Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)

“I’ll be picking ye up just here, then,” Rafe said, ignoring her gibe. He pointed to a carved-stone horse tank that stood in a small lay-by. “Just here,” he repeated, and looked at the sun. “It’s just gone two—will ye be done with your business by four, d’ye think?”


“I’ve no idea,” she said, standing on tiptoe to look as far as she could over the sea of green surrounding the house. Ornamental domes and shiny bits that might be glass or metal were visible through the trees, and she heard faint strains of music in the distance. She meant to explore the delights of Their Highnesses’ royal residence and its gardens to the full, once she’d dealt with Mr. Bloomer.

Rafe rolled his eyes but good-naturedly.

“Aye, then. If ye’re not here at four, I’ll come back on the hour ’til I find you.” He leaned down to address her nose to nose, hazel eyes boring into hers. “And if ye’re not here by seven, I’m comin’ in after you. Got that, have ye, Lady Bedelia?”

“Oh, piffle,” she said, but in a genial manner. She’d bought a modest parasol of ruffled green silk and now unfurled it with a flourish, turning her back on him. “I’ll see you anon.”

“And’s when anon, then?” he shouted behind her.

“Whenever I’m bloody ready!” she called back over her shoulder and strolled on, gently twirling.

The crowd was funneling in to a large central hall, where Princess Augusta—or so Minnie assumed the pretty, bejeweled woman with the big blue eyes and the incipient double chin to be—was greeting her guests, supported by several other gorgeously dressed ladies. Minnie casually faded into the crowd and bypassed the receiving line; no need to call attention to herself.

There were enormous refreshment tables at the back of the house, and she graciously accepted a glass of sherbet and an iced cake offered her by a servant; she nibbled as she wandered out into the gardens, with an eye to its design and the locations of various landmarks. She was to meet Mr. Bloomer at three o’clock, in the “first of the glasshouses.” Wearing green.

Green she was, from head to toe: a pale-green muslin gown, with a jacket and overskirt in a printed French calico. And, of course, the parasol, which she erected again once outside the house.

It was clever of Mr. Bloomer to choose green, she thought; she was very visible among the much more common pinks and blues and whites the other women wore, though not so uncommon as to cause staring. Green didn’t suit many complexions, but beyond that, green fabric tended to fade badly: Monsieur Vernet—an artist friend of her father’s, quite obsessed with whales—had told her once that green was a fugitive color, a notion that delighted her.

Perhaps that was why trees changed the color of their leaves in autumn? The green slipped away somehow, leaving them to fade into a brownish death. But why, then, did they have that momentary blaze of red and yellow?

Such concerns were far from the plants surrounding her; it was midsummer, and everything was so verdant that, far from being conspicuous, had she stopped moving in the midst of all this burgeoning flora, she would have been almost invisible.

She found the glasshouses without difficulty. There were five of them, all in a row, glittering like diamonds in the afternoon sun, each one linked to its fellow by a short covered passageway. She was a bit early, but that shouldn’t matter. She furled the parasol and joined the people passing in.

Inside, the air was heavy and damp, luscious with the smell of ripening fruit and heady blossom. She’d seen the king’s Orangerie at Versailles once; this was much less impressive but much more appealing. Oranges and lemons and limes, plums, peaches and apricots, pears…and the intoxicating scent of citrus blossom floating over everything.

She sighed happily and drifted down the graveled pathways that led among the rows, murmuring apology or acknowledgment as she brushed someone in passing, never meeting anyone’s eyes, and, finding herself momentarily alone beneath a canopy of quince trees, stopped to breathe the perfume of the solid yellow fruits overhead, the size of cricket balls.

A flash of red caught her own eye through the trees, and for an instant she thought it was an exotic bird, lured by the astonishing abundance of peculiar fruits. Then she heard male voices above the well-bred hum of the largely female guests, and a moment later her red bird stepped out into the wide graveled patch where the pathways intersected. A soldier, in full-dress uniform—a blaze of scarlet and gold, with shining black boots to the knee and a sword at his belt.

He wasn’t tall; in fact, he was rather slight, with a fine-boned face seen in profile as he turned to say something to his companion. He stood very straight, though, shoulders square and head up, and there was something about him that reminded her of a bantam cock—something deeply fierce, innately proud, and completely unaware of its relative size. Ready to take on all comers, spurs first.

The thought entertained her so much that it was a moment before she noticed his interlocutor. The companion wasn’t dressed as a soldier but was certainly very fine, too, in ocher velvet with a blue satin sash and some large medallion pinned to his chest—the Order of Something-or-Other, she supposed. He did, however, strongly resemble a frog, wide-lipped and pale, with rather big, staring eyes.

The sight of the two of them, rooster and frog, engaged in convivial conversation, made her smile behind her fan, and she didn’t notice the gentleman who had come up behind her until he spoke.

“Are you fond of opuntioid cacti…madam?”

“I might be, if I knew what they were,” she replied, swinging round to see a youngish gentleman in a plum-colored suit gazing at her intently. He cleared his throat and cocked an eyebrow.

“Um…actually, I prefer succulents,” she said, giving the agreed-upon countersign. She cleared her throat, as well, hoping she remembered the word. “Particularly the, um, euphorbias.”

The question in his eyes vanished, replaced by amusement. He looked her up and down in a manner that might in other circumstances have been insulting. She flushed but held his gaze and raised her brows.

“Mr. Bloomer, I presume?”

“If you like,” he said, smiling, and offered her his arm. “Do let me show you the euphorbias, Miss…?”

A moment of panic: who should she be, or admit to being?

“Houghton,” she said, seizing Rafe’s mocking nickname. “Lady Bedelia Houghton.”

“Of course you are,” he said, straight-faced. “Charmed to make your acquaintance, Lady Bedelia.”

He bowed slightly, she took his arm, and together they walked slowly into the wilderness.

They passed through minor jungles of philodendrons—but philodendrons that had never graced anything so plebeian as a parlor, with ragged leaves each half as large as Minnie herself, and a thing with great veined leaves the color of green ink and the look of watered silk.

“They’re rather poisonous, philodendrons,” Mr. Bloomer said, with a casual nod. “All of them. Did you know?”