Diana Gabaldon - Outlander

Contents

To the Memory of My Mother,
Who Taught Me to Read
Jacqueline Sykes Gabaldon

People disappear all the time. Ask any policeman. Better yet, ask a journalist. Disappearances are bread-and-butter to journalists.

Young girls run away from home. Young children stray from their parents and are never seen again. Housewives reach the end of their tether and take the grocery money and a taxi to the station. International financiers change their names and vanish into the smoke of imported cigars.

Many of the lost will be found, eventually, dead or alive. Disappearances, after all, have explanations.

Usually.

HIGH PRAISE FOR

DIANA GABALDON AND

OUTLANDER

GREAT FUNmarvelous and fantastic adventures, romance, sexperfect escape reading.

San Francisco Chronicle

Gabaldon fashions deeply probed characters and a richly textured settinghistory comes deliciously alive on the page.

Daily News (New York)

AN OLD-FASHIONED PAGE-TURNERa mix of history, romance and adventure.

The Cincinnati Post

STUNNING.

Los Angeles Daily News

A feast for ravenous readers of eighteenth-century Scottish history, heroism and romance.

Kirkus Reviews

INTRIGUINGsatisfyingwhen the last page is turned its difficult to let the characters go.

Daily Press (Newport News)

INGENIOUSan exuberant potpourri of romance and historical adventure.

Anniston Star

Gabaldon shows not only a talent with factual detail but also a flair for creating memorable characters and some striking sex scenes.

Locus

HIGHLY IMAGINATIVE AND SUSPENSEFULGabaldons ambitious first novel gives the reader a well-researched view of 18th-century life as seen through the eyes of a 20th-century woman.

Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

BRILLIANTLY COLOREDDiana Gabaldon is a born storyteller who will leave you breathlessShe transports readers into the era with the ease of a master historian and then brings to life characters so real youll believe they truly existed.

Rave Reviews

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank:

Jackie Cantor, Editor par excellence, whose consistent enthusiasm had so much to do with getting this story between covers; Perry Knowlton, Agent of impeccable judgment, who said, Go ahead and tell the story the way it should be told; well worry about cutting it later; my husband, Doug Watkins, who, despite occasionally standing behind my chair, saying, If its set in Scotland, why doesnt anybody say Hoot, mon? also spent a good deal of time chasing children and saying Mommy is writing! Leave her alone!; my daughter Laura, for loftily informing a friend, My mother writes books!; my son Samuel, who, when asked what Mommy does for a living, replied cautiously, Well, she watches her computer a lot; my daughter Jennifer, who says, Move over, Mommy; its my turn to type!; Jerry ONeill, First Reader and Head Cheerleader, and the rest of my personal Gang of FourJanet McConnaughey, Margaret J. Campbell, and John L. Myerswho read everything I write, and thereby keep me writing; Dr. Gary Hoff, for verifying the medical details and kindly explaining the proper way to reset a dislocated shoulder; T. Lawrence Tuohy, for details of military history and costuming; Robert Riffle, for explaining the difference between betony and bryony, listing every kind of forget-me-not known to man, and verifying that aspens really do grow in Scotland; Virginia Kidd, for reading early parts of the manuscript and encouraging me to go on with it; Alex Krislov, for co-hosting with other systems operators the most extraordinary electronic literary cocktail-party-cum-writers-incubator in the world, the CompuServe Literary Forum; and the many members of LitForumJohn Stith, John Simpson, John L. Myers, Judson Jerome, Angelia Dorman, Zilgia Quafay, and the restfor Scottish folk songs, Latin love poetry, and for laughing (and crying) in the right places.

P ART O NE

Inverness, 1945

A NEW BEGINNING

I t wasnt a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first glance. Mrs. Bairds was like a thousand other Highland bed-and-breakfast establishments in 1945; clean and quiet, with fading floral wallpaper, gleaming floors, and a coin-operated hot-water geyser in the lavatory. Mrs. Baird herself was squat and easygoing, and made no objection to Frank lining her tiny rose-sprigged parlor with the dozens of books and papers with which he always traveled.

I met Mrs. Baird in the front hall on my way out. She stopped me with a pudgy hand on my arm and patted at my hair.

Dear me, Mrs. Randall, ye canna go out like that! Here, just let me tuck that bit in for ye. There! Thats better. Ye know, my cousin was tellin me about a new perm she tried, comes out beautiful and holds like a dream; perhaps ye should try that kind next time.

I hadnt the heart to tell her that the waywardness of my light brown curls was strictly the fault of nature, and not due to any dereliction on the part of the permanent-wave manufacturers. Her own tightly marceled waves suffered from no such perversity.

Yes, Ill do that, Mrs. Baird, I lied. Im just going down to the village to meet Frank. Well be back for tea. I ducked out the door and down the path before she could detect any further defects in my undisciplined appearance. After four years as a Royal Army nurse, I was enjoying the escape from uniforms and rationing by indulging in brightly printed light cotton dresses, totally unsuited for rough walking through the heather.

Not that I had originally planned to do a lot of that; my thoughts ran more on the lines of sleeping late in the mornings, and long, lazy afternoons in bed with Frank, not sleeping. However, it was difficult to maintain the proper mood of languorous romance with Mrs. Baird industriously Hoovering away outside our door.

That must be the dirtiest bit of carpet in the entire Scottish Highlands, Frank had observed that morning as we lay in bed listening to the ferocious roar of the vacuum in the hallway.

Nearly as dirty as our landladys mind, I agreed. Perhaps we should have gone to Brighton after all. We had chosen the Highlands as a place to holiday before Frank took up his appointment as a history professor at Oxford, on the grounds that Scotland had been somewhat less touched by the physical horrors of war than the rest of Britain, and was less susceptible to the frenetic postwar gaiety that infected more popular vacation spots.

And without discussing it, I think we both felt that it was a symbolic place to reestablish our marriage; we had been married and spent a two-day honeymoon in the Highlands, shortly before the outbreak of war seven years before. A peaceful refuge in which to rediscover each other, we thought, not realizing that, while golf and fishing are Scotlands most popular outdoor sports, gossip is the most popular indoor sport. And when it rains as much as it does in Scotland, people spend a lot of time indoors.

Where are you going? I asked, as Frank swung his feet out of bed.

Id hate the dear old thing to be disappointed in us, he answered. Sitting up on the side of the ancient bed, he bounced gently up and down, creating a piercing rhythmic squeak. The Hoovering in the hall stopped abruptly. After a minute or two of bouncing, he gave a loud, theatrical groan and collapsed backward with a twang of protesting springs. I giggled helplessly into a pillow, so as not to disturb the breathless silence outside.