* * *
It was a restless night. Too tired to stay awake a moment longer, I was too happy to fall soundly asleep. Perhaps I was afraid he would vanish if I slept. Perhaps he felt the same. We lay close together, not awake, but too aware of each other to sleep deeply. I felt every small twitch of his muscles, every movement of his breathing, and knew he was likewise aware of me.
Half-dozing, we turned and moved together, always touching, in a sleepy, slow-motion ballet, learning again in silence the language of our bodies. Somewhere in the deep, quiet hours of the night, he turned to me without a word, and I to him, and we made love to each other in a slow, unspeaking tenderness that left us lying still at last, in possession of each other’s secrets.
Soft as a moth flying in the dark, my hand skimmed his leg, and found the thin deep runnel of the scar. My fingers traced its invisible length and paused, with the barest of touches at its end, wordlessly asking, “How?”
His breathing changed with a sigh, and his hand lay over mine.
“Culloden,” he said, the whispered word an evocation of tragedy. Death. Futility. And the terrible parting that had taken me from him.
“I’ll never leave you,” I whispered. “Not again.”
His head turned on the pillow, his features lost in darkness, and his lips brushed mine, light as the touch of an insect’s wing. He turned onto his back, shifting me next to him, his hand resting heavy on the curve of my thigh, keeping me close.
Sometime later, I felt him shift again, and turn the bedclothes back a little way. A cool draft played across my forearm; the tiny hairs prickled upright, and then flattened beneath the warmth of his touch. I opened my eyes, to find him turned on his side, absorbed in the sight of my hand. It lay still on the quilt, a carved white thing, all the bones and tendons chalked in gray as the room began its imperceptible shift from night to day.
“Draw her for me,” he whispered, head bent as he gently traced the shapes of my fingers, long and ghostly beneath the darkness of his own touch.
“What has she of you, of me? Can ye tell me? Are her hands like yours, Claire, or mine? Draw her for me, let me see her.” He laid his own hand down beside my own. It was his good hand, the fingers straight and flat-jointed, the nails clipped short, square and clean.
“Like mine,” I said. My voice was low and hoarse with waking, barely loud enough to register above the drumming of the rain outside. The house beneath was silent. I raised the fingers of my immobile hand an inch in illustration.
“She has long, slim hands like mine—but bigger than mine, broad across the backs, and a deep curve at the outside, near the wrist—like that. Like yours; she has a pulse just there, where you do.” I touched the spot where a vein crossed the curve of his radius, just where the wrist joins the hand. He was so still I could feel his heartbeat under my fingertip.
“Her nails are like yours; square, not oval like mine. But she has the crooked little finger on her right hand that I have,” I said, lifting it. “My mother had it, too; Uncle Lambert told me.” My own mother had died when I was five. I had no clear memory of her, but thought of her whenever I saw my own hand unexpectedly, caught in a moment of grace like this one. I laid the hand with the crooked finger on his, then lifted it to his face.
“She has this line,” I said softly, tracing the bold sweep from temple to cheek. “Your eyes, exactly, and those lashes and brows. A Fraser nose. Her mouth is more like mine, with a full bottom lip, but it’s wide, like yours. A pointed chin, like mine, but stronger. She’s a big girl—nearly six feet tall.” I felt his start of astonishment, and nudged him gently, knee to knee. “She has long legs, like yours, but very feminine.”
“And has she that small blue vein just there?” His hand touched my own face, thumb tender in the hollow of my temple. “And ears like tiny wings, Sassenach?”
“She always complained about her ears—said they stuck out,” I said, feeling the tears sting my eyes as Brianna came suddenly to life between us.
“They’re pierced. You don’t mind, do you?” I said, talking fast to keep the tears at bay. “Frank did; he said it looked cheap, and she shouldn’t, but she wanted to do it, and I let her, when she was sixteen. Mine were; it didn’t seem right to say she couldn’t when I did, and her friends all did, and I didn’t—didn’t want—”
“Ye were right,” he said, interrupting the flow of half-hysterical words. “Ye did fine,” he repeated, softly but firmly, holding me close. “Ye were a wonderful mother, I know it.”
I was crying again, quite soundlessly, shaking against him. He held me gently, stroking my back and murmuring. “Ye did well,” he kept saying. “Ye did right.” And after a little while, I stopped crying.
“Ye gave me a child, mo nighean donn,” he said softly, into the cloud of my hair. “We are together for always. She is safe; and we will live forever now, you and I.” He kissed me, very lightly, and laid his head upon the pillow next to me. “Brianna,” he whispered, in that odd Highland way that made her name his own. He sighed deeply, and in an instant, was asleep. In another, I fell asleep myself, my last sight his wide, sweet mouth, relaxed in sleep, half-smiling.
26
WHORE’S BRUNCH
From years of answering the twin calls of motherhood and medicine, I had developed the ability to wake from even the soundest sleep at once and completely. I woke so now, immediately aware of the worn linen sheets around me, the dripping of the eaves outside, and the warm scent of Jamie’s body mingling with the cold, sweet air that breathed through the crack of the shutters above me.
Jamie himself was not in bed; without reaching out or opening my eyes, I knew that the space beside me was empty. He was close by, though. There was a sound of stealthy movement, and a faint scraping noise nearby. I turned my head on the pillow and opened my eyes.
The room was filled with a gray light that washed the color from everything, but left the pale lines of his body clear in the dimness. He stood out against the darkness of the room, solid as ivory, vivid as though he were etched upon the air. He was naked, his back turned to me as he stood in front of the chamber pot he had just pulled from its resting place beneath the washstand.
I admired the squared roundness of his buttocks, the small muscular hollow that dented each one, and their pale vulnerability. The groove of his backbone, springing in a deep, smooth curve from hips to shoulders. As he moved slightly, the light caught the faint silver shine of the scars on his back, and the breath caught in my throat.
He turned around then, face calm and faintly abstracted. He saw me watching him, and looked slightly startled.
I smiled but stayed silent, unable to think of anything to say. I kept looking at him, though, and he at me, the same smile upon his lips. Without speaking, he moved toward me and sat on the bed, the mattress shifting under his weight. He laid his hand open on the quilt, and I put my own into it without hesitation.
“Sleep well?” I asked idiotically.
A grin broadened across his face. “No,” he said. “Did you?”
“No.” I could feel the heat of him, even at this distance, in spite of the chilly room. “Aren’t you cold?”
“No.”
We fell quiet again, but could not take our eyes away from each other. I looked him over carefully in the strengthening light, comparing memory to reality. A narrow blade of early sun knifed through the shutters’ crack, lighting a lock of hair like polished bronze, gilding the curve of his shoulder, the smooth flat slope of his belly. He seemed slightly larger than I had remembered, and one hell of a lot more immediate.
“You’re bigger than I remembered,” I ventured. He tilted his head, looking down at me in amusement.
“You’re a wee bit smaller, I think.”
His hand engulfed mine, fingers delicately circling the bones of my wrist. My mouth was dry; I swallowed and licked my lips.
“A long time ago, you asked me if I knew what it was between us,” I said.
His eyes rested on mine, so dark a blue as to be nearly black in a light like this.
“I remember,” he said softly. His fingers tightened briefly on mine. “What it is—when I touch you; when ye lie wi’ me.”
“I said I didn’t know.”
“I didna ken either.” The smile had faded a bit, but was still there, lurking in the corners of his mouth.
“I still don’t,” I said. “But—” and stopped to clear my throat.
“But it’s still there,” he finished for me, and the smile moved from his lips, lighting his eyes. “Aye?”
It was. I was still as aware of him as I might have been of a lighted stick of dynamite in my immediate vicinity, but the feeling between us had changed. We had fallen asleep as one flesh, linked by the love of the child we had made, and had waked as two people—bound by something different.
“Yes. Is it—I mean, it’s not just because of Brianna, do you think?”
The pressure on my fingers increased.
“Do I want ye because you’re the mother of my child?” He raised one ruddy eyebrow in incredulity. “Well, no. Not that I’m no grateful,” he added hastily. “But—no.” He bent his head to look down at me intently, and the sun lit the narrow bridge of his nose and sparked in his lashes.
“No,” he said. “I think I could watch ye for hours, Sassenach, to see how you have changed, or how ye’re the same. Just to see a wee thing, like the curve of your chin”—he touched my jaw gently, letting his hand slide up to cup my head, thumb stroking my earlobe—“or your ears, and the bittie holes for your earbobs. Those are all the same, just as they were. Your hair—I called ye mo nighean donn, d’ye recall? My brown one.” His voice was little more than a whisper, his fingers threading my curls between them.
“I expect that’s changed a bit,” I said. I hadn’t gone gray, but there were paler streaks where my normal light brown had faded to a softer gold, and here and there, the glint of a single silver strand.
“Like beechwood in the rain,” he said, smiling and smoothing a lock with one forefinger, “and the drops coming down from the leaves across the bark.”
I reached out and stroked his thigh, touching the long scar that ran down it.
“I wish I could have been there to take care of you,” I said softly. “It was the most horrible thing I ever did—leaving you, knowing…that you meant to be killed.” I could hardly bear to speak the word.
“Well, I tried hard enough,” he said, with a wry grimace that made me laugh, in spite of my emotion. “It wasna my fault I didna succeed.” He glanced dispassionately at the long, thick scar that ran down his thigh. “Not the fault of the Sassenach wi’ the bayonet, either.”
I heaved myself up on one elbow, squinting at the scar. “A bayonet did that?”
“Aye, well. It festered, ye see,” he explained.
“I know; we found the journal of the Lord Melton who sent you home from the battlefield. He didn’t think you’d make it.” My hand tightened on his knee, as though to reassure myself that he was in fact here before me, alive.
He snorted. “Well, I damn nearly didn’t. I was all but dead when they pulled me out of the wagon at Lallybroch.” His face darkened with memory.
“God, sometimes I wake up in the night, dreaming of that wagon. It was two days’ journey, and I was fevered or chilled, or both together. I was covered wi’ hay, and the ends of it sticking in my eyes and my ears and through my shirt, and fleas hopping all through it and eating me alive, and my leg killing me at every jolt in the road. It was a verra bumpy road, too,” he added broodingly.
“It sounds horrible,” I said, feeling the word quite inadequate. He snorted briefly.
“Aye. I only stood it by imagining what I’d do to Melton if I ever met him again, to get back at him for not shooting me.”
I laughed again, and he glanced down at me, a wry smile on his lips.
“I’m not laughing because it’s funny,” I said, gulping a little. “I’m laughing because otherwise I’ll cry, and I don’t want to—not now, when it’s over.”
“Aye, I know.” He squeezed my hand.
I took a deep breath. “I—I didn’t look back. I didn’t think I could stand to find out—what happened.” I bit my lip; the admission seemed a betrayal. “It wasn’t that I tried—that I wanted—to forget,” I said, groping clumsily for words. “I couldn’t forget you; you shouldn’t think that. Not ever. But I—”
“Dinna fash yourself, Sassenach,” he interrupted. He patted my hand gently. “I ken what ye mean. I try not to look back myself, come to that.”
“But if I had,” I said, staring down at the smooth grain of the linen, “if I had—I might have found you sooner.”
The words hung in the air between us like an accusation, a reminder of the bitter years of loss and separation. Finally he sighed, deeply, and put a finger under my chin, lifting my face to his.
“And if ye had?” he said. “Would ye have left the lassie there without her mother? Or come to me in the time after Culloden, when I couldna care for ye, but only watch ye suffer wi’ the rest, and feel the guilt of bringing ye to such a fate? Maybe see ye die of the hunger and sickness, and know I’d killed ye?” He raised one eyebrow in question, then shook his head.
“No. I told ye to go, and I told ye to forget. Shall I blame ye for doing as I said, Sassenach? No.”
“But we might have had more time!” I said. “We might have—” He stopped me by the simple expedient of bending and putting his mouth on mine. It was warm and very soft, and the stubble of his face was faintly scratchy on my skin.
After a moment he released me. The light was growing, putting color in his face. His skin glowed bronze, sparked with the copper of his beard. He took a deep breath.
“Aye, we might. But to think of that—we cannot.” His eyes met mine steadily, searching. “I canna look back, Sassenach, and live,” he said simply. “If we have no more than last night, and this moment, it is enough.”
“Not for me, it isn’t!” I said, and he laughed.
“Greedy wee thing, are ye no?”
“Yes,” I said. The tension broken, I returned my attention to the scar on his leg, to keep away for the moment from the painful contemplation of lost time and opportunity.
“You were telling me how you got that.”
“So I was.” He rocked back a little, squinting down at the thin white line down the top of his thigh.
“Well, it was Jenny—my sister, ye ken?” I did indeed remember Jenny; half her brother’s size, and dark as he was blazing fair, but a match and more for him in stubbornness.
“She said she wasna going to let me die,” he said, with a rueful smile. “And she didn’t. My opinion didna seem to have anything to do wi’ the matter, so she didna bother to ask me.”
“That sounds like Jenny.” I felt a small glow of comfort at the thought of my sister-in-law. Jamie hadn’t been alone as I feared, then; Jenny Murray would have fought the Devil himself to save her brother—and evidently had.
“She dosed me for the fever, and put poultices on my leg to draw the poison, but nothing worked, and it only got worse. It swelled and stank, and then began to go black and rotten, so they thought they must take the leg off, if I was to live.”
He recounted this quite matter-of-factly, but I felt a little faint at the thought.
“Obviously they didn’t,” I said. “Why not?”
Jamie scratched his nose and rubbed a hand back through his hair, wiping the wild spill of it out of his eyes. “Well, that was Ian,” he said. “He wouldna let her do it. He said he kent well enough what it was like to live wi’ one leg, and while he didna mind it so much himself, he thought I wouldna like to—all things considered,” he added, with a wave of the hand and a glance at me that encompassed everything—the loss of the battle, of the war, of me, of home and livelihood—of all the things of his normal life. I thought Ian might well have been right.
“So instead Jenny made three of the tenants come to sit on me and hold me still, and then she slit my leg to the bone wi’ a kitchen knife and washed the wound wi’ boiling water,” he said casually.
“Jesus H. Christ!” I blurted, shocked into horror.
He smiled faintly at my expression. “Aye, well, it worked.”
I swallowed heavily, tasting bile. “Jesus. I’d think you’d have been a cripple for life!”
“Well, she cleansed it as best she could, and stitched it up. She said she wasna going to let me die, and she wasna going to have me be a cripple, and she wasna going to have me lie about all the day feelin’ sorry for myself, and—” He shrugged, resigned. “By the time she finished tellin’ me all the things she wouldna let me do, it seemed the only thing left to me was to get well.”
I echoed his laugh, and his smile broadened at the memory. “Once I could get up, she made Ian take me outside after dark and make me walk. Lord, we must ha’ been a sight, Ian wi’ his wooden leg, and me wi’ my stick, limping up and down the road like a pair of lame cranes!”
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 satisfaction. 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.
The head thought this over for some time, and finally answered, with equal caution, “Ian Murray.”
“Ian Murray?” I shot up straight, rescuing the sheet at the last moment. “Come in here,” I said peremptorily. “If you’re who I think you are, why aren’t you where you’re supposed to be, and what are you doing here?” The face looked rather alarmed, and showed signs of withdrawal.
“Stop!” I called, and put a leg out of bed to pursue him. The big brown eyes widened at the sight of my bare limb, and he froze. “Come in, I said.”
Slowly, I withdrew the leg beneath the quilts, and equally slowly, he followed it into the room.
He was tall and gangly as a fledgling stork, with perhaps nine stone spread sparsely over a six-foot frame. Now that I knew who he was, the resemblance to his father was clear. He had his mother’s pale skin, though, which blushed furiously red as it occurred to him suddenly that he was standing next to a bed containing a naked woman.
“I…er…was looking for my…for Mr. Malcolm, I mean,” he murmured, staring fixedly at the floorboards by his feet.
“If you mean your uncle Jamie, he’s not here,” I said.
“No. No, I suppose not.” He seemed unable to think of anything to add to this, but remained staring at the floor, one foot twisted awkwardly to the side, as though he were about to draw it up under him, like the wading bird he so much resembled.
“Do ye ken where…” he began, lifting his eyes, then, as he caught a glimpse of me, lowered them, blushed again and fell silent.
“He’s looking for you,” I said. “With your father,” I added. “They left here not half an hour ago.”
His head snapped up on its skinny neck, goggling.
“My father?” he gasped. “My father was here? Ye know him?”
“Why, yes,” I said, without thinking. “I’ve known Ian for quite a long time.”
He might be Jamie’s nephew, but he hadn’t Jamie’s trick of inscrutability. Everything he thought showed on his face, and I could easily trace the progression of his expressions. Raw shock at learning of his father’s presence in Edinburgh, then a sort of awestruck horror at the revelation of his father’s long-standing acquaintance with what appeared to be a woman of a certain occupation, and finally the beginnings of angry absorption, as the young man began an immediate revision of his opinions of his father’s character.
“Er—” I said, mildly alarmed. “It isn’t what you think. I mean, your father and I—it’s really your uncle and I, I mean—” I was trying to figure out how to explain the situation to him without getting into even deeper waters, when he whirled on his heel and started for the door.
“Wait a minute,” I said. He stopped, but didn’t turn around. His well-scrubbed ears stood out like tiny wings, the morning light illuminating their delicate pinkness. “How old are you?” I asked.
He turned around to face me, with a certain painful dignity. “I’ll be fifteen in three weeks,” he said. The red was creeping up his cheeks again. “Dinna worry, I’m old enough to know—what sort of place this is, I mean.” He jerked his head toward me in an attempt at a courtly bow.
“Meaning no offense to ye, mistress. If Uncle Jamie—I mean, I—” he groped for suitable words, failed to find any, and finally blurted, “verra pleased to meet ye, mum!” turned and bolted through the door, which shut hard enough to rattle in its frame.
I fell back against the pillows, torn between amusement and alarm. I did wonder what the elder Ian was going to say to his son when they met—and vice versa. As long as I was wondering, I wondered what had brought the younger Ian here in search of Jamie. Evidently, he knew where his uncle was likely to be found; yet judging from his diffident attitude, he had never before ventured into the brothel.
Had he extracted the information from Geordie at the printshop? That seemed unlikely. And yet, if he hadn’t—then that meant he had learned of his uncle’s connection with this place from some other source. And the most likely source was Jamie himself.
But in that case, I reasoned, Jamie likely already knew that his nephew was in Edinburgh, so why pretend he hadn’t seen the boy? Ian was Jamie’s oldest friend; they had grown up together. If whatever Jamie was up to was worth the cost of deceiving his brother-in-law, it was something serious.
I had got no further with my musings, when there came another knock on the door.
“Come in,” I said, smoothing out the quilts in anticipation of the breakfast tray to be placed thereon.
When the door opened, I had directed my attention at a spot about five feet above the floor, where I expected the chambermaid’s head to materialize. Upon the last opening of the door, I had had to adjust my vision upward a foot, to accommodate the appearance of Young Ian. This time, I was obliged to drop it.
“What in the bloody hell are you doing here?” I demanded as the diminutive figure of Mr. Willoughby entered on hands and knees. I sat up and hastily tucked my feet underneath me, pulling not only sheet but quilts well up around my shoulders.
In answer, the Chinese advanced to within a foot of the bed, then let his head fall to the floor with a loud clunk. He raised it and repeated the process with great deliberation, making a horrid sound like a melon being cleaved with an ax.
“Stop that!” I exclaimed, as he prepared to do it a third time.
“Thousand apology,” he explained, sitting up on his heels and blinking at me. He was quite a bit the worse for wear, and the dark red mark where his forehead had smacked the floor didn’t add anything to his appearance. I trusted he didn’t mean he’d been going to hit his head on the floor a thousand times, but I wasn’t sure. He obviously had the hell of a hangover; for him to have attempted it even once was impressive.
“That’s quite all right,” I said, edging cautiously back against the wall. “There’s nothing to apologize for.”
“Yes, apology,” he insisted. “Tsei-mi saying wife. Lady being most honorable First Wife, not stinking whore.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said. “Tsei-mi? You mean Jamie? Jamie Fraser?”
The little man nodded, to the obvious detriment of his head. He clutched it with both hands and closed his eyes, which promptly disappeared into the creases of his cheeks.
“Tsei-mi,” he affirmed, eyes still closed. “Tsei-mi saying apology to most honored First Wife. Yi Tien Cho most humble servant.” He bowed deeply, still holding onto his head. “Yi Tien Cho,” he added, opening his eyes and tapping his chest to indicate that that was his name; in case I should be confusing him with any other humble servants in the vicinity.
“That’s quite all right,” I said. “Er, pleased to meet you.”
Evidently heartened by this, he slid bonelessly onto his face, prostrating himself before me.
“Yi Tien Cho lady’s servant,” he said. “First Wife please to walk on humble servant, if like.”
“Ha,” I said coldly. “I’ve heard about you. Walk on you, eh? Not bloody likely!”
A slit of gleaming black eye showed, and he giggled, so irrepressibly that I couldn’t help laughing myself. He sat up again, smoothing down the spikes of dirt-stiffened black hair that sprang, porcupine-like, from his skull.
“I wash First Wife’s feet?” he offered, grinning widely.
“Certainly not,” I said. “If you really want to do something helpful, go and tell someone to bring me breakfast. No, wait a minute,” I said, changing my mind. “First, tell me where you met Jamie. If you don’t mind,” I added, to be polite.
He sat back on his heels, head bobbing slightly. “Docks,” he said. “Two year ago. I come China, long way, no food. Hiding barrel,” he explained, reaching his arms in a circle, to demonstrate his means of transportation.
“A stowaway?”
“Trade ship,” he nodded. “On docks here, stealing food. Stealing brandy one night, getting stinking drunk. Very cold to sleep; die soon, but Tsei-mi find.” He jabbed a thumb at his chest once more. “Tsei-mi’s humble servant. Humble servant First Wife.” He bowed to me, swaying alarmingly in the process, but came upright again without mishap.
“Brandy seems to be your downfall,” I observed. “I’m sorry I haven’t anything to give you for your head; I don’t have any medicines with me at the moment.”
“Oh, not worry,” he assured me. “I having healthy balls.”
“How nice for you,” I said, trying to decide whether he was gearing up for another attempt on my feet, or merely still too drunk to distinguish basic anatomy. Or perhaps there was some connection in Chinese philosophy, between the well-being of head and testicles? Just in case, I looked round for something that might be used as a weapon, in case he showed a disposition to begin burrowing under the bedclothes.
Instead, he reached into the depths of one baggy blue-silk sleeve and with the air of a conjuror, drew out a small white silk bag. He upended this, and two balls dropped out into his palm. They were larger than marbles and smaller than baseballs; about the size, in fact, of the average testicle. A good deal harder, though, being apparently made of some kind of polished stone, greenish in color.
“Healthy balls,” Mr. Willoughby explained, rolling them together in his palm. They made a pleasant clicking noise. “Streaked jade, from Canton,” he said. “Best kind of healthy balls.”
“Really?” I said, fascinated. “And they’re medicinal—good for you, that’s what you’re saying?”
He nodded vigorously, then stopped abruptly with a faint moan. After a pause, he spread out his hand, and rolled the balls to and fro, keeping them in movement with a dextrous circling of his fingers.
“All body one part; hand all parts,” he said. He poked a finger toward his open palm, touching delicately here and there between the smooth green spheres. “Head there, stomach there, liver there,” he said. “Balls make all good.”
“Well, I suppose they’re as portable as Alka-Seltzer,” I said. Possibly it was the reference to stomach that caused my own to emit a loud growl at this point.
“First Wife wanting food,” Mr. Willoughby observed shrewdly.
“Very astute of you,” I said. “Yes, I do want food. Do you suppose you could go and tell someone?”
He dumped the healthy balls back into their bag at once, and springing to his feet, bowed deeply.
“Humble servant go now,” he said, and went, crashing rather heavily into the door post on his way out.