* * *
The silence in the study was shattering. Roger, who had leaped to his feet in pursuit of Brianna, was left standing in the middle of the room, awkwardly frozen. He looked down at his hands as if not quite sure what to do with them, then at Claire. She sat perfectly still in the sanctuary of the wing chair, like an animal frozen by the passing shadow of a raptor.
After several moments, Roger moved across to the desk and leaned against it.
“I don’t know what to say,” he said.
Claire’s mouth twitched faintly. “Neither do I.”
They sat in silence for several minutes. The old house creaked, settling around them, and a faint noise of banging pots came down the hallway from the kitchen, where Fiona was doing something about dinner. Roger’s feeling of shock and constrained embarrassment gradually gave way to something else, he wasn’t sure what. His hands felt icy, and he rubbed them on his legs, feeling the warm rasp of the corduroy on his palms.
“I…” He started to speak, then stopped and shook his head.
Claire drew a deep breath, and he realized that it was the first movement he had seen her make since Brianna had left. Her gaze was clear and direct.
“Do you believe me?” she asked.
Roger looked thoughtfully at her. “I’ll be damned if I know,” he said at last.
That provoked a slightly wavering smile. “That’s what Jamie said,” she said, “when I asked him at the first where he thought I’d come from.”
“I can’t say I blame him.” Roger hesitated, then, making up his mind, got off the desk and came across the room to her. “May I?” He knelt and took her unresisting hand in his, turning it to the light. You can tell real ivory from the synthetic, he remembered suddenly, because the real kind feels warm to the touch. The palm of her hand was a soft pink, but the faint line of the “J” at the base of her thumb was white as bone.
“It doesn’t prove anything,” she said, watching his face. “It could have been an accident; I could have done it myself.”
“But you didn’t, did you?” He laid the hand back in her lap very gently, as though it were a fragile artifact.
“No. But I can’t prove it. The pearls”—her hand went to the shimmer of the necklace at her throat—“they’re authentic; that can be verified. But can I prove where I got them? No.”
“And the portrait of Ellen MacKenzie—” he began.
“The same. A coincidence. Something to base my delusion upon. My lies.” There was a faintly bitter note in her voice, though she spoke calmly enough. There was a patch of color in each cheek now, and she was losing that utter stillness. It was like watching a statue come to life, he thought.
Roger got to his feet. He paced slowly back and forth, rubbing a hand through his hair.
“But it’s important to you, isn’t it? It’s very important.”
“Yes.” She rose herself and went to the desk, where the folder of his research sat. She laid a hand on the manila sheeting with reverence, as though it were a gravestone; he supposed to her it was.
“I had to know.” There was a faint quaver in her voice, but he saw her chin firm instantly, suppressing it. “I had to know if he’d done it—if he’d saved his men—or if he’d sacrificed himself for nothing. And I had to tell Brianna. Even if she doesn’t believe it—if she never believes it. Jamie was her father. I had to tell her.”
“Yes, I see that. And you couldn’t do it while Dr. Randall—your hus—I mean, Frank,” he corrected himself, flushing, “was alive.”
She smiled faintly. “It’s all right; you can call Frank my husband. He was, after all, for a good many years. And Bree’s right, in a way—he was her father, as well as Jamie.” She glanced down at her hands, and spread the fingers of both, so the light gleamed from the two rings she wore, silver and gold. Roger was struck by a thought.
“Your ring,” he said, coming to stand close by her again. “The silver one. Is there a maker’s mark in it? Some of the eighteenth-century Scottish silversmiths used them. It might not be proof positive, but it’s something.”
Claire looked startled. Her left hand covered the right protectively, fingers rubbing the wide silver band with its pattern of Highland interlace and thistle blooms.
“I don’t know,” she said. A faint blush rose in her cheeks. “I haven’t seen inside it. I’ve never taken it off.” She twisted the ring slowly over the joint of the knuckle; her fingers were slender, but from long wearing, the ring had left a groove in her flesh.
She squinted at the inside of the ring, then rose and brought it to the table, where she stood next to Roger, tilting the silver circle to catch the light from the table lamp.
“There are words in it,” she said wonderingly. “I never realized that he’d…Oh, dear God.” Her voice broke, and the ring slipped from her fingers, rattling on the table with a tiny metal chime. Roger hurriedly scooped it up, but she had turned away, fists held tight against her middle. He knew she didn’t want him to see her face; the control she had kept through the long hours of the day and the scene with Brianna had deserted her now.
He stood for a minute, feeling unbearably awkward and out of place. With a terrible feeling that he was violating a privacy that ran deeper than anything he had ever known, but not knowing what else to do, he lifted the tiny metal circle to the light and read the words inside.
“Da mi basia mille…” But it was Claire’s voice that spoke the words, not his. Her voice was shaky, and he could tell that she was crying, but it was coming back under her control. She couldn’t let go for long; the power of what she held leashed could so easily destroy her.
“It’s Catullus. A bit of a love poem. Hugh.…Hugh Munro—he gave me the poem for a wedding present, wrapped around a bit of amber with a dragonfly inside it.” Her hands, still curled into fists, had now dropped to her sides. “I couldn’t say it all, still, but the one bit—I know that much.” Her voice was growing steadier as she spoke, but she kept her back turned to Roger. The small silver circle glowed in his palm, still warm with the heat of the finger it had left.
“…da mi basia mille…”
Still turned away, she went on, translating,
“Then let amorous kisses dwell
On our lips, begin and tell
A Thousand and a Hundred score
A Hundred, and a Thousand more.”
When she had finished, she stood still a moment, then slowly turned to face him again. Her cheeks were flushed and wet, and her lashes clumped together, but she was superficially calm.
“A hundred, and a thousand more,” she said, with a feeble attempt at a smile. “But no maker’s mark. So that isn’t proof, either.”
“Yes, it is.” Roger found there seemed to be something sticking in his own throat, and hastily cleared it. “It’s absolute proof. To me.”
Something lit in the depths of her eyes, and the smile grew real. Then the tears welled up and overflowed as she lost her grip once and for all.
“I’m sorry,” she said at last. She was sitting on the sofa, elbows on her knees, face half-buried in one of the Reverend Mr. Wakefield’s huge white handkerchiefs. Roger sat close beside her, almost touching. She seemed very small and vulnerable. He wanted to pat the ash-brown curls, but felt too shy to do it.
“I never thought…it never occurred to me,” she said, blowing her nose again. “I didn’t know how much it would mean, to have someone believe me.”
“Even if it isn’t Brianna?”
She grimaced slightly at his words, brushing back her hair with one hand as she straightened.
“It was a shock,” she defended her daughter. “Naturally, she couldn’t—she was so fond of her father—of Frank, I mean,” she amended hastily. “I knew she might not be able to take it all in at first. But…surely when she’s had time to think about it, ask questions…” Her voice faded, and the shoulders of her white linen suit slumped under the weight of the words.
As though to distract herself, she glanced at the table, where the stack of shiny-covered books still sat, undisturbed.
“It’s odd, isn’t it? To live twenty years with a Jacobite scholar, and to be so afraid of what I might learn that I could never bear to open one of his books?” She shook her head, still staring at the books. “I don’t know what happened to many of them—I couldn’t stand to find out. All the men I knew; I couldn’t forget them. But I could bury them, keep their memory at bay. For a time.”
And that time now was ended, and another begun. Roger picked up the book from the top of the stack, weighing it in his hands, as if it were a responsibility. Perhaps it would take her mind off Brianna, at least.
“Do you want me to tell you?” he asked quietly.
She hesitated for a long moment, but then nodded quickly, as though afraid she would regret the action if she paused to think about it longer.
He licked dry lips, and began to talk. He didn’t need to refer to the book; these were facts known to any scholar of the period. Still, he held Frank Randall’s book against his chest, solid as a shield.
“Francis Townsend,” he began. “The man who held Carlisle for Charles. He was captured. Tried for treason, hanged and disemboweled.”
He paused, but the white face was drained of blood already, no further change was possible. She sat across the table from him, motionless as a pillar of salt.
“MacDonald of Keppoch charged the field at Culloden on foot, with his brother Donald. Both of them were cut down by English cannon fire. Lord Kilmarnock fell on the field of battle, but Lord Ancrum, scouting the fallen, recognized him and saved his life from Cumberland’s men. No great favor; he was beheaded the next August on Tower Hill, together with Balmerino.” He hesitated. “Kilmarnock’s young son was lost on the field; his body was never recovered.”
“I always liked Balmerino,” she murmured. “And the Old Fox? Lord Lovat?” Her voice was little more than a whisper. “The shadow of an ax…”
“Yes.” Roger’s fingers stroked the slick jacket of the book unconsciously, as though reading the words within by Braille. “He was tried for treason, and condemned to be beheaded. He made a good end. All the accounts say that he met his death with great dignity.”
A scene flashed through Roger’s mind; an anecdote from Hogarth. He recited from memory, as closely as he could. “ ‘Carried through the shouts and jeers of an English mob on his way to the Tower, the old chieftain of clan Fraser appeared nonchalant, indifferent to the missiles that sailed past his head, and almost good-humored. In reply to a shout from one elderly woman—“You’re going to get your head chopped off, you old Scotch cur!”—he leaned from his carriage window and shouted jovially back, “I expect I shall, you ugly old English bitch!” ’ ”
She was smiling, but the sound she made was a cross between a laugh and a sob.
“I’ll bet he did, the bloody old bastard.”
“When he was led to the block,” Roger went on cautiously, “he asked to inspect the blade, and instructed the executioner to do a good job. He told the man, ‘Do it right, for I shall be very angry indeed if you don’t.’ ”
Tears were running down beneath her closed lids, glittering like jewels in the firelight. He made a motion toward her, but she sensed it and shook her head, eyes still closed.
“I’m all right. Go on.”
“There isn’t much more. Some of them survived, you know. Lochiel escaped to France.” He carefully refrained from mention of the chieftain’s brother, Archibald Cameron. The doctor had been hanged, disemboweled, and beheaded at Tyburn, his heart torn out and given to the flames. She did not seem to notice the omission.
He finished the list rapidly, watching her. Her tears had stopped, but she sat with her head hung forward, the thick curly hair hiding all expression.
He paused for a moment when he had finished speaking, then got up and took her firmly by the arm.
“Come on,” he said. “You need a little air. It’s stopped raining; we’ll go outside.”