* * *
He followed me through the scrim of trees toward the house, almost treading on my heels in his haste. I kept tripping over tree roots and half-buried stones, not watching where I was going, fighting the overwhelming urge to turn around and stare at him. If William, Viscount Ashness, ninth Earl of Ellesmere, was not the very last person I had ever expected to see in the backwoods of North Carolina, he was certainly next to the last—King George was a trifle less likely to turn up on the doorstep, I supposed.
What had possessed that…that…I groped about, trying to choose among several discreditable epithets to apply to Lord John Grey, and gave up the struggle, in favor of trying to think what in heaven’s name to do. I gave that up, too; there wasn’t a thing I could do.
William, Viscount Ashness, ninth Earl of Ellesmere. Or he thought he was. And just what do you propose to do, I thought silently and savagely toward Lord John Grey, when he finds out that he’s really the bastard son of a pardoned Scottish criminal? And more important—what’s the Scottish criminal going to do? or feel?
I stopped, causing the boy to stumble as he tried to avoid crashing into me.
“Sorry,” I murmured. “Thought I saw a snake,” and went on, the thought that had stopped me in my tracks still knotting my midsection like a dose of bitter apples. Could Lord John have brought the boy on purpose to reveal his parentage? Did he mean to leave him here, with Jamie—with us?
Alarming as I found the notion, I couldn’t reconcile it with the man I had met in Jamaica. I might have sound reasons for disliking John Grey—always difficult to feel a warm sense of goodwill toward a man with a professed homosexual passion for one’s husband, after all—but I had to admit that I had seen no trace of either recklessness or cruelty in his character. On the contrary, he had struck me as a sensitive, kindly, and honorable man—or at least he had, before I’d found out about his predilections toward Jamie.
Could something have happened? Some threat to the boy that made Lord John fear for his safety? Surely no one could have found out the truth about William—no one knew, save Lord John and Jamie. And me, of course, I added as an afterthought. Without the evidence of the resemblance—again I repressed the urge to turn round and stare at him—there was no reason for anyone ever to suspect.
But see them side by side, and—well, I shortly would see them side by side. The thought gave me a queer hollowness beneath the breastbone, half fright and half anticipation. Was it really as strong as I thought, that resemblance?
I took a deliberate quick detour, through a clump of low-hanging dogwood, making an excuse to turn and wait for him. He came through after me, ducking awkwardly to retrieve the silver-buckled shoe he had dropped.
No, I thought, watching covertly as he straightened up, face flushed from bending. It wasn’t as strong as I’d thought at first. He had the promise of Jamie’s bones, but it wasn’t all there yet—he had the outlines, but not yet the substance. He would be very tall—that was obvious—but now he was about my height, gawky and slender, his limbs very long, and thin enough to seem almost delicate.
He was much darker than Jamie, too; while his hair glinted red in the shafts of sunlight that came through the branches, it was a deep chestnut, nothing like Jamie’s bright red-gold, and his skin had turned a soft golden brown in the sun, not at all like Jamie’s half-burnt bronze.
He had the Frasers’ slanted cat-eyes, though, and there was something about the set of his head, the cock of the slender shoulders, that made me think of—
Bree. It hit me with a small shock, like a spark of electricity. He did look quite a bit like Jamie, but it was my memories of Brianna that had caused that jolt of instant recognition when I saw him. Only ten years her junior, the childish outlines of his face were much more similar to hers than to Jamie’s.
He had paused to disentangle a long strand of hair from a grappling dogwood branch; now he came up with me, one brow raised inquiringly.
“Is it far?” he asked. The color had come back to his face with the exertion of walking, but he still looked a trifle sick, and kept his eyes averted from his legs.
“No,” I said. I motioned toward the chestnut grove. “Just there. Look; you can see the smoke from the chimney.”
He didn’t wait to be led, but set off with dogged speed, anxious to be rid of the leeches.
I followed him quickly, not wanting him to reach the cabin ahead of me. I was prey to a mixture of the most disquieting sensations; uppermost was anxiety for Jamie, a little lower, anger at John Grey. Below that, an intense curiosity. And at the bottom, far enough down that I could almost pretend it wasn’t there, was a pang of sharp longing for my daughter, whose face I had never thought to see again.
Jamie and Lord John were sitting on the bench by the door; at the sound of our steps, Jamie rose and looked toward the wood. He’d had time to prepare himself; his glance passed casually over the boy as he turned to me.
“Oh, Claire. Ye’ve found the other of our visitors, then. I’d sent Ian down to find ye. Ye’ll recall Lord John, I expect?”
“How could I forget?” I said, giving his lordship a particularly bright smile. His mouth twitched slightly, but he kept a straight face as he bowed deeply in my direction. How did a man stay so impeccably groomed after several days on horseback, sleeping in the woods?
“Your servant, Mrs. Fraser.” He glanced at the boy, frowning slightly at his state of undress. “May I present my stepson, Lord Ellesmere? And William, as I see you have made the acquaintance of our gracious hostess, will you also make your compliments to our host, Captain Fraser?”
The boy was shifting from foot to foot, nearly dancing on his toes. At this prompting, though, he jerked a quick bow in Jamie’s direction.
“Your servant, Captain,” he said, then cast an agonized glance at me, plainly conscious of nothing but the fact that more of his blood was being sucked out by the second.
“You’ll excuse us?” I said politely, and taking the boy by the arm, led him into the cabin and shut the door firmly in the astonished faces of the men. William sat immediately on the stool I pointed out, and thrust out his legs, trembling.
“Hurry!” he said. “Oh, please, do hurry!”
There was no salt ground; I took my digging knife and chipped a piece from the block with reckless haste, dropped it into my mortar, and smashed it into granules with a few quick jabs of the pestle. Crumbling the grains between my fingers, I scattered the salt thickly on each leech.
“Rather hard on the poor old leeches,” I said, seeing the first draw itself slowly up into a ball. “Still, it does the trick.” The leech let go its grip and tumbled off William’s leg, followed in similar fashion by its fellows, who writhed in slow-motion agony on the floor.
I scooped up the tiny bodies and flung them into the fire, then knelt in front of him, tactfully keeping my head bent while he got control of his face.
“Here, let me take care of the bites.” Tiny streams of blood ran down his legs; I dabbed them with a clean cloth, then washed the small wounds with vinegar and St.-John’s-wort to stop the bleeding.
He let out a deep and tremulous sigh of relief as I dried his shins. “It’s not that I’m afraid of—of blood,” he said, in a tone of bravado that made it apparent that that was precisely what he was afraid of. “It’s only they’re such filthy creatures.”
“Nasty little things,” I agreed. I stood up, took a clean cloth, dipped it in water, and matter-of-factly wiped his smudged face. Then, without asking, I picked up my hairbrush and began to comb out the snarls of his hair.
He looked utterly startled at this familiarity, but beyond an initial stiffening of his spine, made no protest, and as I began to order his hair, he let out another small sigh, and let his shoulders slump a little.
His skin had a pleasant animal heat, and my fingers, still chilly from the stream, warmed comfortably as I ordered the soft strands of silky chestnut hair. It was very thick, and slightly wavy. On the crown of his head was a cowlick, a delicate whorl that gave me mild vertigo to see; Jamie had the same cowlick, in the same place.
“I’ve lost my ribbon,” he said, looking vaguely round, as though one might materialize from bread hutch or inkwell.
“That’s all right; I’ll lend you one.” I finished plaiting his hair and tied it with a scrap of yellow ribbon, feeling as I did so an odd sense of protectiveness.
I had learned of his existence only a few years earlier, and if I had thought of him in the meantime at all, had felt no more than a minor sense of curiosity tinged with resentment. But now something—be it his resemblance to my own child, his resemblance to Jamie, or simply the fact that I had taken care of him in some small way—had given me a strange feeling of almost proprietary concern for him.
I could hear the rumble of voices outside; the sound of a sudden laugh, and my annoyance at John Grey came back with a rush. How dare he risk both Jamie and William—and for what? Why was the bloody man here, in a wilderness as blatantly unsuited to someone of his sort as a—
The door opened, and Jamie poked his head in.
“Will ye be all right?” he asked. His eyes rested on the boy, an expression of polite concern on his face, but I saw his hand, curled tight as it rested on the door frame, and the line of tension that ran through leg and shoulder. He was strung like a harp; if I had touched him, he would have given off a low twanging noise.
“Quite all right,” I said pleasantly. “Would Lord John care for some refreshment, do you think?”
I put the kettle on to boil for tea, and—with an inner sigh—took out the last loaf of bread, which I had meant to use for my next round of penicillin experiments. Feeling that the emergency justified it, I brought out the last bottle of brandy as well. Then I put the jampot on the table, explaining that the butter was unfortunately in the custody of the pig at the moment.
“Pig?” said William, looking confused.
“In the pantry,” I said, with a nod at the closed door.
“Why do you keep—” he started, then sat up sharply and closed his mouth, having obviously been kicked under the table by his stepfather, who was smiling pleasantly over his cup.
“It is very kind of you to receive us, Mrs. Fraser,” Lord John interjected, giving his stepson a warning eye. “I do apologize for our unexpected arrival; I hope we do not discommode you too greatly.”
“Not at all,” I said, wondering just where we were going to put them to sleep. William could go to the shed with Ian, I supposed; it was no worse than sleeping rough, as he had been doing. But the thought of sharing a bed with Jamie, with Lord John on the trundle an arm’s-length away…
Ian, with his usual instinct for mealtimes, appeared at this delicate point in the proceedings, and was introduced all round, with such a confusion of explanations and reciprocal bowing in cramped quarters that the teapot was knocked over.
Using this minor disaster as an excuse, I sent Ian off to show William the attractions of wood and stream, with a packet of jam sandwiches and a bottle of cider to share between them. Then, free of their inhibiting presences, I filled the cups with brandy, sat down again, and fixed John Grey with a narrow eye.
“What are you doing here?” I said, without preamble.
He opened his light blue eyes very wide, then lowered his very long lashes and batted them deliberately at me.
“I did not come with the intention of seducing your husband, I assure you,” he said.
“John!” Jamie’s fist struck the table with a force that rattled the teacups. His cheekbones were flushed dark red, and he was scowling with embarrassed fury.
“Sorry.” Grey, by contrast, had gone white, though he remained otherwise visibly unruffled. It occurred to me for the first time that he might possibly be as unnerved as Jamie by this meeting.
“My apologies, ma’am,” he said, with a curt nod in my direction. “That was unforgivable. I would point out, however, that you have been looking at me since we met as though you had encountered me lying in the gutter outside some notorious mollyhouse.” A light flush burned over his face now, too.
“Sorry,” I breathed. “Give me a bit more notice next time, and I’ll take care to adjust my features.”
He stood up suddenly and went to the window, where he stood with his back to the room, hands braced on the sill. There was an exceedingly awkward silence. I didn’t want to look at Jamie; instead I affected great interest in a bottle of fennel seeds that stood on the table.
“My wife has died,” he said abruptly. “On the ship between England and Jamaica. She was coming to join me there.”
“I am sorry to hear of it,” Jamie said quietly. “The lad will have been with her?”
“Yes.” Lord John turned back, leaning against the sill, so that the spring sunlight silhouetted his neat head and gave him a gleaming halo. “Willie was—very close to Isobel. She was the only mother he’d known since his birth.”
Willie’s true mother, Geneva Dunsany, had died in giving birth to him; his presumed father, the Earl of Ellesmere, had died the same day, in an accident. So much, Jamie had already told me. Likewise, that Geneva’s sister, Isobel, had taken care of the orphaned boy, and that John Grey had married Isobel when Willie was six or so—at the time Jamie had left the Dunsanys’ employ.
“I’m very sorry,” I said, sincerely, and didn’t mean only the death of his wife.
Grey glanced at me, and gave me the shadow of a nod in acknowledgment.
“My appointment as governor was nearly at an end; I had intended perhaps to take up residence on the island, should the climate suit my family. As it was…” He shrugged.
“Willie was grief-stricken by the loss of his mother; it seemed advisable to seek to distract his mind by whatever means I could. An opportunity presented itself almost at once; my wife’s estate includes a large property in Virginia, which she had bequeathed to William. Upon her death, I received inquiries from the factor of the plantation, asking for instruction.”
He moved away from the window, coming slowly back toward the table where we sat.
“I could not well decide what to do with the property without seeing it, and evaluating the conditions that obtain here. So I determined that we should sail to Charleston, and from there, travel overland to Virginia. I trusted to the novelty of the experience to divert William from his grief—which I am pleased to observe, it seems to have done. He has been much more cheerful these past weeks.”
I opened my mouth to say that Fraser’s Ridge seemed a bit out of his way, regardless, but then thought better of it.
He appeared to guess what I was thinking, for he gave me a brief wry smile. I really would have to do something about my face, I thought. Having Jamie read my thoughts was one thing, and not at all unpleasant, on the whole. Having total strangers walk in and out of my mind at will was something else.
“Where is the plantation?” Jamie asked, with somewhat more tact but the same implication.
“The nearest town of any sort is called Lynchburg—on the James River.” Lord John looked at me, still wry, but apparent good humor restored. “It is in fact no more than a few days deviation in our journey to come here, in spite of the remoteness of your aerie.”
He switched his attention to Jamie, frowning slightly.
“I told Willie that you are an old acquaintance of mine, from my soldiering days—I trust you do not object to the deception?”
Jamie shook his head, one side of his mouth turning up a bit. “Deception, is it? I shouldna think I could well mind what ye called me, under the circumstances. And so far as that bit goes, it’s true enough.”
“You don’t think he’ll remember you?” I asked Jamie. He had been a groom on Willie’s home estate; a prisoner of war following the Jacobite Rising.
He hesitated, but then shook his head.
“I dinna think so. He was barely six when I left Helwater; that will be half a lifetime ago, to a lad—and a world away. And there’s no reason he should think to recall a groom named MacKenzie, let alone connect the name wi’ me.”
Willie hadn’t recognized Jamie on sight, certainly, but then he had been too concerned with the leeches to take much notice of anyone. A thought struck me, and I turned to Lord John, who was fiddling with a snuffbox he had taken from his pocket.
“Tell me,” I said, moved by a sudden impulse. “I don’t mean to distress you—but…do you know how your wife died?”
“How?” He looked startled at the question, but collected himself at once. “She died of a bloody flux, so her maid said.” His mouth twisted slightly. “It was…not a pleasant death, I believe.” Bloody flux, eh? That was the standard description for anything from amebic dysentery to cholera.
“Was there a doctor? Someone on board who took care of her?”
“There was,” he said, a little sharply. “What do you imply, ma’am?”
“Nothing,” I said. “It’s only that I wondered whether perhaps that was where Willie saw leeches used.”
A flicker of understanding crossed his face.
“Oh, I see. I hadn’t thought—”
At this point, I noticed Ian, who was hovering in the doorway, obviously reluctant to interrupt but with a marked look of urgency on his face.
“Did you want something, Ian?” I asked, interrupting Lord John.
He shook his head, brown hair flying.
“No, I thank ye, Auntie. It’s only—” He cast a helpless glance at Jamie. “Well, I’m sorry, Uncle, I ken I shouldna ha’ let him do it, but—”
“What?” Alarmed by Ian’s tone of voice, Jamie was already on his feet. “What have ye done?”
The lad twisted his big hands together, cracking his knuckles in embarrassment.
“Well, ye see, his Lordship asked for the privy, and so I told him about the snake, and that he’d best go into the wood instead. So he did, but then he wanted to see the snake, and…and…”
“He’s not bitten?” Jamie asked anxiously. Lord John, who had obviously been about to ask the same thing, gave him a glance.
“Oh, no!” Ian looked surprised. “We couldna see it to start with, because it was too dark below. So we lifted off the benchtop to get more light. We could see the serpent fine, then, and we poked at it a bit wi’ a long branch, so it was lashin’ to and fro like the wee book said, but it didna seem inclined to bite itself. And—and—” He darted a glance at Lord John, and swallowed audibly.
“It was my fault,” he said, nobly squaring his shoulders, the better to accept blame. “I said as how I’d thought to shoot it earlier, but we didna want to waste the powder. And so his Lordship said as how he would fetch his papa’s pistol from the saddlebag and deal with the thing at once. And so—”
“Ian,” said Jamie between his teeth. “Stop blethering this instant and tell me straight what ye’ve done wi’ the lad. Ye’ve not shot him by mistake, I hope?”
Ian looked offended at this slur upon his marksmanship.
“Of course not!” he said.
Lord John coughed politely, forestalling further recriminations.
“Perhaps you would be good enough to tell me the whereabouts of my son at this moment?”
Ian took a deep breath and visibly commended his soul to God.
“He’s in the bottom of the privy,” he said. “Have ye got a bit o’ rope, Uncle Jamie?”
With an admirable economy of both words and motion, Jamie reached the door in two strides and disappeared, closely followed by Lord John.
“Is he in there with the snake?” I asked, hastily scrabbling through the washbasket for something to use as a tourniquet, just in case.
“Oh, no, Auntie,” Ian assured me. “Ye dinna think I’d have left him, and the serpent was still there? Maybe I’d best go help,” he added, and disappeared as well.
I hurried after him, to find Jamie and Lord John standing shoulder to shoulder in the doorway of the privy, conversing with the depths. Standing on tiptoe to peer over Lord John’s shoulder, I saw the torn butt end of a long, slender hickory branch protruding a few inches above the edge of the oblong hole. I held my breath; Lord Ellesmere’s struggles had stirred up the contents of the privy, and the reek was enough to sear the cilia off my nasal membranes.
“He says he’s not hurt,” Jamie assured me, turning away from the hole and unlimbering a coil of rope from his shoulder.
“Good,” I said. “Where’s the snake, though?” I peeked nervously into the outhouse, but couldn’t see anything beyond the silvery cedar boards and the dark recesses of the pit.
“It went that way,” Ian said, gesturing vaguely down the path by which I had come. “The laddie couldna quite get a clear shot, so I gave the thing a wee snoove wi’ the stick, and damned if the bugger didna turn and come at me, right up the branch! It scairt me so I let out a skelloch and let go, and I bumped the lad, and—well, that’s how it happened,” he ended lamely.
Trying to avoid Jamie’s eye, he sidled toward the pit and, leaning over, yelled awkwardly, “Hey! I’m glad ye didna break your neck!”
Jamie gave him a look that said rather plainly that if necks were to be broken…but forbore further remarks in the interests of extracting William promptly from his oubliette. This procedure was carried out without further incident, and the would-be marksman was lifted out, clinging to the rope like a caterpillar on a string.
There had luckily been enough sewage in the bottom of the pit to break his fall. From appearances, the ninth Earl of Ellesmere had landed facedown. Lord John stood for a moment on the path, wiping his hands on his breeches and surveying the encrusted object before him. He rubbed the back of a hand over his mouth, trying either to hide a smile or to stifle his sense of smell.
Then his shoulders started to shake.
“What news from the Underworld, Persephone?” he said, unable to keep the quaver of laughter out of his voice.
A pair of slanted eyes looked blue murder out of the mask of filth obscuring his Lordship’s features. It was a thoroughly Fraser expression, and I felt a qualm go through me at the sight. By my side, Ian gave a sudden start. He glanced quickly from the Earl to Jamie and back, then he caught my eye and his own face went perfectly and unnaturally blank.
Jamie was saying something in Greek, to which Lord John replied in the same language, whereupon both men laughed like loons. Trying to ignore Ian, I bent an eye in Jamie’s direction. Shoulders still shaking with suppressed mirth, he saw fit to enlighten me.
“Epicharmus,” he explained. “At the Oracle of Delphi, seekers after enlightenment would throw down a dead python into the pit, and then hang about, breathing in the fumes as it decayed.”
Lord John declaimed, gesturing grandly. “ ‘The spirit toward the heavens, the body to the earth.’ ”
William exhaled strongly through his nose, precisely as Jamie did when tried beyond bearing. Ian twitched beside me. Good grief, I thought, freshly unnerved. Does the boy have nothing from his mother?
“And have you attained any spiritual insights as a result of your recent m-mystical experience, William?” Lord John asked, making a poor attempt at self-control. He and Jamie were both flushed, with a laughter that I thought due as much to the release of nervous tension as to brandy or hilarity.
His Lordship, glowering, pulled off his neckcloth and flung it on the path with a soggy splat. Now Ian was giggling nervously, too, unable to help himself. My own belly muscles were quivering under the strain, but I could see that the patches of exposed flesh above William’s collar were the color of the ripe tomatoes by the privy. Knowing all too well what usually happened to a Fraser who reached that particular level of incandescence, I thought the time had come to break up the party.
“Er-hem,” I said, clearing my throat. “If you will allow me, gentlemen? Unlearned as I am in Greek philosophy, there is one small epigram I know by heart.”
I handed William the jar of lye soap I had brought in lieu of a tourniquet.
“Pindar,” I said. “ ‘Water is best.’ ”
A small flash of what might have been gratitude showed through the muck. His Lordship bowed to me, with utmost correctness, then turned, gave Ian a fishy stare, and stomped off through the grass toward the creek, dripping. He seemed to have lost his shoes.
“Puir clarty bugger,” Ian said, shaking his head mournfully. “It’ll be days before he gets the stink off.”
“No doubt.” Lord John’s lips were still twitching, but the urge to declaim Greek poetry seemed to have left him, replaced by less elevated concerns. “Do you know what has become of my pistol, by the way? The one William was using before his unfortunate accident?”
“Oh.” Ian looked uncomfortable. He lifted his chin in the direction of the privy. “I…ah…well, I’m verra much afraid—”
“I see.” Lord John rubbed his own immaculately barbered chin.
Jamie fixed Ian with a long stare.
“Ah…” said Ian, backing up a pace or two.
“Get it,” said Jamie, in a tone that brooked no contradiction.
“But—” said Ian.
“Now,” said his uncle, and dropped the slimy rope at his feet.
Ian’s Adam’s apple bobbed, once. He looked at me, wide-eyed as a rabbit.
“Take your clothes off first,” I said helpfully. “We don’t want to have to burn them, do we?”