Jamie, he thought with a tinge of wry amusement. Calling for one or the other of the Frasers had in fact been his first impulse, once he got Fanny out of the creek. But Jamie had gone to Salem, and Claire had said she was going to look at a case of what might be chicken pox at the MacNeills’。 And if you came right down to it … neither of them could really help in this situation. Whereas, maybe … just maybe …
He took a deep breath, hugged Fanny tight, then set her down and stood up. Fanny was shivering by this time, hard enough that the sobs had stopped, though tears were still flowing and her eyes were swollen.
“Come with me,” Roger said firmly, reaching for her hand. “Brianna can maybe fix this.”
ROGER’S ONLY THOUGHT when he’d said “fix this” was a fuzzy notion of Sellotape, this succeeded by a dubious notion of drying the paper and stitching the drawing together like a sampler. Brianna, luckily, had a better idea.
“It’s a nice, heavy rag paper,” she observed, laying the still-damp pieces of the drawing on the kitchen table and smoothing them. “Must have been, to last so long. How long do you think Fanny’s had it?”
“Two years, maybe?” Roger hazarded a guess. “Her sister was seventeen or so when she died, and Fanny says this was done when she was ten, so Jane would have been maybe fifteen. Can you copy it, do ye think?”
“Yes, and I will. But Fanny will want the original, too. For emotional reasons.”
Roger nodded. “Aye. What can you do about it, then?”
“Oh, just mend the tear.”
“Ye really are going to sew it together? I thought of that, but—”
“Well, that’s actually not a bad idea,” she said, looking as though she wanted to laugh but refraining from doing it out of politeness. “But I’m pretty sure Fanny wouldn’t want her poor sister to look like Frankenstein’s monster, even if she doesn’t know what that is.”