Outlander by Diana Gabaldon Read Free Book Online

you’re one of those can love again if your first love’s lost.”
    She squinted nearsightedly at my palm, running a short, ridged nail gently down the deep marriage line. “But most divided lines are broken—yours is forked.” She looked up with a roguish smile. “Sure you’re not a bigamist, on the quiet, like?”
    I shook my head, laughing. “No. When would I have the time?” Then I turned my hand, showing the outer edge.
    “I’ve heard that small marks on the side of the hand indicate how many children you’ll have?” My tone was casual, I hoped. The edge of my palm was disappointingly smooth.
    Mrs. Graham flicked a scornful hand at this idea.
    “Pah! After ye’ve had a bairn or two, ye might show lines there. More like you’d have them on your face. Proves nothing at all beforehand.”
    “Oh, it doesn’t?” I was foolishly relieved to hear this. I was going to ask whether the deep lines across the base of my wrist meant anything (a potential for suicide?), but we were interrupted at that point by the Reverend Wakefield coming into the kitchen bearing the empty tea cups. He set them on the drainboard and began a loud and clumsy fumbling through the cupboard, obviously in hopes of provoking help.
    Mrs. Graham sprang to her feet to defend the sanctity of her kitchen, and pushing the Reverend adroitly to one side, set about assembling tea things on a tray for the study. He drew me to one side, safely out of the way.
    “Why don’t you come to the study and have another cup of tea with me and your husband, Mrs. Randall? We’ve made really a most gratifying discovery.”
    I could see that in spite of outward composure, he was bursting with the glee of whatever they had found, like a small boy with a toad in his pocket. Plainly I was going to have to go and read Captain Jonathan Randall’s laundry bill, his receipt for boot repairs, or some document of similar fascination.
    Frank was so absorbed in the tattered documents that he scarcely looked up when I entered the study. He reluctantly surrendered them to the vicar’s podgy hands, and came round to stand behind the Reverend Wakefield and peer over his shoulder, as though he could not bear to let the papers out of his sight for a moment.
    “Yes?” I said politely, fingering the dirty bits of paper. “Ummm, yes, very interesting.” In fact, the spidery handwriting was so faded and so ornate that it hardly seemed worth the trouble of deciphering it. One sheet, better preserved than the rest, had some sort of crest at the top.
    “The Duke of…Sandringham, is it?” I asked, peering at the crest, with its faded leopard couchant, and the printing below, more legible than the handwriting.
    “Yes, indeed,” the vicar said, beaming even more. “An extinct title, now, you know.”
    I didn’t, but nodded intelligently, being no stranger to historians in the manic grip of discovery. It was seldom necessary to do more than nod periodically, saying “Oh, really?” or “How perfectly fascinating!” at appropriate intervals.
    After a certain amount of deferring back and forth between Frank and the vicar, the latter won the honor of telling me about their discovery. Evidently, all this rubbish made it appear that Frank’s ancestor, the notorious Black Jack Randall, had not been merely a gallant soldier for the Crown, but a trusted—and secret—agent of the Duke of Sandringham.
    “Almost an agent provocateur, wouldn’t you say, Dr. Randall?” The vicar graciously handed the ball back to Frank, who seized it and ran.
    “Yes, indeed. The language is very guarded, of course.…” He turned the pages gently with a scrubbed forefinger.
    “Oh, really?” I said.
    “But it seems from this that Jonathan Randall was entrusted with the job of stirring up Jacobite sentiments, if any existed, among the prominent Scottish families in his area. The point being to smoke out any baronets and clan chieftains who might be harboring secret sympathies in that