GREY WAS STILL IN his shirtsleeves; the rain had cut through the cloth to his flesh.
Jamie went to the shed’s wall and put his eye to a crack between the boards. He raised a hand, adjuring silence, and John stood waiting, shivering, as the sound of hooves and voices went past. Who might it be? Not soldiers; there was no sound of brass, no jingling spurs or arms. The sounds faded, and Jamie turned back. He frowned, noticing for the first time that Grey was wet through, and, taking the cloak from his shoulders, wrapped it round him.
The cloak was damp, too, but made of wool, and Jamie’s body heat lingered in it. Grey closed his eyes for an instant, embraced.
“May I know what it is that you’ve been doing?” Grey inquired, opening them.
“When?” Jamie gave him a half smile. “Just now, or since I saw ye last?”
“Just now.”
“Ah.” Jamie sat down on a barrel and leaned back—gingerly—against the wall.
Grey noted with interest that the sound was nearly “ach,” and deduced that Fraser had spent much of his time of late with Scots. He also observed that Fraser’s lips were pursed in thought. The slanted blue eyes cut in his direction.
“Ye’re sure ye want to know? It’s likely better if ye don’t.”
“I put considerable trust in your judgment and discretion, Mr. Fraser,” Grey said politely, “but somewhat more in my own. I’m sure you will forgive me.”
Fraser appeared to find that funny; the wide mouth twitched, but he nodded and produced a small packet, sewn in oilskin, from inside his shirt.
“I was observed in the act of accepting this from my foster son,” he said. “The person who saw me followed me to an ordinary, then went to fetch the nearest company of soldiers whilst I was refreshing myself. Or so I assume. I saw them coming down the street, supposed that it might be myself they sought, and… left.”
“You are familiar, I suppose, with the trope regarding the guilty who flee when no man pursues? How do you know they were after you to begin with and not merely interested by your abrupt departure?”
The half smile flickered again, this time tinged with rue.
“Call it the instinct of the hunted.”
“Indeed. I am surprised that you allowed yourself to be cornered, as it were, your instincts being what they are.”
“Aye, well, even foxes grow old, do they not?” Fraser said dryly.
“Why the devil did you come to my house?” Grey demanded, suddenly irritable. “Why did you not run for the edge of town?”
Fraser looked surprised.
“My wife,” he said simply, and it occurred to Grey, with a pang, that it had not been inadvertence or lack of caution that had impelled Jamie Fraser to come to his house, even with soldiers on his heels. He’d come for her. For Claire.
Jesus! He thought with sudden panic. Claire!
But there was no time to say anything, even could he have thought what to say. Jamie rose and, taking the pistol from his belt, beckoned him to come.
They went down an alleyway, then through the backyard of a pub, squeezing past the open brew tub, its surface pocked by falling rain. Smelling faintly of hops, they emerged into a street and slowed down. Jamie had gripped his wrist throughout this journey, and Lord John felt his hand beginning to go numb but said nothing. They passed two or three groups of soldiers, but he walked with Jamie, matching him stride for stride, keeping his eyes front. There was no conflict of heart and duty here: to shout for help might result in Jamie’s death; it almost surely would result in the death of at least one soldier.
Jamie kept his pistol out of sight, half hidden in his coat but in his hand, putting it back into his belt only when they reached the place where he had left his horse. It was a private house; he left Grey by himself on the porch for a moment with a muttered “Stay here,” while he disappeared inside.
A strong sense of self-preservation urged Lord John to run, but he didn’t and was rewarded when Jamie emerged again and smiled a little, seeing him. So you weren’t sure I’d stay? Fair enough, Grey thought. He hadn’t been sure, either.
“Come on, then,” Jamie said, and with a jerk of his head beckoned Grey to follow him to the stable, where he quickly saddled and bridled a second horse, handing the reins to Grey before mounting his own.
“Pro forma,” he said politely to Grey, and, drawing the pistol, pointed it at him. “Should anyone ask later. Ye’ll come with me, and I will shoot you, should ye make any move to give me away before we’re out of the city. We are understood, I hope?”
“We are,” Grey replied briefly, and swung up into the saddle.
He rode a little ahead of Jamie, conscious of the small round spot between his shoulder blades. Pro forma or not, he’d meant it.
He wondered whether Jamie would shoot him in the chest or simply break his neck when he found out. Likely bare hands, he thought. It was a visceral sort of thing, sex.
The idea of concealing the truth hadn’t seriously occurred to him. He didn’t know Claire Fraser nearly as well as Jamie did—but he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she couldn’t keep secrets. Not from anyone. And certainly not from Jamie, restored to her from the dead.
Of course, it might be some time before Jamie was able to speak to her again. But he knew Jamie Fraser infinitely better than he knew Claire—and the one thing he was certain of was that nothing whatever would stand long between Jamie and his wife.
The rain had passed, and the sun shone on the puddles as they splashed through the streets. There was a sense of movement all around, agitation in the air. The army was quartered in Germantown, but there were always soldiers in the city, and their knowledge of imminent departure, anticipation of the return to campaigning, infected the city like a plague, a fever passing invisibly from man to man.
A patrol on the road out of the city stopped them but waved them on when Grey gave his name and rank. His companion he introduced as Mr. Alexander MacKenzie and thought he felt a vibration of humor from said companion. Alex MacKenzie was the name Jamie had used at Helwater—as Grey’s prisoner.
Oh, God, Grey thought suddenly, leading the way out of sight of the patrol. William. In the shock of the confrontation and their abrupt departure, he hadn’t had time to think. If Grey were dead, what would William do?
His thoughts buzzed like a swarm of hiving bees, crawling over one another in a seething mass; impossible to focus on one for more than an instant before it was lost in the deafening hum. Denys Randall-Isaacs. Richardson. With Grey gone, he would almost certainly move to arrest Claire. William would try to stop him, if he knew. But William didn’t know what Richardson was…. Grey didn’t know, either, not for sure. Henry and his Negro lover—Grey knew they were lovers now, had seen it in both their faces—Dottie and her Quaker: if the twin shocks didn’t kill Hal, he’d be on a ship bound for America in nothing flat, and that would certainly kill him. Percy. Oh, Jesus, Percy.
Jamie was in front of him now, leading the way. There were little groups of people on the road: mostly farmers coming in with wagonloads of supplies for the army. They looked curiously at Jamie, much more so at Grey. But no one stopped or challenged them, and an hour later Jamie led them down a trace off the main road and into a small woodland dripping and steaming from the recent rain. There was a stream; Jamie swung down off his horse and left it to drink, and Grey did likewise, feeling strangely unreal, as though the leather of saddle and reins was foreign to his skin, as though rain-chilled air passed through him, body and bones, rather than around him.
Jamie crouched by the stream and drank, then splashed water over his head and face and stood up, shaking himself like a dog.
“Thank ye, John,” he said. “I hadna time to say it earlier. I’m verra grateful to ye.”
“Thank me? It was hardly my choice. You abducted me at gunpoint.”
Jamie smiled; the tension of the last hour had eased, and with it the lines of his face.
“Not that. For taking care of Claire, I mean.”
“Claire,” he repeated. “Ah. Yes. That.”
“Aye, that,” Jamie said patiently, and bent a little to peer at him in concern. “Are ye quite well, John? Ye look a wee bit peaked.”
“Peaked,” Grey muttered. His heart was beating very erratically; perhaps it would conveniently stop. He waited for a moment to allow it to do this if it liked, but it went on cheerfully thumping away. No help, then. Jamie was still looking quizzically at him. Best to get it over quickly.
He took a deep breath, shut his eyes, and commended his soul to God.
“I have had carnal knowledge of your wife,” he blurted.
He had expected to die more or less instantaneously upon this utterance, but everything continued just as usual. Birds continued chirping in the trees, and the rip and slobber of the horses champing grass was the only sound above that of the rushing water. He opened one eye to find Jamie Fraser standing there regarding him, head to one side.
“Oh?” said Jamie curiously. “Why?”
BRED IN THE BONE
I … UH … IF you’ll excuse me for a moment…” I backed slowly to the door of my room and, seizing the knob, whipped inside and shut the door, leaving Willie to recover himself in decent privacy. And not only Willie.
I pressed myself against the door as though pursued by werewolves, my blood thundering in my ears.
“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” I whispered. Something like a geyser rose up inside me and burst in my head, the spray of it sparkling with sunlight and diamonds. I was dimly aware that it had come on to rain outside, and dirty gray water was streaking the windowpanes, but that didn’t matter a bit to the effervescence inside me.
I stood still for several minutes, eyes closed, not thinking anything, just murmuring, “Thank you, God,” over and over, soundlessly.
A tentative rap on the door jarred me out of this trance, and I turned to open it. William stood on the landing.
His shirt still hung open where he’d torn it, and I could see the pulse beat fast in the hollow of his throat. He bowed awkwardly to me, trying to achieve a smile but notably failing in the attempt. He gave it up.
“I am not sure what to call you,” he said. “Under the—the circumstances.”
“Oh,” I said, mildly disconcerted. “Well. I don’t think—at least I hope that the relationship between you and me hasn’t changed.” I realized, with a sudden dampening of my euphoria, that it very well might now, and the thought gave me a deep pang. I was very fond of him, for his own sake, as well as for his father’s—or fathers’, as the case might be.
“Could you bring yourself to go on calling me ‘Mother Claire,’ do you think? Just until we can think of something more… appropriate,” I added hastily, seeing reluctance narrow his eyes. “After all, I suppose I am still your stepmother. Regardless of the … er… the situation.”
He turned that over for a moment, then nodded briefly.
“May I come in? I wish to talk to you.”
“Yes, I suppose you do.”
If I hadn’t known both his fathers, I would have marveled at his ability to suppress the rage and confusion he had so clearly exhibited a quarter of a hour ago. Jamie did it by instinct, John by long experience—but both of them had an iron power of will, and whether William’s was bred in the bone or acquired by example, he most assuredly had one.
“Shall I send for something?” I asked. “A little brandy? It’s good for shock.”
He shook his head. He wouldn’t sit—I didn’t think he could—but leaned against the wall.
“I suppose that you knew? You could scarcely help but notice the resemblance, I suppose,” he added bitterly.
“It is rather striking,” I agreed, with caution. “Yes, I knew. My husband told me”—I groped for some delicate way of putting it— “the, um, circumstances of your birth some years ago.”
And just how was I going to describe those circumstances?
It hadn’t exactly escaped me that there were a few awkward explanations to be made—but caught up in the alarms of Jamie’s sudden reappearance and escape and the giddiness of my own subsequent euphoria, it somehow hadn’t occurred to me that I would be the person making them.
I’d seen the little shrine he kept in his room, the double portrait of his two mothers—both so heartbreakingly young. If age was good for anything, surely it should have given me the wisdom to deal with this?
How could I tell him that he was the result of an impulsive, self-willed young girl’s blackmail? Let alone tell him that he had been the cause of both his legal parents’ deaths? And if anyone was going to tell him what his birth had meant to Jamie, it was going to have to be Jamie.
“Your mother…” I began, and hesitated. Jamie would have taken the blame solely upon himself rather than blacken Geneva’s memory to her son, I knew. I wasn’t having that.
“She was reckless,” William said, watching me closely. “Everybody says she was reckless. Was it—I suppose I only want to know, was it rape?”
“God, no!” I said, horrified, and saw his fists uncurl a little.
“That’s good,” he said, and let out the breath he’d been holding. “You’re sure he didn’t lie to you?”
“I’m sure.” He and his father might be able to hide their feelings; I certainly couldn’t, and while I would never be able to make a living playing cards, having a glass face was occasionally a good thing. I stood still and let him see that I told the truth.
“Do you think—did he say—” He stopped and swallowed, hard. “Did they love each other, do you think?”
“As much as they could, I think,” I said softly. “They hadn’t much time, only the one night.” I ached for him and would have liked so much to take him in my arms and comfort him. But he was a man, and a young one, fierce about his pain. He’d deal with it as he could, and I thought it would be some years—if ever—before he learned to share it.
“Yes,” he said, and pressed his lips together, as though he’d been going to say something else and thought better of it. “Yes, I—I see.” It was quite clear from his tone that he didn’t but, reeling under the impact of realization, had no idea what to ask next, let alone what to do with the information he had.
“I was born almost exactly nine months after my parents’ marriage,” he said, giving me a hard look. “Did they deceive my father? Or did my mother play the whore with her groom before she wed?”
“That might be a bit harsh,” I began.
“No, it isn’t,” he snapped. “Which was it?”
“Your fa—Jamie. He’d never deceive another man in his marriage.” Except Frank, I thought, a little wildly. But, of course, he hadn’t known at first that he was doing it…
“My father,” he said abruptly. “Pa—Lord John, I mean. He knew—knows?”
“Yes.” Thin ice again. I didn’t think he had any idea that Lord John had married Isobel principally for his sake—and Jamie’s—but didn’t want him going anywhere near the question of Lord John’s motives.
“All of them,” I said firmly, “all four of them; they wanted what was best for you.”
“Best for me,” he repeated bleakly. “Right.” His knuckles had gone white again, and he gave me a look through narrowed eyes that I recognized all too well: a Fraser about to go off with a bang. I also knew perfectly well that there was no way of stopping one from detonating but had a try anyway, putting out a hand to him.
“William,” I began. “Believe me—”
“I do,” he said. “Don’t bloody tell me any more. God damn it!” And, whirling on his heel, he drove his fist through the paneling with a thud that shook the room, wrenched his hand out of the hole he’d made, and stormed out. I heard crunching and rending as he paused to kick out several of the balusters on the landing and rip a length of the stair railing off, and I made it to the door in time to see him draw back a four-foot chunk of wood over his shoulder, swing, and strike the crystal chandelier that hung over the stairwell in an explosion of shattering glass. For a moment, he teetered on the open edge of the landing and I thought he would fall, or hurl himself off, but he staggered back from the edge and threw the chunk of wood like a javelin at the remnant of the chandelier with a burst of breath that might have been a grunt or a sob.
Then he rushed headlong down the stairs, thumping his wounded fist at intervals against the wall, where it left bloody smudges. He hit the front door with his shoulder, rebounded, jerked it open, and went out like a locomotive.
I stood frozen on the landing in the midst of chaos and destruction, gripping the edge of the broken balustrade. Tiny rainbows danced on walls and ceiling like multicolored dragonflies sprung out of the shattered crystal that littered the floor.
Something moved; a shadow fell across the floor of the hall below. A small, dark figure walked slowly in through the open doorway. Putting back the hood of her cloak, Jenny Fraser Murray looked round at the devastation, then up at me, her face a pale oval glimmering with humor.
“Like father, like son, I see,” she remarked. “God help us all.”