Outlander aka Cross Stitch

Chapter 26. THE LAIRD’S RETURN

At first, we were so happy only to be with each other and away from Leoch than we didn’t talk much. Across the flat of the moor, Donas could carry us both without strain, and I rode with my arms about Jamie’s waist, glorying in the feel of the sun-warmed muscle shifting under my cheek. Whatever problems we might be facing – and I knew there were plenty – we were together. Forever. And that was enough.

As the first shock of happiness mellowed into the glow of companionship, we began to talk again. About the countryside through which we were passing, at first. Then, cautiously, about me, and where I had come from. He was fascinated by my descriptions of modern life, though I could tell that most of my stories seemed like fairy tales to him. He loved especially the descriptions of automobiles, tanks, and airplanes, and made me describe them over and over, as minutely as I could. By tacit agreement, we avoided any mention of Frank.

As we covered more countryside, the conversation turned back to our present time; Colum, the Castle, then the stag hunt and the Duke.

“He seems a nice chap,” Jamie remarked. As the going became rougher, he had dismounted and walked alongside, which made conversation easier.

“I thought so too,” I answered. “But-”

“Oh, aye, ye canna put too much faith in what a man seems these days,” he agreed. “Still, we got on, he and I. We’d sit together and talk of an evening, found the fire in the hunting lodge. He’s a good bit brighter than he seems, for the one thing; he knows how that voice makes him seem, and I think he uses it to make himself look a bit of a fool, while all the time the mind is there, workin’ behind his eyes.”

“Mmm. That’s what I’m afraid of. Did you… tell him?”

He shrugged. “A bit. He knew my name, of course, from that time before, at the castle.”

I laughed at the memory of his account of that time. “Did you, er, reminisce about old times?”

He grinned, the ends of his hair floating about his face in the autumn breeze.

“Oh, just a bit. He asked me once whether I still suffered from stomach trouble. I kept my face straight and answered that as a rule, no, but I thought perhaps I felt a bit of griping coming on just now. He laughed, and said he hoped it did not discommode my beautiful wife.”

I laughed myself. Right now, what the Duke might or mightn’t do didn’t seem of overwhelming importance. Nevertheless, he might one day be of use.

“I told him a little,” Jamie went on. “That I was outlawed, but not guilty of the charge, though I’d have precious little chance of proving it. He seemed sympathetic, but I was cautious about telling him the circumstances – let alone the fact that there’s a price on my head. I hadna yet made up my mind whether to trust him with the rest of it, when… well, when Old Alec came tearing into the camp like the devil himself was on his tail, and Murtagh and I left the same way.”

This reminded me. “Where is Murtagh?” I asked. “He came back with you to Leoch?” I hoped the little clansman hadn’t fallen afoul of either Colum or the villagers of Cranesmuir.

“He started back wi’ me, but the beast he was riding was no match for Donas. Aye, a bonny wee lad ye are, Donas mo buidheag.” He slapped the shimmering sorrel neck, and Donas snorted and ruffled his mane. Jamie glanced up at me and smiled.

“Dinna worry for Murtagh. There’s a canty wee bird can mind for himself.”

“Canty? Murtagh?” I knew the word meant “cheerful,” which seemed incongruous to a degree. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile. Have you?”

“Oh, aye. At least twice.”

“How long have you known him?”

“Twenty-three years. He’s my godfather.”

“Oh. Well, that explains a bit. I didn’t think he’d bother on my account.”

Jamie patted my leg. “Of course he would. He likes you.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Having thus approached the subject of recent events, I took a deep breath and asked something I badly wanted to know.

“Jamie?”

“Aye?”

“Geillis Duncan. Will they… will they really burn her?”

He glanced up at me, frowning slightly, and nodded.

“I expect so. Not ’til after the child is born, though. Is that what troubles ye?”

“One of the things. Jamie, look at this.” I tried to push up the voluminous sleeve, failed, and settled for pulling the neck of the shirt off my shoulder to display my vaccination scar.

“God in heaven,” he said slowly, after I had explained. He looked sharply at me. “So that’s why… is she from your own time then?”

I shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. All I can say is that she was likely born sometime after 1920; that’s when public inoculation came in.” I looked over my shoulder, but low-lying clouds hid the crags that now separated us from Leoch. “I don’t suppose I ever will know… now.”

Jamie took Donas’s reins and led him aside, under a small pine grove, on the banks of a small stream. He grasped me around the waist and lifted me down.

“Dinna grieve for her,” he said firmly, holding me. “She’s a wicked woman; a murderer, if not a witch. She did kill her husband, no?”

“Yes,” I said, with a shudder, remembering Arthur Duncan’s glazed eyes.

“I still dinna understand why she should kill him, though,” he said, shaking his head in puzzlement. “He had money, a good position. And I doubt he beat her.”

I looked at him in exasperated amazement.

“And that’s your definition of a good husband?”

“Well… yes,” he said, frowning. “What else might she want?”

“What else?” I was so taken aback, I just looked at him for a moment, then slid down on the grass and started to laugh.

“What’s funny? I thought this was murder.” He smiled, though, and put an arm around me.

“I was just thinking,” I said, still snorting a bit, “if your definition of a good husband is one with money and position who doesn’t beat his wife… what does that make you?”

“Oh,” he said. He grinned. “Well, Sassenach, I never said I was a good husband. Neither did you. ‘Sadist,’ I think ye called me, and a few other things that I wouldna repeat for the sake of decency. But not a good husband.”

“Good. Then I won’t feel obliged to poison you with cyanide.”

“Cyanide?” He looked down curiously at me. “What’s that?”

“The thing that killed Arthur Duncan. It’s a bloody fast, powerful poison. Fairly common in my time, but not here.” I licked my lips meditatively.

“I tasted it on his lips, and just that tiny bit was enough to make my whole face go numb. It acts almost instantly, as you saw. I should have known then – about Geilie, I mean. I imagine she made it from crushed peach pits or cherry stones, though it must have been the devil of a job.”

“Did she tell ye why she did it, then?”

I sighed and rubbed my feet. My shoes had been lost in the struggle at the loch, and I tended to pick up stickers and cockleburs, my feet not being hardened as Jamie’s were.

“That and a good deal more. If there’s anything to eat in your saddlebags, why don’t you fetch it, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

We entered the valley of Broch Tuarach the next day. As we came down out of the foothills, I spotted a solitary rider, some distance away, heading roughly in our direction. He was the first person I had seen since we had left Cranesmuir.

The man approaching us was stout and prosperous-looking, with a snowy stock showing at the neck of a serviceable grey serge coat, its long tails covering all but an inch or two of his breeches.

We had been traveling for the best part of a week, sleeping out-of-doors, washing in the cold, fresh water of the burns, and living quite well off such rabbits and fish as Jamie could catch, and such edible plants and berries as I could find. Between our efforts, our diet was better than that in the Castle, fresher, and certainly more varied, if a little unpredictable.

But if nutrition was well served by an outdoor life, appearance was another thing, and I took hasty stock of our looks as the gentleman on horseback hesitated, frowning, then changed direction and trotted slowly toward us to investigate.

Jamie, who had insisted on walking most of the way to spare the horse, was a disreputable sight indeed, hose stained to the knees with reddish dust, spare shirt torn by brambles and a week’s growth of beard bristling fiercely from cheek and jaw.

His hair had grown long enough in the last months to reach his shoulders. Usually clubbed into a queue or laced back, it was free now, thick and unruly, with small bits of leaf and stick caught in the disordered coppery locks. Face burned a deep ruddy bronze, boots cracked from walking, dirk and sword thrust through his belt, he looked a wild Highlander indeed.

I was hardly better. Covered modestly enough in the billows of Jamie’s best shirt and the remnants of my shirt, barefoot, and shawled in his plaid, I looked a right ragamuffin. Encouraged by the misty dampness and lacking any restraint in the form of comb or brush, my hair rioted all over my head. It had grown as well during my sojourn at the Castle, and floated in clouds and tangles about my shoulders, drifting into my eyes whenever the wind was behind us, as it was now.

Shoving the wayward locks out of my eyes, I watched the cautious approach of the gentleman in grey. Jamie, seeing him, brought our own horse to a stop and waited for him to draw near enough for speech.

“It’s Jock Graham,” he said to me, “from up the way at Murch Nardagh.”

The man came within a few yards, reined up and sat looking us over carefully. His eyes, pouched with fat, crinkled and rested suspiciously on Jamie, then suddenly sprang wide.

“Lallybroch?” he said unbelievingly.

Jamie nodded benignly. With a completely unfounded air of proprietorial pride, he laid a hand on my thigh and said, “and my lady Lallybroch.”

Jock Graham’s mouth dropped an inch or two, then was hastily drawn up again into an expression of flustered respect.

“Ah… my… lady,” he said, belatedly doffing his hat and bowing in my direction. “You’ll be, er, going home, then?” he asked, trying to keep his fascinated gaze from resting on my leg, bared to the knee by a rent in my shift, and stained with elderberry juice.

“Aye.” Jamie glanced over his shoulder, toward the rift in the hill he had told me was the entrance to Broch Tuarach. “You’ll have been there lately, Jock?”

Graham pulled his eyes away from me and looked at Jamie. “Och? Oh, aye. Aye, I’ve been there. They’re all well. Be pleased to see ye, I expect. Go well, then, Fraser.” And with a hasty dig into his horse’s ribs, he turned aside and headed up the valley.

We watched him go. Suddenly, a hundred yards away, he paused. Turning in the saddle, he rose in his stirrups and cupped his mouth to shout. The sound, borne by the wind, reached us thin but distinct.

“Welcome home!”

And he disappeared over a rise.

Broch Tuarach means “the north-facing tower.” From the side of the mountain above, the broch that gave the small estate its name was no more than another mound of rocks, much like those that lay at the foot of the hills we had been traveling through.

We came down through a narrow, rocky gap between two crags, leading the horse between boulders. Then the going was easier, the land sloping more gently down through the fields and scattered cottages, until at last we struck a small winding road that led to the house.

It was larger than I had expected; a handsome three-story manor of harled white stone, windows outlined in the natural grey stone, a high slate roof with multiple chimneys, and several smaller whitewashed buildings clustered about it, like chicks about a hen. The old stone broch, situated on a small rise to the rear of the house, rose sixty feet above the ground, cone-topped like a witch’s hat, girdled with three rows of tiny arrow-slits.

As we drew near, there was a sudden terrible racket from the direction of the outbuildings, and Donas shied and reared. No horseman, I promptly fell off, landing ignominiously in the dusty road. With an eye for the relative importance of things, Jamie leapt for the plunging horse’s bridle, leaving me to fend for myself.

The dogs were almost upon me, baying and growling, by the time I found my feet. To my panicked eyes, there seemed to be at least a dozen of them, all with teeth bared and wicked. There was a shout from Jamie.

“Bran! Luke! Sheas!”

The dogs skidded to a halt within a few feet of me, confused. They milled, growling uncertainly, until he spoke again.

“Sheas, mo maise! Stand, ye wee heathen!” They did, and the largest dog’s tail began gradually to wag, once, and then twice, questioningly.

“Claire. Come take the horse. He’ll not let them close, and it’s me they want. Walk slowly; they’ll no harm ye.” He spoke casually, not to alarm either horse or dogs further. I was not so sanguine, but edged carefully toward him. Donas jerked his head and rolled his eyes as I took the bridle, but I was in no mood to put up with tantrums, and I yanked the rein firmly down and grabbed the headstall.

The thick velvet lips writhed back from his teeth, but I jerked harder. I put my face close to the big glaring golden eye and glared back.

“Don’t try it!” I warned, “or you’ll end up as dogsmeat, and I won’t lift a hand to save you!”

Jamie meanwhile was slowly walking toward the dogs, one hand held out fistlike toward them. What had seemed a large pack was only four dogs: a small brownish rat-terrier, two ruffed and spotted shepherds, and a huge black and tan monster that could have stood in for the Hound of the Baskervilles with no questions asked.

This slavering creature stretched out a neck thicker than my waist and sniffed gently at the proffered knuckles. A tail like a ship’s cable beat back and forth with increasing fervor. Then it flung back its enormous head, baying with joy, and leaped on its master, knocking him flat in the road.

“ ‘In which Odysseus returns from the Trojan War and is recognized by his faithful hound,’ ” I remarked to Donas, who snorted briefly, giving his opinion either of Homer, or of the undignified display of emotion going on in the roadway.

Jamie, laughing, was ruffling the fur and pulling the ears of the dogs, who were all trying to lick his face at once. Finally he beat them back sufficiently to rise, keeping his feet with difficulty against their ecstatic demonstrations.

“Well, someone’s glad to see me, at any rate,” he said, grinning, as he patted the beast’s head. “That’s Luke-” he pointed to the terrier, “and Elphin and Mars. Brothers, they are, and bonny sheep-dogs. And this,” he laid an affectionate hand on the enormous black head, which slobbered in appreciation, “is Bran.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” I said, cautiously extending a knuckle to be sniffed. “What is he?”

“A staghound.” He scratched the pricked ears, quoting

“Thus Fingal chose his hounds:

Eye like sloe, ear like leaf,

Chest like horse, hough like sickle

And the tail joint far from the head.”

“If those are the qualifications, then you’re right,” I said, inspecting Bran. “If his tail joint were any further from his head, you could ride him.”

“I used to, when I was small – not Bran, I don’t mean, but his grandfather, Nairn.”

He gave the hound a final pat and straightened, gazing toward the house. He took the restive Donas’s bridle and turned him downhill.

“In which Odysseus returns to his home, disguised as a beggar,…” he quoted in Greek, having picked up my earlier remark. “And now,” he said, straightening his collar with some grimness, “I suppose it’s time to go and deal with Penelope and her suitors.”

When we reached the double doors, the dogs panting at our heels, Jamie hesitated.

“Should we knock?” I asked, a bit nervous. He looked at me in astonishment.

“It’s my home,” he said, and pushed the door open.

He led me through the house, ignoring the few startled servants we passed, past the entrance hall and through a small gun room, into the drawing room. It boasted a wide hearth with a polished mantel, and bits of silver and glass gleamed here and there, capturing the late-afternoon sun. For a moment, I thought the room was empty. Then I saw a faint movement in one corner near the hearth.

She was smaller than I had expected. With a brother like Jamie, I had imagined her at least my height, or even taller, but the woman by the fire barely reached five feet. Her back was to us as she reached for something on the shelf of the china cabinet, and the ends of her dress sash dipped close to the floor.

Jamie froze when he saw her.

“Jenny,” he said.

The woman turned and I caught an impression of brows black as ink-squills, and blue eyes wide in a white face before she launched herself at her brother.

“Jamie!” Small as she was, she jarred him with the impact of her embrace. His arms went about her shoulders in reflex and they clung for a moment, her face tight against his shirtfront, his hand tender on the nape of her neck. On his face was an expression of such mingled uncertainty and yearning joy that I felt almost an intruder.

Then she pressed herself closer to him, murmuring something in Gaelic, and his expression dissolved in shock. He grasped her by the arms and held her away from him, looking down.

The faces were much alike; the same oddly slanted dark blue eyes and broad cheekbones. The same thin, blade-bridged nose, just a trifle too long. But she was dark where Jamie was fair, with cascades of black curly hair, bound back with green ribbon.

She was beautiful, with clear-drawn features and alabaster skin. She was also clearly in a state of advanced pregnancy.

Jamie had gone white at the lips. “Jenny,” he whispered, shaking his head. “Oh, Jenny. Mo cridh.”

Her attention was distracted just then by the appearance of a small child in the doorway, and she pulled away from her brother without noticing his discomposure. She took the little boy’s hand and led him into the room, murmuring encouragement. He hung back a little, thumb in mouth for comfort, peering up at the strangers from behind his mother’s skirts.

For his mother she plainly was. He had her mop of thick, curly black hair and the square set of her shoulders, though the face was not hers.

“This is wee Jamie,” she said, looking proudly down at the lad. “And this is your uncle Jamie, mo cridh, the one you’re named for.”

“For me? You named him for me?” Jamie looked like a fighter who has just been punched very hard in the stomach. He backed away from mother and child until he blundered into a chair, and sank into it as though the strength had gone from his legs. He hid his face in his hands.

His sister by this time was aware that something was amiss. She touched him tentatively on the shoulder.

“Jamie? What is it, my dearie? Are ye ill?”

He looked up at her then, and I could see his eyes were full of tears.

“Did ye have to do that, Jenny? Do ye think that I’ve not suffered enough for what happened – for what I let happen – that ye must name Randall’s bastard for me, to be a reproach to me so long as I live?”

Jenny’s face, normally pale, lost all vestiges of color.

“Randall’s bastard?” she said blankly. “John Randall, ye mean? The Redcoat captain?”

“Aye, the Redcoat captain. Who else would I mean, for God’s sake! You’ll remember him, I suppose?” Jamie was recovering enough of his customary poise for sarcasm.

Jenny eyed her brother closely, one arched brow lifted in suspicion.

“Have ye lost your senses, man?” she inquired. “Or have ye taken a drop too much along the way?”

“I should never have come back,” he muttered. He rose then, stumbling slightly and tried to pass without touching her. She stood her ground, however, and gripped him by the arm.

“Correct me, brother, if I’m wrong,” Jenny said slowly, “but I’ve the strong impression you’re saying I’ve played the whore to Captain Randall, and what I’m askin’ myself is what maggots you’ve got in your brain to make ye say so?”

“Maggots, is it?” Jamie turned to her, mouth twisted with bitterness. “I wish it were so; I’d rather I was dead and in my grave than to see my sister brought to such a pass.” He seized her by the shoulders, and shook her slightly, crying out, “Why, Jenny, why? To have ye ruin yourself for me was shame enough to kill me. But this…” He dropped his hands then, with a gesture of despair that took in the protruding belly, swelling accusingly under the light smocking.

He turned abruptly toward the door, and an elderly woman, who had been listening avidly with the child clinging to her skirts, drew back in alarm.

“I should not have come. I’ll go.”

“You’ll do no such thing, Jamie Fraser,” his sister said sharply. “Not before you’ve listened to me. Sit yourself down, then, and I’ll tell ye about Captain Randall, since ye want to know.”

“I don’t want to know! I don’t want to hear it!” As she advanced toward him, he turned sharply away to the window that looked out over the yard. She followed him, saying “Jamie…,” but he repelled her with a violent gesture.

“No! Don’t talk to me! I’ve said I canna bear to hear it!”

“Och, is that a fact?” She eyed her brother, standing at the window with his legs braced wide apart, hands on the sill and back stubbornly set against her. She bit her lip and a calculating look came over her face. Quick as lightning, she stooped and her hand shot under his kilt like a striking snake.

Jamie let out a roar of sheer outrage and stood bolt upright with shock. He tried to turn, then froze as she apparently tightened her grip.

“There’s men as are sensible,” she said to me, with a wicked smile, “and beasts as are biddable. Others ye’ll do nothing with, unless ye have ’em by the ballocks. Now, ye can listen to me in a civil way,” she said to her brother, “or I can twist a bit. Hey?”

He stood still, red-faced, breathing heavily through clenched teeth. “I’ll listen,” he said, “and then I’ll wring your wee neck, Janet! Let me go!”

No sooner did she oblige than he whirled on her.

“What in hell d’ye think you’re doing?” he demanded. “Tryin’ to shame me before my own wife?” Jenny was not fazed by his outrage. She rocked back on her heels, viewing her brother and me sardonically.

“Weel, and if she’s your wife, I expect she’s more familiar wi’ your balls than what I am. I havena seen them myself since ye got old enough to wash alone. Grown a bit, no?”

Jamie’s face went through several alarming transformations, as the dictates of civilized behavior struggled with the primitive impulse of a younger brother to clout his sister over the head. Civilization at length won out, and he said through his teeth, with what dignity he could summon, “Leave my balls out of it. And then, since you’ll not rest ’til ye make me hear it, tell me about Randall. Tell me why ye disobeyed my orders and chose to dishonor yourself and your family instead.”

Jenny put her hands on her hips and drew herself to her full height, ready for combat. Slower than he to lose her temper; still she had one, no doubt of that.

“Oh, disobey your orders, is it? That’s what eats at ye, Jamie, isn’t it? You know best, and we’ll all do as ye say, or we’ll come to rack and ruin, nae doubt.” She flounced angrily. “And if I’d done as you said, that day, you’d ha’ been dead in the dooryard, Faither hanged or in prison for killing Randall, and the lands gone forfeit to the Crown. To say nothing of me, wi’ my home and family gone, needing to beg in the byroads to live.”

Not pale at all now, Jamie was flushed with anger.

“Aye, so ye chose to sell yourself rather than beg! I’d sooner have died in my blood and seen Faither and the lands in hell along with me, and well ye know it!”

“Aye, I know it! You’re a ninny, Jamie, and always have been!” his sister returned in exasperation.

“Fine thing for you to say! You’re not content wi’ ruining your good name and my own, ye must go on with the scandal, and flaunt your shame to the whole neighborhood!”

“You’ll not speak to me in that way, James Fraser, brother or no! What d’ye mean, ‘my shame’? Ye great fool, you-”

“What I mean? When you’re goin’ about swelled out to here like a mad toad?” He mimicked her belly with a contemptuous swipe of the hand.

She took one step back, drew back her hand and slapped him with all the force she could muster. The impact jarred his head back and left a white outline of her fingers printed on his cheek. He slowly raised a hand to the mark, staring at his sister. Her eyes were glittering dangerously and her bosom heaved. The words spilled out in a torrent between clenched white teeth.

“Toad, is it? Stinking coward – ye’ve no more courage than to leave me here, thinking ye dead or imprisoned, wi’ no word from one day to the next, and then ye come strolling in one fine day – with a wife, no less – and sit in my drawing room calling me toad and harlot and-”

“I didna call ye harlot, but I should! How can ye-”

Despite the differences in their heights, brother and sister were almost nose to nose, hissing at one another in an effort to keep their carrying voices from ringing through the old manor house. The effort was largely wasted, judging from the glimpses I caught of various interested faces peeping discreetly from kitchen, hall, and window. The laird of Broch Tuarach was having an interesting homecoming, to be sure.

I thought it best to let them have it out without my presence, and so I stepped quietly into the hall, with an awkward nod to the elderly woman, and continued into the yard. There was a small arbor there with a bench, on which I seated myself, looking about with interest.

Besides the arbor, there was a small walled garden, blooming with the last of the summer roses. Beyond it was what Jamie referred to as “the doocot”; or so I assumed, from the assorted pigeons that were fluttering in and out of the pierced-work opening at the top of the building.

I knew there was a barn and a shed for silage; these must be to the other side of the house, with the farm’s granary and the henyard, kailyard, and disused chapel. Which still left a small stone building on this side unaccounted for. The light autumn wind was from that direction; I sniffed deeply, and was rewarded with the rich smell of hops and yeast. That was the brewhouse, then, where the beer and ale for the estate were made.

The road past the gate led up and over a small hill. As I looked, a small group of men appeared at the crest, silhouetted in the evening light. They seemed to hover a moment, as though taking leave of each other. This appeared to be the case, for only one came down the hill toward the house, the others striking off through the fields toward a clump of cottages in the distance.

As the single man came down the hill, I could see that he limped badly. When he came through the gate, the reason for it was apparent. The right leg was missing below the knee, and he wore a wooden peg in replacement.

In spite of the limp, he moved youthfully. In fact, as he drew near to the arbor, I could see that he was only in his twenties. He was tall, nearly as tall as Jamie, but much narrower through the shoulder, thin, in fact, nearly to the point of skinniness.

He paused at the entrance to the arbor, leaning heavily on the lattice, and looked in at me with interest. Thick brown hair fell smoothly over a high brow, and deepset brown eyes held a look of patient good humor.

The voices of Jamie and his sister had risen while I waited outside. The windows were open to the warm weather, and the disputants were quite audible from the arbor, though not all the words were clear.

“Interfering, nosy bitch!” came Jamie’s voice, loud on the soft evening air.

“Havena the decency to…” His sister’s reply was lost in a sudden breeze.

The newcomer nodded easily toward the house.

“Ah, Jamie’s home, then.”

I nodded in reply, not sure whether I should introduce myself. It didn’t matter, for the young man smiled and inclined his head to me.

“I’m Ian Murray, Jenny’s husband. And I imagine ye’ll be… ah…”

“The Sassenach wench Jamie’s married,” I finished for him. “My name is Claire. Did you know about it, then?” I asked, as he laughed. My mind was racing. Jenny’s husband?

“Oh, aye. We heard from Joe Orr, who’d got it from a tinker in Ardraigh. Ye canna keep anything secret long in the Highlands. You should know that, even if you’ve been wed as little as a month. Jenny’s been wondering for weeks what you’d be like.”

“Whore!” Jamie bellowed from inside the house. Jenny’s husband didn’t turn a hair, but went on examining me with friendly curiosity.

“You’re a bonny lass,” he said, looking me over frankly. “Are ye fond of Jamie?”

“Well… yes. Yes, I am,” I answered, a bit taken aback. I was becoming accustomed to the directness that characterized most Highlanders, but it still took me unawares from time to time.

He pursed his lips and nodded as though satisfied, and sat down beside me on the bench.

“Better let them have a few minutes longer,” he said, with a wave at the house, where the shouting had now turned to Gaelic. He seemed completely unconcerned as to the cause of the battle. “Frasers dinna listen to anything when they’ve their danders up. When they’ve shouted themselves out, sometimes ye can make them see reason, but not ’til then.”

“Yes, I noticed,” I said dryly, and he laughed.

“So you’ve been wed long enough to find that out, eh? We heard as how Dougal made Jamie wed ye,” he said, ignoring the battle and concentrating his attention on me. “But Jenny said it would take more than Dougal MacKenzie to make Jamie do something he didna care to. Now that I see ye, of course I can see why he did it.” He lifted his brows, inviting further explanation, but politely not forcing it.

“I imagine he had his reasons,” I said, my attention divided between my companion and the house, where the sounds of combat continued. “I don’t want… I mean, I hope…” Ian correctly interpreted my hesitations and my glance toward the drawing-room windows.

“Oh, I expect you’ve something to do with it. But she’d take it out of him whether you were here or not. She loves Jamie something fierce, ye know, and she worried a lot while he was gone, especially with her father goin’ so sudden. Ye’ll know about that?” The brown eyes were sharp and observant, as though to gauge the depth of confidence between me and Jamie.

“Yes, Jamie told me.”

“Ah.” He nodded toward the house. “Then, of course, she’s wi’ child.”

“Yes, I noticed that too,” I said.

“Hard to miss, is it no?” Ian answered with a grin, and we both laughed. “Makes her frachetty,” he explained, “not that I’d blame her. But it would take a braver man than me to cross words wi’ a woman in her ninth month.” He leaned back, stretching his wooden leg out in front of him.

“Lost it at Daumier with Fergus nic Leodhas,” he explained. “Grape shot. Aches a wee bit toward the end of the day.” He rubbed the flesh just above the leather cuff that attached the peg to his stump.

“Have you tried rubbing it with Balm of Gilead?” I asked. “Water-pepper or stewed rue might help too.”

“I’ve not tried the water-pepper,” he answered, interested. “I’ll ask Jenny does she know how to make it.”

“Oh, I’d be glad to make it for you,” I said, liking him. I looked toward the house again. “If we stay long enough,” I added doubtfully. We chatted inconsequentially for a little, both listening with one ear to the confrontation going on beyond the window, until Ian hitched forward, carefully settling his artificial limb under him before rising.

“I imagine we should go in now. If either of them stops shouting long enough to hear the other, they’ll be hurting each other’s feelings.”

“I hope that’s all they hurt.”

Ian chuckled. “Oh, I dinna think Jamie would strike her. He’s used to forbearance in the face of provocation. As for Jenny, she might slap his face, but that’s all.”

“She already did that.”

“Weel, the guns are locked up, and all the knives are in the kitchen, except what Jamie’s wearing. And I don’t suppose he’ll let her close enough to get his dirk away from him. Nay, they’re safe enough.” He paused at the door. “Now, as for you and me…” He winked solemnly. “That’s a different matter.”

Inside, the maids started and flitted nervously away at Ian’s approach. The housekeeper, though, was still hovering by the drawing room door in fascination, drinking in the scene within, Jamie’s namesake cradled against her capacious bosom. Such was her concentration that when Ian spoke to her, she jumped as though he had run a hatpin into her, and put a hand to her palpitating heart.

Ian nodded politely to her, took the little boy in his arms, and led the way into the drawing room. We paused just inside the door to survey the scene. Brother and sister had paused for breath, both still bristling and glaring like a pair of angry cats.

Small Jamie, spotting his mother, struggled and kicked to get down from Ian’s arms, and once on the floor, made for her like a homing pigeon. “Mama!” he cried. “Up! Jamie up!” Turning, she scooped up the little boy and held him like a weapon against her shoulder.

“Can ye tell your uncle how old ye are, sweetheart?” she asked him, throttling her voice down to a coo – under which the sound of clashing steel was still all too apparent. The boy heard it; he turned and burrowed his face into his mother’s neck. She patted his back mechanically, still glaring at her brother.

“Since he’ll not tell ye, I will. He’s two, come last August. And if you’re bright enough to count – which I take leave to doubt – you’ll see he was conceived six months past the time I last saw yon Randall, which was in our own dooryard, beating the living daylight out of my brother with a saber.”

“That’s so, is it?” Jamie glowered at his sister. “I’ve heard a bit differently. It’s common knowledge you’ve taken the man to your bed; not the once, but as your lover. That child’s his.” He nodded contemptuously at his namesake, who had turned to peer under his mother’s chin at this big, loud stranger. “I believe ye when ye say the new bastard you’re carrying is not; Randall was in France ’til this March. So you’re not only a whore, but an unchoosy one too. Who fathered this last devil’s-spawn on ye?”

The tall young man beside me coughed apologetically, breaking the tension in the room.

“I did,” he said mildly. “That one too.” Advancing stiffly on his wooden leg, he took the little boy from his fuming wife and set him in the crook of his arm. “Favors me a bit, some say.”

In fact, seen side by side, the faces of man and boy were nearly identical, allowing for the round cheeks of the one and the crooked nose of the other. The same high brow and narrow lips. The same feathery brows arched over the same deep, liquid-brown eyes. Jamie, staring at the pair of them, looked rather as though he’d been hit in the small of the back with a sandbag. He closed his mouth and swallowed once, clearly having no idea what to do next.

“Ian,” he said, a little weakly. “You’re married, then?”

“Oh, aye,” his brother-in-law said cheerfully. “Wouldn’t do, otherwise, would it?”

“I see,” Jamie murmured. He cleared his throat and bobbed his head at his newly discovered brother-in-law. “It’s, er, it’s kind of ye, Ian. To take her, I mean. Most kind.”

Feeling that he might be in need of some moral support at this point, I moved to Jamie’s side, and touched his arm. His sister’s eyes lingered on me speculatively, but she said nothing. Jamie looked around and seemed startled to find me there, as though he had forgotten my existence. And no wonder if he had, I thought. But he seemed relieved by the interruption, at least, and put out a hand to draw me forward.

“My wife,” he said, rather abruptly. He nodded toward Jenny and Ian. “My sister, and, her, ah…” he trailed off, as Ian and I exchanged polite smiles.

Jenny was not to be distracted by social niceties.

“What d’ye mean, it’s kind of him to take me?” she demanded, ignoring the introductions. “As if I didna ken!” Ian looked inquiringly at her, and she waved a disdainful hand at Jamie. “He means it was kind of ye to wed me in my soiled condition!” She gave a snort that would have done credit to someone twice her size. “Bletherer!”

“Soiled condition?” Ian looked startled, and Jamie suddenly leaned forward and grasped his sister hard about the upper arm.

“Did ye not tell him about Randall?” He sounded truly shocked. “Jenny, how could ye do such a thing?”

Only Ian’s hand on Jenny’s other arm restrained her from flying at her brother’s throat. Ian drew her firmly behind him, and turning, set small Jamie in her arms, so that she was forced to grasp the child to save him falling. Then Ian put an arm about Jamie’s shoulders and tactfully steered him a safe distance away.

“It’s hardly a matter for the drawing room,” he said, low-voiced and deprecating, “but ye might be interested to know that your sister was virgin on her wedding night. I was, after all, in a position to say.”

Jenny’s wrath was now more or less evenly divided between brother and husband.

“How dare ye to say such things in my presence, Ian Murray!?” she flamed. “Or out of it, either! My wedding night’s no one’s business but mine and yours – sure it’s not his! Next you’ll be showing him the sheets from my bridal bed!”

“Weel, if I did now, it would shut him up, no?” said Ian soothingly. “Come now, mi dhu, ye shouldna worrit yourself, it’s bad for the babe. And the shouting troubles wee Jamie too.” He reached out for his son, who was whimpering, not sure yet whether the situation required tears. Ian jerked his head at me and rolled an eye in Jamie’s direction.

Taking my cue, I grabbed Jamie by the arm and dragged him to an armchair in a neutral corner. Ian had Jenny likewise installed on the loveseat, a firm arm across her shoulders to keep her in place.

“Now, then.” In spite of his unassuming manner, Ian Murray had an undeniable authority. I had my hand on Jamie’s shoulder, and could feel the tension begin to go out of it.

I thought that the room looked a bit like the ring of a boxing match, with the fighters twitching restlessly in the corners, each awaiting the signal for action under the soothing hand of a manager.

Ian nodded at his brother-in-law, smiling. “Jamie. It’s good to see ye, man. We’re pleased you’re home, and your wife with ye. Are we not, mi dhu?” he demanded of Jenny, his fingers tightening perceptibly on her shoulder.

She was not one to be forced into anything. Her lips compressed into a thin tight line, as though forming a seal, then opened reluctantly to let one word escape.

“Depends,” she said, and shut them tight again.

Jamie rubbed a hand over his face, then raised his head, ready for a fresh round.

“I saw ye go into the house with Randall,” he said stubbornly. “And from things he said to me later – how comes he to know you’ve a mole on your breast, then?”

She snorted violently. “Do ye remember all that went on that day, or did the Captain beat it out of ye wi’ his saber?”

“Of course I remember! I’m no likely to forget it!”

“Then perhaps you’ll remember that I gave the Captain a fair jolt in the crutch wi’ my knee at one point in the proceedings?”

Jamie hunched his shoulders, wary. “Aye, I remember.”

Jenny smiled in a superior manner.

“Weel then, if your wife here – ye could tell me her name at least, Jamie, I swear you’ve no manners at all – anyway, if she was to give ye similar treatment – and richly you deserve it, I might add – d’ye think you’d be able to perform your husbandly duties a few minutes later?”

Jamie, who had been opening his mouth to speak, suddenly shut it. He stared at his sister for a long moment, then one corner of his mouth twitched slightly.

“Depends,” he said. The mouth twitched again. He had been sitting hunched forward in his chair, but sat back now, looking at her with the half-skeptical expression of a younger brother listening to a sister’s fairy tales, feeling himself too old to be amazed, but half-believing still against his will.

“Really?” he said.

Jenny turned to Ian. “Go and fetch the sheets, Ian,” she ordered.

Jamie raised both hands in surrender. “No. No, I believe ye. It’s just, the way he acted after…”

Jenny sat back, relaxed in the curve of Ian’s arm, her son cuddling as close as the bulk of her belly would permit, gracious in victory.

“Weel, after all he’d said outside, he could hardly admit in front of his own men to being incapable, now could he? He’d have to seem as though he’d done as he promised, no? And,” she admitted, “I’ll have to say the man was verra unpleasant about it all; he did strike me and tear my gown. In fact, he knocked me half-senseless trying, and by the time I’d come to myself and got decently covered again, the English had gone, taking you along with them.”

Jamie gave a long sigh and closed his eyes briefly. His broad hands rested on his knees, and I covered one of them with a gentle squeeze. He took my hand and opened his eyes, giving me a faint smile of acknowledgment before turning back to his sister.

“All right,” he said. “But I want to know, Jenny; did ye know when ye went with him that he’d not harm you?”

She was silent for a moment, but her gaze was steady on her brother’s face, and at last she shook her head, a slight smile on her lips.

She put out a hand to stop Jamie’s protest, and the gull-winged brows rose in a graceful arc of inquiry. “And if your life is a suitable exchange for my honor, tell me why my honor is not a suitable exchange for your life?” The brows drew together in a scowl, the twin of the one adorning her brother’s face. “Or are you telling me that I may not love you as much as you love me? Because if ye are, Jamie Fraser, I’ll tell ye right now, it’s not true!”

Opening his mouth to reply before she was finished, Jamie was taken suddenly at a loss by this conclusion. He closed his mouth abruptly as his sister pressed her advantage.

“Because I do love ye, for all you’re a thick-headed, slack-witted, lack-brained gomerel. And I’ll no have ye dead in the road at my feet just because you’re too stubborn to keep your mouth shut for the once in your life!”

Blue eyes glared into blue eyes, shooting sparks in all directions. Swallowing the insults with difficulty, Jamie struggled for a rational reply. He seemed to be making up his mind to something. Finally he squared his shoulders, resigned to it.

“All right, then, I’m sorry,” he said. “I was wrong, and I’ll beg your pardon.”

He and his sister sat staring at each other for a long moment, but whatever pardon he was expecting from her was not forthcoming. She examined him closely, biting her lip, but said nothing. Finally he grew impatient.

“I’ve said I’m sorry! What more d’ye want of me?” he demanded. “Do ye want me to go on my knees to ye? I’ll do it if I must, but tell me!”

She shook her head slowly, lip still caught between her teeth.

“No,” she said at last, “I’ll not have ye on your knees in your own house. Stand up, though.”

Jamie stood, and she set the child down on the loveseat and crossed the room to stand in front of him.

“Take off your shirt,” she ordered.

“I’ll not!”

She jerked the shirttail out of his kilt and reached for the buttons. Short of forcible resistance, clearly he was going to obey or submit to being undressed. Retaining as much dignity as he could, he backed away from her, and tightlipped, removed the disputed garment.

She circled behind him and surveyed his back, her face displaying the same carefully blank expression I had seen Jamie adopt when concealing some strong emotion. She nodded, as though confirming something long suspected.

“Weel, and if you’ve been a fool, Jamie, it seems you’ve paid for it.” She laid her hand gently on his back, covering the worst of the scars.

“It looks as though it hurt.”

“It did.”

“Did you cry?”

His fists clenched involuntarily at his sides. “Yes!”

Jenny walked back around to face him, pointed chin lifted and slanted eyes wide and bright. “So did I,” she said softly. “Every day since they took ye away.”

The broad-cheeked faces were once more mirrors of each other, but the expression that they wore was such that I rose and stepped quietly through the kitchen door to leave them alone. As the door swung to behind me, I saw Jamie catch hold of his sister’s hands and say something huskily in Gaelic. She stepped into his embrace, and the rough bright head bent to the dark.

Chapter 27. THE LAST REASON

We ate like wolves at dinner, retired to a large, airy bedroom, and slept like logs. The sun would have been high by the time we rose in the morning, save that the sky was covered in clouds. I could tell it was late by the bustling feel of the house, as of people going cheerfully about their business, and by the tempting aromas that drifted up the stairs.

After breakfast the men prepared to go out, visiting tenants, inspecting fences, mending wagons, and generally enjoying themselves. As they paused in the hall to don their coats, Ian spotted Jenny’s large basket resting on the table beneath the hall mirror.

“Shall I fetch home some apples from the orchard, Jenny? ’Twould save ye walking so far.”

“Good idea,” said Jamie, casting an appraising eye at his sister’s expansive frontage. “We dinna want her to drop it in the road.”

“I’ll drop you where ye stand, Jamie Fraser,” she retorted, calmly holding up the coat for Ian to shrug into. “Be useful for the once, and take this wee fiend outside wi’ ye. Mrs. Crook’s in the washhouse; ye can leave him there.” She moved her foot, dislodging small Jamie, who was clinging to her skirts, chanting “up, up” monotonously.

His uncle obediently grabbed the wee fiend around the middle and swept him out the door, upside down and shrieking with delight. “Ah,” Jenny sighed contentedly, bending to inspect her appearance in the gold-framed mirror. She wet a finger and smoothed her brows, then finished doing up the buttons at her throat. “Nice to finish dressing wi’out someone clinging to your skirts or wrapped round your knees. Some days I can scarce go to the privy alone, or speak a single sentence wi’out being interrupted.”

Her cheeks were slightly flushed, and her dark hair gleamed against the blue silk of her dress. Ian smiled at her, warm brown eyes glowing at the blooming picture she presented.

“Weel, you’ll have time to talk wi’ Claire, perhaps,” he suggested. He cocked one eyebrow in my direction. “I expect she’s mannerly enough to listen, but for God’s sake, dinna tell her any of your poems, or she’ll be on the next coach to London before Jamie and I get back.”

Jenny snapped her fingers under his nose, unperturbed by the teasing.

“I’m none too worried, man. There’s no coach going before next April, and I reckon she’ll be used to us by that time. Get on wi’ ye; Jamie’s waiting.”

While the men went about their business, Jenny and I spent the day in the parlor, she stitching, I winding up stray bits of yarn and sorting the colored silks.

Outwardly friendly, we circled each other cautiously in conversation, watching each other from the corners of our eyes. Jamie’s sister, Jamie’s wife; Jamie was the central point, unspoken, about which our thoughts revolved.

Their shared childhood linked them forever, like the warp and the weft of a single fabric, but the patterns of their weave had been loosened, by absence and suspicion, then by marriage. Ian’s thread had been present in their weaving since the beginning, mine was a new one. How would the tensions pull in this new pattern, one thread against another?

Our conversation ran on casual lines, but with the words unspoken clearly heard beneath.

“You’ve run the house here alone since your mother died?”

“Oh, aye. Since I was ten.”

I had the nurturing and the loving of him as a boy. What will you do with the man I helped make?

“Jamie says as you’re a rare fine healer.”

“I mended his shoulder for him when we first met.”

Yes, I am capable, and kind. I will care for him.

“I hear ye married very quickly.”

Did you wed my brother for his land and money?

“Yes, it was quick. I didn’t even know Jamie’s true surname until just before the ceremony.”

I didn’t know he was laird of this place; I can only have married him for himself.

And so it went through the morning, a light luncheon, and into the hours of the afternoon, as we exchanged small talk, tidbits of information, opinions, small and hesitant jokes, taking each other’s measure. A woman who had run a large household since the age of ten, who had managed the estate since her father’s death and her brother’s disappearance, was not a person to be lightly esteemed. I did wonder what she thought of me, but she seemed as capable as her brother of hiding her thoughts when she chose to.

As the clock on the mantelpiece began to strike five, Jenny yawned and stretched, and the garment she had been mending slid down the rounded slope of her belly onto the floor.

She began clumsily to reach for it, but I dropped to my knees beside her.

“No, I’ll get it.”

“Thank ye… Claire.” Her first use of my name was accompanied by a shy smile, and I returned it.

Before we could return to our conversation, we were interrupted by the arrival of Mrs. Crook, the housekeeper, who poked a long nose into the parlor and inquired worriedly whether we had seen wee Master Jamie.

Jenny laid aside her sewing with a sigh.

Jenny laid aside her sewing with a sigh.

“Got away again, has he? Nay worry, Lizzie. He’s likely gone wi’ his Da or his uncle. We’ll go and see, shall we, Claire? I could use a breath of air before supper.”

She rose heavily to her feet and pressed her hands against the small of her back. She groaned and gave me a wry smile.

“Three weeks, about. I canna wait.”

We walked slowly through the grounds outside, Jenny pointing out the brewhouse and the chapel, explaining the history of the estate, and when the different bits had been built.

As we approached the corner of the dovecote, we heard voices in the arbor.

“There he is, the wee rascal!” Jenny exclaimed. “Wait ’til I lay hands on him!”

“Wait a minute.” I laid a hand on her arm, recognizing the deeper voice that underlaid the little boy’s.

“Dinna worrit yourself, man,” said Jamie’s voice. “You’ll learn. It’s a bit difficult, isn’t it, when your cock doesna stick out any further than your belly button?”

I stuck my head around the corner, to find him seated on a chopping block, engaged in converse with his namesake, who was struggling manfully with the folds of his smock.

“What are you doing with the child?” I inquired cautiously.

“I’m teachin’ young James here the fine art of not pissing on his feet,” he explained. “Seems the least his uncle could do for him.”

I raised one eyebrow. “Talk is cheap. Seems the least his uncle could do is show him.”

He grinned. “Well, we’ve had a few practical demonstrations. Had a wee accident last time, though.” He exchanged accusatory looks with his nephew. “Dinna look at me,” he said to the boy. “It was all your fault. I told ye to keep still.”

“Ahem,” said Jenny dryly, with a look at her brother and a matching one at her son. The smaller Jamie responded by pulling the front of his smock up over his head, but the larger one, unabashed, grinned cheerfully and rose from his seat, brushing dirt from his breeks. He set a hand on his nephew’s swathed head, and turned the little boy toward the house.

“ ‘To everything there is a season,’ ” he quoted, “ ‘and a time for every purpose under heaven.’ First we work, wee James, and then we wash. And then – thank God – it’s time for supper.”

The most pressing matters of business attended to, Jamie took time the next afternoon to show me over the house. Built in 1702, it was indeed modern for its time, with such innovations as porcelain stoves for heating, and a great brick oven built into the kitchen wall, so that bread was no longer baked in the ashes of the hearth. The ground floor hallway, the stairwell, and the drawing room walls were lined with pictures. Here and there was a pastoral landscape, or an animal study, but most were of the family and their connections.

I paused before a picture of Jenny as a young girl. She sat on the garden wall, a red-leaved vine behind her. Lined up in front of her along the top of the wall was a row of birds; sparrows, a thrush, a lark, and even a pheasant, all jostling and sidling for position before their laughing mistress. It was quite unlike most of the formally posed pictures, in which one ancestor or another glared out of their frames as though their collars were choking them.

“My mother painted that,” Jamie said, noting my interest. “She did quite a few of the ones in the stairwell, but there are only two of hers in here. She always liked that one best herself.” A large, blunt finger touched the surface of the canvas gently, tracing the line of the red-leaved vine. “Those were Jenny’s tame birds. Anytime there was a bird found wi’ a lame leg or a broken wing, whoever found it would bring it along, and in days she’d have it healed, and eatin’ from her hand. That one always reminded me of Ian.” The finger tapped above the pheasant, wings spread to keep its balance, gazing at its mistress with dark, adoring eyes.

“You’re awful, Jamie,” I said, laughing. “Is there one of you?”

“Oh, aye.” He led me to the opposite wall, near the window.

Two red-haired, tartan-clad little boys stared solemnly out of the frame, seated with an enormous staghound. That must be Nairn, Bran’s grandfather, Jamie, and his older brother Willie, who had died of the smallpox at eleven. Jamie could not have been more than two when it was painted, I thought; he stood between his elder brother’s knees, one hand resting on the dog’s head.

Jamie had told me about Willie during our journey from Leoch, one night by the fire at the bottom of a lonely glen. I remembered the small snake, carved of cherrywood, that he had drawn from his sporran to show me.

“Willie gave it me for my fifth birthday,” he had said, finger gently stroking the sinuous curves. It was a comical little snake, body writhing artistically, and its head turned back to peer over what would have been its shoulder, if snakes had shoulders.

Jamie handed me the little wooden object, and I turned it over curiously.

“What’s this scratched on the underside? S-a-w-n-y. Sawny?”

“That’s me,” Jamie said, ducking his head as though mildly embarrassed. “It’s a pet name, like, a play on my second name, Alexander. It’s what Willie used to call me.”

The faces in the picture were very much alike; all the Fraser children had that forthright look that dared you to take them at less than their own valuation of themselves. In this portrait, though, Jamie’s cheeks were rounded and his nose still snubbed with babyhood, while his brother’s strong bones had begun to show the promise of the man within, a promise never kept.

“Were you very fond of him?” I asked softly, laying a hand on his arm. He nodded, looking away into the flames on the hearth.

“Oh, aye,” he said with a faint smile. “He was five years older than I, and I thought he was God, or at least Christ. Used to follow him everywhere; or everywhere he’d let me, at least.”

He turned away and wandered toward the bookshelves. Wanting to give him a moment alone, I stayed, looking out of the window.

From this side of the house I could see dimly through the rain the outline of a rocky, grass-topped hill in the distance. It reminded me of the fairies’ dun where I had stepped through a rock and emerged from a rabbit hole. Only six months. But it seemed like a very long time ago.

Jamie had come to stand beside me at the window. Staring absently out at the driving rain, he said, “There was another reason. The main one.”

“Reason?” I said stupidly.

“Why I married you.”

“Which was?” I don’t know what I expected him to say, perhaps some further revelation of his family’s contorted affairs. What he did say was more of a shock, in its way.

“Because I wanted you.” He turned from the window to face me. “More than I ever wanted anything in my life,” he added softly.

I continued staring at him, dumbstruck. Whatever I had been expecting, it wasn’t this. Seeing my openmouthed expression, he continued lightly. “When I asked my Da how ye knew which was the right woman, he told me when the time came, I’d have no doubt. And I didn’t. When I woke in the dark under that tree on the road to Leoch, with you sitting on my chest, cursing me for bleeding to death, I said to myself, ‘Jamie Fraser, for all ye canna see what she looks like, and for all she weighs as much as a good draft horse, this is the woman.’ ”

I started toward him, and he backed away, talking rapidly. “I said to myself, ‘She’s mended ye twice in as many hours, me lad; life amongst the MacKenzies being what it is, it might be as well to wed a woman as can stanch a wound and set broken bones.’ And I said to myself, ‘Jamie, lad, if her touch feels so bonny on your collarbone, imagine what it might feel like lower down…’ ”

He dodged around a chair. “Of course, I thought it might ha’ just been the effects of spending four months in a monastery, without benefit of female companionship, but then that ride through the dark together” – he paused to sigh theatrically, neatly evading my grab at his sleeve – “with that lovely broad arse wedged between my thighs” – he ducked a blow aimed at his left ear and sidestepped, getting a low table between us – “and that rock-solid head thumping me in the chest” – a small metal ornament bounced off his own head and went clanging to the floor – “I said to myself…”

He was laughing so hard at this point that he had to gasp for breath between phrases. “Jamie… I said… for all she’s a Sassenach bitch… with a tongue like an adder’s… with a bum like that… what does it matter if she’s a f-face like a sh-sh-sheep?”

I tripped him neatly and landed on his stomach with both knees as he hit the floor with a crash that shook the house.

“You mean to tell me that you married me out of love?” I demanded. He raised his eyebrows, struggling to draw in breath.

“Have I not… just been… saying so?”

Grabbing me round the shoulders with one arm, he wormed the other hand under my skirt and proceeded to inflict a series of merciless pinches on that part of my anatomy he had just been praising.

Returning to pick up her embroidery basket, Jenny sailed in at this point and stood eyeing her brother with some amusement. “And what are you up to, young Jamie me lad?” she inquired, one eyebrow up.

“I’m makin’ love to my wife,” he panted, breathless between giggling and fighting.

“Well, ye could find a more suitable place for it,” she said, raising the other eyebrow. “That floor’ll give ye splinters in your arse.”

If Lallybroch was a peaceful place, it was also a busy one. Everyone in it seemed to stir into immediate life at cockcrow, and the farm then spun and whirred like a complicated bit of clockwork until after sunset, when one by one the cogs and wheels that made it run began to fall away, rolling off into the dark to seek supper and bed, only to reappear like magic in their proper places in the morning.

So essential did every last man, woman, and child seem to the running of the place that I could not imagine how it had fared these last few years, lacking its master. Now not only Jamie’s hands, but mine as well, were pressed into full employment. For the first time, I understood the stern Scotch strictures against idleness that had seemed like mere quaintness before – or after, as the case might be. Idleness would have seemed not only a sign of moral decay, but an affront to the natural order of things.

There were moments, of course. Those small spaces of time, too soon gone, when everything seems to stand still, and existence is balanced on a perfect point, like the moment of change between the dark and the light, when both and neither surround you.

I was enjoying such a moment on the evening of the second or third day following our arrival at the farmhouse. Sitting on the fence behind the house, I could see tawny fields to the edge of the cliff past the broch, and the mesh of trees on the far side of the pass, dimming to black before the pearly glow of the sky. Objects near and far away seemed to be at the same distance, as their long shadows melted into the dusk.

The air was chilly with a hint of the coming frost, and I thought I must go in soon, though I was reluctant to leave the still beauty of the place. I wasn’t aware of Jamie approaching until he slid the heavy folds of a cloak around my shoulders. I hadn’t realized quite how cold it was until I felt the contrasting warmth of the thick wool.

Jamie’s arms came around me with the cloak, and I nestled back against him, shivering slightly.

“I could see ye shivering from the house,” he said, taking my hands in his. “Catch a chill, if you’re not careful.”

“And what about you?” I twisted about to look at him. Despite the increasing bite of the air, he looked completely comfortable in nothing but shirt and kilt, with no more than a slight reddening of the nose to show it was not the balmiest of spring evenings.

“Ah, well, I’m used to it. Scotsmen are none so thin-blooded as ye bluenosed Southrons.” He tilted my chin up and kissed my nose, smiling. I took him by the ears and adjusted his aim downward.

It lasted long enough for our temperatures to have equalized by the time he released me, and the warm blood sang in my ears as I leaned back, balancing on the fence rail. The breeze blew from behind me, fluttering strands of hair across my face. He brushed them off my shoulders, spreading the ruffled locks out with his fingers, so the setting sun shone through the strands.

“You look like you’ve a halo, with the light behind ye that way,” he said, softly. “An angel crowned with gold.”

“And you,” I answered softly, tracing the edge of his jaw where the amber light sparked from his sprouting beard. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

He knew what I meant. One eyebrow went up, and he smiled, half his face lit by the glowing sun, the other half in shadow.

“Well, I knew ye didna want to wed me. I’d no wish to burden you or make myself foolish by telling you then, when it was plain you’d lie with me only to honor vows you’d rather not have made.” He grinned, teeth white in the shadow, forestalling my protest. “The first time, at least. I’ve my pride, woman.”

I reached out and drew him to me, pulling him close, so that he stood between my legs as I sat on the fence. Feeling the faint chill of his skin, I wrapped my legs around his hips and enfolded him with the wings of my cloak. Under the sheltering fabric, his arms came tight around me, pressing my cheek against the smudged cambric of his shirt.

“My love,” he whispered. “Oh, my love. I do want ye so.”

“Not the same thing, is it?” I said. “Loving and wanting, I mean.”

He laughed, a little huskily. “Damn close, Sassenach, for me, at least.” I could feel the strength of his wanting, hard and urgent. He stepped back suddenly, and stooping, lifted me from the fence.

“Where are we going?” We were headed away from the house, toward the cluster of sheds in the shadow of the elm grove.

“To find a haystack.”

Chapter 28. KISSES AND DRAWERS

I gradually found my own place in the running of the estate. As Jenny could no longer manage the long walk to the tenants’ cottages, I took to visiting them myself, accompanied sometimes by a stable lad, sometimes by Jamie or Ian. I took food and medicines with me, treated the sick as best I could, and made suggestions as to the improvement of health and hygiene, which were received with varying degrees of grace.

At Lallybroch itself, I poked about the house and grounds, making myself useful wherever I could, mostly in the gardens. Besides the lovely little ornamental garden, the manor had a small herb garden and an immense kitchen garden or kailyard that supplied turnips, cabbages, and vegetable marrows.

Jamie was everywhere; in the study with the account books, in the fields with the tenants, in the horse barn with Ian, making up for lost time. There was something more than duty or interest in it, too, I thought. We would have to leave soon; he wanted to set things running in a path that would continue while he was gone, until he – until we – could return for good.

I knew we would have to leave, yet surrounded by the peaceful house and grounds of Lallybroch and the cheerful company of Jenny, Ian, and small Jamie, I felt as though I had come home at last.

After breakfast one morning, Jamie rose from the table, announcing that he thought he would go as far as the head of the valley, to see a horse that Martin Mack had for sale.

Jenny turned from the sideboard, brows drawn together.

“D’ye think it safe, Jamie? There’s been English patrols all through the district the last month or so.”

He shrugged, taking his coat from the chair where he had laid it.

“I’ll be careful.”

“Oh, Jamie,” said Ian, coming in with an armful of firewood for the hearth. “I meant to ask – can ye gang up to the mill this morning? Jock was up yestere’en to say something’s gone amiss wi’ the wheel. I had a quick look, but he and I together couldna shift it. I think there’s a bit o’ rubbish stuck in the works outside, but it’s well under the water.”

He stamped his wooden leg lightly, smiling at me.

“I can still walk, thank God, and ride as well, but I canna swim. I just thrash about, and gang in circles like a doodle-bug.”

Jamie laid the coat back on the chair with a smile at his brother-in-law’s description.

“None so bad, Ian, if it keeps ye from havin’ to spend the morning in a freezing millpond. Aye, I’ll go.” He turned to me.

“Care to walk up wi’ me, Sassenach? It’s a fine morning, and ye can bring your wee basket.” He cocked an ironic eye at the enormous withy basket I used for gathering. “I’ll go and change my sark. Be wi’ ye in a moment.” He headed for the staircase and bounded athletically up the steps, three at a time.

Ian and I exchanged smiles. If there was any regret that such feats were now beyond him, it was hidden beneath his pleasure in seeing Jamie’s exuberance.

“It’s good to have him back,” he said.

“I only wish we could stay,” I said, with regret.

The soft brown eyes filled with alarm. “Ye’ll no be going at once, surely?”

I shook my head. “No, not at once. But we’ll need to leave well before the snow comes.” Jamie had decided that our best course was to go to Beauly, seat of clan Fraser. Perhaps his grandfather, Lord Lovat, could be of help; if not, he might at least arrange us passage to France.

Ian nodded, reassured. “Oh, aye. But you’ve a few weeks yet.”

It was a beautiful bright autumn day, with air like cider and a sky so blue you could drown in it. We walked slowly so that I could keep an eye out for late-blooming eglantine and teasel heads, chatting casually.

“It’s Quarter Day next week,” Jamie remarked. “Will your new gown be ready then?”

“I expect so. Why, is it an occasion?”

He smiled down at me, taking the basket while I stooped to pull up a stalk of tansy.

“Oh, in a way. Nothing like Colum’s great affairs, to be sure, but all the Lallybroch tenants will come to pay their rents – and their respects to the new Lady Lallybroch.”

“I expect they’ll be surprised you’ve married an Englishwoman.”

“I reckon there are a few fathers might be disappointed at that; I’d courted a lass or two hereabouts before I got arrested and taken to Fort William.”

“Sorry you didn’t wed a local girl?” I asked coquettishly.

“If ye think I’m going to say ‘yes,’ and you standin’ there holding a pruning knife,” he remarked, “you’ve less opinion of my good sense than I thought.”

I dropped the pruning knife, which I’d taken to dig with, stretched my arms out, and stood waiting. When he released me at last, I stooped to pick up the knife again, saying teasingly, “I always wondered how it was you stayed a virgin so long. Are the girls in Lallybroch all plain, then?”

“No,” he said, squinting up into the morning sun. “It was mostly my father was responsible for that. We’d stroll over the fields in the evenings, sometimes, he and I, and talk about things. And once I got old enough for such a thing to be a possibility, he told me that a man must be responsible for any seed he sows, for it’s his duty to take care of a woman and protect her. And if I wasna prepared to do that, then I’d no right to burden a woman with the consequences of my own actions.”

He glanced behind us, toward the house. And toward the small family graveyard, near the foot of the broch, where his parents were buried.

“He said the greatest thing in a man’s life is to lie wi’ a woman he loves,” he said softly. He smiled at me, eyes blue as the sky overhead. “He was right.”

I touched his face lightly, tracing the broad sweep downward from cheek to jaw.

“Rather hard on you, though, if he expected you to wait so long to marry,” I said.

Jamie grinned, kilt flapping round his knees in the brisk autumn breeze.

“Well, the Church does teach that self-abuse is a sin, but my father said he thought that if it came to a choice between abusin’ yourself or some poor woman, a decent man might choose to make the sacrifice.”

When I stopped laughing, I shook my head and said, “No. No, I won’t ask. You did stay a virgin, though.”

“Strictly by the grace of God and my father, Sassenach. I dinna think I thought much about anything but the lasses, once I turned fourteen or so. But that was when I was sent to foster wi’ Dougal at Beannachd.”

“No girls there?” I asked. “I thought Dougal had daughters.”

“Aye, he has. Four. The two younger are no much to look at, but the eldest was a verra handsome lassie. A year or two older than me, Molly was. And not much flattered by my attention, I dinna think. I used to stare at her across the supper table, and she’d look down her nose at me and ask did I have the catarrh? Because if so, I should go to bed, and if not, she would be much obliged if I’d close my mouth, as she didna care to look at my tonsils while she was eating.”

“I begin to see how you stayed a virgin,” I said, hiking my skirts to climb a stile. “But they can’t all have been like that.”

“No,” he said reflectively, giving me a hand over the stile. “No, they weren’t. Molly’s younger sister, Tabitha, was a bit friendlier.” He smiled reminiscently.

“Tibby was the first girl I kissed. Or perhaps I should say the first girl who kissed me. I was carrying two pails of milk for her, from the barn to the dairy, plotting all the way how I’d get her behind the door, where there wasna room to get away, and kiss her there. But my hands were full, and she had to open the door for me to go through. So it was me ended up behind the door, and Tib who walked up to me, took me by both ears and kissed me. Spilled the milk, too,” he added.

“Sounds a memorable first experience,” I said, laughing.

“I doubt I was her first,” he said, grinning. “She knew a lot more about it than I did. But we didna get much practice; a day or two later, her mother caught us in the pantry. She didna do more than give me a sharpish look and tell Tibby to go and set the table for dinner, but she must have told Dougal about it.”

If Dougal MacKenzie had been quick to resent an insult to his sister’s honor, I could only imagine what he might have done in defense of his daughter’s.

“I shudder to think,” I said, grinning.

“So do I,” said Jamie, shuddering. He shot me a sidelong glance, looking shy.

“You’ll know that young men in the morning, sometimes they wake up with… well, with-” He was blushing.

“Yes, I know,” I said. “So do old men of twenty-three. You think I don’t notice? You’ve brought it to my attention often enough.”

“Mmmphm. Well, the morning after Tib’s mother caught us, I woke up just at dawn. I’d been dreaming about her – Tib, I mean, not her mother – and I wasna surprised to feel a hand on my cock. What was surprising was that it wasn’t mine.”

“Surely it wasn’t Tibby’s?”

“Well, no, it wasna. It was her father’s.”

“Dougal?! Whatever-?”

“Well, I opened my eyes wide and he smiled down at me, verra pleasant. And then he sat on the bed and we had a nice little chat, uncle and nephew, foster-father to foster-son. He said how much he was enjoying my being there, him not having a son of his own, and all that. And how his family was all so fond of me, and all. And how he would hate to think that there might be any advantage taken of such fine, innocent feelings as his daughters might have toward me, but how of course he was so pleased that he could trust me as he would his own son.”

“And all the time he was talking and me lying there, he had his one hand on his dirk, and the other resting on my fine young balls. So I said yes, Uncle, and no, Uncle, and when he left, I rolled myself up in the quilt and dreamed about pigs. And I didna kiss a girl again until I was sixteen, and went to Leoch.”

He looked over at me, smiling. His hair was laced back with a leather thong, but the shorter ends were sticking up at the crown as usual, glimmering red and gold in the brisk, clear air. His skin had darkened to a golden bronze during our journey from Leoch and Craigh na Dun, and he looked like an autumn leaf, swirling joyfully wind-borne.

“And what of you, my bonny Sassenach?” he asked, grinning. “Did ye have the wee laddies panting at your heels, or were ye shy and maidenly?”

“A bit less than you,” I said circumspectly. “I was eight.”

“Jezebel. Who was the lucky lad?”

“The dragoman’s son. That was in Egypt. He was nine.”

“Och, well, you’re no to blame then. Led astray by an older man. And a bloody heathen, no less.”

The mill came into sight below, picture-pretty, with a deep-red vine glowing up the side of the yellow plaster wall, and shutters standing open to the daylight, tidy in spite of the worn green paint. The water gushed happily down the sluice under the idle water-wheel into the millpond. There were even ducks on the pond, teal and goldeneye paused for a rest on their southern flight.

“Look,” I said, pausing at the top of the hill, putting a hand on Jamie’s arm to stop him. “Isn’t it lovely?”

“Be a sight more lovely if the water-wheel were turnin’,” he said practically. Then he glanced down at me and smiled.

“Aye, Sassenach. It’s a bonny place. I used to swim here when I was a lad – there’s a wide pool round the bend of the stream.”

A little further down the hill, the pool became visible through the screen of willows. So did the boys. There were four of them, sporting and splashing and yelling, all naked as jays.

“Brrr,” I said, watching them. The weather was fine for autumn, but there was enough of a nip in the air to make me glad of the shawl I’d brought. “It makes my blood run cold, just to see them.”

“Och?” Jamie said. “Well, let me warm it for ye then.”

With a glance down at the boys in the stream, he stepped back into the shade of a big horse chestnut tree. He put his hands about my waist and drew me into the shadow after him.

“Ye werena the first lass I kissed,” he said softly. “But I swear you’ll be the last.” And he bent his head to my upturned face.

Once the miller had emerged from his lair, and hasty introductions were made, I retired to the bank of the millpond, while Jamie spent several minutes listening to an explanation of the problem. As the miller went back into the millhouse, to try turning the stone from within, Jamie stood a moment, staring into the dark, weedy depths of the millpond. Finally, with a shrug of resignation, he began to strip off his clothes.

“No help for it,” he remarked to me. “Ian’s right; there’s something stuck in the wheel under the sluice. I’ll have to go down and-” Stopped by my gasp, he turned around to where I sat on the bank with my basket.

“And what’s amiss wi’ you?” he demanded. “Have ye no seen a man in his drawers before?”

“Not… not like… that!” I managed to get out, between sputters. Anticipating possible submergence, he had donned beneath his kilt a short garment of incredible elderliness, originally of red flannel, now patched with a dazzling array of colors and textures. Obviously, this pair of drawers had originally belonged to someone who measured several inches more around the middle than Jamie. They hung precariously from his hipbones, the folds drooping in V’s over his flat belly.

“Your grandfather’s?” I guessed, making a highly unsuccessful effort to suppress my giggling. “Or your grandmother’s?”

“My father’s,” he said coldly, looking down his nose at me. “Ye dinna expect me to be swimming bare as an egg before my wife and my tenants, do ye?”

With considerable dignity, he gathered the excess material up in one hand and waded into the millpond. Treading water near the wheel, he took his bearings, then with a deep breath, upended and submerged, my last sight of him the ballooning bottom of the red flannel drawers. The miller, leaning out of the millhouse window, shouted encouragement and directions whenever the sleek wet head broke the surface for air.

The edge of the pond bank was thick with water plants, and I foraged with my digging stick for mallow root and the small, fine-leaved dropwort. I had half the basket filled when I heard a polite cough behind me.

She was a very old lady indeed, or at least she looked it. She leaned on a hawthorn stick, enveloped in garments she must have worn twenty years before, now much too voluminous for the shrunken frame inside them.

“Good morn to ye,” she said, nodding a head like a bobbin. She wore a starched white kertch that hid most of her hair, but a few wisps of iron-grey peeped out beside cheeks like withered apples.

“Good morning,” I said, and started to scramble up, but she advanced a few steps and sank down beside me with surprising grace. I hoped she could get up again.

“I’m-” I started, but had barely opened my mouth when she interrupted.

“Ye’ll be the new lady, o’ course. I’m Mrs. MacNab – Grannie MacNab, they call me, along o’ my daughters-in-law all bein’ Mrs. MacNabs as weel.” She reached out a skinny hand and pulled my basket toward her, peering into it.

“Mallow root – ah, that’s good for cough. But ye dinna want to use that one, lassie.” She poked at a small brownish tuber. “Looks like lily root, but it isna that.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Adder’s-tongue. Eat that one, lassie, and ye’ll be rollin’ round the room wi’ your heels behind yer head.” She plucked the tuber from the basket and threw it into the pond with a splash. She pulled the basket onto her lap and pawed expertly through the remaining plants, while I watched with a mixture of amusement and irritation. At last, satisfied, she handed it back.

“Weel, you’re none sae foolish, for a Sassenach lassie,” she remarked. “Ye ken betony from lamb’s-quarters, at least.” She cast a glance toward the pond, where Jamie’s head appeared briefly, sleek as a seal, before disappearing once again beneath the millhouse. “I see his lairdship didna wed ye for your face alone.”

“Thank you,” I said, choosing to construe this as a compliment. The old lady’s eyes, sharp as needles, were fastened on my midsection.

“Not wi’ child yet?” she demanded. “Raspberry leaves, that’s the thing. Steep a handful wi’ rosehips and drink it when the moon’s waxing, from the quarter to the full. Then when it wanes from the full to the half, take a bit o’ barberry to purge your womb.”

“Oh,” I said, “well-”

“I’d a bit of a favor to ask his lairdship,” the old lady went on. “But as I see he’s a bit occupied at present, I’ll tell you about it.”

“All right,” I agreed weakly, not seeing how I could stop her anyway.

“It’s my grandson,” she said, fixing me with small grey eyes the size and shininess of marbles. “My grandson Rabbie, that is; I’ve sixteen altogether, and the three o’ them named Robert, but the one’s Bob and t’other Rob, and the wee one’s Rabbie.”

“Congratulations,” I said politely.

“I want his lairdship to take the lad on as stable lad,” she went on.

“Well, I can’t say-”

“It’s his father, ye ken,” she said, leaning forward confidentially. “Not as I’ll say there’s aught wrong wi’ a bit o’ firmness; spare the rod and spoil the child, I’ve said often enough, and the good Lord kens weel enough that boys were meant to be smacked, or he’d not ha’ filled ’em sae full o’ the de’il. But when it comes to layin’ a child out on the hearth, and a bruise on his face the size o’ my hand, and for naught more than takin’ an extra bannock from the platter, then-”

“Rabbie’s father beats him, you mean?” I interrupted.

The old lady nodded, pleased with my ready intelligence. “To be sure. Is that no what I’ve been sayin’?” She held up a hand. “Now, in the regular way, o’ course I’d not interfere. A man’s son’s his ain to do as he sees fit wi’, but… weel, Rabbie’s a bit of a favorite o’ mine. And it’s no the lad’s fault as his father’s a drunken sot, shameful as ’tis for his own mither to say such a thing.”

She raised an admonitory finger like a stick. “Not but what Ronald’s father didna take a drop too much from time to time. But lay a hand on me or the bairns he never did – not after the first time, at any rate,” she added thoughtfully. She twinkled suddenly at me, little cheeks round and firm as summer apples, so I could see what a very lively and attractive girl she must have been.

“He struck me the once,” she confided, “and I snatched the girdle off the fire and crowned him wi’ it.” She rocked back and forth, laughing. “Thought I’d kilt him for sure, and me wailin’ and holdin’ of his heid in my lap, thinkin’ what would I do, a widow wi’ twa bairns to feed? But he came round,” she said matter-of-factly, “and ne’er laid a hand on me or the bairnies again. I bore thirteen, ye ken,” she said proudly. “And raised ten.”

“Congratulations,” I said, meaning it.

“Raspberry leaves,” she said, laying a confiding hand on my knee. “Mark me, lassie, raspberry leaves will do it. And if not, come to see me, and I’ll make ye a bittie drink o’ coneflower and marrow seed, wi’ a raw egg beaten up in it. That’ll draw yer man’s seed straight up into the womb, ye ken, and you’ll be swellin’ like a pumpkin by Easter.”

I coughed, growing a bit red in the face. “Mmmphm. And you want Jamie, er, his lairdship I mean, to take your grandson into his house as stable lad, to get him away from his father?”

“Aye, that’s it. Now he’s a brankie wee worker, is Rabbie, and his lairdship will no be-”

The old lady’s face froze in the midst of her animated conversation. I turned to look over my shoulder, and froze as well. Redcoats. Dragoons, six of them, on horseback, making their way carefully down the hill toward the millhouse.

With admirable presence of mind, Mrs. MacNab stood up and sat down again on top of Jamie’s discarded clothes, her spreading skirts hiding everything.

There was a splash and an explosive gasp from the millpond behind me as Jamie surfaced again. I was afraid to call out or move, for fear of attracting the dragoons’ attention to the pond, but the sudden dead silence behind me told me he had seen them. The silence was broken by a single word traveling across the water, softly spoken, but heartfelt in its sincerity.

“Merde,” he said.

The old lady and I sat unmoving, stone-faced, watching the soldiers come down the hill. At the last moment, as they made the final turn around the mill-house path, she turned swiftly to me and laid a stick-straight finger across her withered lips. I mustn’t speak and let them hear that I was English. I didn’t have time even to nod in acknowledgment before the mud-caked hooves came to a halt a few feet away.

“Good morrow to you, ladies,” said the leader. He was a corporal, but not, I was pleased to see, Corporal Hawkins. A quick glance showed me that none of the men were among those I had seen at Fort William, and I relaxed my grip on the handle of my basket just a fraction.

“We saw the mill from above,” the dragoon said, “and thought perhaps to purchase a sack of meal?” He divided a bow between us, not sure who to address.

Mrs. MacNab was frosty, but polite.

“Good morrow,” she said, inclining her head. “But if ye’ve come for meal, I fear me ye’ll be sair disappointit. The mill wheel’s nae workin’ just now. Perhaps next time ye come this way.”

“Oh? What’s amiss, then?” The corporal, a short young man with a fresh complexion, seemed interested. He walked down to the edge of the pond to peer at the wheel. The miller, popping up in the mill to report the latest progress with the millstone, saw him and hastily popped back down out of sight.

The corporal called to one of his men. Climbing up the slope, he gestured to the other soldier, who obligingly stooped to let the corporal climb on his back. Reaching up, he managed to catch the edge of the roof with both hands, and squirmed up onto the thatch. Standing, he could barely reach the edge of the great wheel. He reached out and rocked it with both hands. Bending down, he shouted through the window to the miller to try turning the millstone by hand.

I willed myself to keep my eyes away from the bottom of the sluice. I wasn’t sufficiently familiar with the workings of waterwheels to know for sure, but I was afraid that if the wheel gave way suddenly, anything near the underwater works might be crushed. Apparently this was no idle fear, for Mrs. MacNab spoke sharply to one of the soldiers near us.

“Ye should ca’ your master doon now, laddie. He’ll do no good tae the mill or himsel’. Ye shouldna meddle wi’ things as ye dinna understand.”

“Oh, you’ve no cause for worry, missus,” said the soldier casually. “Corporal Silvers’s father has a wheat mill in Hampshire. What the Corporal doesn’t know about waterwheels would fit in me shoe.”

Mrs. MacNab and I exchanged looks of alarm. The corporal, after a bit more clambering up and down and exploratory rockings and pokings, came down to where we sat. He was perspiring freely, and wiped his red face with a large, grubby handkerchief before addressing us.

“I can’t move it from above, and that fool of a miller doesn’t seem to speak any English at all.” He glanced at Mrs. MacNab’s sturdy stick and gnarled limbs, then at me. “Perhaps the young lady could come and talk to him for me?”

Mrs. MacNab stretched out a protective hand, gripping me by the sleeve.

“Ye’ll hae to pardon my daughter-in-law, sorr. She’s gone sair saft in the heid, ever syne her last babe was stillborn. Hasna spoke a word in ower a year, puir lassie. And I canna leave her for a minute, for fear she’ll throw hersel’ intae the water in her grief.”

I did my best to look soft-headed, no great effort in my present state of mind.

The corporal looked disconcerted. “Oh,” he said. “Well…” He wandered down to the edge of the pond and stood frowning into the water. He looked just as Jamie had an hour before, and apparently for the same reason.

“No help for it, Collins,” he said to the old trooper. “I’ll have to go under and see what’s holding it.” He took off his scarlet coat and began to unfasten the cuffs of his shirt. I exchanged looks of horror with Mrs. MacNab. While there might be sufficient air under the millhouse for survival, certainly there was not room to hide very effectively.

I was considering, not very optimistically, the chances of throwing a convincing epileptic fit, when the great wheel suddenly creaked overhead. With a sound like a tree being murdered, the big arc made a swooping half-turn, stuck for a moment, then rolled into a steady revolution, scoops merrily pouring bright streamlets into the sluice.

The corporal paused in his undressing, admiring the arc of the wheel.

“Look at that, Collins! Wonder what was stuck in it?”

As though in answer, something came into sight at the top of the wheel. It hung from one of the scoops, sodden red folds dripping. The scoop hit the stream now churning down the sluice, the object came loose, and Jamie’s father’s erstwhile drawers floated majestically out onto the waters of the millpond.

The elderly trooper fished them out with a stick, presenting them gingerly to his commander, who plucked them off the stick like a man obliged to pick up a dead fish.

“Hm,” he said, holding up the garment critically. “Wonder where on earth that came from? Must have been caught around the shaft. Curious that something like that could cause so much trouble, isn’t it, Collins?”

“Yessir.” The trooper plainly did not consider the interior workings of a Scottish mill wheel to be of absorbing interest, but answered politely.

After turning the cloth over a time or two, the corporal shrugged, and used it to wipe the dirt from his hands.

“Decent bit of flannel,” he said, wringing out the sopping cloth. “It’ll do to polish tack, at least. Something of a souvenir, eh, Collins?” And with a polite bow to Mrs. MacNab and me, he turned to his horse.

The dragoons had barely disappeared from sight over the brow of the hill when a splashing from the millpond heralded the rising from the depths of the resident water sprite.

He was the bloodless white, blue-tinged, of Carrara marble, and his teeth chattered so hard that I could barely make out his first words, which were, in any case, in Gaelic.

Mrs. MacNab had no trouble making them out, and her ancient jaw dropped. She snapped it shut, though, and made a low reverence toward the emergent laird. Seeing her, he stopped his progress toward the shore, the water still lapping modestly about his hips. He took a deep breath, clenching his teeth to stop the chattering, and plucked a streamer of duckweed off his shoulder.

“Mrs. MacNab,” he said, bowing to his elderly tenant.

“Sir,” she said, bowing back once again. “A fine day, is it no?”

“A bit b-brisk,” he said, casting an eye at me. I shrugged helplessly.

“We’re pleased to see ye back in yer home, sir, and it’s our hope, the lads and mysel’, as you’ll soon be back to stay.”

“Mine too, Mrs. MacNab,” Jamie said courteously. He jerked his head at me, glaring. I smiled blandly.

The old lady, ignoring this byplay, folded her gnarled hands in her lap and settled back with dignity.

“I’ve a wee favor I was wishin’ to ask of your lairdship,” she began, “havin’ tae do wi’-”

“Grannie MacNab,” Jamie interrupted, advancing a menacing half-step through the water, “whatever your wish is, I’ll do it. Provided only that ye’ll give me back my shirt before my parts fall off wi’ cold.”

Chapter 29. MORE HONESTY

In the evenings, when supper was cleared away, we generally sat in the drawing room with Jenny and Ian, talking companionably of this and that, or listening to Jenny’s stories.

Tonight, though, it was my turn, and I held Jenny and Ian rapt as I told them about Mrs. MacNab and the Redcoats.

“God kens well enough that boys need to be smacked, or he’d no fill them sae full o’ the de’il.” My imitation of Grannie MacNab brought down the house.

Jenny wiped tears of laughter from her eyes.

“Lord, it’s true enough. And she’d know it too. What has she got, Ian, eight boys?”

Ian nodded. “Aye, at least. I canna even remember all their names; seemed like there was always a couple of MacNabs about to hunt or fish or swim with, when Jamie and I were younger.”

“You grew up together?” I asked. Jamie and Ian exchanged wide, complicitous grins.

“Oh, aye, we’re familiar,” Jamie said, laughing. “Ian’s father was the factor for Lallybroch, like Ian is now. On a number of occasions during my reckless youth, I’ve found myself standing elbow to elbow with Mr. Murray there, explaining to one or other of our respective fathers how appearances can be deceiving, or failing that, why circumstances alter cases.”

“And failin’ that,” said Ian, “I’ve found myself on the same number of occasions, bent over a fence rail alongside Mr. Fraser there, listenin’ to him yell his heid off while waitin’ for my own turn.”

“Never!” replied Jamie indignantly. “I never yelled.”

“Ye call it what ye like, Jamie,” his friend answered, “but ye were awful loud.”

“Ye could hear the both of ye for miles,” Jenny interjected. “And not only the yelling. Ye could hear Jamie arguing all the time, right up to the fence.”

“Aye, ye should ha’ been a lawyer, Jamie. But I dinna ken why I always let you do the talking,” said Ian, shaking his head. “You always got us in worse trouble than we started.”

Jamie began to laugh again. “You mean the broch?”

“I do.” Ian turned to me, motioning toward the west, where the ancient stone tower rose from the hill behind the house.

“One of Jamie’s better arguments, that was,” he said, rolling his eyes upward. “He told Brian it was uncivilized to use physical force in order to make your point of view prevail. Corporal punishment was barbarous, he said, and old-fashioned, to boot. Thrashing someone just because they had committed an act with whose ram-ramifications, that was it – with whose ramifications ye didn’t agree was not at a’ a constructive form of punishment…”

All of us were laughing by this time.

“Did Brian listen to all of this?” I asked.

“Oh, aye.” Ian nodded. “I just stood there wi’ Jamie, nodding whenever he’d stop for breath. When Jamie finally ran out of words, his father sort of coughed a bit and said ‘I see.’ Then he turned and looked out of the window for a little, swinging the strap and nodding his head, as though he were thinking. We were standing there, elbow to elbow like Jamie said, sweating. At last Brian turned about and told us to follow him to the stables.”

“He gave us each a broom, a brush, and a bucket, and pointed us in the direction of the broch,” said Jamie, taking up the story. “Said I’d convinced him of my point, so he’d decided on a more ‘constructive’ form of punishment.”

Ian’s eyes rolled slowly up, as though following the rough stones of the broch upward.

“That tower rises sixty feet from the ground,” he told me, “and it’s thirty feet in diameter, wi’ three floors.” He heaved a sigh. “We swept it from the top to the bottom,” he said, “and scrubbed it from the bottom to the top. It took five days, and I can taste rotted oat-straw when I cough, even now.”

“And you tried to kill me on the third day,” said Jamie, “for getting us into that.” He touched his head gingerly. “I had a wicked gash over my ear, where ye hit me wi’ the broom.”

“Oh, weel,” Ian said comfortably, “that was when ye broke my nose the second time, so we were even.”

“Trust a Murray to keep score,” Jamie said, shaking his head.

“Let’s see,” I said, counting on my fingers. “According to you, Frasers are stubborn, Campbells are sneaky, MacKenzies are charming but sly, and Grahams are stupid. What’s the Murrays’ distinguishing characteristic?”

“Ye can count on them in a fight,” said Jamie and Ian together, then laughed.

“Ye can too,” said Jamie, recovering. “You just hope they’re on your side.” And both men went off into fits again.

Jenny shook her head disapprovingly at spouse and brother.

“And we havena even had any wine yet,” she said. She put down her sewing and heaved herself to her feet. “Come wi’ me, Claire; we’ll see has Mrs. Crook made any biscuits to have wi’ the port.”

Coming back down the hall a quarter of an hour later with trays of refreshments, I heard Ian say, “You’ll not mind then, Jamie?”

“Mind what?”

“That we wed without your consent – me and Jenny, I mean.”

Jenny, walking ahead of me, came to a sudden stop outside the drawing room door.

There was a brief snort from the love seat where Jamie lay sprawled, feet propped on a hassock. “Since I didna tell ye where I was, and ye had no notion when – if ever – I’d come back, I can hardly blame ye for not waiting.”

I could see Ian in profile, leaning over the log basket. His long, good-natured face wore a slight frown.

“Weel, I didna think it right, especially wi’ me being crippled…”

There was a louder snort.

“Jenny couldna have a better husband, if you’d lost both legs and your arms as well,” Jamie said gruffly. Ian’s pale skin flushed slightly in embarrassment. Jamie coughed and swung his legs down from the hassock, leaning over to pick up a scrap of kindling that had fallen from the basket.

“How did ye come to wed anyway, given your scruples?” he asked, one side of his mouth curling up.

“Gracious, man,” Ian protested, “ye think I had any choice in the matter? Up against a Fraser?” He shook his head, grinning at his friend.

“She came up to me out in the field one day, while I was tryin’ to mend a wagon that sprang its wheel. I crawled out, all covered wi’ muck, and found her standin’ there looking like a bush covered wi’ butterflies. She looks me up and down and she says-” He paused and scratched his head. “Weel, I don’t know exactly what she said, but it ended with her kissing me, muck notwithstanding, and saying, ‘Fine, then, we’ll be married on St. Martin’s Day.’ ” He spread his hands in comic resignation. “I was still explaining why we couldna do any such thing, when I found myself in front of a priest, saying, ‘I take thee, Janet’… and swearing to a lot of verra improbable statements.”

Jamie rocked back in his seat, laughing.

“Aye, I ken the feeling,” he said. “Makes ye feel a bit hollow, no?”

Ian smiled, embarrassment forgotten. “It does and all. I still get that feeling, ye know, when I see Jenny sudden, standing against the sun on the hill, or holding wee Jamie, not lookin’ at me. I see her, and I think, ‘God, man, she can’t be yours, not really.’ ” He shook his head, brown hair flopping over his brow. “And then she turns and smiles at me…” He looked up at his brother-in-law, grinning.

“Weel, ye know yourself. I can see it’s the same wi’ you and your Claire. She’s… something special, no?”

Jamie nodded. The smile didn’t leave his face, but altered somehow.

“Aye,” he said softly. “Aye, she is that.”

Over the port and biscuits, Jamie and Ian reminisced further about their shared boyhood, and their fathers. Ian’s father, William, had died just the past spring, leaving Ian to run the estate alone.

“You remember when your father came on us down by the spring, and made us go wi’ him to the smithy to see how to fix a wagon-tree?”

“Aye, and he couldna understand why we kept squirming and shifting about-”

“And he kept asking ye did ye need to go to the privy-”

Both men were laughing too hard to finish the story, so I looked at Jenny.

“Toads,” she said succinctly. “The two o’ them each had five or six toads inside his shirt.”

“Oh, Lord,” said Ian. “When the one crawled up your neck and hopped out of your shirt into the forge, I thought I’d die.”

“I cannot imagine why my father didna wring my neck on several occasions,” said Jamie, shaking his head. “It’s a wonder I ever grew up.”

Ian looked consideringly at his own offspring, industriously engaged in piling wooden blocks on top of each other by the hearth. “I don’t quite know how I’m goin’ to manage it, when the time comes I have to beat my own son. I mean… he’s, well, he’s so small.” He gestured helplessly at the sturdy little figure, tender neck bent to his task.

Jamie eyed his small namesake cynically. “Aye, he’ll be as much a devil as you or I, give him time. After all, I suppose even I must ha’ looked small and innocent at one point.”

“You did,” said Jenny unexpectedly, coming to set a pewter cup of cider in her husband’s hand. She patted her brother on the head.

“You were verra sweet as a baby, Jamie. I remember standing over your cot. Ye canna ha’ been more than two, asleep wi’ your thumb in your mouth, and we agreed we’d never seen a prettier lad. You had fat round cheeks and the dearest red curls.”

The pretty lad turned an interesting shade of rose, and drained his cider at one gulp, avoiding my glance.

“Didna last long, though,” Jenny said, flashing white teeth in a mildly malicious smile at her brother. “How old were ye when ye got your first thrashing, Jamie? Seven?”

“No, eight,” Jamie said, thrusting a new log into the smoldering pile of kindling. “Christ, that hurt. Twelve strokes full across the bum, and he didna let up a bit, beginning to end. He never did.” He sat back on his heels, rubbing his nose with the knuckles of one hand. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes bright from the exertion.

“Once it was over, Father went off a bit and sat down on a rock while I settled myself. Then when I’d quit howling and got down to a sort of wet snuffle, he called me over to him. Now that I think of it, I can remember just what he said. Maybe you can use it on young Jamie, Ian, when the time comes.” Jamie closed his eyes, recalling.

“He stood me between his knees and made me look him in the face, and said, ‘That’s the first time, Jamie. I’ll have to do it again, maybe a hundred times, before you’re grown to a man.’ He laughed a bit then and said, ‘My father did it to me at least that often, and you’re as stubborn and cockle-headed as ever I was.’

“He said, ‘Sometimes I daresay I’ll enjoy thrashing you, depending on what you’ve done to deserve it. Mostly I won’t. But I’ll do it nonetheless. So remember it, lad. If your head thinks up mischief, your backside’s going to pay for it.’ Then he gave me a hug and said, ‘You’re a braw lad, Jamie. Go away to the house now and let your mother comfort ye.’ I opened my mouth to say something to that, and he said, quick-like, ‘No, I know you don’t need it, but she does. Get on wi’ ye.’ So I came down and Mother fed me bread with jam on it.”

Jenny suddenly started to laugh. “I just remembered,” she said, “Da used to tell that story about you, Jamie, about thrashing you, and what he said to you. He said when he sent ye back to the house after, you came halfway down, then all of a sudden stopped and waited for him.

“When he came down to ye, you looked up at him and said, ‘I just wanted to ask, Faither – did ye enjoy it this time?’ And when he said ‘no,’ you nodded and said, ‘Good. I didna like it much either.’ ”

We all laughed for a minute together, then Jenny looked up at her brother, shaking her head. “He loved to tell that story. Da always said you’d be the death of him, Jamie.”

The merriment died out of Jamie’s face, and he looked down at the big hands resting on his knees.

“Aye,” he said quietly. “Well, and I was, then, wasn’t I?”

Jenny and Ian exchanged glances of dismay, and I looked down at my own lap, not knowing what to say. There was no sound for a moment but the crackling of the fire. Then Jenny, with a quick look at Ian, set down her glass and touched her brother on the knee.

“Jamie,” she said. “It wasna your fault.”

He looked up at her and smiled, a little bleakly.

“No? Who else’s, then?”

She took a deep breath and said, “Mine.”

“What?” He stared at her in blank astonishment.

She had gone a little paler even than usual, but remained composed.

“I said it was my fault, as much as anyone’s. For – for what happened to you, Jamie. And Father.”

He covered her hand with his own and rubbed it gently.

“Dinna talk daft, lass,” he said. “Ye did what ye did to try to save me; you’re right, if ye’d not gone wi’ Randall, he’d likely have killed me here.”

She studied her brother’s face, a troubled frown wrinkling her rounded brow.

“No, I dinna regret taking Randall to the house – not even if he’d… well, no. But that wasn’t it.” She drew a deep breath again, steeling herself.

“When I took him inside, I brought him up to my room. I – I didna ken quite what to expect – I’d not… been wi’ a man. He seemed verra nervous, though, all flushed and as though he were not certain himself, which seemed strange to me. He pushed me onto the bed, and then he stood there, rubbing himself. I thought at first I’d really damaged him wi’ my knee, though I knew I hadna struck him so hard, really.” The color was creeping up her cheeks, and she stole a sidelong glance at Ian before looking hastily back at her lap.

“I ken now that he was trying to – to make himself ready. I didna mean to let him know I was frightened, so I sat up straight on the bed and stared at him. That seemed to anger him, and he ordered me to turn round. I wouldna do it, though, and just kept looking at him.”

Her face was the color of one of the roses by the doorstep. “He… unbuttoned himself, and I… well, I laughed at him.”

“You did what?” Jamie said incredulously.

“I laughed. I mean-” Her eyes met her brother’s with some defiance. “I kent well enough how a man’s made. I’d seen you naked often enough, and Willy and Ian as well. But he-” A tiny smile appeared on her lips, despite her apparent efforts to suppress it. He looked so funny, all red in the face, and rubbing himself so frantic, and yet still only half-”

There was a choked sound from Ian, and she bit her lip, but went on bravely.

“He didna like it when I laughed, and I could see it, so I laughed some more. That’s when he lunged at me and tore my dress half off me. I smacked him in the face, and he struck me across the jaw, hard enough to make me see stars. Then he grunted a bit, as though that pleased him, and started to climb onto the bed wi’ me. I had just about sense enough left to laugh again. I struggled up onto my knees, and I – I taunted him. I told him I kent he was no a real man, and couldna manage wi’ a woman. I-”

She bent her head still further, so the dark curls swung down past her flaming cheeks. Her words were very low, almost a whisper.

“I… spread the pieces of my gown apart, and I… taunted him wi’ my breasts. I told him I knew he was afraid o’ me, because he wasna fit to touch a woman, but only to sport wi’ beasts and young lads…”

“Jenny,” said Jamie, shaking his head helplessly.

Her head came up to look at him. “Weel, I did then,” she said. “It was all I could think of, and I could see that he was fair off his head, but it was plain too that he… couldn’t. And I stared right at his breeches and I laughed again. And then he got his hands round my throat, throttling me, and I cracked my head against the bedpost, and… and when I woke he’d gone, and you wi’ him.”

There were tears standing in her lovely blue eyes as she grasped Jamie’s hands.

“Jamie, will ye forgive me? I know if I’d not angered him that way he wouldna have treated you as he did, and then Faither-”

“Oh, Jenny, love, mo cridh, don’t.” He was kneeling beside her, pulling her face into his shoulder. Ian, on her other side, looked as though he had been turned to stone.

Jamie rocked her gently as she sobbed. “Hush, little dove. Ye did right, Jenny. It wasna your fault, and maybe not mine either.” He stroked her back.

“Listen, mo cridh. He came here to do damage, under orders. And it would ha’ made no difference who he’d found here, or what you or I might have done. He meant to cause trouble, to rouse the countryside against the English, for his own purposes – and those of the man that hired him.”

Jenny stopped crying and sat up, looking at him in amazement.

“To rouse folk against the English? But why?”

Jamie made an impatient gesture with one hand. “To find out the folk that might support Prince Charles, should it come to another Rising. But I dinna ken yet which side Randall’s employer is on – if he wants to know so those that follow the Prince can be watched, and maybe have their property seized, or if it’s that he – Randall’s employer – means to go wi’ the Prince himself, and wants the Highlands roused and ready for war when the time comes. I dinna ken, and it isna important now.” He touched his sister’s hair, smoothing it back from her brow.

“All that’s important is that you’re not harmed, and I am home. Soon I’ll come back to stay, mo cridh. I promise.”

She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it, her face glowing. She fumbled in her pocket for a handkerchief and blew her nose. Then she looked at Ian, still frozen by her side, a look of hurt anger in his eyes.

She touched him gently on the shoulder.

“You think I should ha’ told you.”

He didn’t move, but went on looking at her. “Aye,” he said quietly. “I do.”

She put the handkerchief down in her lap and took him by both hands.

“Ian, man, I didna tell ye because I didna wish to lose you too. My brother was gone, and my father. I didna mean to lose my own heart’s blood as well. For you are dearer to me even than home and family, love.” She cast a lopsided smile at Jamie. “And that’s saying quite a bit.”

She looked into Ian’s eyes, pleading, and I could see love and hurt pride struggling for mastery on his face. Jamie rose then and touched me on the shoulder. We left the room quietly, leaving them together before the dying fire.

It was a clear night, and the moonlight fell in floods through the tall casements. I could not fall asleep myself, and I thought perhaps it was the light also that kept Jamie awake; he lay quite still, but I could tell by his breathing that he was not asleep. He turned onto his back, and I heard him chuckle softly under his breath.

“What’s funny?” I asked quietly.

He turned his head toward me. “Oh, did I wake ye, Sassenach? I’m sorry. I was only remembering about things.”

“I wasn’t asleep.” I scooted closer. The bed had obviously been made for the days when a whole family slept together on one mattress; the gigantic feather-bed must have consumed the entire productivity of hundreds of geese, and navigating through the drifts was like crossing the Alps without a compass. “What were you remembering?” I asked, once I had safely reached his side.

“Oh, about my father, mostly. Things he said.”

He folded his arms behind his head, staring musingly at the thick beams that crossed the low ceiling. “It’s strange,” he said, “when he was alive, I didna pay him much heed. But once he was dead, the things he’d told me had a good deal more influence.” He chuckled briefly again. “What I was thinking about was the last time he thrashed me.”

“Funny, was it?” I said. “Anyone ever told you that you have a very peculiar sense of humor, Jamie?” I fumbled through the quilts for his hand, then gave up and pushed them back. He began to stroke my back, and I snuggled next to him, making small noises of pleasure.

“Didn’t your uncle beat you, then, when you needed it?” he asked curiously. I smothered a laugh at the thought.

“Lord, no! He would have been horrified at the thought. Uncle Lamb didn’t believe in beating children – he thought they should be reasoned with, like adults.” Jamie made a Scottish noise in his throat, indicating derision at this ludicrous idea.

“That accounts for the defects in your character, no doubt,” he said, patting my bottom. “Insufficient discipline in your youth.”

“What defects in my character?” I demanded. The moonlight was bright enough for me to see his grin.

“Ye want me to list them all?”

“No.” I dug an elbow into his ribs. “Tell me about your father. How old were you then?” I asked.

“Oh, thirteen – fourteen maybe. Tall and skinny, with spots. I canna remember why I was being thrashed; at that point, it was more often something I’d said than something I’d done. All I remember is we were both of us boiling mad about it. That was one of the times he enjoyed beating me.” He pulled me to him and settled me closer against his shoulder, his arm around me. I stroked his flat belly, toying with his navel.

“Stop that, it tickles. D’ye want to hear, or no?”

“Oh, I want to hear. What are we going to do if we ever have children – reason with them, or beat them?” My heart raced a little at the thought, though there was no sign that this would ever be more than an academic question. His hand trapped mine, holding it still over his belly.

“That’s simple. You reason with them, and when you’re through, I’ll take them out and thrash them.”

“I thought you liked children.”

“I do. My father liked me, when I wasna being an idiot. And he loved me, too – enough to beat the daylights out of me when I was being an idiot.”

I flopped onto my stomach. “All right, then. Tell me about it.”

Jamie sat up and wadded the pillows more comfortably before lying back down, folded arms behind his head again.

“Well, he sent me up to the fence, as usual – he always made me go up first, so I could experience the proper mixture of terror and remorse while I waited for him, he said – but he was so angry, he was right behind me. I was bent over and taking it, then, gritting my teeth and determined I’d make no noise about it – damned if I’d let him know how much it hurt. I was digging my fingers into the wood of the fence rail as hard as I could – hard enough to leave splinters behind – and I could feel my face turnin’ red from holding my breath.” He drew a deep breath, as though making up for it, and let it out slowly.

“Usually I’d know when it was going to be over, but this time he didn’t stop. It was all I could do to keep my mouth shut; I was grunting wi’ each stroke and I could feel the tears starting, no matter how much I blinked, but I held on for dear life.” He was uncovered to the waist, almost glowing in the moonlight, frosted with tiny silver hairs. I could see the pulse beat just below his breastbone, a steady throb just under my hand.

“I don’t know how long it went on,” he continued. “Not that long, likely, but it seemed like a long time to me. At last he stopped a moment and shouted at me. He was beside himself wi’ fury, and I was so furious myself I could barely make out what he said at first, but then I could.

“He roared ‘Damn you, Jamie! Can ye no cry out? You’re grown now, and I dinna mean to beat you ever again, but I want one good yelp out of ye, lad, before I quit, just so I’ll think I’ve made some impression on ye at last!’ ” Jamie laughed, disturbing the even movement of his pulsebeat.

“I was so upset at that, I straightened up and whirled round and yelled at him, ‘Weel, why did ye no say so in the first place, ye auld fool! OUCH!!’

“Next thing I knew I was on the ground, wi’ my ears ringing and a pain in my jaw, where he’d clouted me. He was standing over me, panting, and wi’ his hair and his beard all on end. He reached down and got my hand and hauled me up.

“Then he patted my jaw, and said, still breathing hard, ‘That’s for calling your father a fool. It may be true, but it’s disrespectful. Come on, we’ll wash for supper.’ And he never struck me again. He still shouted at me, but I shouted back, and it was mostly man to man, after that.”

He laughed comfortably, and I smiled into the warmth of his shoulder.

“I wish I’d known your father,” I said. “Or maybe it’s better not,” I said, struck by a thought. “He might not have liked you marrying an Englishwoman.”

Jamie hugged me closer and pulled the quilts up over my bare shoulders. “He’d have thought I’d got some sense at last.” He stroked my hair. “He’d have respected my choice, whoever it was, but you” – he turned his head and kissed my brow gently – “he would have liked you verra much, my Sassenach.” And I recognized it for the accolade it was.

Chapter 30. CONVERSATIONS BY THE HEARTH

Whatever rift Jenny’s revelations had caused between her and Ian, it seemed to have healed. We sat for a short time after dinner in the parlor next evening, Ian and Jamie talking over the farm’s business in the corner, accompanied by a decanter of elderberry wine, while Jenny relaxed at last with her swollen ankles propped on a hassock. I tried to write down some of the receipts she had tossed over her shoulder at me as we whizzed through the day’s work, consulting her for details as I scribbled.

TO TREAT CARBUNCLES, I headed one sheet.

Three iron nails, to be soaked for one week in sour ale. Add one handful of cedarwood shavings, allow to set. When shavings have sunk to the bottom, mixture is ready. Apply three times daily, beginning on the first day of a quarter moon.

BEESWAX CANDLES began another sheet.

Drain honey from the comb. Remove dead bees, so far as possible. Melt comb with a small amount of water in a large cauldron. Skin bees, wings, and other impurities from surface of water. Drain water, replace. Stir frequently for half an hour, then allow to settle. Drain water, keep for use in sweetening. Purify with water twice more.

My hand was getting tired, and I had not even gotten to the making of candle molds, the twisting of wicks, and the hanging of candles to dry.

“Jenny,” I called, “how long does it take to make candles, counting everything?”

She laid the small shirt she was stitching in her lap, considering.

“Half a day to gather the combs, two to drain the honey – one if it’s hot – one day to purify the wax, unless there’s a lot or it’s verra dirty – then two. Half a day to make the wicks, one or two to make the molds, half a day to melt the wax, pour the molds and hang them to dry. Say a week altogether.”

The dim lamplight and the sputtering quill were too much to contend with after the day’s labors. I sat down next to Jenny and admired the tiny garment she was embroidering with nearly invisible stitches.

Her rounded stomach suddenly heaved, as the inhabitant shifted position. I watched, fascinated. I had never been close to someone pregnant for a prolonged period, and hadn’t realized the amount of activity that went on inside.

“Would you like to feel it?” Jenny offered, seeing me staring at her middle.

“Well…” She took my hand and placed it firmly on her mound.

“Right there. Just wait a moment; he’ll kick again soon. They don’t like ye lying back like this, ye know. It makes them restless and they start to squirm.”

Sure enough, a surprisingly vigorous push raised my hand by several inches.

“Goodness! He’s strong!” I exclaimed.

“Aye.” Jenny patted her stomach with a touch of pride. “He’ll be bonny, like his brother and his Da.” She smiled across at Ian, whose attention had momentarily wandered from the breeding records of horses to his wife and child-to-be.

“Or even like his good-for-nothing red-heided uncle,” she added, raising her voice slightly and nudging me.

“Hey?” Jamie looked up, distracted from his accounts. “Were ye speaking to me?”

“I wonder was it the ‘red-heided’ or the ‘good-for-nothing’ that caught his attention,” Jenny said to me, sotto voce, with another nudge.

To Jamie she said sweetly, “Nothing at all, mo cridh. We were just speculating on the possibility that the new one would have the misfortune to resemble its uncle.”

The uncle in question grinned and came across to sit on the hassock, Jenny amiably moving her feet, then replacing them in his lap.

“Rub them for me, Jamie,” she begged. “You’re better at it than Ian.”

He obliged, and Jenny leaned back and closed her eyes in bliss. She dropped the tiny shirt on her central mound, which continued to heave as though in protest. Jamie stared entranced at the movements, just as I had.

“Isn’t it uncomfortable?” he asked. “Havin’ someone turn somersaults in your belly?”

Jenny opened her eyes and grimaced as a long swell arced across her stomach.

“Mmm. Sometimes I feel my liver’s black and blue from bein’ kicked. But mostly it’s a good feeling, instead. It’s like…” She hesitated, then grinned at her brother. “It’s hard to describe to a man, you not having the proper parts. I don’t suppose I could tell ye what carrying a child feels like, no more than you could tell me what it’s like to be kicked in the ballocks.”

“Oh, I could tell ye that.” He promptly doubled up, clasping himself, and rolled his eyes back in his head with a hideous gurgling groan.

“Is that not right, Ian?” he asked, turning his head toward the stool where Ian sat laughing, wooden leg propped on the hearth.

His sister put a delicate foot on his chest and pushed him upright. “All right then, clown. In that case, I’m glad I havena got any.”

Jamie straightened up and brushed the hair out of his eyes. “No, really,” he said, interested, “is it just that the parts are different? Could you describe it to Claire? After all, she’s a woman, though she’s not borne a child yet.”

Jenny eyed my midriff appraisingly, and I felt that small pang once more.

“Mmm, perhaps.” She spoke slowly, thinking. “You feel as though your skin is verra thin all over. You feel everything that touches you, even the rubbing of your clothes, and not just on your belly, but over your legs and flanks and breasts.” Her hands went to them unconsciously, curving the lawn under the swelling rounds. “They feel heavy and full… and they’re verra sensitive just at the tips.” The small, blunt thumbs slowly circled the breasts and I saw the nipples rise against the cloth.

“And of course you’re big and you’re clumsy,” Jenny smiled ruefully, rubbing the spot on her hip where she had banged against the table earlier. “You take up more room than you’re used to.”

“Here, though” – her hands rose protectively to the top of her stomach – “that’s where you feel things most, of course.” She caressed the rounded bulge as though it were her child’s skin she stroked, rather than her own. Ian’s eyes followed her hands as they moved from top to bottom of the curving hillock, over and over, smoothing the fabric again and again.

“In the early days, it’s a bit like belly-gas,” she said, laughing. She poked a toe into her brother’s midsection. “Just there – like little bubbles rippling through your belly. But then later, you feel the child move, and it’s like a fish on your line and then gone – like a quick tug, but so soon past you’re not sure you felt it.” As though in protest at this description, her unseen companion heaved to and fro, making her stomach bulge on one side, then the other.

“I imagine you’re sure, by this time,” Jamie remarked, following the movement with fascination.

“Oh, aye.” She placed a hand on one bulge, as though to quiet it. “They sleep, ye know, for hours at a time. Sometimes ye fear they’ve died, when there’s no movement for a long time. Then you try to wake them” – her hand pushed in sharply at the side, and was rewarded immediately by a strong push in the opposite direction – “and you’re happy when they kick again. But it’s not just the babe itself. You feel swollen all over, near the end. Not painful… just so ripe you could burst. It’s as though you need to be touched, verra lightly, all over.” Jenny was no longer looking at me. Her eyes held her husband’s, and I knew she was no longer aware of me or her brother. There was an air of intimacy between her and Ian, as though this were a story often told, but one of which they never tired.

Her voice was lower now, and her hands rose again to her breasts, heavy and compelling under the light bodice.

“And in the last month or so, the milk begins to come in. You feel yourself filling, just a wee bit at a time, a little each time the child moves. And then suddenly, everything comes up hard and round.” She cupped her stomach again. “There’s no pain, then, just a breathless feeling, and then your breasts tingle as though they’ll explode if they’re not suckled.” She closed her eyes and leaned back, stroking her massive belly, over and over, with a rhythm like the invocation of a spell. It came to me, watching her, that if ever there were such a thing as a witch, then Janet Fraser was one.

The smoky air was filled with the trance over the room; the feeling that lies at the root of lust, the terrible yearning need to join, and create. I could have counted every hair on Jamie’s body without looking at him, and knew each one stood erect.

Jenny opened her eyes, dark in the shadows, and smiled at her husband, a slow, rich curve of infinite promise.

“And late in bearing, when the child moves a lot, sometimes there’s a feeling like when you’ve your man inside ye, when he comes to ye deep and pours himself into you. Then, then when that throbbing starts deep inside ye along with him, it’s like that, but it’s much bigger; it ripples all through the walls of your womb and fills all of you. The child’s quiet then, and it’s as though it’s him you’ve taken inside you instead.”

Suddenly she turned to me, and the spell was broken. “That’s what they want sometimes, ye know,” she said quietly, smiling into my eyes. “They want to come back.”

Some time later, Jenny rose, floating toward the door with a glance back that pulled Ian after her like iron to true north. She paused near the door for him, looking back at her brother, who sat still by the fire hearth.

“You’ll see to the fire, Jamie?” She stretched, arching her back, and the curve of her spine echoed the strangely sinuous curve of her belly. Ian’s knuckles pressed hard along the length of her back, and ground into the base of her spine, making her groan. And then they were gone.

I stretched too, arms upward, feeling the pleasant pull of tired muscles. Jamie’s hands ran down my sides and rested on the swell of my hips. I leaned back into him, drawing his hands forward, imagining them cupping the gentle curve of an unborn child.

As I turned my head to kiss him, I noticed the small form curled in the corner of the settle.

“Look. They’ve forgotten small Jamie.” The little boy customarily slept on a trundle in his parents’ room. Tonight he had fallen asleep by the fire while we sat talking over the wine, but no one had remembered to carry him up to his bed. My own Jamie turned me to face him, smoothing my hair away from his nose.

“Jenny never forgets anything,” he said. “I expect she and Ian do not care for company just now.” His hands went to the fastening at the back of my skirt. “He’ll do where he is for the present.”

“But what if he wakes up?”

The roving hands came up under the now-loose edge of the bodice. Jamie cocked an eyebrow at the recumbent form of his small nephew.

“Aye well. He’ll have to learn his job sometime, won’t he? Ye don’t want him to be as ignorant as his uncle was.” He tossed several cushions to the floor before the fire and lowered himself, carrying me with him.

The firelight gleamed on the silvery scars on his back, as though he were in fact the iron man I had once accused him of being, the metal core showing through rents in the fragile skin. I traced the lashmarks one by one, and he shivered under my touch.

“Do you think Jenny’s right?” I asked later. “Do men really want to come back inside? Is that why you make love to us?” A breath of laughter stirred the hair by my ear.

“Well, it’s no usually the first thing in my mind when I take ye to bed, Sassenach. Far from it. But then…” His hands cupped my breasts softly, and his lips closed on one nipple. “I’d no just say she was completely wrong either. Sometimes… aye, sometimes it would be good, to be inside again, safe and… one. Knowing we cannot, I suppose, is what makes us want to beget. If we cannot go back ourselves, the best we can do is to give that precious gift to our sons, at least for a little while…” He shook himself suddenly, like a dog flinging water from its coat.

“Pay me no mind, Sassenach,” he murmured. “I get verra maudlin, drinking elderberry wine.”

Chapter 31. QUARTER DAY

There was a light knock on the door, and Jenny stepped in, carrying a folded blue garment over her arm and a hat in one hand. She looked her brother over critically, then nodded.

“Aye, the shirt’s well enough. And I’ve let out your best coat for ye; you’ve grown a bit through the shoulders since I saw ye last.” She cocked her head to one side, considering. “Ye’ve done a braw job of it today – up to the neck, at least. Sit ye down over there, and I’ll tend to your hair.” She pointed to the stool by the window.

“My hair? What’s wrong wi’ my hair?” Jamie demanded, putting a hand up to check. Grown nearly to shoulder-length, he had as usual laced it back with a leather thong to keep it out of his face.

Wasting no time on chat, his sister pushed him down onto the stool, yanked the thong loose and began to brush him vigorously with the tortoiseshell brushes.

“What’s wrong wi’ your hair?” she asked rhetorically. “Weel, now. There’s cockleburs in it, for one thing.” She plucked a small brown object delicately from his head and dropped it on the dresser. “And bits of oak leaf. Where were ye yesterday – rootling under the trees like a hog? And more tangles than a skein of washed yarn-”

“Ouch!”

“Be still, roy.” Frowning with concentration, she picked up a comb and teased out the tangles, leaving a smooth, shining mass of auburn, copper, cinnamon, and gold, all gleaming together in the morning sun from the window. Jenny spread it in her hands, shaking her head over it.

“I canna think why the good Lord should waste hair like that on a man,” she remarked. “Like a red-deer’s pelt, in places.”

“It is wonderful isn’t it?” I agreed. “Look, where the sun’s bleached it on top, he’s got those lovely blond streaks.” The object of our admiration glowered up at us.

“If ye both dinna stop it, I shall shave my head.” He stretched out a threatening hand toward the dresser, where his razor rested. His sister, deft in spite of the enormous bulge of pregnancy, reached out and smacked his wrist with the hairbrush. He yelped, then yelped again as she yanked the hair back into a fistful.

“Keep still,” she ordered. She began to separate the hair into three thick strands. “I’ll make ye a proper cockernonny,” she declared with satisfaction. “I’ll no have ye goin’ down to your tenants looking like a savage.”

Jamie muttered something rebellious under his breath, but subsided under his sister’s ministrations. Dexterously tucking in stray bits here and there, she plaited the hair into a thick formal queue, tucking the ends under and binding them securely with thread. Then she reached into her pocket, pulled out a blue silk ribbon and triumphantly tied it in a bow.

“There!” she said. “Bonny, no?” She turned to me for confirmation, and I had to admit it. The closely bound hair set off the shape of his head and the bold modeling of his face. Clean and orderly, in snowy linen and grey breeches, he cut a wonderful figure.

“Especially the ribbon,” I said, suppressing an urge to laugh. “The same color as his eyes.”

Jamie glared at his sister.

“No,” he said shortly. “No ribbons. This isna France, nor yet King Geordie’s court! I dinna care if it’s the color of the Virgin’s cloak – no ribbons, Janet!”

“Oh, all right, then, fusspot. There.” She pulled the ribbon loose and stood back.

“Aye, ye’ll do,” she said, with satisfaction. Then she turned her penetrating blue eyes on me.

“Hm,” she said, tapping her foot thoughtfully.

As I had arrived more or less in rags, it had been necessary to make me two new gowns as quickly as possible; one of homespun for daily use, and one of silk for occasions of state such as this. Better at stitching wounds than cloth, I had helped with the cutting and pinning, but been obliged to leave the design and sewing to Jenny and Mrs. Crook.

They had done a beautiful job, and the primrose yellow silk fitted my torso like a glove, with deep folds rolling back over the shoulders and falling behind in panels that flowed into the luxuriant drape of the full skirt. Bowing reluctantly to my absolute refusal to wear corsets, they had instead ingeniously reinforced the upper bodice with whale-bone stays ruthlessly stripped from an old corset.

Jenny’s eyes traveled slowly upward from my feet to my head, where they lingered. With a sigh, she reached for the hairbrush.

“You, too,” she said.

I sat, face burning, avoiding Jamie’s eyes, as she carefully removed small twigs and bits of oak leaf from my curls, depositing them on the dresser next to those seined from her brother’s hair. Eventually my hair was combed out and pinned up, and she reached into her pocket and pulled out a small lace cap.

“There,” she said, pinning it firmly to the top of my pile of curls. “Kertch and all. Verra respectable ye look, Claire.”

I assumed this was meant as a compliment, and murmured something in reply.

“Have ye any jewelry, though?” Jenny asked.

I shook my head. “No, I’m afraid not. All I had were the pearls Jamie gave me for our wedding, and those-” Under the circumstances of our departure from Leoch, pearls had been the last thing on my mind.

“Oh!” Jamie exclaimed, suddenly reminded. He dug in the sporran resting on the dresser, and triumphantly pulled out the string of pearls.

“Where on earth did you get those?” I asked in amazement.

“Murtagh brought them, early this morning,” he answered. “He went back to Leoch during the trial and got everything he could carry – thinking that we’d need it if we got away. He looked for us on the road here, but of course we’d gone to… to the hill, first.”

“Is he still here?” I asked.

Jamie stood behind me to fasten the necklace.

“Oh, aye. He’s downstairs eating everything in the kitchen and deviling Mrs. Crook.”

Aside from his songs, I had heard the wiry little man say less than three dozen words throughout the course of our acquaintanceship, and the thought of his “deviling” anyone was incongruous. He must feel remarkably at home at Lallybroch, I thought.

“Who is Murtagh?” I asked. “I mean, is he a relation of yours?”

Jamie and Jenny both looked surprised.

“Oh, aye,” the latter replied. She turned to her brother. “He’s – what, Jamie? – Father’s second cousin’s uncle?”

“Nephew,” he corrected. “Ye dinna remember? Old Leo had the two boys, and then-”

I put my hands over my ears in a marked manner. This seemed to remind Jenny of something, for she clapped her hands together.

“Earbobs!” she exclaimed. “I think I’ve some pearl ones that will just do with that necklace! I’ll fetch them directly.” She vanished with her usual light speed.

“Why does your sister call you Roy?” I asked curiously, watching as he tied his stock before the looking glass. He wore the customary expression of a man doing battle with a mortal enemy, common to all men adjusting their neckwear, but he unclamped his lips to grin at me.

“Och, that. It isna the English name Roy. It’s a pet name in Gaelic; the color of my hair. The word’s ‘ruadh’ – means ‘red.’ ” He had to spell the word and say it over several times before I could catch any difference.

“Sounds the same to me, roy,” I said, shaking my head.

Jamie picked up his sporran and began tucking in the loose bits of things that had come out when he pulled out the pearls. Finding a tangled length of fishing line, he upended the bag over the bed, dumping everything in a pile. He began to sort through it, painstakingly winding up the bits of line and string, finding loose fish hooks and firmly re-imbedding them in the piece of cork where they normally rested. I moved over to the bed and inspected the array.

“I’ve never seen so much rubbish in my life,” I observed. “You’re a regular jackdaw, Jamie.”

“It isna rubbish,” he said, stung. “I’ve uses for all these things.”

“Well, the fish lines, and the hooks, yes. And the string for snares. Even, stretching a point, the pistol wadding and the balls – you do carry a pistol now and again. And the little snake Willie gave you, I understand that. But the stones? And a snail shell? And a piece of glass? And…” I bent closer to peer at a dark, furry mass of something.

“What is – it isn’t, is it? Jamie, why on earth are you carrying a dried mole’s foot in your sporran?”

“Against rheumatism, of course.” He snatched the object from under my nose and stuffed it back in the badger skin.

“Oh, of course,” I agreed, surveying him with interest. His face was mildly flushed with embarrassment. “It must work; you don’t creak anywhere.” I picked a small Bible out of the remaining rubble and thumbed through it, while he stowed away the rest of his valuable equipment.

“Alexander William Roderick MacGregor.” I read aloud the name on the flyleaf. “You said there was a debt owing him, Jamie. What did you mean by that?”

“Oh, that.” He sat down beside me on the bed, took the small book from me and gently flipped the pages.

“I told ye this belonged to a prisoner who’d died at Fort William, no?”

“Yes.”

“I didna know the lad myself; he died a month before I came there. But the doctor who gave it to me told me about him, while he tended my back. I think he needed to tell someone about it, and he couldna speak to anyone in the garrison.” He closed the book, holding it on his knee, and stared out the window at the gay October sunshine.

Alex MacGregor, a lad of eighteen or so, had been arrested for the common offense of cattle-lifting. A fair, quiet lad, he had seemed likely to serve his sentence and be released without incident. A week before his release, though, he had been found hanging in the horseshed.

“There was no doubt he’d done it himself, the doctor said.” Jamie caressed the leather cover of the small book, drawing one large thumb along the binding. “And he did not exactly say what he thought, himself. But he did say that Captain Randall had had a private conversation with the lad a week before.”

I swallowed, suddenly cold despite the sunshine.

“And you think-”

“No.” His voice was soft and certain. “I dinna think. I know, and so did the doctor. And I imagine the sergeant-major knew for certain, and that’s why he died.” He spread his hands flat on his knees, looking down at the long joints of his fingers. Large, strong and capable; the hands of a farmer, the hands of a warrior. He picked up the small Bible and put it into the sporran.

“I’ll tell ye this, mo duinne. One day Jack Randall will die at my hands. And when he is dead, I shall send back that book to the mother of Alex MacGregor, with word that her son is avenged.”

The air of tension was broken by the sudden reappearance of Jenny, now resplendent in blue silk and her own lace kertch, holding a large box of worn red morocco leather.

“Jamie, the Currans are come, and Willie Murray and the Jeffries. You’d best go down and have a second breakfast with them – I’ve put out fresh bannocks and salt herring, and Mrs. Crook’s doing fresh jam cakes.”

“Oh, aye. Claire, come down when you’re ready.” Rising hastily, he paused long enough to gather me up for a brief but thorough kiss, and disappeared. His footsteps clattered down the first flight of stairs, slowing on the second to the more sedate pace suitable to a laird’s entrance, as he neared the ground floor.

Jenny smiled after him, then turned her attention to me. Placing the box on the bed, she threw back the lid, revealing a jumbled array of jewels and baubles. I was surprised to see it; it seemed unlike the neat, orderly Jenny Murray whose iron hand kept the household running smoothly from dawn to dusk.

She stirred a finger through the bright clutter, then as though picking up my thought, looked up and smiled at me.

“I keep thinking I must sort all these things one day. But when I was small, my mother would let me rummage in her box sometimes, and it was like finding magic treasure – I never knew what I’d pick up next. I suppose I think if it were all orderly, the magic would go, somehow. Daft, no?”

“No,” I said, smiling back at her. “No, it isn’t.”

We rummaged slowly through the box, holding the cherished bits and pieces of four generations of women.

“That was my grandmother Fraser’s,” Jenny said, holding up a silver brooch. It was in the shape of a fret-worked crescent moon, a small single diamond shining above the tip like a star.

“And this-” She pulled out a slender gold band, with a ruby surrounded by brilliants. “That’s my wedding ring. Ian spent half a year’s salary on it, though I told him he was foolish to do it.” The fond look on her face suggested that Ian had been anything but foolish. She polished the stone on the bosom of her dress and admired it once more before replacing it in the box.

“I’ll be happy once the babe is born,” she said, patting her bulge with a grimace. “My fingers are so swollen in the mornings I can scarcely do up my laces, let alone wear my rings.”

I caught a strange nonmetallic gleam in the depths of the box, and pointed. “What’s that?”

“Oh, those,” she said, dipping into the box again. “I’ve never worn them; they don’t suit me. But you could wear them – you’re tall and queenly, like my mother was. They were hers, ye ken.”

They were a pair of bracelets. Each made from the curving, almost-circular tusk of a wild boar, polished to a deep ivory glow, the ends capped with silver tappets, etched with flowered tracery.

“Lord, they’re gorgeous! I’ve never seen anything so… so wonderfully barbaric.”

Jenny was amused. “Aye, that they are. Someone gave them to Mother as a wedding gift, but she never would say who. My father used to tease her now and then about her admirer, but she wouldna tell him, either, just smiled like a cat that’s had cream to its supper. Here, try them.”

The ivory was cool and heavy on my arm. I couldn’t resist stroking the deep yellow surface, grained with age.

“Aye, they suit ye,” Jenny declared. “And they go wi’ that yellow gown, as well. Here are the earbobs – put these on, and we’ll go down.”

Murtagh was seated at the kitchen table, industriously eating ham off the end of his dirk. Passing behind him with a platter, Mrs. Crook dexterously bent and slid three fresh hot bannocks onto his plate, hardly breaking her stride.

Jenny was bustling to and fro, preparing and overseeing. Pausing in her progress, she peered over Murtagh’s shoulder at his rapidly emptying plate.

“Don’t stint yourself, man,” she remarked. “There’s another hog in the pen, after all.”

“Begrudge a kinsman a bite, do ye?” he asked, not interrupting his chewing.

“Me?” Jenny put both hands on her hips. “Heavens, no! After all, ye’ve only had the four helpings so far. Mrs. Crook,” she turned to call to the departing housekeeper, “when you’ve done wi’ the bannocks, fix this starveling man a bowl of parritch to fill in the chinks with. We dinna want him fainting on the doorstep, ye ken.”

When Murtagh saw me standing in the doorway, he promptly choked on a bite of ham.

“Mmmphm,” he said, by way of greeting, after Jenny had pounded him helpfully on the back.

“Nice to see you too,” I replied, sitting down opposite him. “Thank you, by the way.”

“Mmphm?” The question was muffled by half a bannock, spread with honey.

“For fetching my things from the Castle.”

“Mmp.” He dismissed any notion of thanks with a wave that ended in a reach for the butter dish.

“I brought your wee bits of plant and such as well,” he said, with a jerk of the head at the window. “Out in the yard, in my saddlebags.”

“You’ve brought my medicine box? That’s wonderful!” I was delighted. Some of the medicinal plants were rare, and had taken no little trouble to find and prepare properly.

“But how did you manage?” I asked. Once I had recovered from the horror of the witchcraft trial, I often wondered how the occupants of the Castle had taken my sudden arrest and escape. “I hope you didn’t have any difficulty.”

“Och, no.” He took another healthy bite, but waited until it had made its leisurely way down his throat before replying further.

“Mrs. Fitz had them put away, like, packed up in a box already. I went to her at the first, ye ken, for I wasna sure what reception I’d get.”

“Very sensible. I don’t imagine Mrs. Fitz would scream at sight of you,” I agreed. The bannocks were steaming gently in the cool air, and smelt heavenly. I reached for one, the heavy boar’s-tooth bracelets clinking together on my wrist. I saw Murtagh’s eyes on them and adjusted them so he could see the engraved silver end pieces.

“Aren’t they lovely?” I said. “Jenny said they were her mother’s.”

Murtagh’s eyes dropped to the bowl of parritch that Mrs. Crook had thrust unceremoniously under his nose.

“They suit ye,” he mumbled. Then, returning suddenly to the earlier subject, he said, “No, she wouldna summon help against me. I was well acquent’ wi’ Glenna FitzGibbons, some time ago.”

“Oh, a long-lost love of yours, was she?” I teased, enjoying the incongruous thought of him entwined in amorous embrace with the ample Mrs. Fitz.

Murtagh glanced up coldly from his parritch.

“That she wasna, and I’ll thank ye to keep a civil tongue when ye speak of the lady. Her husband was my mother’s brother. And she was sore grieved for ye, I’ll ha’ ye to know.”

I lowered my eyes, abashed, and reached for the honey to cover my embarrassment. The stone jar had been set in a pot of boiling water to liquefy the contents, and it was comfortingly warm to the touch.

“I’m sorry,” I said, drizzling the sweet golden fluid over the bannock, watching carefully so as not to spill it. “I wondered, you know, what she felt like, when… when I…”

“They didna realize at the first ye were gone,” the little man said matter-of-factly, ignoring my apology. “When ye didna come in to dinner, they thought maybe you’d stayed late in the fields and gone up to your bed without eating; your door was closed. And the next day, when there was all the outcry over the taking of Mistress Duncan, no one thought to look for ye. There was no mention of you, only of her, when the news came, and in all the excitement, no one thought to look for ye.”

I nodded thoughtfully. No one would have missed me, save those seeking medical treatment; I had spent most of my time in Colum’s library while Jamie was away.

“What about Colum?” I asked. I was more than idly curious; had he really planned it, as Geilie thought?

Murtagh shrugged. He scanned the table for further victuals, apparently spotted nothing to his liking, and leaned back, folding his hands comfortably over his lean midriff.

“When he had the news from the village, he had the gates closed at once, and forbade anyone from the Castle to go down, for fear of being caught up in the moil.” He leaned further back, eyeing me speculatively.

“Mrs. Fitz thought to find ye, the second day. She said that she asked all the maids if they’d laid eyes on ye. No one had, but one of the girls said she thought perhaps ye’d gone to the village – maybe you’d taken shelter in a house there.” One of the girls, I thought cynically. The one that knew bloody well where I was.

He belched softly, not bothering to stifle the sound.

“I heard Mrs. Fitz turned the Castle upside down, then, and made Colum send down a man to the village, once she was sure ye werena to be found. And when they learned what had happened…” A faint look of amusement lighted the dark face.

“She didna tell me everything, but I gathered she made Himself’s life more of a misery to him than it usually is, naggin’ at him to send down and free ye by force of arms – and not the least bit of use, him arguin’ that it had gone well beyond the point where he could do that, and now it was in the hands o’ the examiners, and one thing and another. It must ha’ been something to see,” he said reflectively, “twa wills like that, set one against the other.”

And in the end, it seemed, neither had either triumphed nor given way. Ned Gowan, with his lawyer’s gift for compromise, had found the way between them, by offering to go himself to the trial, not as representative of the laird, but as an independent advocate.

“Did she think I might be a witch?” I asked curiously. Murtagh snorted briefly.

“I’ve yet to see the auld woman believes in witches, nor the young one, neither. It’s men think there must be ill-wishes and magic in women, when it’s only the natural way of the creatures.”

“I begin to see why you’ve never married,” I said.

“Do ye, then?” He pushed back his chair abruptly and rose, pulling the plaid forward over his shoulders.

“I’ll be off. Gie my respects to the laird,” he said to Jenny, who reappeared from the front hall, where she had been greeting tenants. “He’ll be busy, I’ve nae doubt.”

Jenny handed him a large cloth sack, tied in a knot at the mouth, and plainly holding enough provisions for a week.

“A wee bite for the journey home,” she said, dimpling at him. “Might last ye at least out of sight o’ the house.”

He tucked the knot of the sack snugly into his belt and nodded briefly, turning toward the door.

“Aye,” he said, “and if not, ye’ll see the corbies gatherin’ just beyond the rise, come to pick my bones.”

“A lot of good they’d get from it,” she answered cynically, eyeing his scrawny frame. “I’ve seen more sound flesh on a broomstick.”

Murtagh’s dour face remained unchanged, but a faint gleam showed in his eye, nonetheless.

“Oh, aye?” he said. “Weel, I’ll tell ye, lass…” The voices passed down the hall, mingling in amiable insult and argument, vanishing at last in the echoes of the front hall.

I sat at the table for a moment longer, idly caressing the warm ivory of Ellen MacKenzie’s bracelets. At the far-off slam of the door, I shook myself and stood up to take my place as the Lady of Lallybroch.

Usually a busy place, on Quarter Day the manor house simply bristled with activity. Tenants came and went all day. Many came only long enough to pay their rents; some stayed all day, wandering about the estate, visiting with friends, taking refreshment in the parlor. Jenny, blooming in blue silk, and Mrs. Crook, starched in white linen, flitted back and forth between kitchen and parlor, overseeing the two maidservants, who staggered to and fro under enormous platters of oatcake, fruitcake, “crumbly,” and other sweets.

Jamie, having introduced me with ceremony to the tenants present in dining room and parlor, then retired into his study with Ian, to receive the tenants singly, to confer with them over the needs of the spring planting, to consult over the sale of wool and grain, to note the activities of the estate, and to set things in order for the next quarter of the year.

I puttered cheerfully about the place, visiting with tenants, lending a hand with the refreshments when needed, sometimes just drifting into the background to watch the comings and goings.

Recalling Jamie’s promise to the old woman by the millpond, I waited with some curiosity for the arrival of Ronald MacNab.

He came shortly past noon, riding a tall, slip-jointed mule, with a small boy clinging to his belt behind. I viewed them covertly from the parlor door, wondering just how accurate his mother’s assessment had been.

I decided that while “drunken sot” might be overstating things slightly, Grannie MacNab’s general perceptions were acute. Ronald MacNab’s hair was long and greasy, carelessly tied back with twine, and his collar and cuffs were grey with dirt. While surely a year or two younger than Jamie, he looked at least fifteen years older, the bones of his face submerged in bloat, small grey eyes dulled and bloodshot.

As for the child, he also was scruffy and dirty. Worse, so far as I was concerned, he slunk along behind his father, keeping his eyes on the floor, cringing when Ronald turned and spoke sharply to him. Jamie, who had come to the door of his study, saw it too, and I saw him exchange a sharp look with Jenny, bringing a fresh decanter in answer to his call.

She nodded imperceptibly and handed over the decanter. Then, taking the child firmly by the hand, she towed him toward the kitchen, saying, “Come along wi’ me now, laddie. I believe we’ve a crumbly or two going wantin’. Or what about a slice of fruitcake?”

Jamie nodded formally to Ronald MacNab, standing aside as the man went into the study. Reaching out to shut the door, Jamie caught my eye and nodded toward the kitchen. I nodded back and turned to follow Jenny and young Rabbie.

I found them engaged in pleasant converse with Mrs. Crook, who was ladling punch from the big cauldron into a crystal bowl. She tipped a bit into a wooden cup and offered it to the lad, who hung back, eyeing her suspiciously, before finally accepting it. Jenny went on chatting casually to the lad as she loaded platters, receiving little more than grunts in return. Still, the half-wild little creature seemed to be relaxing a bit.

“Your sark’s a bit grubby, lad,” she observed, leaning forward to turn back the collar. “Take it off, and I’ll give it a bit of a wash before ye go.” “Grubby” was a gross understatement, but the boy pulled back defensively. I was behind him, though, and at a gesture from Jenny, grabbed him by the arms before he could dart away.

He kicked and yowled, but Jenny and Mrs. Crook closed in on him as well, and between the three of us, we peeled the filthy shirt off his back.

“Ah.” Jenny drew in her breath sharply. She was holding the boy’s head firmly under one arm, and the scrawny back was fully exposed. Welts and scabs scored the flesh on either side of the knobby backbone, some freshly healed, some so old as to be only faded shadows lapping the prominent ribs. Jenny took a good grip on the back of the boy’s neck, speaking soothingly to him as she released his head. She jerked her head in the direction of the hall, looking at me.

“You’d better tell him.”

I knocked tentatively at the study door, holding a plate of honeyed oatcakes as excuse. At Jamie’s muffled bidding, I opened the door and went in.

My face as I served MacNab must have been sufficient, for I didn’t have to ask to speak privately with Jamie. He stared meditatively at me for a moment, then turned back to his tenant.

“Well then, Ronnie, that will do for the grain allotment. There’s the one other thing I meant to speak wi’ you about, though. You’ve a likely lad named Rabbie, I understand, and I’m needing a boy of that size to help in the stables. Would ye be willing for him to come?” Jamie’s long fingers played with a goosequill on the desk. Ian, seated at a smaller table to one side, propped his chin on his fists, staring at MacNab with frank interest.

MacNab glowered belligerently. I thought he had the irritable resentment of a man who isn’t drunk but wishes he were.

“No, I’ve need of the lad,” he said curtly.

“Mm.” Jamie lounged back in his chair, hands folded across his middle. “I’d pay ye for his services, of course.”

The man grunted and shifted in his chair.

“My mother’s been at ye, eh? I said no, and I meant no. The lad’s my son, and I’ll deal wi’ him as I see fit. And I see fit to keep him to hame.”

Jamie eyed MacNab thoughtfully, but turned his attention back to the ledgers without further argument.

Late in the afternoon, as the tenants repaired to the warmer reaches of pantry and parlor for refreshment before departing, I spotted Jamie from the window, strolling in leisurely fashion toward the pigshed, arm slung about the scruffy MacNab in comradely style. The pair disappeared behind the shed, presumably to inspect something of agricultural interest, and reappeared within a minute or two, coming toward the house.

Jamie’s arm was still about the shorter man’s shoulders, but seemed now to be supporting him. MacNab’s face was an unhealthy grey, slicked with sweat, and he walked very slowly, seeming unable to straighten up all the way.

“Weel, that’s good, then,” Jamie remarked cheerfully as they came within earshot. “Reckon your missus will be glad of the extra money, eh, Ronald? Ah, here’s your animal for you – fine-looking beast, is he no?” The moth-eaten mule that had brought the MacNabs to the farm shambled out of the yard where it had been enjoying the hospitality of the estate. A wisp of hay still protruded from the corners of its mouth, jerking irregularly as the beast chewed.

Jamie gave MacNab a hand under the foot to assist him to his seat; much-needed help, by the look of it. MacNab did not speak or wave in response to Jamie’s voluble “God-speeds” and “safe journeys,” but only nodded in a dazed way as he left the yard at a walk, seemingly intent on some secret trouble that absorbed his attention.

Jamie stood leaning on the fence, exchanging pleasantries as other tenants wended their ways homeward, until the untidy figure of MacNab was out of sight over the crest of the hill. He straightened, gazing down the road, then turned and gave a whistle. A small figure in a torn but clean smock and stained kilt crept out from under the haywagon.

“Weel, then, young Rabbie,” said Jamie genially. “Looks as though your father’s given his permission for ye to be a stable lad after all. I’m sure as you’ll be a hard worker and a credit to him, eh?” Round, bloodshot eyes stared up dumbly out of the dirty face, and the boy made no response at all, until Jamie reached out, and grasping him gently by the shoulder, turned him toward the horse trough.

“There’ll be some supper waiting ye in the kitchen, laddie. Go and wash a bit first, though; Mrs. Crook’s a picky woman. Oh, and Rabbie” – he leaned down to whisper to the lad – “mind your ears, or she’ll do ’em for ye. She scrubbed mine for me this morning.” He put his hands behind his ears and flapped them solemnly at the boy, who broke into a shy smile and fled toward the trough.

“I’m glad you managed it,” I said, taking Jamie’s arm to go in to supper. “With little Rabbie MacNab, I mean. How did you do it, though?”

He shrugged. “Took Ronald back of the brewhouse and fisted him once or twice in the soft parts. Asked him did he want to part wi’ his son or his liver.” He glanced down at me, frowning.

“It wasna right, but I couldn’t think what else to do. And I didna want the lad to go back wi’ him. It wasn’t only I’d promised his grannie, either. Jenny told me about the lad’s back.” He hesitated. “I’ll tell ye, Sassenach. My father whipped me as often as he thought I needed it, and a lot oftener than I thought I did. But I didna cower when he spoke to me. And I dinna think young Rabbie will lie in bed with his wife one day and laugh about it.”

He hunched his shoulders, with that odd half-shrug, something I hadn’t seen him do in months.

“He’s right; the lad’s his own son, he can do as he likes. And I’m not God; only the laird, and that’s a good bit lower down. Still…” He looked down at me with a crooked half-smile.

“It’s a damn thin line between justice and brutality, Sassenach. I only hope I’ve come down on the right side of it.”

I put an arm around his waist and hugged him.

“You did right, Jamie.”

“Ye think so?”

“Yes.”

We strolled back toward the house, arms about each other. The whitewashed farm buildings glowed amber in the setting sun. Instead of going into the house, though, Jamie steered me up the slight rise behind the manor. Here, sitting on the top rail of a fenced field, we could see the whole of the home farm laid out before us.

I laid my head on Jamie’s shoulder and sighed. He squeezed me gently in response.

“This is what you were born to do, isn’t it, Jamie?”

“Perhaps, Sassenach.” He looked out over the fields and buildings, the crofts and the roads, then looked down, a smile suddenly curving the wide mouth.

“And you, my Sassenach? What were you born for? To be lady of a manor, or to sleep in the fields like a gypsy? To be a healer, or a don’s wife, or an outlaw’s lady?”

“I was born for you,” I said simply, and held out my arms to him.

“Ye know,” he observed, letting go at last, “you’ve never said it.”

“Neither have you.”

“I have. The day after we came. I said I wanted you more than anything.”

“And I said that loving and wanting weren’t necessarily the same thing,” I countered.

He laughed. “Perhaps you’re right, Sassenach.” He smoothed the hair from my face and kissed my brow. “I wanted ye from the first I saw ye – but I loved ye when you wept in my arms and let me comfort you, that first time at Leoch.”

The sun sank below the line of black pines, and the first stars of the evening came out. It was mid-November, and the evening air was cold, though the days still kept fine. Standing on the opposite side of the fence, Jamie bent his head, putting his forehead against mine.

“You first.”

“No, you.”

“Why?”

“I’m afraid.”

“Of what, my Sassenach?” The darkness was rolling in over the fields, filling the land and rising up to meet the night. The light of the new crescent moon marked the ridges of brow and nose, crossing his face with light.

“I’m afraid if I start I shall never stop.”

He cast a glance at the horizon, where the sickle moon hung low and rising. “It’s nearly winter, and the nights are long, mo duinne.” He leaned across the fence, reaching, and I stepped into his arms, feeling the heat of his body and the beat of his heart.

“I love you.”

Chapter 32. HARD LABOR

A few days later, near sunset, I was on the hill behind the house, digging up the tubers of a small patch of corydalis I had found. Hearing the rustle of footsteps approaching through the grass, I turned, expecting to see Jenny or Mrs. Crook come to call me to supper. Instead it was Jamie, hair spiked with dampness from his predinner ablutions, still in his shirt, knotted together between his legs for working in the fields. He came up behind me and put his arms around me, resting his chin on my shoulder. Together we watched the sun sinking behind the pines, robed in gold and purple glory. The landscape faded quietly around us, but we stayed where we were, wrapped in contentment. Finally, as it began to grow dark, I could hear Jenny calling from the house below.

“We’d better go in,” I said, reluctantly stirring.

“Mmm.” Jamie didn’t move, but merely tightened his hold, still gazing into the deepening shadows, as though trying to fix each stone and blade of grass in memory.

I turned to him and slipped my arms around his neck.

“What is it?” I asked quietly. “Must we leave soon?” My heart sank at the prospect of leaving Lallybroch, but I knew that it was dangerous for us to stay too much longer; another visit from the redcoats could happen at any time, with much more sinister results.

“Aye. Tomorrow, or the day after, at latest. There are English at Knockchoilum; it’s twenty miles from here, but that’s only two days’ ride in fine weather.” I started to slither off the fence, but Jamie slid an arm under my knees and lifted me, holding me against his chest.

I could feel the heat of the sun still in his skin, and smell the warm dusty scent of sweat and oat grass. He had been helping with the last of the harvesting, and the smell reminded me of a supper the week before, when I knew that Jenny, always friendly and polite, had finally accepted me fully as a member of the family.

Harvesting was grueling work, and Ian and Jamie were often nodding by the end of supper. On one occasion, I had left the table to fetch a brose pudding for dessert, and returned to find both of them sound asleep, and Jenny laughing quietly to herself amid the remains of supper. Ian lay slumped in his chair, chin resting on his chest, breathing heavily. Jamie had laid his cheek on his folded arms and sprawled forward across the table, snoring peacefully between the platter and the peppermill.

Jenny took the pudding from me and served us both, shaking her head at the slumbering men.

“They were yawning so much I wondered, ye know,” she said, “what would happen if I stopped talking. So I kept quiet, and sure enough, two minutes later they were out, the both of them.” She smoothed Ian’s hair tenderly off his forehead.

“That’s why there’re so few babies born in July here,” she said, with a wicked cock of the eyebrow at me. “The men can’t keep awake long enough in November to start one.” It was true enough, and I laughed. Jamie stirred and snorted next to me, and I laid a hand on the back of his neck to soothe him. His lips curved at once in a soft, reflexive smile, then relaxed into sleep once more.

Jenny, watching him, said, “That’s funny, that is. I’ve not seen him do that since he was quite small.”

“Do what?”

She nodded. “Smile in his sleep. He used always to do it, if ye came by and petted him in his cradle, or even later, in his trundle. Sometimes Mother and I would take it in turns to stroke his head and see could we make him smile; he always would.”

“That’s odd, isn’t it?” I experimented, running a hand gently down the back of his head and neck. Sure enough, I was rewarded at once by a singularly sweet smile that lingered for a moment before the lines of his face relaxed once more into the rather stern expression he presented when asleep.

“I wonder why he does that,” I said, watching him in fascination. Jenny shrugged and grinned at me.

“I imagine it means he’s happy.”

In the event, we did not leave next day. In the middle of the night, I was wakened by low conversation in the room. Rolling over, I saw Ian bending over the bed, holding a candle.

“The babe’s on its way,” said Jamie, seeing me awake. He sat up, yawning. “A bit early, Ian?”

“Ye never know. Small Jamie was late. Better early than late, I reckon.” Ian’s smile was quick and nervous.

“Sassenach, can ye deliver a child? Or had I best go for the midwife?” Jamie turned to me, questioning. I didn’t hesitate in my answer.

I shook my head. “Get the midwife.” I had seen only three births during my training; all conducted in a sterile operating room, the patient draped and anesthetized, nothing visible save the grotesquely swelling perineum and the suddenly emergent head.

Having seen Jamie on his way to fetch the midwife, Mrs. Martins, I followed Ian up the stairs.

Jenny was sitting in a chair near the window, leaning comfortably back. She had put on an old nightgown, stripped the bed and spread an aged quilt over the feather mattress, and was now just sitting. Waiting.

Ian hovered nervously over her. Jenny smiled too, but with a distracted, inward look, as though listening to something far off, which only she could hear. Ian, fully dressed, fidgeted about the room, picking things up and putting them down, until Jenny at last ordered him to leave.

“Go downstairs and rouse Mrs. Crook, Ian,” she said, smiling to ease the dismissal. “Tell her to get things ready for Mrs. Martins. She’ll ken what to do.” She drew in her breath sharply then, and put both hands on her distended abdomen. I stared, seeing her belly draw up suddenly tight and round. She bit her lip and breathed heavily for a moment, then relaxed. Her belly had resumed its normal shape, a slightly pendant teardrop, rounded at both ends.

Ian put a hand hesitantly on her shoulder, and she covered it with her own, smiling up at him.

“Then tell her to feed ye, man. You and Jamie will be needing a bit to eat. They say the second babe comes faster than the first; maybe by the time you’re done wi’ breakfast, I’ll be ready for a bite myself.”

He squeezed her shoulder tightly, and kissed her, murmuring something in her ear before turning to go. He hesitated in the doorway, looking back, but she waved him firmly away.

It seemed a very long time before Jamie arrived with the midwife, and I grew more nervous as the contractions grew stronger. Second babies were said to be faster, as a rule. What if this one decided to arrive before Mrs. Martins?

At first, Jenny carried on light conversation with me, only pausing to bend forward slightly, holding her stomach, as the contractions tightened their grip. But she quickly lost the urge to talk, and lay back, resting quietly in between the increasingly powerful pains. Finally, after one that almost bent her double in her chair, she rose to her feet, staggering.

“Help me walk a bit, Claire,” she said. Unsure what was the proper procedure, I did as she said, grasping her tightly under the arm to help her stand upright. We made several slow circuits of the room, pausing when a contraction struck, going on when it eased. Shortly before the midwife arrived, Jenny made her way to the bed and lay down.

Mrs. Martins was a reassuring-looking person; tallish and thin, she had wide shoulders and muscular forearms, and the sort of kind, down-to-earth expression that invited confidence. Two vertical creases between her iron-grey brows, always visible, deepened when she was concentrating.

They stayed shallow as she made her preliminary examination. Everything normal so far, then. Mrs. Crook had produced a pile of clean, ironed sheets for our use, and Mrs. Martins took one of these, still folded, and pushed it under Jenny. I was startled to see the dark stain of blood between her thighs, as she raised herself slightly.

Seeing my look, Mrs. Martins nodded reassuringly.

“Aye. Bloody show, it’s called. It’s all right. It’s only when the blood is bright red, and a terrible lot all at once, that ye worry. There’s nothing wrong.”

We all settled down to wait. Mrs. Martins talked quietly and comfortingly to Jenny, rubbing the small of her back, pressing hard during the contractions. As the pains became more frequent, Jenny began to clamp her lips together and snort heavily through her nose. Often, there was a deep, faint groan as the full force of the pain came on.

Jenny’s hair was soaked with perspiration by this time, and her face bright red with the strain. Watching her, I realized fully why it was called “labor.” Giving birth was bloody hard work.

Over the next two hours, little progress appeared to be made, except that the pains grew obviously stronger. Able at first to answer questions, Jenny quit responding, lying panting at the end of each contraction, face fading from red to white in a matter of seconds.

She clamped her lips through the next one, beckoning me to her side as it eased.

“If the child lives…” she said, gasping for air, “and it’s a girl… her name is Margaret. Tell Ian… name her Margaret Ellen.”

“Yes, of course,” I soothed. “But you’ll be able to tell him yourself. It won’t be long, now.”

She only shook her head in determined negation, and clenched her teeth as the next pain came. Mrs. Martins took me by the arm, steering me away.

“Dinna mind it, lassie,” she said matter-of-factly. “They always think they’re goin’ to die about now.”

“Oh,” I said, mildly relieved.

“Mind ye,” she said, in a lower voice, “sometimes they do.”

Even Mrs. Martins seemed a trifle worried as the pains went on, with no appreciable progress. Jenny was tiring badly; as each pain eased, her body went slack, and she even dozed off, as though seeking escape in small intervals of sleep. Then, as the remorseless fist grasped her once again, she would wake fighting and groaning with effort, writhing to the side to curl protectively over the rigid lump of the unborn child.

“Could the child be… backward?” I asked, in a low voice, shy about suggesting such a thing to an experienced midwife. Mrs. Martins seemed not at all offended by the suggestion, though; the lines between her brows merely deepened as she looked at the straining woman.

When the next pain eased, Mrs. Martins flung back the sheet and nightgown, and went rapidly to work, pressing here and there on the huge mound with quick, skilled fingers. It took several tries, as the probing seemed to incite the pains, and examination was impossible during the relentlessly powerful contractions.

At last she drew back, thinking, tapping one foot abstractedly as she watched Jenny writhe through two more of the spine-wrenching pains. As she jerked on the sheets, one of the strained linens parted suddenly with a rending tear.

As though this had been a signal, Mrs. Martins started forward with decision, beckoning to me.

“Lean her back a bit, lass,” Mrs. Martins instructed me, not at all disconcerted by Jenny’s cries. I supposed she had heard her share of screaming.

At the next relaxation, Mrs. Martins plunged into action. Grasping the child through the momentarily flaccid walls of the womb, she heaved, trying to turn it. Jenny screamed and jerked my arms as another contraction started.

Mrs. Martins tried again. And again. And again. Unable to keep from pushing, Jenny was wearing herself far past the point of exhaustion, her body struggling past the bounds of ordinary strength as it strove to force the child into the world.

Then it worked. There was a sudden strange fluid shifting, and the amorphous bulk of the child turned under Mrs. Martins’s hands. All at once, the shape of Jenny’s belly was altered, and there was an immediate sense of getting down to business.

“Now push.” She did, and Mrs. Martins dropped to her knees beside the bed. Apparently she saw some sign of progress, for she rose and hastily snatched a small bottle from the table where she had put it when she came in. She poured a small amount of what looked like oil on her fingertips, and began to rub it gently between Jenny’s legs.

Jenny made a deep and vicious sound of protest at being touched as the next pain came on, and Mrs. Martins took her hand away. Jenny sagged into inertness and the midwife resumed her gentle massage, crooning to her patient, telling her everything was well, just to rest, and now… push!

During the next contraction, Mrs. Martins put her hand on top of Jenny’s belly and pushed down strongly. Jenny shrieked, but the midwife kept pushing until the contraction eased.

“Push with me on the next one,” the midwife said. “It’s almost here.”

I put my hands above Mrs. Martins’s on Jenny’s belly, and at her signal, all three of us pushed together. There was a deep, victorious grunt from Jenny, and a slimy blob swelled suddenly between her thighs. She straightened her legs against the mattress and pushed once more, and Margaret Ellen Murray shot into the world like a greased pig.

A little later, I straightened from wiping Jenny’s smiling face with a damp rag and glanced out the window. It was nearly sunset.

“I’m all right,” Jenny said. “Quite all right.” The broad grin of delight with which she had greeted the delivery of her daughter had turned into a small, permanent smile of deep contentment. She reached up with an unsteady hand and touched my sleeve.

“Go tell Ian,” she said. “He’ll be worrit.”

To my cynical eyes, it didn’t look it. The scene in the study, where Ian and Jamie had taken refuge, strongly resembled a premature celebratory debauch. An empty decanter stood on the sideboard, accompanied by several bottles, and a strong alcoholic fume hung over the room like a cloud.

The proud father appeared to have passed out, head resting on the laird’s desk. The laird himself was still conscious, but bleary-eyed, leaning back against the paneling and blinking like an owl.

Outraged, I stamped over to the desk and gripped Ian by the shoulder, shaking him roughly and ignoring Jamie, who pushed himself upright, saying, “Sassenach, wait…”

Ian was not quite unconscious. His head came up reluctantly, and he looked at me with a set, rigid face, eyes bleak and pleading holes. I realized suddenly that he thought I had come to tell him that Jenny was dead.

I relaxed my grip and patted him gently instead.

“She’s all right,” I said, softly. “You have a daughter.”

He laid his head down on his arms again, and I left him, his thin shoulders shaking as Jamie patted his back.

The survivors now revived and cleaned up, the Murray-Fraser families gathered in Jenny’s room for a celebratory supper. Little Margaret, tidied for inspection and swaddled in a small blanket, was given to her father, who received his new offspring with an expression of beatific reverence.

“Hello, wee Maggie,” he whispered, touching the tiny button of a nose with one fingertip.

His new daughter, unimpressed by the introduction, closed her eyes in concentration, stiffened, and urinated on her father’s shirt.

During the brief bustle of hilarity and repair occasioned by this lapse of good manners, small Jamie succeeded in escaping from the clutches of Mrs. Crook and flung himself onto Jenny’s bed. She grunted slightly in discomfort, but put out a hand and gathered him in, waving at Mrs. Crook to let him be.

“My mama!” he declared, burrowing into Jenny’s side.

“Well, who else?” she asked reasonably. “Here, laddie.” She hugged him, and kissed the top of his head, and he relaxed, reassured, and snuggled against her. She gently pushed his head down, stroking his hair.

“Lay your head then, man,” she said. “Past your bedtime. Lay your head.” Comforted by her presence, he put a thumb in his mouth and fell asleep.

Given a turn to hold the baby, Jamie proved remarkably competent, cupping the small fuzzy skull in the palm of one hand like a tennis ball. He seemed reluctant to hand the child back to Jenny, who cuddled her against her breasts, crooning soft endearments.

At last we made our way to our own room, which seemed silent and empty in contrast to the warm family scene we had just left, Ian kneeling by his wife’s bed, hand resting on small Jamie as Jenny nursed the new baby. I was conscious for the first time of just how tired I was; it was nearly twenty-four hours since Ian had roused me.

Jamie closed the door quietly behind him. Without speaking, he came behind me and undid the fastenings of my gown. His hands reached around me and I lay back gratefully against his chest. Then he bent his head to kiss me and I turned, putting my own arms around his neck. I felt not only very tired, but very tender, and not a little sad.

“Perhaps it’s as well,” Jamie said slowly, as though to himself.

“What’s as well?”

“That you’re barren.” He couldn’t see my face, buried in his chest, but he must have felt me stiffen.

“Aye, I knew that long ago. Geillis Duncan told me, soon after we wed.” He stroked my back gently. “I regretted it a bit at first, but then I began to think it was as well; living as we must, it would be verra difficult if you were to get with child. And now” – he shivered slightly – “now I think I am glad of it; I wouldna want ye to suffer that way.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” I said, after a long while, thinking of the rounded, fuzzy head and tiny fingers.

“I would.” He kissed the top of my head. “I saw Ian’s face; it was like his own flesh was being torn, each time Jenny screamed.” My arms were around him, stroking the ridged scars on his back. “I can bear pain, myself,” he said softly, “but I couldna bear yours. That would take more strength than I have.”

Chapter 33. THE WATCH

Jenny recovered rapidly after Margaret’s birth, insisting on coming downstairs the day following the delivery. At the combined insistence of Ian and Jamie, she reluctantly refrained from doing any work, only supervising from the sofa in the parlor where she reclined, baby Margaret sleeping in her cradle alongside.

Not content to sit idle, though, within a day or two she had ventured as far as the kitchen, and then the back garden. Sitting on the wall, the well-wrapped baby in a carrying sling, she was keeping me company as I simultaneously pulled dead vines and kept an eye on the enormous cauldron in which the household’s laundry was boiled. Mrs. Crook and the maids had already removed the clean wash to be hung and dried; now I was waiting for the water to cool sufficiently to be dumped out.

Small Jamie was “helping” me, yanking out plants with mad abandon and flinging bits of stick in all directions. I called a warning as he ventured too near the cauldron, then raced after him as he ignored me. Luckily the pot had cooled quickly; the water was no more than warm. Warning him to keep back with his mother, I grasped the pot and tilted it away from the iron contrivance that held it and kept it from falling.

I sprang back out of the way as the dirty water cascaded over the lip of the pot, steaming in the chilly air. Young Jamie, squatting beside me on his heels, splatted his hands joyfully in the warm mud, and black droplets flew all over my skirts.

His mother slid down from the wall, yanked him up by the collar and dealt him a smart clout on the backside.

“Have ye no sense, gille? Look at ye! There’s your shirt’ll have to go and be washed again! And look what ye’ve done to your auntie’s skirt, ye wee heathen!”

“It doesn’t matter,” I protested, seeing the miscreant’s lower lip quiver.

“Weel, it matters to me,” said Jenny, giving her offspring the benefit of a gimlet eye. “Say ‘sorry’ to your auntie, laddie, then get ye into the house and have Mrs. Crook give ye a bit of a wash.” She patted his bottom, gently this time, and gave him a push in the direction of the house.

We were turning back to the mass of sodden clothes, when the sound of hoofbeats came from the road.

“That’ll be Jamie back, I expect,” I said, listening. “He’s early, though.”

Jenny shook her head, peering intently toward the road. “Not his horse.”

The horse, when it appeared at the crest of a hill, was not one she knew, to judge from her frown. The man aboard, though, was no stranger. She stiffened beside me, then began to run toward the gate, wrapping both arms around the baby to hold it steady.

“It’s Ian!” she called to me.

He was tattered and dusty and bruised about the face, as he slid off his horse. One bruise on his forehead was swollen, with a nasty split that went through the eyebrow. Jenny caught him under the arm as he hit the ground, and it was only then I saw that his wooden leg was gone.

“Jamie,” he gasped. “We met the Watch near the mill. Waiting for us. They knew we were coming.”

My stomach lurched. “Is he alive?”

He nodded, panting for breath. “Aye. Not wounded, either. They took him to the west, toward Killin.”

Jenny’s fingers were exploring his face.

“Are ye bad hurt, man?”

He shook his head. “No. They took my horse and my leg; they didna need to kill me to stop me following.”

Jenny glanced at the horizon, where the sun lay just above the trees. Maybe four o’clock, I estimated. Ian followed her gaze and anticipated her question.

“We met them near midday. It took me over two hours to get to a place that had a horse.”

She stood still, for a moment, calculating, then turned to me with decision.

“Claire. Help Ian to the house, will ye, and if he needs aught in the way of doctoring, do it as fast as ye can. I’ll give the babe to Mrs. Crook and fetch the horses.”

She was gone before either of us could protest.

“Does she mean… but she can’t!” I exclaimed. “She can’t mean to leave the baby!”

Ian was leaning heavily on my shoulder as we made our way slowly up the path to the house. He shook his head.

“Maybe not. But I dinna think she means to let the English hang her brother, either.”

It was growing dark by the time we reached the spot where Jamie and Ian had been ambushed. Jenny slid off her horse and cast about through the bushes like a small terrier, pushing branches out of her way and muttering things under her breath that sounded suspiciously like some of her brother’s better curses.

“East,” she said, finally coming out of the trees, scratched and dirty. She beat dead leaves from her skirt, and took her horse’s reins from my numbed hands. “We canna follow in the dark, but at least I know which way to go, come the dawn.”

We made a simple camp, hobbling the horses and building a small fire. I admired the efficiency with which Jenny had done it, and she smiled.

“I used to make Jamie and Ian show me things, when they were young. How to build fires, and climb trees – even how to skin things. And how to track.” She glanced again in the direction taken by the Watch.

“Dinna worry, Claire.” She smiled at me and sat down by the fire. “Twenty horses canna go far through the brush, but two can. The Watch will be taking the road toward Eskadale, by the looks of it. We can cut over the hills and meet them near Midmains.”

Her nimble fingers were tugging at the bodice of her gown. I stared in amazement as she spread the folds of cloth and pulled down the top of her underblouse to show her breasts. They were very large, and looked hard, swollen with milk. In my ignorance, I had not thought to wonder what a nursing mother does if deprived of her nursling.

“I canna leave the babe for long,” she said in answer to my thoughts, grimacing as she cupped one breast from beneath. “I’ll burst.” In response to the touch, milk had begun to drip from the engorged nipple, thin and bluish. Pulling a large kerchief from her pocket, Jenny tucked it beneath her breast. There was a small pewter cup on the ground beside her, one she had taken from the saddlebag. Pressing the lip of the cup just below the nipple, she gently stroked the breast between two fingers, squeezing gently toward the nipple. The milk dripped faster in response, then suddenly the areole around the nipple contracted and the milk spurted out in a tiny jet of surprising force.

“I didn’t know it did that!” I blurted, staring in fascination.

Jenny moved the cup to catch the stream, and nodded. “Oh, aye. The babe’s sucking starts it, but once the milk lets down, all the child need do is swallow. Oh, that feels better.” She closed her eyes briefly in relief.

She emptied the cup onto the ground, remarking, “Shame to waste it, but there isna much to do wi’ it, is there?” Switching hands, she placed the cup again and repeated the process with the other breast.

“It’s a nuisance,” she said, looking up to see me still watching. “Everything to do wi’ bairns is a nuisance, almost. Still, ye’d never choose not to have them.”

“No,” I answered softly. “You wouldn’t choose that.”

She looked across the fire at me, face kind and concerned.

“It isna your time yet,” she said. “But you’ll have bairns of your own one day.”

I laughed a little shakily. “First we’d better find the father.”

She emptied the second cup and began readjusting her dress.

“Oh, we’ll find them. Tomorrow. We have to, for I canna stay away from wee Maggie much longer than that.”

“And once we’ve found them?” I asked. “What then?”

She shrugged and reached for the blanket rolls.

“That depends on Jamie. And on how much he’s made them hurt him.”

Jenny was right; we did find the Watch the next day. We left our campsite before full day, pausing only long enough for her to express more milk. She seemed to be able to find trails where none existed, and I followed her without question into a heavily wooded area. Quick travel was impossible through the brushy undergrowth, but she assured me that we were taking a much more direct route than the one the Watch would have to follow, bound as they were to roads by the size of their group.

We came on them near noon. I heard the jingle of harness and the casual voices I had heard once before, and put out a hand to stop Jenny, who was following me for the moment.

“There’s a ford in the stream below,” she whispered to me. “It sounds as though they’ve stopped there to water the horses.” Sliding down, she took both sets of reins and tethered our own horses, then, beckoning to me to follow, she slid into the undergrowth like a snake.

From the vantage point to which she led me, on a small ledge overlooking the ford, we could see almost all of the men of the Watch, mostly dismounted and talking in casual groups, some sitting on the ground eating, some leading the horses in groups of two and three to the water. What we couldn’t see was Jamie.

“Do you suppose they’ve killed him?” I whispered in panic. I had counted every man twice, to be sure I had missed no one. There were twenty men and twenty-six horses; all in plain view, so far as I could see. But no hint of a prisoner, and no telltale gleam of sun on red hair.

“I doubt it,” Jenny answered. “But there’s only one way to find out.” She began to squirm backward from the ledge.

“What’s that?”

“Ask.”

The road narrowed as it left the ford, becoming little more than a dusty trail through dense stands of pine and alder on either side. The trail was not wide enough for the Watch to ride two abreast; each man would have to pass down it in single file.

As the last man in the line approached a bend in the trail, Jenny Murray stepped suddenly out in the road ahead of him. His horse shied, and the man struggled to rein it in, cursing. As he opened his mouth to demand indignantly what she meant by this behavior, I stepped out of the bush behind, and whacked him solidly behind the ear with a fallen branch.

Taken completely by surprise, he lost his balance as the horse shied again, and fell off into the roadway. He wasn’t stunned; the blow had only knocked him over. Jenny remedied this deficiency with the assistance of a good-sized rock.

She grabbed the horse’s reins and gestured violently to me.

“Come on!” she whispered. “Get him off the road before they notice he’s gone.”

So it was that when Robert MacDonald of the Glen Elrive Watch recovered consciousness, it was to find himself securely tied to a tree, looking down the barrel of a pistol held by the steely-eyed sister of his erstwhile prisoner.

“What have ye done wi’ Jamie Fraser?” she demanded.

MacDonald shook his head dazedly, obviously thinking her a figment of his imagination. An attempt to move put paid to this notion, and after an allowance for the statutory amount of cursing and threatening, he at last reconciled himself to the idea that the only way to get loose was to tell us what we wanted to know.

“He’s dead,” MacDonald said sullenly. Then, as Jenny’s finger tightened ominously on the trigger, he added in sudden panic, “It wasna me! It was his own fault!”

Jamie, he said, had been mounted double, arms bound with a leather strap, behind one of the Watch, riding between two other men. He had seemed docile enough, and they had taken no particular precautions when fording the river six miles from the mill.

“Damn fool threw himself off the horse and into the deep water,” said MacDonald, shrugging as well as he could with his hands tied behind him. “We fired at him. Must have hit him, for he didna come up again. But the stream’s swift just below the ford, and it’s deep. We searched a bit, but no body. Must ha’ been carried downstream. Now, for God’s sake, ladies, will ye no untie me!”

After repeated threats from Jenny had elicited no further details or changes in his story, we decided to accept it as true. Declining to free MacDonald altogether, Jenny did at least loosen his bonds, so that given time, he might struggle out of them. Then we ran.

“Do you think he’s dead?” I puffed, as we reached the tethered horse.

“I don’t. Jamie swims like a fish, and I’ve seen him hold his breath for three minutes at a time. Come on. We’re going to search the river bank.”

We cast up and down the banks of the river, stumbling on rocks, splashing in the shallows, scratching our hands and faces on the willows that trawled their branches in the pools.

At last Jenny gave a triumphant shout, and I splashed my way across, balancing precariously on the mossy rocks that lined the bottom of the burn, shallow at this spot.

She was holding a leather strap, still fastened in a circle. A smear of blood discolored one side.

“Wiggled out of it here,” she said, bending the circlet between her hands. She looked back in the direction we had come, down that jagged fall of tangled rocks, deep pools and foaming rapids, and shook her head.

“However did ye manage, Jamie?” she said, half to herself.

We found an area of flattened grass, not far from the verge, where he had evidently lain to rest. I found a small brownish smudge on the bark of an aspen nearby.

“He’s hurt,” I said.

“Aye, but he’s moving,” Jenny answered, looking at the ground as she paced back and forth.

“Are you good at tracking?” I asked hopefully.

“I’m no much of a hunter,” she replied, setting off with me close behind, “but if I canna follow something the size of Jamie Fraser through dry bracken, then I’m daft as well as blind.”

Sure enough, a broad track of crushed brown fern led up the side of the hill and disappeared into a thick clump of heather. Circling around this point turned up no further evidence, nor did calling produce any answer.

“He’ll be gone,” Jenny said, sitting down on a log and fanning herself. I thought she looked pale, and realized that kidnapping and threatening armed men was no pursuit for a woman who had given birth less than a week before.

“Jenny,” I said, “you have to go back. Besides, he might go back to Lallybroch.”

She shook her head. “No, that he wouldna. Whatever MacDonald told us, they’re no likely to give up so easy, not with a reward at hand. If they havena hunted him down yet, it’s because they couldn’t. But they’ll have sent someone back to keep an eye on the farm, just in case. No, that’s the one place he wouldna go.” She pulled at the neck of her gown. The day was cold, but she was sweating slightly, and I could see growing dark stains on the bosom of her dress, from leaking milk.

She saw me looking and nodded. “Aye, I’ll have to go back soon. Mrs. Crook’s nursing the lassie wi’ goat’s milk and sugar water, but she canna do without me much longer, nor me without her. I hate to leave ye alone, though.”

I didn’t much care for the thought of having to hunt alone through the Scottish Highlands for a man who might be anywhere, either, but I put a bold face on it.

“I’ll manage,” I said. “It could be worse. At least he’s alive.”

“True.” She glanced at the sun, low over the horizon. “I’ll stay wi’ ye through the night, at least.”

Huddled around the fire at night, we didn’t talk much. Jenny was preoccupied with thoughts of her abandoned child, me with thoughts of just how I was to proceed on my own, alone with no real knowledge of geography or Gaelic.

Suddenly Jenny’s head snapped up, listening. I sat up and listened myself, but heard nothing. I peered into the dark woods in the direction Jenny was looking, but saw no gleaming eyes in the depths, thank God.

When I turned back to the fire, Murtagh was sitting on the other side, calmly warming his hands at the blaze. Jenny snapped round at my exclamation, and uttered a short laugh of surprise.

“I could ha’ cut both your throats before ye ever looked in the right direction,” the little man observed.

“Oh, could ye then?” Jenny was sitting with her knees drawn up, hands clasped near her ankles. With a lightning dart, her hand went under her skirt and the blade of a sgian dhu flashed in the firelight.

“None sae bad,” Murtagh agreed, nodding sagely. “Is the wee Sassenach that good?”

“No,” said Jenny, restoring her blade to her stocking. “So it’s good you’ll be with her. Ian sent for ye, I expect?”

The little man nodded. “Aye. Did ye find the Watch yet?”

We told him of our progress to date. At the news that Jamie had escaped, I could have sworn that a muscle twitched near the corner of his mouth, but it would have been stretching matters to call it a smile.

At length, Jenny rose, folding her blanket.

“Where are you going?” I asked in surprise.

“Home.” She nodded at Murtagh. “He’ll be wi’ ye now; you don’t need me, and there’s others that do.”

Murtagh looked up at the sky. The waning moon was faintly visible behind a haze of cloud, and a soft spatter of rain whispered in the pine boughs above us.

“The morning will do. The wind’s risin’, and no one will move far tonight.”

Jenny shook her head and went on tucking her hair beneath her kerchief. “I know my way. And if none will move tonight, there’s none will hinder me on the road, no?”

Murtagh sighed impatiently. “You’re stubborn as your ox of a brother, beggin’ your pardon. Little reason to hurry back, so far as I can see – I doubt your good man will ha’ taken a doxy to his bed in the time ye’ve been gone.”

“You see as far as the end o’ your nose, duine, and that’s short enough,” Jenny answered sharply. “And if ye’ve lived so long without knowing better than to stand between a nursing mother and a hungry child, you’ve not sense enough to hunt hogs, let alone find a man in the heather.”

Murtagh raised his hands in surrender. “Oh, aye, ye’ll take your own way. I didna ken I was tryin’ to talk sense to a wild sow. Get a tush through the leg for my trouble, I expect.”

Jenny laughed unexpectedly, dimpling. “I expect ye might at that, ye auld rogue.” She bent and heaved the heavy saddle up on her knee. “See that ye take care with my good-sister, then, and send word when ye’ve found Jamie.”

As she turned to saddle the horse, Murtagh added, “By the bye, ye’ll reckon to find a new kitchen maid when ye reach home.”

She paused and eyed him, then slowly set the saddle on the ground. “And who might that be?” she asked.

“The Widow MacNab,” he replied, with deliberation.

She was still for a moment, nothing moving but the kerchief and cloak that stirred in the rising wind.

“How?” she asked at last.

Murtagh bent to pick up the saddle. He heaved it up and secured the girth with what seemed like one effortless motion.

“Fire,” he said, giving a final tug to the stirrup leather. “Watch your way as ye pass the high field; the ashes will still be warm.”

He cupped his hands to give her a foot up, but she shook her head and took the reins instead, beckoning to me.

“Walk wi’ me to the top of the hill, Claire, if ye will.”

The air was cold and heavy, away from the fire. My skirts were damp from sitting on the ground, and clung to my legs as I walked. Jenny’s head was bent against the wind, but I could see her profile, lips pale and set with chill.

“It was MacNab that gave Jamie to the Watch?” I asked at last. She nodded slowly.

“Aye. Ian will have found out, or one of the other men; it doesna matter which.”

It was late November, well past Guy Fawkes Day, but I had a sudden vision of a bonfire, flames leaping up timbered walls and sprouting in the thatch like the tongues of the Holy Ghost, while the fire within roared its prayers for the damned. And inside, the guy, an effigy crouched in ash on his own hearthstone, ready to fall into black dust at the next blast of cold wind to sweep through the shell of his home. There is a fine line sometimes, between justice and brutality.

I realized Jenny was looking full at me, questioning, and I returned her gaze with a nod. We stood together, in this case at least, on the same side of that grim and arbitrary line.

We paused at the top of the hill, Murtagh a dark speck by the fire below. Jenny rummaged for a moment in the side pocket of her skirt, then pressed a small wash leather bag into my hand.

“The rents from quarter day,” she said. “Ye might need it.”

I tried to give the money back, insisting that Jamie would not want to take money that was needed for the running of the estate, but she would have none of it. And while Janet Fraser was half her brother’s size, she more than matched his stubbornness.

Outclassed, I gave up at last, and tucked the money safely away in the recesses of my own costume. At Jenny’s insistence, I took also the small sgian dhu she pressed upon me.

“It’s Ian’s, but he has another,” she said. “Put it into your stocking top, and hold it with your garter. Don’t leave it off, even when ye sleep.”

She paused a moment, as though there were something else she meant to say. Apparently there was.

“Jamie said,” she said carefully, “that ye might… tell me things sometimes. And he said that if ye did, I was to do as ye said. Is there… anything ye wish to tell me?”

Jamie and I had discussed the necessity for preparing Lallybroch and its inhabitants against the coming disasters of the Rising. But we had thought then that there was time. Now I had no time, or most a few minutes, in which to give this new sister I held dear enough information to guard Lallybroch against the coming storm.

Being a prophet was a very uncomfortable occupation, I thought, not for the first time. I felt considerable sympathy with Jeremiah and his Lamentations. I also realized exactly why Cassandra was so unpopular. Still, there was no help for it. On the crest of a Scottish hill, the night wind of an autumn storm whipping my hair and skirts like the sheets of a banshee, I turned my face to the shadowed skies and prepared to prophesy.

“Plant potatoes,” I said.

Jenny’s mouth dropped slightly open, then she firmed her jaw and nodded briskly. “Potatoes. Aye. There’s none closer than Edinburgh, but I’ll send for them. How many?”

“As many as you can. They’re not planted in the Highlands now, but they will be. They’re a root crop that will keep for a long time, and the yield is better than wheat. Put as much ground as you can into crops that can be stored. There’s going to be a famine, a bad one, in two years. If there’s land or property that’s not productive now, sell it, for gold. There’s going to be war, and slaughter. Men will be hunted, here and everywhere through the Highlands.” I thought for a moment. “Is there a priest-hole in the house?”

“No, it was built well after the Protector’s time.”

“Make one then, or some safe place to hide. I hope Jamie won’t need it,” I swallowed hard at the thought, “but someone may.”

“All right. Is that all?” Her face was serious and intent in the half-light. I blessed Jamie for his forethought in warning her, and her for her trust in her brother. She didn’t ask me how, or why, but only took careful note of what I said, and I knew my hasty instructions would be followed.

“That’s all. All I can think of just now, anyway.” I tried to smile, but the effort seemed unconvincing, even to me.

Hers was better. She touched my cheek briefly in farewell.

“God go wi’ ye, Claire. We’ll meet again – when ye bring my brother home.”