Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)

La Vida de la Alma. Close enough to the Latin to translate as “The Life of the Soul.” It was soft-bound in a thin oxblood leather, worn by years—a lifetime?—of reading, with a stamped pattern of tiny pecten shells, each one edged with gilt. She touched one gently, feeling a great sense of peace. Books always had something to say, beyond the words inside, but it was rare to find one with so strong a character.

She opened it carefully; the paper inside was thin, and the ink had begun to fade with age but not to blur. The book had few illustrations, and those few, simple: a cross, the Lamb of God, the pecten shell, drawn larger—she’d seen that once or twice before, in Spanish manuscripts, but didn’t know the significance. She must remember to ask her father….

“Ah,” she said, compressing her lips. “Father.” She’d been trying not to think of him, not until she’d had time to sort out her emotions and consider what on earth she might say to him about her mother.

She’d thought of the woman called Sister Emmanuelle many times since leaving her in her hay-filled womb of light. The shock had faded, but the images of that meeting were printed on her mind as indelibly as the black ink inside this book. She still felt the sting of loss and the ache of sorrow—but the sense of peace from the book seemed somehow to shelter her, like a covering wing.

“Are you an angel?”

She sighed and set the book gently into its nest of cloth and felt. She’d have to talk to her father, yes. But what on earth would she say?

“Raphael…”

“If you have any answers,” she said to the book and its author, “please pray for me. For us.”

She wasn’t crying, but her eyes were damp, and she wiped her face with the hem of her dusty apron. Before she could settle to work again, though, there came a knock at the door.

Eliza had gone out to do the shopping, so Minnie opened the door just as she was. Mick and Rafe O’Higgins stood shoulder to shoulder in the hall, both of them smudged with soot and excited as terriers smelling a rat.

“We’ve got the letters, Bedelia!” Rafe said.

“All the letters!” Mick added, proudly holding up a leather bag.



“WE WAITED FOR the butler’s day out,” Mick explained, laying his booty out ceremoniously before her. “It’s the butler what arranges for the sweeps to come in when needed, aye? So when we come to the door with our brooms and cloths—not to worry, we borrowed ’em, ye’ll not have to pay—and said Mr. Sylvester had sent for us to attend to the library chimney…”

“Well, the housekeeper looked a bit squint-eyed,” Rafe chimed in, “but she showed us along, and when we began to bang about and shout up the chimney and kick up soot, she left us quite to ourselves. And so…”

He swept a hand out over the table. All the letters, indeed. The bag had disgorged a small, flat wooden case, a leather folder, and a thin stack of letters, soberly bound with black grosgrain ribbon.

“Well done!” Minnie told them sincerely. She felt a flutter of excitement at sight of the letters, though a cautious excitement. The O’Higginses had, of course, brought away every letter they could find. They must have more than the countess’s letters here, and she wondered for a brief moment whether some of the extras might be valuable…but dismissed the thought for now. As long as they’d found Esmé’s…

“Did you get paid for sweeping the chimney?” she asked, out of curiosity.

“Sure and ye wound us, Lady Bedelia,” Rafe said, clasping a battered hat over his heart and trying to look wounded. There was smut on his nose.

“O’ course we did,” Mick said, grinning. “T’wouldn’t have been convincing, otherwise, would it?”

They were cock-a-hoop over their success, and it took nearly half a bottle of Madeira to celebrate said success enough for them to leave, but at last she closed the door upon them, rubbed at a smudge on the white doorjamb with her thumb, and walked slowly back to the table to see what she had.

She took the letters from their various wrappings and set them out in three neat piles. The letters from Esmé, Lady Melton, to her lover, Nathaniel Twelvetrees: those were the ones in the wooden box. The letters in the beribboned bundle were from said Nathaniel Twelvetrees to Esmé. And the leather folder held quite unexpected letters—from Harold, Lord Melton, to his wife.

Minnie had never felt the slightest reservation in reading someone else’s letters. It was simply part of the work, and if she occasionally met someone in those pages whose voice struck her mind or heart, someone real—that was a bonus, something to treasure privately, with a sweet regret that she would never know the writer face-to-face.

Well, she’d certainly never know Esmé or Nathaniel face-to-face, she thought. As for Harold, Lord Melton—just looking at the untidy pile of crumpled, smoothed-out, ink-blotted sheets made the hairs prickle at the back of her neck.

Esmé first, she decided. Esmé was the center of it all. And it was Esmé’s letters she’d been commissioned—more or less—to steal. A faint hint of perfume rose from the wooden box, something slightly bitter, fresh, and mysterious. Myrrh? Nutmeg? Dried lemon? Not sweet at all, she thought—nor, likely, was Esmé Grey.

Not all of the letters had dates, but she sorted them as best she could. All on the same stationery, an expensive linen rag paper, thick to the touch and pure white. The sentiments inscribed upon them were not pure at all.

Mon cher…Dois-je vous dire ce que je voudrais que vous me fassiez? “Shall I tell you what I want you to do to me?”

Minnie had read her way with interest through her father’s entire stock of erotica when she was fourteen, accidentally discovering in the process that one didn’t necessarily need a partner in order to experience the sensations so euphorically described therein. Esmé hadn’t much literary style, but her imagination—surely some of it must be imagination?—was remarkable and expressed with a blunt freedom that made Minnie want to squirm, ever so slightly, in her seat.

Not that they were all like that. One was a simple two-line note making an assignation, another was a more thoughtful—and, surprisingly, a more intimate—letter describing Esmé’s visit to—oh, God, Minnie thought, and wiped her hand on her skirt, as she’d begun to perspire—Princess Augusta and her fabulous garden.

Esmé had noted carelessly that she had no liking for the princess, whom she thought heavy in both body and mind, but that Melton had asked her to accept the invitation to tea in order to—and here Minnie translated Esmé’s idiomatic French expression—“drench in melted butter” the vulgar woman and pave the way for Melton to discuss his military designs with the prince.

She then mentioned walking through the glass conservatories with the princess, paused to make comical, if offhandedly complimentary, comparisons between her lover’s physical parts and various exotic plants—she mentioned the euphorbias, Minnie noted—and ended with a brief remark about the Chinese flowers called chu. She was attracted—Minnie snorted, reading this—by the “purity and stillness” of the blooms.

“à les regarder, mon ame s’est apaisée,” she had written. “It soothed my soul to look at them.”