* * *
The afternoon sun was hot on the white limestone rocks, casting deep shadows into the clefts and hollows. I found what I was looking for at last, growing from a narrow crack in a giant boulder, in gay defiance of the lack of soil. I broke a stalk of aloe from its clump, split the fleshy leaf, and spread the cool green gel inside across the welts on Jamie’s palm.
“Better?” I said.
“Much.” Jamie flexed his hand, grimacing. “Christ, those nettles sting!”
“They do.” I pulled down the neck of my bodice and spread a little aloe juice on my breast with a gingerly touch. The coolness brought relief at once.
“I’m rather glad you didn’t take me up on my offer,” I said wryly, with a glance at a nearby bunch of blooming nettle.
He grinned and patted me on the bottom with his good hand.
“Well, it was a near thing, Sassenach. Ye shouldna tempt me like that.” Then, sobering, he bent and kissed me gently.
“No, mo duinne. I swore to ye the once, and I was meaning it. I shallna raise a hand to you in anger, ever. After all,” he added softly, turning away, “I have done enough to hurt you.”
I shrank from the pain of memory, but I owed him justice as well.
“Jamie,” I said, lips trembling a bit. “The…baby. It wasn’t your fault. I felt as though it was, but it wasn’t. I think…I think it would have happened anyway, whether you’d fought Jack Randall or not.”
“Aye? Ah…well.” His arm was warm and comforting about me, and he pressed my head into the curve of his shoulder. “It eases me a bit to hear ye say so. It wasna the child so much as Frank that I meant, though. D’ye think you can forgive me for that?” The blue eyes were troubled as he looked down at me.
“Frank?” I felt a shock of surprise. “But…there’s nothing to forgive.” Then a thought struck me; perhaps he really didn’t know that Jack Randall was still alive—after all, he had been arrested immediately after the duel. But if he didn’t know.…I took a deep breath. He would have to find it out in any case; perhaps better from me.
“You didn’t kill Jack Randall, Jamie,” I said.
To my puzzlement, he didn’t seem shocked or surprised. He shook his head, the afternoon sun striking sparks from his hair. Not yet long enough to lace back again, it had grown considerably in prison, and he had to brush it out of his eyes continuously.
“I know that, Sassenach,” he said.
“You do? But…what…” I was at a loss.
“You…dinna know about it?” he said hesitantly.
A cold feeling crept up my arms, despite the heat of the sun.
“Know what?”
He chewed his lower lip, eyeing me reluctantly. At last he took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh.
“No, I didna kill him. But I wounded him.”
“Yes, Louise said you wounded him badly. But she said he was recovering.” Suddenly, I saw again in memory that last scene in the Bois de Boulogne; the last thing I had seen before the blackness took me. The sharp tip of Jamie’s sword, slicing through the rain-spattered doeskin. The sudden red stain that darkened the fabric…and the angle of the blade, glinting with the force that drove it downward.
“Jamie!” I said, eyes widening with horror. “You didn’t…Jamie, what have you done!”
He looked down, rubbing his welted palm against the side of his kilt. He shook his head, wondering at himself.
“I was such a fool, Sassenach. I couldna think myself a man and let him go unpunished for what he’d done to the wee lad, and yet…all the time, I kept thinking to myself, ‘Ye canna kill the bastard outright, you’ve promised. Ye canna kill him.’ ” He smiled faintly, without humor, looking down at the marks on his palm.
“My mind was boiling over like a pot of parritch on the flame, yet I held to that thought. ‘Ye canna kill him.’ And I didn’t. But I was half-mad wi’ the fury of the fighting, and the blood singing in my ears—and I didna stop a moment to remember why it was I must not kill him, beyond that I had promised you. And when I had him there on the ground before me, and the memory of Wentworth and Fergus, and the blade live in my hand—” He broke off suddenly.
I felt the blood draining from my head and sat down heavily on a rock outcropping.
“Jamie,” I said. He shrugged helplessly.
“Well, Sassenach,” he said, still avoiding my gaze, “all I can say is, it’s a hell of a place to be wounded.”
“Jesus.” I sat still, stunned by this revelation. Jamie sat quiet beside me, studying the broad backs of his hands. There was still a small pink mark on the back of the right one. Jack Randall had driven a nail through it, in Wentworth.
“D’ye hate me for it, Claire?” His voice was soft, almost tentative.
I shook my head, eyes closed.
“No.” I opened them, and saw his face close by, wearing a troubled frown. “I don’t know what I think now, Jamie. I really don’t. But I don’t hate you.” I put a hand on his, and squeezed it gently. “Just…let me be by myself for a minute, all right?”