I laughed again, but had to blink back tears; I could see all too well the two tall, limping figures, struggling stubbornly against darkness and pain, leaning on each other for support.
“You lived in a cave for a time, didn’t you? We found the story of it.”
His eyebrows went up in surprise. “A story about it? About me, ye mean?”
“You’re a famous Highland legend,” I told him dryly, “or you will be, at least.”
“For living in a cave?” He looked half-pleased, half-embarrassed. “Well, that’s a foolish thing to make a story about, aye?”
“Arranging to have yourself betrayed to the English for the price on your head was maybe a little more dramatic,” I said, still more dryly. “Taking rather a risk there, weren’t you?”
The end of his nose was pink, and he looked somewhat abashed.
“Well,” he said awkwardly, “I didna think prison would be verra dreadful, and everything considered.…”
I spoke as calmly as I could, but I wanted to shake him, suddenly and ridiculously furious with him in retrospect.
“Prison, my arse! You knew perfectly well you might have been hanged, didn’t you? And you bloody did it anyway!”
“I had to do something,” he said, shrugging. “And if the English were fool enough to pay good money for my lousy carcass—well, there’s nay law against takin’ advantage of fools, is there?” One corner of his mouth quirked up, and I was torn between the urge to kiss him and the urge to slap him.
I did neither, but sat up in bed and began combing the tangles out of my hair with my fingers.
“I’d say it’s open to question who the fool was,” I said, not looking at him, “but even so, you should know that your daughter’s very proud of you.”
“She is?” He sounded thunderstruck, and I looked up at him, laughing despite my irritation.
“Well, of course she is. You’re a bloody hero, aren’t you?”
He went quite red in the face at this, and stood up, looking thoroughly disconcerted.
“Me? No!” He rubbed a hand through his hair, his habit when thinking or disturbed in his mind.
“No. I mean,” he said slowly, “I wasna heroic at all about it. It was only … I couldna bear it any longer. To see them all starving, I mean, and not be able to care for them—Jenny, and Ian and the children; all the tenants and their families.” He looked helplessly down at me. “I really didna care if the English hanged me or not,” he said. “I didna think they would, because of what ye’d told me, but even if I’d known for sure it meant that—I would ha’ done it, Sassenach, and not minded. But it wasna bravery—not at all.” He threw up his hands in frustration, turning away. “There was nothing else I could do!”
“I see,” I said softly, after a moment. “I understand.” He was standing by the chiffonier, still naked, and at this, he turned half-round to face me.
“Do ye, then?” His face was serious.
“I know you, Jamie Fraser.” I spoke with more certainty than I had felt at any time since the moment I stepped through the rock.
“Do ye, then?” he asked again, but a faint smile shadowed his mouth.
“I think so.”
The smile on his lips widened, and he opened his mouth to reply. Before he could speak, though, there was a knock upon the chamber door.
I started as though I had touched a hot stove. Jamie laughed, and bent to pat my hip as he went to the door.
“I expect it’s the chambermaid with our breakfast, Sassenach, not the constable. And we are marrit, aye?” One eyebrow rose quizzically.
“Even so, shouldn’t you put something on?” I asked, as he reached for the doorknob.
He glanced down at himself.
“I shouldna think it’s likely to come as a shock to anyone in this house, Sassenach. But to honor your sensibilities—” He grinned at me, and taking a linen towel from the washstand, wrapped it casually about his loins before pulling open the door.
I caught sight of a tall male figure standing in the hall, and promptly pulled the bedclothes over my head. This was a reaction of pure panic, for if it had been the Edinburgh constable or one of his minions, I could scarcely expect much protection from a couple of quilts. But then the visitor spoke, and I was glad that I was safely out of sight for the moment.
“Jamie?” The voice sounded rather startled. Despite the fact that I had not heard it in twenty years, I recognized it at once. Rolling over, I surreptitiously lifted a corner of the quilt and peeked out beneath it.
“Well, of course it’s me,” Jamie was saying, rather testily. “Have ye no got eyes, man?” He pulled his brother-in-law, Ian, into the room and shut the door.
“I see well enough it’s you,” Ian said, with a note of sharpness. “I just didna ken whether to believe my eyes!” His smooth brown hair showed threads of gray, and his face bore the lines of a good many years’ hard work. But Joe Abernathy had been right; with his first words, the new vision merged with the old, and this was the Ian Murray I had known before.
“I came here because the lad at the printshop said ye’d no been there last night, and this was the address Jenny sends your letters to,” he was saying. He looked round the room with wide, suspicious eyes, as though expecting something to leap out from behind the armoire. Then his gaze flicked back to his brother-in-law, who was making a perfunctory effort to secure his makeshift loincloth.
“I never thought to find ye in a kittle-hoosie, Jamie!” he said. “I wasna sure, when the … the lady answered the door downstairs, but then—”
“It’s no what ye think, Ian,” Jamie said shortly.
“Oh, it’s not, aye? And Jenny worrying that ye’d make yourself ill, living without a woman so long!” Ian snorted. “I’ll tell her she needna concern herself wi’ your welfare. And where’s my son, then, down the hall with another o’ the harlots?”
“Your son?” Jamie’s surprise was evident. “Which one?”
Ian stared at Jamie, the anger on his long, half-homely face fading into alarm.
“Ye havena got him? Wee Ian’s not here?”
“Young Ian? Christ, man, d’ye think I’d bring a fourteen-year-old lad into a brothel?”
Ian opened his mouth, then shut it, and sat down on the stool.
“Tell ye the truth, Jamie, I canna say what ye’d do anymore,” he said levelly. He looked up at his brother-in-law, jaw set. “Once I could. But not now.”
“And what the hell d’ye mean by that?” I could see the angry flush rising in Jamie’s face.
Ian glanced at the bed, and away again. The red flush didn’t recede from Jamie’s face, but I saw a small quiver at the corner of his mouth. He bowed elaborately to his brother-in-law.
“Your pardon, Ian, I was forgettin’ my manners. Allow me to introduce ye to my companion.” He stepped to the side of the bed and pulled back the quilts.
“No!” Ian cried, jumping to his feet and looking frantically at the floor, the wardrobe, anywhere but at the bed.
“What, will ye no give your regards to my wife, Ian?” Jamie said.
“Wife?” Forgetting to look away, Ian goggled at Jamie in horror. “Ye’ve marrit a whore?” he croaked.
“I wouldn’t call it that, exactly,” I said. Hearing my voice, Ian jerked his head in my direction.
“Hullo,” I said, waving cheerily at him from my nest of bedclothes. “Been a long time, hasn’t it?”
I’d always thought the descriptions of what people did when seeing ghosts rather exaggerated, but had been forced to revise my opinions in light of the responses I had been getting since my return to the past. Jamie had fainted dead away, and if Ian’s hair was not literally standing on end, he assuredly looked as though he had been scared out of his wits.
Eyes bugging out, he opened and closed his mouth, making a small gobbling noise that seemed to entertain Jamie quite a lot.
“That’ll teach ye to go about thinkin’ the worst of my character,” he said, with apparent satis
faction. Taking pity on his quivering brother-in-law, Jamie poured out a tot of brandy and handed him the glass. “Judge not, and ye’ll no be judged, eh?”
I thought Ian was going to spill the drink on his breeches, but he managed to get the glass to his mouth and swallow.
“What—” he wheezed, eyes watering as he stared at me. “How—?”
“It’s a long story,” I said, with a glance at Jamie. He nodded briefly. We had had other things to think about in the last twenty-four hours besides how to explain me to people, and under the circumstances, I rather thought explanations could wait.
“I don’t believe I know Young Ian. Is he missing?” I asked politely.
Ian nodded mechanically, not taking his eyes off me.
“He stole away from home last Friday week,” he said, sounding rather dazed. “Left a note that he’d gone to his uncle.” He took another swig of brandy, coughed and blinked several times, then wiped his eyes and sat up straighter, looking at me.
“It’ll no be the first time, ye see,” he said to me. He seemed to be regaining his self-confidence, seeing that I appeared to be flesh and blood, and showed no signs either of getting out of bed, or of putting my head under my arm and strolling round without it, in the accepted fashion of Highland ghosts.
Jamie sat down on the bed next to me, taking my hand in his.
“I’ve not seen Young Ian since I sent him home wi’ Fergus six months ago,” he said. He was beginning to look as worried as Ian. “You’re sure he said he was coming to me?”
“Well, he hasna got any other uncles that I know of,” Ian said, rather acerbically. He tossed back the rest of the brandy and set the cup down.
“Fergus?” I interrupted. “Is Fergus all right, then?” I felt a surge of joy at the mention of the French orphan whom Jamie had once hired in Paris as a pickpocket, and brought back to Scotland as a servant lad.
Distracted from his thoughts, Jamie looked down at me.
“Oh, aye, Fergus is a bonny man now. A bit changed, of course.” A shadow seemed to cross his face, but it cleared as he smiled, pressing my hand. “He’ll be fair daft at seein’ you once more, Sassenach.”
Uninterested in Fergus, Ian had risen and was pacing back and forth across the polished plank floor.
“He didna take a horse,” he muttered. “So he’d have nothing anyone would rob him for.” He swung round to Jamie. “How did ye come, last time ye brought the lad here? By the land round the Firth, or did ye cross by boat?”
Jamie rubbed his chin, frowning as he thought. “I didna come to Lallybroch for him. He and Fergus crossed through the Carryarrick Pass and met me just above Loch Laggan. Then we came down through Struan and Weem and … aye, now I remember. We didna want to cross the Campbell lands, so we came to the east, and crossed the Forth at Donibristle.”
“D’ye think he’d do that again?” Ian asked. “If it’s the only way he knows?”
Jamie shook his head doubtfully. “He might. But he kens the coast is dangerous.”
Ian resumed his pacing, hands clasped behind his back. “I beat him ’til he could barely stand, let alone sit, the last time he ran off,” Ian said, shaking his head. His lips were tight, and I gathered that Young Ian was perhaps rather a trial to his father. “Ye’d think the wee fool would think better o’ such tricks, aye?”
Jamie snorted, but not without sympathy.
“Did a thrashing ever stop you from doing anything you’d set your mind on?”
Ian stopped his pacing and sat down on the stool again, sighing.
“No,” he said frankly, “but I expect it was some relief to my father.” His face cracked into a reluctant smile, as Jamie laughed.
“He’ll be all right,” Jamie declared confidently. He stood up and let the towel drop to the floor as he reached for his breeches. “I’ll go and put about the word for him. If he’s in Edinburgh, we’ll hear of it by nightfall.”
Ian cast a glance at me in the bed, and stood up hastily.
“I’ll go wi’ ye.”
I thought I saw a shadow of doubt flicker across Jamie’s face, but then he nodded and pulled the shirt over his head.
“All right,” he said, as his head popped through the slit. He frowned at me.
“I’m afraid ye’ll have to stay here, Sassenach,” he said.
“I suppose I will,” I said dryly. “Seeing that I haven’t any clothes.” The maid who brought our supper had removed my dress, and no replacement had as yet appeared.
Ian’s feathery brows shot up to his hairline, but Jamie merely nodded.
“I’ll tell Jeanne on the way out,” he said. He frowned slightly, thinking. “It may be some time, Sassenach. There are things—well, I’ve business to take care of.” He squeezed my hand, his expression softening as he looked at me.
“I dinna want to leave ye,” he said softly. “But I must. You’ll stay here until I come again?”
“Don’t worry,” I assured him, waving a hand at the linen towel he had just discarded. “I’m not likely to go anywhere in that.”
The thud of their feet retreated down the hall and faded into the sounds of the stirring house. The brothel was rising, late and languid by the stern Scottish standards of Edinburgh. Below me I could hear the occasional slow muffled thump, the clatter of shutters thrust open nearby, a cry of “Gardyloo!” and a second later, the splash of slops flung out to land on the street far below.
Voices somewhere far down the hall, a brief inaudible exchange, and the closing of a door. The building itself seemed to stretch and sigh, with a creaking of timbers and a squeaking of stairs, and a sudden puff of coal-smelling warm air came out from the back of the cold hearth, the exhalation of a fire lit on some lower floor, sharing my chimney.
I relaxed into the pillows, feeling drowsy and heavily content. I was slightly and pleasantly sore in several unaccustomed places, and while I had been reluctant to see Jamie go, there was no denying that it was nice to be alone for a bit to mull things over.
I felt much like one who has been handed a sealed casket containing a long-lost treasure. I could feel the satisfying weight and the shape of it, and know the great joy of its possession, but still did not know exactly what was contained therein.
I was dying to know everything he had done and said and thought and been, through all the days between us. I had of course known that if he had survived Culloden, he would have a life—and knowing what I did of Jamie Fraser, it was unlikely to be a simple one. But knowing that, and being confronted with the reality of it, were two different things.
He had been fixed in my memory for so long, glowing but static, like an insect frozen in amber. And then had come Roger’s brief historical sightings, like peeks through a keyhole; separate pictures like punctuations, alterations; adjustments of memory, each showing the dragonfly’s wings raised or lowered at a different angle, like the single frames of a motion picture. Now time had begun to run again for us, and the dragonfly was in flight before me, flickering from place to place, so I saw little more yet than the glitter of its wings.
There were so many questions neither of us had had a chance to ask yet—what of his family at Lallybroch, his sister Jenny and her children? Obviously Ian was alive, and well, wooden leg notwithstanding—but had the rest of the family and the tenants of the estate survived the destruction of the Highlands? If they had, why was Jamie here in Edinburgh?
And if they were alive—what would we tell them about my sudden reappearance? I bit my lip, wondering whether there was any explanation—short of the truth—which might make sense. It might depend on what Jamie had told them when I disappeared after Culloden; there had seemed no need to concoct a reason for my vanishing at the time; it would simply be assumed that I had perished in the aftermath of the Rising, one more of the nameless corpses lying starved on the rocks or slaughtered in a leafless glen.
Well, we’d manage that when we came to it, I supposed. I was more curious just now about the extent and the danger of Jamie’s
less legitimate activities. Smuggling and sedition, was it? I was aware that smuggling was nearly as honorable a profession in the Scottish Highlands as cattle-stealing had been twenty years before, and might be conducted with relatively little risk. Sedition was something else, and seemed like an occupation of dubious safety for a convicted ex-Jacobite traitor.
That, I supposed, was the reason for his assumed name—or one reason, at any rate. Disturbed and excited as I had been when we arrived at the brothel the night before, I had noticed that Madame Jeanne referred to him by his own name. So presumably he smuggled under his own identity, but carried out his publishing activities—legal and illegal—as Alex Malcolm.
I had seen, heard and felt enough, during the all too brief hours of the night, to be fairly sure that the Jamie Fraser I had known still existed. How many other men he might be now remained to be seen.
There was a tentative rap at the door, interrupting my thoughts. Breakfast, I thought, and not before time. I was ravenous.
“Come in,” I called, and sat up in bed, pulling up the pillows to lean against.
The door opened very slowly, and after quite a long pause, a head poked its way through the opening, much in the manner of a snail emerging from its shell after a hailstorm.
It was topped with an ill-cut shag of dark brown hair so thick that the cropped edges stuck out like a shelf above a pair of large ears. The face beneath was long and bony; rather pleasantly homely, save for a pair of beautiful brown eyes, soft and huge as a deer’s, that rested on me with a mingled expression of interest and hesitancy.
The head and I regarded each other for a moment.
“Are you Mr. Malcolm’s … woman?” it asked.
“I suppose you could say so,” I replied cautiously. This was obviously not the chambermaid with my breakfast. Neither was it likely to be one of the other employees of the establishment, being evidently male, though very young. He seemed vaguely familiar, though I was sure I hadn’t seen him before. I pulled the sheet a bit higher over my breasts. “And who are you?” I inquired.
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