Voyager(Outlander #3)

27

UP IN FLAMES

The dress was a trifle lower-cut than necessary, and a bit tight in the bosom, but on the whole, not a bad fit.

“And how did you know Daphne would be the right size?” I asked, spooning up my soup.

“I said I didna bed wi’ the lasses,” Jamie replied circumspectly. “I never said I didna look at them.” He blinked at me like a large red owl—some congenital tic made him incapable of closing one eye in a wink—and I laughed.

“That gown becomes ye a good deal more than it did Daphne, though.” He cast a glance of general approval at my bosom and waved at a servingmaid carrying a platter of fresh bannocks.

Moubray’s tavern was doing a thriving dinner business. Several cuts above the snug, smoky atmosphere to be found in The World’s End and similar serious drinking establishments, Moubray’s was a large and elegant place, with an outside stair that ran up to the second floor, where a commodious dining room accommodated the appetites of Edinburgh’s prosperous tradesmen and public officials.

“Who are you at the moment?” I asked. “I heard Madame Jeanne call you ‘Monsieur Fraser’—are you Fraser in public, though?”

He shook his head and broke a bannock into his soup bowl. “No, at the moment, I’m Sawney Malcolm, Printer and Publisher.”

“Sawney? That’s a nickname for Alexander, is it? I should have thought ‘Sandy’ was more like it, especially considering your hair.” Not that his hair was sandy-colored in the least, I reflected, looking at it. It was like Bree’s hair—very thick, with a slight wave to it, and all the colors of red and gold mixed; copper and cinnamon, auburn and amber, red and roan and rufous, all mingled together.

I felt a sudden wave of longing for Bree; at the same time, I longed to untie Jamie’s hair from its formal plait and run my hands up under it, to feel the solid curve of his skull, and the soft strands tangled in my fingers. I could still recall the tickle of it, spilling loose and rich across my breasts in the morning light.

My breath coming a little short, I bent my head to my oyster stew.

Jamie appeared not to have noticed; he added a large pat of butter to his bowl, shaking his head as he did so.

“Sawney’s what they say in the Highlands,” he informed me. “And in the Isles, too. Sandy’s more what ye’d hear in the Lowlands—or from an ignorant Sassenach.” He lifted one eyebrow at me, smiling, and raised a spoonful of the rich, fragrant stew to his mouth.

“All right,” I said. “I suppose more to the point, though—who am I?”

He had noticed, after all. I felt one large foot nudge mine, and he smiled at me over the rim of his cup.

“You’re my wife, Sassenach,” he said gruffly. “Always. No matter who I may be—you’re my wife.”

I could feel the flush of pleasure rise in my face, and see the memories of the night before reflected in his own. The tips of his ears were faintly pink.

“You don’t suppose there’s too much pepper in this stew?” I asked, swallowing another spoonful. “Are you sure, Jamie?”

“Aye,” he said. “Aye, I’m sure,” he amended, “and no, the pepper’s fine. I like a wee bit of pepper.” The foot moved slightly against mine, the toe of his shoe barely brushing my ankle.

“So I’m Mrs. Malcolm,” I said, trying out the name on my tongue. The mere fact of saying “Mrs.” gave me an absurd little thrill, like a new bride. Involuntarily, I glanced down at the silver ring on my right fourth finger.

Jamie caught the glance, and raised his cup to me.

“To Mrs. Malcolm,” he said softly, and the breathless feeling came back.

He set down the cup and took my hand; his own was big and so warm that a general feeling of glowing heat spread rapidly through my fingers. I could feel the silver ring, separate from my flesh, its metal heated by his touch.

“To have and to hold,” he said, smiling.

“From this day forward,” I said, not caring in the least that we were attracting interested glances from the other diners.

Jamie bent his head and pressed his lips against the back of my hand, an action that turned the interested glances into frank stares. A clergyman was seated across the room; he glared at us and said something to his companions, who turned round to stare. One was a small, elderly man; the other, I was surprised to see, was Mr. Wallace, my companion from the Inverness coach.

“There are private rooms upstairs,” Jamie murmured, blue eyes dancing over my knuckles, and I lost interest in Mr. Wallace.

“How interesting,” I said. “You haven’t finished your stew.”

“Damn the stew.”

“Here comes the servingmaid with the ale.”

“Devil take her.” Sharp white teeth closed gently on my knuckle, making me jerk slightly in my seat.

“People are watching you.”

“Let them, and I trust they’ve a fine day for it.”

His tongue flicked gently between my fingers.

“There’s a man in a green coat coming this way.”

“To hell—” Jamie began, when the shadow of the visitor fell upon the table.

“A good day to you, Mr. Malcolm,” said the visitor, bowing politely. “I trust I do not intrude?”

“You do,” said Jamie, straightening up but keeping his grip on my hand. He turned a cool gaze on the newcomer. “I think I do not know ye, sir?”

The gentleman, an Englishman of maybe thirty-five, quietly dressed, bowed again, not intimidated by this marked lack of hospitality.

“I have not had the pleasure of your acquaintance as yet, sir,” he said deferentially. “My master, however, bade me greet you, and inquire whether you—and your companion—might be so agreeable as to take a little wine with him.”

The tiny pause before the word “companion” was barely discernible, but Jamie caught it. His eyes narrowed.

“My wife and I,” he said, with precisely the same sort of pause before “wife,” “are otherwise engaged at the moment. Should your master wish to speak wi’ me—”

“It is Sir Percival Turner who sends to ask, sir,” the secretary—for so he must be—put in quickly. Well-bred as he was, he couldn’t resist a tiny flick of one eyebrow, as one who uses a name he expects to conjure with.

“Indeed,” said Jamie dryly. “Well, with all respect to Sir Percival, I am preoccupied at present. If you will convey him my regrets?” He bowed, with a politeness so pointed as to come within a hair of rudeness, and turned his back on the secretary. That gentleman stood for a moment, his mouth slightly open, then pivoted smartly on his heel and made his way through the scatter of tables to a door on the far side of the dining room.

“Where was I?” Jamie demanded. “Oh, aye—to hell wi’ gentlemen in green coats. Now, about these private rooms—”

“How are you going to explain me to people?” I asked.

He raised one eyebrow.

“Explain what?” He looked me up and down. “Why must I make excuses for ye? You’re no missing any limbs; you’re not poxed, hunchbacked, toothless or lame—”

“You know what I mean,” I said, kicking him lightly under the table. The lady sitting near the wall nudged her companion and widened her eyes disapprovingly at us. I smiled nonchalantly at them.

“Aye, I do,” he said, grinning. “However, what wi’ Mr. Willoughby’s activities this morning, and one thing and another, I havena had much chance to think about the matter. Perhaps I’ll just say—”

“My dear fellow, so you are married! Capital news! Simply capital! My deepest congratulations, and may I be—dare I hope to be?—the first to extend my felicitations and best wishes to your lady?”

A small, elderly gentleman in a tidy wig leaned heavily on a gold-knobbed stick, beaming genially at us both. It was the little gentleman who had been sitting with Mr. Wallace and the clergyman.

“You will pardon the minor discourtesy of my sending Johnson to fetch you earlier, I am sure,” he said deprecatingly. “It is only that my wretched infirmity prevents rapid movement, as you see.”

Jamie had risen to his feet at the appearance of the visitor, and with a polite gesture, now drew out a chair.

“You’ll join us, Sir Percival?” he said.

“Oh, no, no indeed! Shouldn’t dream of intruding on your new happiness, my dear sir. Truly, I had no idea—” Still protesting gracefully, he sank down into the proffered chair, wincing as he extended his foot beneath the table.

“I am a martyr to gout, my dear,” he confided, leaning close enough for me to smell his foul old-man’s breath beneath the wintergreen that spiced his linen.

He didn’t look corrupt, I thought—breath notwithstanding—but then appearances could be deceiving; it was only about four hours since I had been mistaken for a prostitute.

Making the best of it, Jamie called for wine, and accepted Sir Percival’s continued effusions with some grace.

“It is rather fortunate that I should have encountered you here, my dear fellow,” the elderly gentleman said, breaking off his flowery compliments at last. He laid a small, manicured hand on Jamie’s sleeve. “I had something particular to say to you. In fact, I had sent a note to the printshop, but my messenger failed to find you there.”

“Ah?” Jamie cocked an eyebrow in question.

“Yes,” Sir Percival went on. “I believe you had spoken to me—some weeks ago, I scarce recall the occasion—of your intention to travel north on business. A matter of a new press, or something of the sort?” Sir Percival had quite a sweet face, I thought, handsomely patrician despite his years, with large, guileless blue eyes.

“Aye, that’s so,” Jamie agreed courteously. “I am invited by Mr. McLeod of Perth, to see a new style of letterpress he’s recently put in use.”

“Quite.” Sir Percival paused to remove a snuffbox from his pocket, a pretty thing enameled in green and gold, with cherubs on the lid.

“I really should not advise a trip to the north just now,” he said, opening the box and concentrating on its contents. “Really I should not. The weather is like to be inclement at this season; I am sure it would not suit Mrs. Malcolm.” Smiling at me like an elderly angel, he inhaled a large pinch of snuff and paused, linen handkerchief at the ready.

Jamie sipped at his wine, his face blandly composed.

“I am grateful for your advice, Sir Percival,” he said. “You’ll perhaps have received word from your agents of recent storms to the north?”

Sir Percival sneezed, a small, neat sound, like a mouse with a cold. He was rather like a white mouse altogether, I thought, seeing him dab daintily at his pointed pink nose.

“Quite,” he said again, putting away the kerchief and blinking benevolently at Jamie. “No, I would—as a particular friend with your welfare at heart—most strongly advise that you remain in Edinburgh. After all,” he added, turning the beam of his benevolence on me, “you surely have an inducement to remain comfortably at home now, do you not? And now, my dear young people, I am afraid I must take my leave; I must not detain you any longer from what must be your wedding breakfast.”

With a little assistance from the hovering Johnson, Sir Percival got up and tottered off, his gold-knobbed stick tap-tapping on the floor.

“He seems a nice old gent,” I remarked, when I was sure he was far enough away not to hear me.

Jamie snorted. “Rotten as a worm-riddled board,” he said. He picked up his glass and drained it. “Ye’d think otherwise,” he said meditatively, putting it down and staring after the wizened figure, now cautiously negotiating the head of the stairs. “A man as close as Sir Percival is to Judgment Day, I mean. Ye’d think fear o’ the Devil would prevent him, but not a bit.”

“I suppose he’s like everyone else,” I said cynically. “Most people think they’re going to live forever.”

Jamie laughed, his exuberant spirits returning with a rush.

“Aye, that’s true,” he said. He pushed my wineglass toward me. “And now you’re here, Sassenach, I’m convinced of it. Drink up, mo nighean donn, and we’ll go upstairs.”

* * *

“Post coitum omne animalium triste est,” I remarked, with my eyes closed.

There was no response from the warm, heavy weight on my chest, save the gentle sigh of his breathing. After a moment, though, I felt a sort of subterranean vibration, which I interpreted as amusement.

“That’s a verra peculiar sentiment, Sassenach,” Jamie said, his voice blurred with drowsiness. “Not your own, I hope?”

“No.” I stroked the damp bright hair back from his forehead, and he turned his face into the curve of my shoulder, with a small contented snuffle.

The private rooms at Moubray’s left a bit to be desired in the way of amorous accommodation. Still, the sofa at least offered a padded horizontal surface, which, if you came right down to it, was all that was necessary. While I had decided that I was not past wanting to commit passionate acts after all, I was still too old to want to commit them on the bare floorboards.

“I don’t know who said it—some ancient philosopher or other. It was quoted in one of my medical textbooks; in the chapter on the human reproductive system.”

The vibration made itself audible as a small chuckle.

“Ye’d seem to have applied yourself to your lessons to good purpose, Sassenach,” he said. His hand passed down my side and wormed its way slowly underneath to cup my bottom. He sighed with contentment, squeezing slightly.

“I canna think when I have felt less triste,” he said.

“Me either,” I said, tracing the whorl of the small cowlick that lifted the hair from the center of his forehead. “That’s what made me think of it—I rather wondered what led the ancient philosopher to that conclusion.”

“I suppose it depends on the sorts of animaliae he’d been fornicating with,” Jamie observed. “Maybe it was just that none o’ them took to him, but he must ha’ tried a fair number, to make such a sweeping statement.”

He held tighter to his anchor as the tide of my laughter bounced him gently up and down.

“Mind ye, dogs sometimes do look a trifle sheepish when they’ve done wi’ mating,” he said.

“Mm. And how do sheep look, then?”

“Aye, well, female sheep just go on lookin’ like sheep—not havin’ a great deal of choice in the matter, ye ken.”

“Oh? And what do the male sheep look like?”

“Oh, they look fair depraved. Let their tongues hang out, drooling, and their eyes roll back, while they make disgusting noises. Like most male animals, aye?” I could feel the curve of his grin against my shoulder. He squeezed again, and I pulled gently on the ear closest to hand.

“I didn’t notice your tongue hanging out.”

“Ye werena noticing; your eyes were closed.”

“I didn’t hear any disgusting noises, either.”

“Well, I couldna just think of any on the spur of the moment,” he admitted. “Perhaps I’ll do better next time.”

We laughed softly together, and then were quiet, listening to each other breathe.

“Jamie,” I said softly at last, smoothing the back of his head, “I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy.”

He rolled to one side, shifting his weight carefully so as not to squash me, and lifted himself to lie face-to-face with me.

“Nor me, my Sassenach,” he said, and kissed me, very lightly, but lingering, so that I had time just to close my lips in a tiny bite on the fullness of his lower lip.

“It’s no just the bedding, ye ken,” he said, drawing back a little at last. His eyes looked down at me, a soft deep blue like the warm tropic sea.

“No,” I said, touching his cheek. “It isn’t.”

“To have ye with me again—to talk wi’ you—to know I can say anything, not guard my words or hide my thoughts—God, Sassenach,” he said, “the Lord knows I am lust-crazed as a lad, and I canna keep my hands from you—or anything else—” he added, wryly, “but I would count that all well lost, had I no more than the pleasure of havin’ ye by me, and to tell ye all my heart.”

“It was lonely without you,” I whispered. “So lonely.”

“And me,” he said. He looked down, long lashes hiding his eyes, and hesitated for a moment.

“I willna say that I have lived a monk,” he said quietly. “When I had to—when I felt that I must or go mad—”

I laid my fingers against his lips, to stop him.

“Neither did I,” I said. “Frank—”

His own hand pressed gently against my mouth. Both dumb, we looked at each other, and I could feel the smile growing behind my hand, and my own under his, to match it. I took my hand away.

“It doesna signify,” he said. He took his hand off my mouth.

“No,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.” I traced the line of his lips with my finger.

“So tell me all your heart,” I said. “If there’s time.”

He glanced at the window to gauge the light—we were to meet Ian at the print shop at five o’clock, to check the progress of the search for Young Ian—and then rolled carefully off me.

“There’s two hours, at least, before we must go. Sit up and put your clothes on, and I’ll have them bring some wine and biscuits.”

This sounded wonderful. I seemed to have been starving ever since I found him. I sat up and began to rummage through the pile of discarded clothes on the floor, looking for the set of stays the low-necked gown required.

“I’m no ways sad, but I do maybe feel a bit ashamed,” Jamie observed, wriggling long, slender toes into a silk stocking. “Or I should, at least.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, here I am, in paradise, so to speak, wi’ you and wine and biscuits, while Ian’s out tramping the pavements and worrying for his son.”

“Are you worried about Young Ian?” I asked, concentrating on my laces.

He frowned slightly, pulling on the other stocking.

“Not so much worried for him, as afraid he may not turn up before tomorrow.”

“What happens tomorrow?” I asked, and then belatedly recalled the encounter with Sir Percival Turner. “Oh, your trip to the north—that was supposed to be tomorrow?”

He nodded. “Aye, there’s a rendezvous set at Mullin’s Cove, tomorrow being the dark of the moon. A lugger from France, wi’ a load of wine and cambric.”

“And Sir Percival was warning you not to make that rendezvous?”

“So it seems. What’s happened, I canna say, though I expect I’ll find out. Could be as there’s a visiting Customs Officer in the district, or he’s had word of some activity on the coast there that has nothing to do wi’ us, but could interfere.” He shrugged and finished his last garter.

He spread out his hands upon his knees then, palm up, and slowly curled the fingers inward. The left curled at once into a fist, compact and neat, a blunt instrument ready for battle. The fingers of his right hand curled more slowly; the middle finger was crooked, and would not lie along the second. The fourth finger would not curl at all, but stuck out straight, holding the little finger at an awkward angle beside it.

He looked from his hands to me, smiling.

“D’ye remember the night when ye set my hand?”

“Sometimes, in my more horrible moments.” That night was one to remember—only because it couldn’t be forgotten. Against all odds, I had rescued him from Wentworth Prison and a death sentence—but not in time to prevent his being cruelly tortured and abused by Black Jack Randall.

I picked up his right hand and transferred it to my own knee. He let it lie there, warm, heavy and inert, and didn’t object as I felt each finger, pulling gently to stretch the tendons and twisting to see the range of motion in the joints.

“My first orthopedic surgery, that was,” I said wryly.

“Have ye done a great many things like that since?” he asked curiously, looking down at me.

“Yes, a few. I’m a surgeon—but it doesn’t mean then what it means now,” I added hastily. “Surgeons in my time don’t pull teeth and let blood. They’re more like what’s meant now by the word ‘physician’—a doctor with training in all the fields of medicine, but with a specialty.”

“Special, are ye? Well, ye’ve always been that,” he said, grinning. The crippled fingers slid into my palm and his thumb stroked my knuckles. “What is it a surgeon does that’s special, then?”

I frowned, trying to think of the right phrasing. “Well, as best I can put it—a surgeon tries to effect healing…by means of a knife.”

His long mouth curled upward at the notion.

“A nice contradiction, that; but it suits ye, Sassenach.”

“It does?” I said, startled.

He nodded, never taking his eyes off my face. I could see him studying me closely, and wondered self-consciously what I must look like, flushed from lovemaking, with my hair in wild disorder.

“Ye havena been lovelier, Sassenach,” he said, smile growing wider as I reached up to smooth my hair. He caught my hand, and kissed it gently. “Leave your curls be.

“No,” he said, holding my hands trapped while he looked me over, “no, a knife is verra much what you are, now I think of it. A clever-worked scabbard, and most gorgeous to see, Sassenach”—he traced the line of my lips with a finger, provoking a smile—“but tempered steel for a core…and a wicked sharp edge, I do think.”

“Wicked?” I said, surprised.

“Not heartless, I don’t mean,” he assured me. His eyes rested on my face, intent and curious. A smile touched his lips. “No, never that. But you can be ruthless strong, Sassenach, when the need is on ye.”

I smiled, a little wryly. “I can,” I said.

“I have seen that in ye before, aye?” His voice grew softer and his grasp on my hand tightened. “But now I think ye have it much more than when ye were younger. You’ll have needed it often since, no?”

I realized quite suddenly why he saw so clearly what Frank had never seen at all.

“You have it too,” I said. “And you’ve needed it. Often.” Unconsciously, my fingers touched the jagged scar that crossed his middle finger, twisting the distal joints.

He nodded.

“I have wondered,” he said, so low I could scarcely hear him. “Wondered often, if I could call that edge to my service, and sheathe it safe again. For I have seen a great many men grow hard in that calling, and their steel decay to dull iron. And I have wondered often, was I master in my soul, or did I become the slave of my own blade?

“I have thought again and again,” he went on, looking down at our linked hands…“that I had drawn my blade too often, and spent so long in the service of strife that I wasna fit any longer for human intercourse.”

My lips twitched with the urge to make a remark, but I bit them instead. He saw it, and smiled, a little wryly.

“I didna think I should ever laugh again in a woman’s bed, Sassenach,” he said. “Or even come to a woman, save as a brute, blind with need.” A note of bitterness came into his voice.

I lifted his hand, and kissed the small scar on the back of it.

“I can’t see you as a brute,” I said. I meant it lightly, but his face softened as he looked at me, and he answered seriously.

“I know that, Sassenach. And it is that ye canna see me so that gives me hope. For I am—and know it—and yet perhaps…” He trailed off, watching me intently.

“You have that—the strength. Ye have it, and your soul as well. So perhaps my own may be saved.”

I had no notion what to say to this, and said nothing for a while, but only held his hand, caressing the twisted fingers and the large, hard knuckles. It was a warrior’s hand—but he was not a warrior, now.

I turned the hand over and smoothed it on my knee, palm up. Slowly, I traced the deep lines and rising hillocks, and the tiny letter “C” at the base of his thumb; the brand that marked him mine.

“I knew an old lady in the Highlands once, who said the lines in your hand don’t predict your life; they reflect it.”

“Is that so, then?” His fingers twitched slightly, but his palm lay still and open.

“I don’t know. She said you’re born with the lines of your hand—with a life—but then the lines change, with the things you do, and the person you are.” I knew nothing about palmistry, but I could see one deep line that ran from wrist to midpalm, forking several times.

“I think that might be the one they call a life-line,” I said. “See all the forks? I suppose that would mean you’d changed your life a lot, made a lot of choices.”

He snorted briefly, but with amusement rather than derision.

“Oh, aye? Well, that’s safe enough to say.” He peered into his palm, leaning over my knee. “I suppose the first fork would be when I met Jack Randall, and the second when I wed you—see, they’re close together, there.”

“So they are.” I ran my finger slowly along the line, making his fingers twitch slightly as it tickled. “And Culloden maybe would be another?”

“Perhaps.” But he did not wish to talk of Culloden. His own finger moved on. “And when I went to prison, and came back again, and came to Edinburgh.”

“And became a printer.” I stopped and looked up at him, brows raised. “How on earth did you come to be a printer? It’s the last thing I would have thought of.”

“Oh, that.” His mouth widened in a smile. “Well—it was an accident, aye?”

* * *

To start with he had only been looking for a business that would help to conceal and facilitate the smuggling. Possessed of a sizable sum from a recent profitable venture, he had determined to purchase a business whose normal operations involved a large wagon and team of horses, and some discreet premises that could be used for the temporary storage of goods in transit.

Carting suggested itself, but was rejected precisely because the operations of that business made its practitioners subject to more or less constant scrutiny from the Customs. Likewise, the ownership of a tavern or inn, while superficially desirable because of the large quantities of supplies brought in, was too vulnerable in its legitimate operation to hide an illegitimate one; tax collectors and Customs agents hung about taverns like fleas on a fat dog.

“I thought of printing, when I went to a place to have some notices made up,” he explained. “As I was waiting to put in my order, I saw the wagon come rumbling up, all loaded wi’ boxes of paper and casks of alcohol for the ink powder, and I thought, by God, that’s it! For excisemen would never be troubling a place like that.”

It was only after purchasing the shop in Carfax Close, hiring Geordie to run the press, and actually beginning to fill orders for posters, pamphlets, folios, and books, that the other possibilities of his new business had occurred to him.

“It was a man named Tom Gage,” he explained. He loosed his hand from my grasp, growing eager in the telling, gesturing and rubbing his hands through his hair as he talked, disheveling himself with enthusiasm.

“He brought in small orders for this or that—innocent stuff, all of it—but often, and stayed to talk over it, taking trouble to talk to me as well as to Geordie, though he must have seen I knew less about the business than he did himself.”

He smiled at me wryly.

“I didna ken much about printing, Sassenach, but I do ken men.”

It was obvious that Gage was exploring the sympathies of Alexander Malcolm; hearing the faint sibilance of Jamie’s Highland speech, he had prodded delicately, mentioning this acquaintance and that whose Jacobite sympathies had led them into trouble after the Rising, picking up the threads of mutual acquaintance, skillfully directing the conversation, stalking his prey. Until at last, the amused prey had bluntly told him to bring what he wanted made; no King’s man would hear of it.

“And he trusted you.” It wasn’t a question; the only man who had ever trusted Jamie Fraser in error was Charles Stuart—and in that case, the error was Jamie’s.

“He did.” And so an association was begun, strictly business in the beginning, but deepening into friendship as time went on. Jamie had printed all the materials generated by Gage’s small group of radical political writers—from publicly acknowledged articles to anonymous broadsheets and pamphlets filled with material incriminating enough to get the authors summarily jailed or hanged.

“We’d go to the tavern down the street and talk, after the printing was done. I met a few of Tom’s friends, and finally Tom said I should write a small piece myself. I laughed and told him that with my hand, by the time I’d penned anything that could be read, we’d all be dead—of old age, not hanging.

“I was standing by the press as we were talking, setting the type wi’ my left hand, not even thinking. He just stared at me, and then he started to laugh. He pointed at the tray, and at my hand, and went on laughing, ’til he had to sit down on the floor to stop.”

He stretched out his arms in front of him, flexing his hands and studying them dispassionately. He curled one hand into a fist and bent it slowly up toward his face, making the muscles of his arm ripple and swell under the linen.

“I’m hale enough,” he said. “And with luck, may be so for a good many years yet—but not forever, Sassenach. I ha’ fought wi’ sword and dirk many times, but to every warrior comes the day when his strength will fail him.” He shook his head and stretched out a hand toward his coat, which lay on the floor.

“I took these, that day wi’ Tom Gage, to remind me of it,” he said.

He took my hand and put into it the things he had taken from his pocket. They were cool, and hard to the touch, small heavy oblongs of lead. I didn’t need to feel the incised ends to know what the letters on the type slugs were.

“Q.E.D.,” I said.

“The English took my sword and dirk away,” he said softly. His finger touched the slugs that lay in my palm. “But Tom Gage put a weapon into my hands again, and I think I shall not lay it down.”

* * *

We walked arm in arm down the cobbled slope of the Royal Mile at a quarter to five, suffused with a glow engendered by several bowls of well-peppered oyster stew and a bottle of wine, shared at intervals during our “private communications.”

The city glowed all around us, as though sharing our happiness. Edinburgh lay under a haze that would soon thicken to rain again, but for now, the light of the setting sun hung gold and pink and red in the clouds, and shone in the wet patina of the cobbled street, so that the gray stones of the buildings softened and streamed with reflected light, echoing the glow that warmed my cheeks and shone in Jamie’s eyes when he looked at me.

Drifting down the street in this state of softheaded self-absorption, it was several minutes before I noticed anything amiss. A man, impatient of our meandering progress, stepped briskly around us, and then came to a dead stop just in front of me, making me trip on the wet stones and throw a shoe.

He flung up his head and stared skyward for a moment, then hurried off down the street, not running, but walking as fast as he could go.

“What’s the matter with him?” I said, stooping to retrieve my shoe. Suddenly I noticed that all around us, folk were stopping, staring up, and then starting to rush down the street.

“What do you think—?” I began, but when I turned to Jamie, he too was staring intently upward. I looked up, too, and it took only a moment to see that the red glow in the clouds above was a good deal deeper than the general color of the sunset sky, and seemed to flicker in an uneasy fashion most uncharacteristic of sunsets.

“Fire,” he said. “God, I think it’s in Leith Wynd!”

At the same moment, someone farther down the street raised the cry of “Fire!” and as though this official diagnosis had given them leave to run at last, the hurrying figures below broke loose and cascaded down the street like a herd of lemmings, anxious to fling themselves into the pyre.

A few saner souls ran upwards, past us, also shouting “Fire!” but presumably with the intent of alerting whatever passed for a fire department.

Jamie was already in motion, tugging me along as I hopped awkwardly on one foot. Rather than stop, I kicked the other shoe off, and followed him, slipping and stubbing my toes on the cold wet cobbles as I ran.

The fire was not in Leith Wynd, but next door, in Carfax Close. The mouth of the close was choked with excited onlookers, shoving and craning in an effort to see, shouting incoherent questions at one another. The smell of smoke struck hot and pungent through the damp evening air, and waves of crackling heat beat against my face as I ducked into the close.

Jamie didn’t hesitate, but plunged into the crowd, making a path by main force. I pressed close behind him before the human waves could close again, and elbowed my way through, unable to see anything but Jamie’s broad back ahead of me.

Then we popped out in the front of the crowd, and I could see all too well. Dense clouds of gray smoke rolled out of both the printshop’s lower windows, and I could hear a whispering, crackling noise that rose above the noise of the spectators as though the fire were talking to itself.

“My press!” With a cry of anguish, Jamie darted up the front step and kicked in the door. A cloud of smoke rolled out of the open doorway and engulfed him like a hungry beast. I caught a brief glimpse of him, staggering from the impact of the smoke; then he dropped to his knees and crawled into the building.

Inspired by this example, several men from the crowd ran up the steps of the printshop, and likewise disappeared into the smoke-filled interior. The heat was so intense that I felt my skirts blow against my legs with the wind of it, and wondered how the men could stand it, there inside.

A fresh outbreak of shouting in the crowd behind me announced the arrival of the Town Guard, armed with buckets. Obviously accustomed to this task, the men flung off their wine-red uniform coats and began at once to attack the fire, smashing the windows and flinging pails of water through them with a fierce abandon. Meanwhile, the crowd swelled, its noise augmented by a constant cascade of pattering feet down the many staircases of the close, as families on the upper floors of the surrounding buildings hastily ushered hordes of excited children down to safety.

I couldn’t think that the efforts of the bucket brigade, valiant as they were, would have much effect on what was obviously a fire well underway. I was edging back and forth on the pavement, trying vainly to see anything moving within, when the lead man in the bucket line uttered a startled cry and leaped back, just in time to avoid being crowned by a tray of lead type that whizzed through the broken window and landed on the cobbles with a crash, scattering slugs in all directions.

Two or three urchins wriggled through the crowd and snatched at the slugs, only to be cuffed and driven off by indignant neighbors. One plump lady in a kertch and apron darted forward, risking life and limb, and took custody of the heavy type-tray, dragging it back to the curb, where she crouched protectively over it like a hen on a nest.

Before her companions could scoop up the fallen type, though, they were driven back by a hail of objects that rained from both windows: more type trays, roller bars, inking pads, and bottles of ink, which broke on the pavement, leaving big spidery blotches that ran into the puddles spilled by the fire fighters.

Encouraged by the draft from the open door and windows, the voice of the fire had grown from a whisper into a self-satisfied, chuckling roar. Prevented from flinging water through the windows by the rain of objects being thrown out of them, the leader of the Town Guard shouted to his men, and holding a soaked handkerchief over his nose, ducked and ran into the building, followed by a half-dozen of his fellows.

The line quickly re-formed, full buckets coming hand to hand round the corner from the nearest pump and up the stoop, excited lads snatching the empty buckets that bounced down the step, to race back with them to the pump for refilling. Edinburgh is a stone city, but with so many buildings crammed cheek by jowl, all equipped with multiple hearths and chimneys, fire must be still a frequent occurrence.

Evidently so, for a fresh commotion behind me betokened the belated arrival of the fire engine. The waves of people parted like the Red Sea, to allow passage of the engine, drawn by a team of men rather than horses, which could not have negotiated the tight quarters of the wynds.

The engine was a marvel of brass, glowing like a coal itself in the reflected flames. The heat was becoming more intense; I could feel my lungs dry and labor with each gulp of hot air, and was terrified for Jamie. How long could he breathe, in that hellish fog of smoke and heat, let alone the danger of the flames themselves?

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Ian, forcing his way through the crowd despite his wooden leg, had appeared suddenly by my elbow. He grabbed my arm to keep his balance as another rain of objects forced the people around us back again.

“Where’s Jamie?” he shouted in my ear.

“In there!” I bellowed back, pointing.

There was a sudden bustle and commotion at the door of the printshop, with a confused shouting that rose even over the sound of the fire. Several sets of legs appeared, shuffling to and fro beneath the emergent plume of smoke that billowed from the door. Six men emerged, Jamie among them, staggering under the weight of a huge piece of bulky machinery—Jamie’s precious printing press. They eased it down the step and pushed it well into the crowd, then turned back to the printshop.

Too late for any more rescue maneuvers; there was a crash from inside, a fresh blast of heat that sent the crowd scuttling backward, and suddenly the windows of the upper story were lit with dancing flames inside. A small stream of men issued from the building, coughing and choking, some of them crawling, blackened with soot and dampened with the sweat of their efforts. The engine crew pumped madly, but the thick stream of water from their hose made not the slightest impression on the fire.

Ian’s hand clamped down on my arm like the jaws of a trap.

“Ian!” he shrieked, loud enough to be heard above the noises of crowd and fire alike.

I looked up in the direction of his gaze, and saw a wraithlike shape at the second-story window. It seemed to struggle briefly with the sash, and then to fall back or be enveloped in the smoke.

My heart leapt into my mouth. There was no telling whether the shape was indeed Young Ian, but it was certainly a human form. Ian had lost no time in gaping, but was stumping toward the door of the printshop with all the speed his leg would allow.

“Wait!” I shouted, running after him.

Jamie was leaning on the printing press, chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath and thank his assistants at the same time.

“Jamie!” I snatched at his sleeve, ruthlessly jerking him away from a red-faced barber, who kept excitedly wiping sooty hands on his apron, leaving long black streaks among the smears of dried soap and the spots of blood.

“Up there!” I shouted, pointing. “Young Ian’s upstairs!”

Jamie stepped back, swiping a sleeve across his blackened face, and stared wildly at the upper windows. Nothing was to be seen but the roiling shimmer of the fire against the panes.

Ian was struggling in the hands of several neighbors who sought to prevent his entering the shop.

“No, man, ye canna go in!” the Guard captain cried, trying to grasp Ian’s flailing hands. “The staircase has fallen, and the roof will go next!”

Despite his stringy build and the handicap of his leg, Ian was tall and vigorous, and the feeble grasp of his well-meaning Town Guard captors—mostly retired pensioners from the Highland regiments—was no match for his mountain-hardened strength, reinforced as it was by parental desperation. Slowly but surely, the whole confused mass jerked by inches up the steps of the printshop as Ian dragged his would-be rescuers with him toward the flames.

I felt Jamie draw breath, gulping air as deep as he could with his seared lungs, and then he was up the steps as well, and had Ian round the waist, dragging him back.

“Come down, man!” he shouted hoarsely. “Ye’ll no manage—the stair is gone!” He glanced round, saw me, and thrust Ian bodily backward, off-balance and staggering, into my arms. “Hold him,” he shouted, over the roar of the flames. “I’ll fetch down the lad!”

With that, he turned and dashed up the steps of the adjoining building, pushing his way through the patrons of the ground-floor chocolate shop, who had emerged onto the pavement to gawk at the excitement, pewter cups still clutched in their hands.

Following Jamie’s example, I locked my arms tight around Ian’s waist and didn’t let go. He made an abortive attempt to follow Jamie, but then stopped and stood rigid in my arms, his heart beating wildly just under my cheek.

“Don’t worry,” I said, pointlessly. “He’ll do it; he’ll get him out. He will. I know he will.”

Ian didn’t answer—might not have heard—but stood still and stiff as a statue in my grasp, breath coming harshly with a sound like a sob. When I released my hold on his waist, he didn’t move or turn, but when I stood beside him, he snatched my hand and held it hard. My bones would have ground together, had I not been squeezing back just as hard.

It was no more than a minute before the window above the chocolate shop opened and Jamie’s head and shoulders appeared, red hair glowing like a stray tongue of flame escaped from the main fire. He climbed out onto the sill, and cautiously turned, squatting, until he faced the building.

Rising to his stockinged feet, he grasped the gutter of the roof overhead and pulled, slowly raising himself by the strength of his arms, long toes scrabbling for a grip in the crevices between the mortared stones of the housefront. With a grunt audible even over the sound of fire and crowd, he eeled over the edge of the roof and disappeared behind the gable.

A shorter man could not have managed. Neither could Ian, with his wooden leg. I heard Ian say something under his breath; a prayer I thought, but when I glanced at him, his jaw was clenched, face set in lines of fear.

“What in hell is he going to do up there?” I thought, and was unaware that I had spoken aloud until the barber, shading his eyes next to me, replied.

“There’s a trapdoor built in the roof o’ the printshop, ma’am. Nay doubt Mr. Malcolm means to gain access to the upper story so. Is it his ’prentice up there, d’ye know?”

“No!” Ian snapped, hearing this. “It’s my son!”

The barber shrank back before Ian’s glare, murmuring “Oh, aye, just so, sir, just so!” and crossing himself. A shout from the crowd grew into a roar as two figures appeared on the roof of the chocolate shop, and Ian dropped my hand, springing forward.

Jamie had his arm round Young Ian, who was bent and reeling from the smoke he had swallowed. It was reasonably obvious that neither of them was going to be able to negotiate a return through the adjoining building in his present condition.

Just then, Jamie spotted Ian below. Cupping his hand around his mouth, he bellowed “Rope!”

Rope there was; the Town Guard had come equipped. Ian snatched the coil from an approaching Guardsman, leaving that worthy blinking in indignation, and turned to face the house.

I caught the gleam of Jamie’s teeth as he grinned down at his brother-in-law, and the look of answering wryness on Ian’s face. How many times had they thrown a rope between them, to raise hay to the barn loft, or bind a load to the wagon for carrying?

The crowd fell back from the whirl of Ian’s arm, and the heavy coil flew up in a smooth parabola, unwinding as it went, landing on Jamie’s outstretched arm with the precision of a bumblebee lighting on a flower. Jamie hauled in the dangling tail, and disappeared momentarily, to anchor the rope about the base of the building’s chimney.

A few precarious moments’ work, and the two smoke-blackened figures had come to a safe landing on the pavement below. Young Ian, rope slung under his arms and round his chest, stood upright for a moment, then, as the tension of the rope slackened, his knees buckled and he slid into a gangling heap on the cobbles.

“Are ye all right? A bhalaich, speak to me!” Ian fell to his knees beside his son, anxiously trying to unknot the rope round Young Ian’s chest, while simultaneously trying to lift up the lad’s lolling head.

Jamie was leaning against the railing of the chocolate shop, black in the face and coughing his lungs out, but otherwise apparently unharmed. I sat down on the boy’s other side, and took his head on my lap.

I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry at the sight of him. When I had seen him in the morning, he had been an appealing-looking lad, if no great beauty, with something of his father’s homely, good-natured looks. Now, at evening, the thick hair over one side of his forehead had been singed to a bleached red stubble, and his eyebrows and lashes had been burned off entirely. The skin beneath was the soot-smeared bright pink of a suckling pig just off the spit.

I felt for a pulse in the spindly neck and found it, reassuringly strong. His breathing was hoarse and irregular, and no wonder; I hoped the lining of his lungs had not been burned. He coughed, long and rackingly, and the thin body convulsed on my lap.

“Is he all right?” Ian’s hands instinctively grabbed his son beneath the armpits and sat him up. His head wobbled to and fro, and he pitched forward into my arms.

“I think so; I can’t tell for sure.” The boy was still coughing, but not fully conscious; I held him against my shoulder like an enormous baby, patting his back futilely as he retched and gagged.

“Is he all right?” This time it was Jamie, squatting breathless alongside me. His voice was so hoarse I wouldn’t have recognized it, roughened as it was by smoke.

“I think so. What about you? You look like Malcolm X,” I said, peering at him over Young Ian’s heaving shoulder.

“I do?” He put a hand to his face, looking startled, then grinned reassuringly. “Nay, I canna say how I look, but I’m no an ex-Malcolm yet; only a wee bit singed round the edges.”

“Get back, get back!” The Guard captain was at my side, gray beard bristling with anxiety, plucking at my sleeve. “Move yourself, ma’am, the roof’s going!”

Sure enough, as we scrambled to safety, the roof of the printshop fell in, and an awed sound rose from the watching crowd as an enormous fountain of sparks whirled skyward, brilliant against the darkening sky.

As though heaven resented this intrusion, the spume of fiery ash was answered by the first pattering of raindrops, plopping heavily on the cobbles all around us. The Edinburghians, who surely ought to have been accustomed to rain by now, made noises of consternation and began to scuttle back into the surrounding buildings like a herd of cockroaches, leaving nature to complete the fire engine’s work.

A moment later, Ian and I were alone with Young Ian. Jamie, having dispensed money liberally to the Guard and other assistants, and having arranged for his press and its fittings to be housed in the barber’s storeroom, trudged wearily toward us.

“How’s the lad?” he asked, wiping a hand down his face. The rain had begun to come down more heavily, and the effect on his soot-blackened countenance was picturesque in the extreme. Ian looked at him, and for the first time, the anger, worry and fear faded somewhat from his countenance. He gave Jamie a lopsided smile.

“He doesna look a great deal better than ye do yourself, man—but I think he’ll do now. Give us a hand, aye?”

Murmuring small Gaelic endearments suitable for babies, Ian bent over his son, who was by this time sitting up groggily on the curbstone, swaying to and fro like a heron in a high wind.

By the time we reached Madame Jeanne’s establishment, Young Ian could walk, though still supported on either side by his father and uncle. Bruno, who opened the door, blinked incredulously at the sight, and then swung the door open, laughing so hard he could barely close it after us.

I had to admit that we were nothing much to look at, wet through and streaming with rain. Jamie and I were both barefoot, and Jamie’s clothes were in rags, singed and torn and covered with streaks of soot. Ian’s dark hair straggled in his eyes, making him look like a drowned rat with a wooden leg.

Young Ian, though, was the focus of attention, as multiple heads came popping out of the drawing room in response to the noise Bruno was making. With his singed hair, swollen red face, beaky nose, and lashless, blinking eyes, he strongly resembled the fledgling young of some exotic bird species—a newly hatched flamingo, perhaps. His face could scarcely grow redder, but the back of his neck flamed crimson, as the sound of feminine giggles followed us up the stairs.

Safely ensconced in the small upstairs sitting room, with the door closed, Ian turned to face his hapless offspring.

“Going to live, are ye, ye wee bugger?” he demanded.

“Aye, sir,” Young Ian replied in a dismal croak, looking rather as though he wished the answer were “No.”

“Good,” his father said grimly. “D’ye want to explain yourself, or shall I just belt hell out of ye now and save us both time?”

“Ye canna thrash someone who’s just had his eyebrows burnt off, Ian,” Jamie protested hoarsely, pouring out a glass of porter from the decanter on the table. “It wouldna be humane.” He grinned at his nephew and handed him the glass, which the boy clutched with alacrity.

“Aye, well. Perhaps not,” Ian agreed, surveying his son. One corner of his mouth twitched. Young Ian was a pitiable sight; he was also an extremely funny one. “That doesna mean ye aren’t going to get your arse blistered later, mind,” he warned the boy, “and that’s besides whatever your mother means to do to ye when she sees ye again. But for now, lad, take your ease.”

Not noticeably reassured by the magnanimous tone of this last statement, Young Ian didn’t answer, but sought refuge in the depths of his glass of porter.

I took my own glass with a good deal of pleasure. I had realized belatedly just why the citizens of Edinburgh reacted to rain with such repugnance; once one was wet through, it was the devil to get dry again in the damp confines of a stone house, with no change of clothes and no heat available but a small hearthfire.

I plucked the damp bodice away from my breasts, caught Young Ian’s interested glance, and decided regretfully that I really couldn’t take it off with the boy in the room. Jamie seemed to have been corrupting the lad to quite a sufficient extent already. I gulped the porter instead, feeling the rich flavor purl warmingly through my innards.

“D’ye feel well enough to talk a bit, lad?” Jamie sat down opposite his nephew, next to Ian on the hassock.

“Aye…I think so,” Young Ian croaked cautiously. He cleared his throat like a bullfrog and repeated more firmly, “Aye, I can.”

“Good. Well, then. First, how did ye come to be in the printshop, and then, how did it come to be on fire?”

Young Ian pondered that one for a minute, then took another gulp of his porter for courage and said, “I set it.”

Jamie and Ian both sat up straight at that. I could see Jamie revising his opinion as to the advisability of thrashing people without eyebrows, but he mastered his temper with an obvious effort, and said merely, “Why?”

The boy took another gulp of porter, coughed, and drank again, apparently trying to decide what to say.

“Well,” he began uncertainly, “there was a man,” and came to a dead stop.

“A man,” Jamie prompted patiently when his nephew showed signs of having become suddenly deaf and dumb. “What man?”

Young Ian clutched his glass in both hands, looking deeply unhappy.

“Answer your uncle this minute, clot,” Ian said sharply. “Or I’ll take ye across my knee and tan ye right here.”

With a mixture of similar threats and promptings, the two men managed to extract a more or less coherent story from the boy.

Young Ian had been at the tavern at Kerse that morning, where he had been told to meet Wally, who would come down from the rendezvous with the wagons of brandy, there to load the punked casks and spoiled wine to be used as subterfuge.

“Told?” Ian asked sharply. “Who told ye?”

“I did,” Jamie said, before Young Ian could speak. He waved a hand at his brother-in-law, urging silence. “Aye, I kent he was here. We’ll talk about it later, Ian, if ye please. It’s important we know what happened today.”

Ian glared at Jamie and opened his mouth to disagree, then shut it with a snap. He nodded to his son to go on.

“I was hungry, ye see,” Young Ian said.

“When are ye not?” his father and uncle said together, in perfect unison. They looked at each other, snorted with sudden laughter, and the strained atmosphere in the room eased slightly.

“So ye went into the tavern to have a bite,” Jamie said. “That’s all right, lad, no harm done. And what happened while ye were there?”

That, it transpired, was where he had seen the man. A small, ratty-looking fellow, with a seaman’s pigtail, and a blind eye, talking to the landlord.

“He was askin’ for you, Uncle Jamie,” Young Ian said, growing easier in his speech with repeated applications of porter. “By your own name.”

Jamie started, looking surprised. “Jamie Fraser, ye mean?” Young Ian nodded, sipping. “Aye. But he knew your other name as well—Jamie Roy, I mean.”

“Jamie Roy?” Ian turned a puzzled glance on his brother-in-law, who shrugged impatiently.

“It’s how I’m known on the docks. Christ, Ian, ye know what I do!”

“Aye, I do, but I didna ken the wee laddie was helpin’ ye to do it.” Ian’s thin lips pressed tight together, and he turned his attention back to his son. “Go on, lad. I willna interrupt ye again.”

The seaman had asked the tavernkeeper how best an old seadog, down on his luck and looking for employment, might find one Jamie Fraser, who was known to have a use for able men. The landlord pleading ignorance of that name, the seaman had leaned closer, pushed a coin across the table, and in a lowered voice asked whether the name “Jamie Roy” was more familiar.

The landlord remaining deaf as an adder, the seaman had soon left the tavern, with Young Ian right behind him.

“I thought as how maybe it would be good to know who he was, and what he meant,” the lad explained, blinking.

“Ye might have thought to leave word wi’ the publican for Wally,” Jamie said. “Still, that’s neither here nor there. Where did he go?”

Down the road at a brisk walk, but not so brisk that a healthy boy could not follow at a careful distance. An accomplished walker, the seaman had made his way into Edinburgh, a distance of some five miles, in less than an hour, and arrived at last at the Green Owl tavern, followed by Young Ian, near wilted with thirst from the walk.

I started at the name, but didn’t say anything, not wanting to interrupt the story.

“It was terrible crowded,” the lad reported. “Something happened in the morning, and everyone was talking of it—but they shut up whenever they saw me. Anyway, it was the same there.” He paused to cough and clear his throat. “The seaman ordered drink—brandy—then asked the landlord was he acquainted wi’ a supplier of brandy named Jamie Roy or Jamie Fraser.”

“Did he, then?” Jamie murmured. His gaze was intent on his nephew, but I could see the thoughts working behind his high forehead, making a small crease between his thick brows.

The man had gone methodically from tavern to tavern, dogged by his faithful shadow, and in each establishment had ordered brandy and repeated his question.

“He must have a rare head, to be drinkin’ that much brandy,” Ian remarked.

Young Ian shook his head. “He didna drink it. He only smelt it.”

His father clicked his tongue at such a scandalous waste of good spirit, but Jamie’s red brows climbed still higher.

“Did he taste any of it?” he asked sharply.

“Aye. At the Dog and Gun, and again at the Blue Boar. He had nay more than a wee taste, though, and then left the glass untouched. He didna drink at all at the other places, and we went to five o’ them, before…” He trailed off, and took another drink.

Jamie’s face underwent an astonishing transformation. From an expression of frowning puzzlement, his face went completely blank, and then resolved itself into an expression of revelation.

“Is that so, now,” he said softly to himself. “Indeed.” His attention came back to his nephew. “And then what happened, lad?”

Young Ian was beginning to look unhappy again. He gulped, the tremor visible all the way down his skinny neck.

“Well, it was a terrible long way from Kerse to Edinburgh,” he began, “and a terrible dry walk, too…”

His father and uncle exchanged jaundiced glances.

“Ye drank too much,” Jamie said, resigned.

“Well, I didna ken he was going to so many taverns, now, did I?” Young Ian cried in self-defense, going pink in the ears.

“No, of course not, lad,” Jamie said kindly, smothering the beginning of Ian’s more censorious remarks. “How long did ye last?”

Until midway down the Royal Mile, it turned out, where Young Ian, overcome by the cumulation of early rising, a five-mile walk, and the effects of something like two quarts of ale, had dozed off in a corner, waking an hour later to find his quarry long gone.

“So I came here,” he explained. “I thought as how Uncle Jamie should know about it. But he wasna here.” The boy glanced at me, and his ears grew still pinker.

“And just why did ye think he should be here?” Ian favored his offspring with a gimlet eye, which then swiveled to his brother-in-law. The simmering anger Ian had been holding in check since the morning suddenly erupted. “The filthy gall of ye, Jamie Fraser, takin’ my son to a bawdy house!”

“A fine one you are to talk, Da!” Young Ian was on his feet, swaying a bit, but with his big, bony hands clenched at his sides.

“Me? And what d’ye mean by that, ye wee gomerel?” Ian cried, his eyes going wide with outrage.

“I mean you’re a damned hypocrite!” his son shouted hoarsely. “Preachin’ to me and Michael about purity and keepin’ to one woman, and all the time ye’re slinkin’ about the city, sniffin’ after whores!”

“What?” Ian’s face had gone entirely purple. I looked in some alarm to Jamie, who appeared to be finding something funny in the present situation.

“You’re a…a…goddamned whited sepulchre!” Young Ian came up with the simile triumphantly, then paused as though trying to think of another to equal it. His mouth opened, though nothing emerged but a soft belch.

“That boy is rather drunk,” I said to Jamie.

He picked up the decanter of porter, eyed the level within, and set it down.

“You’re right,” he said. “I should ha’ noticed sooner, but it’s hard to tell, scorched as he is.”

The elder Ian wasn’t drunk, but his expression strongly resembled his offspring’s, what with the suffused countenance, popping eyes, and straining neck cords.

“What the bloody, stinking hell d’ye mean by that, ye whelp?” he shouted. He moved menacingly toward Young Ian, who took an involuntary step backward and sat down quite suddenly as his calves met the edge of the sofa.

“Her,” he said, startled into monosyllables. He pointed at me, to make it clear. “Her! You deceivin’ my Mam wi’ this filthy whore, that’s what I mean!”

Ian fetched his son a clout over the ear that knocked him sprawling on the sofa.

“Ye great clot!” he said, scandalized. “A fine way to speak o’ your auntie Claire, to say nothing o’ me and your Mam!”

“Aunt?” Young Ian gawped at me from the cushions, looking so like a nestling begging for food that I burst out laughing despite myself.

“You left before I could introduce myself this morning,” I said.

“But you’re dead,” he said stupidly.

“Not yet,” I assured him. “Unless I’ve caught pneumonia from sitting here in a damp dress.”

His eyes had grown perfectly round as he stared at me. Now a fugitive gleam of excitement came into them.

“Some o’ the auld women at Lallybroch say ye were a wisewoman—a white lady, or maybe even a fairy. When Uncle Jamie came home from Culloden without ye, they said as how ye’d maybe gone back to the fairies, where ye maybe came from. Is that true? D’ye live in a dun?”

I exchanged a glance with Jamie, who rolled his eyes toward the ceiling.

“No,” I said. “I…er, I…”

“She escaped to France after Culloden,” Ian broke in suddenly, with great firmness. “She thought your uncle Jamie was killed in the battle, so she went to her kin in France. She’d been one of Prince Tearlach’s particular friends—she couldna come back to Scotland after the war without puttin’ herself in sore danger. But then she heard of your uncle, and as soon as she kent that her husband wasna deid after all, she took ship at once and came to find him.”

Young Ian’s mouth hung open slightly. So did mine.

“Er, yes,” I said, closing it. “That’s what happened.”

The lad turned large, shining eyes from me to his uncle.

“So ye’ve come back to him,” he said happily. “God, that’s romantic!”

The tension of the moment was broken. Ian hesitated, but his eyes softened as he looked from Jamie to me.

“Aye,” he said, and smiled reluctantly. “Aye, I suppose it is.”

* * *

“I didna expect to be doing this for him for a good two or three years yet,” Jamie remarked, holding his nephew’s head with an expert hand as Young Ian retched painfully into the spittoon I was holding.

“Aye, well, he’s always been forward,” Ian answered resignedly. “Learnt to walk before he could stand, and was forever tumblin’ into the fire or the washpot or the pigpen or the cowbyre.” He patted the skinny, heaving back. “There, lad, let it come.”

A little more, and the lad was deposited in a wilted heap on the sofa, there to recover from the effects of smoke, emotion, and too much porter under the censoriously mingled gaze of uncle and father.

“Where’s that damn tea I sent for?” Jamie reached impatiently for the bell, but I stopped him. The brothel’s domestic arrangements were evidently still disarranged from the excitements of the morning.

“Don’t bother,” I said. “I’ll go down and fetch it.” I scooped up the spittoon and carried it out with me at arm’s length, hearing Ian say behind me, in a reasonable tone of voice, “Look, fool—”

I found my way to the kitchen with no difficulty, and obtained the necessary supplies. I hoped Jamie and Ian would give the boy a few minutes’ respite; not only for his own sake, but so that I would miss nothing of his story.

I had clearly missed something; when I returned to the small sitting room, an air of constraint hung over the room like a cloud, and Young Ian glanced up and then quickly away to avoid my eye. Jamie was his usual imperturbable self, but the elder Ian looked almost as flushed and uneasy as his son. He hurried forward to take the tray from me, murmuring thanks, but would not meet my eye.

I raised one eyebrow at Jamie, who gave me a slight smile and a shrug. I shrugged back and picked up one of the bowls on the tray.

“Bread and milk,” I said, handing it to Young Ian, who at once looked happier.

“Hot tea,” I said, handing the pot to his father.

“Whisky,” I said, handing the bottle to Jamie, “and cold tea for the burns.” I whisked the lid off the last bowl, in which a number of napkins were soaking in cold tea.

“Cold tea?” Jamie’s ruddy brows lifted. “Did the cook have no butter?”

“You don’t put butter on burns,” I told him. “Aloe juice, or the juice of a plantain or plantago, but the cook didn’t have any of that. Cold tea is the best we could manage.”

I poulticed Young Ian’s blistered hands and forearms and blotted his scarlet face gently with the tea-soaked napkins while Jamie and Ian did the honors with teapot and whisky bottle, after which we all sat down, somewhat restored, to hear the rest of Ian’s story.

“Well,” he began, “I walked about the city for a bit, tryin’ to think what best to do. And finally my head cleared a bit, and I reasoned that if the man I’d been following was goin’ from tavern to tavern down the High Street, if I went to the other end and started up the street, I could maybe find him that way.”

“That was a bright thought,” Jamie said, and Ian nodded approvingly, the frown lifting a bit from his face. “Did ye find him?”

Young Ian nodded, slurping a bit. “I did, then.”

Running down the Royal Mile nearly to the Palace of Holyrood at the foot, he had toiled his way painstakingly up the street, stopping at each tavern to inquire for the man with the pigtail and one eye. There was no word of his quarry anywhere below the Canongate, and he was beginning to despair of his idea, when suddenly he had seen the man himself, sitting in the taproom of the Holyrood Brewery.

Presumably this stop was for respite, rather than information, for the seaman was sitting at his ease, drinking beer. Young Ian had darted behind a hogshead in the yard, and remained there, watching, until at length the man rose, paid his score, and made his leisurely way outside.

“He didna go to any more taverns,” the boy reported, wiping a stray drop of milk off his chin. “He went straight to Carfax Close, to the printshop.”

Jamie said something in Gaelic under his breath. “Did he? And what then?”

“Well, he found the shop shut up, of course. When he saw the door was locked, he looked careful like, up at the windows, as though he was maybe thinking of breaking in. But then I saw him look about, at all the folk coming and going—it was a busy time of day, wi’ all the folk coming to the chocolate shop. So he stood on the stoop a moment, thinking, and then he set off back up the close—I had to duck into the tailor’s shop on the corner so as not to be seen.”

The man had paused at the entrance of the close, then, making up his mind, had turned to the right, gone down a few paces, and disappeared into a small alley.

“I kent as how the alley led up to the court at the back of the close,” Young Ian explained. “So I saw at once what he meant to be doing.”

“There’s a wee court at the back of the close,” Jamie explained, seeing my puzzled look. “It’s for rubbish and deliveries and such—but there’s a back door out of the printshop opens onto it.”

Young Ian nodded, putting down his empty bowl. “Aye. I thought it must be that he meant to get into the place. And I thought of the new pamphlets.”

“Jesus,” Jamie said. He looked a little pale.

“Pamphlets?” Ian raised his brows at Jamie. “What kind of pamphlets?”

“The new printing for Mr. Gage,” Young Ian explained.

Ian still looked as blank as I felt.

“Politics,” Jamie said bluntly. “An argument for repeal of the last Stamp Act—with an exhortation to civil opposition—by violence, if necessary. Five thousand of them, fresh-printed, stacked in the back room. Gage was to come round and get them in the morning, tomorrow.”

“Jesus,” Ian said. He had gone even paler than Jamie, at whom he stared in a sort of mingled horror and awe. “Have ye gone straight out o’ your mind?” he inquired. “You, wi’ not an inch on your back unscarred? Wi’ the ink scarce dry on your pardon for treason? You’re mixed up wi’ Tom Gage and his seditious society, and got my son involved as well?”

His voice had been rising throughout, and now he sprang to his feet, fists clenched.

“How could ye do such a thing, Jamie—how? Have we not suffered enough for your actions, Jenny and me? All through the war and after—Christ, I’d think you’d have your fill of prisons and blood and violence!”

“I have,” Jamie said shortly. “I’m no part of Gage’s group. But my business is printing, aye? He paid for those pamphlets.”

Ian threw up his hands in a gesture of vast irritation. “Oh, aye! And that will mean a great deal when the Crown’s agents arrest ye and take ye to London to be hangit! If those things were to be found on your premises—” Struck by a sudden thought, he stopped and turned to his son.

“Oh, that was it?” he asked. “Ye kent what those pamphlets were—that’s why ye set them on fire?”

Young Ian nodded, solemn as a young owl.

“I couldna move them in time,” he said. “Not five thousand. The man—the seaman—he’d broke out the back window, and he was reachin’ in for the doorlatch.”

Ian whirled back to face Jamie.

“Damn you!” he said violently. “Damn ye for a reckless, harebrained fool, Jamie Fraser! First the Jacobites, and now this!”

Jamie had flushed up at once at Ian’s words, and his face grew darker at this.

“Am I to blame for Charles Stuart?” he said. His eyes flashed angrily and he set his teacup down with a thump that sloshed tea and whisky over the polished tabletop. “Did I not try all I could to stop the wee fool? Did I not give up everything in that fight—everything, Ian! My land, my freedom, my wife—to try to save us all?” He glanced at me briefly as he spoke, and I caught one very small quick glimpse of just what the last twenty years had cost him.

He turned back to Ian, his brows lowering as he went on, voice growing hard.

“And as for what I’ve cost your family—what have ye profited, Ian? Lallybroch belongs to wee James now, no? To your son, not mine!”

Ian flinched at that. “I never asked—” he began.

“No, ye didn’t. I’m no accusing ye, for God’s sake! But the fact’s there—Lallybroch’s no mine anymore, is it? My father left it to me, and I cared for it as best I could—took care o’ the land and the tenants—and ye helped me, Ian.” His voice softened a bit. “I couldna have managed without you and Jenny. I dinna begrudge deeding it to Young Jamie—it had to be done. But still…” He turned away for a moment, head bowed, broad shoulders knotted tight beneath the linen of his shirt.

I was afraid to move or speak, but I caught Young Ian’s eye, filled with infinite distress. I put a hand on his skinny shoulder for mutual reassurance, and felt the steady pounding of the pulse in the tender flesh above his collarbone. He set his big, bony paw on my hand and held on tight.

Jamie turned back to his brother-in-law, struggling to keep his voice and temper under control. “I swear to ye, Ian, I didna let the lad be put in danger. I kept him out of the way so much as I possibly could—didna let the shoremen see him, or let him go out on the boats wi’ Fergus, hard as he begged me.” He glanced at Young Ian and his expression changed, to an odd mixture of affection and irritation.

“I didna ask him to come to me, Ian, and I told him he must go home again.”

“Ye didna make him go, though, did you?” The angry color was fading from Ian’s face, but his soft brown eyes were still narrow and bright with fury. “And ye didna send word, either. For God’s sake, Jamie, Jenny hasna slept at night anytime this month!”

Jamie’s lips pressed tight. “No,” he said, letting the words escape one at a time. “No. I didn’t. I—” He glanced at the boy again, and shrugged uncomfortably, as though his shirt had grown suddenly too tight.

“No,” he said again. “I meant to take him home myself.”

“He’s old enough to travel by himself,” Ian said shortly. “He got here alone, no?”

“Aye. It wasna that.” Jamie turned aside restlessly, picking up a teacup and rolling it to and fro between his palms. “No, I meant to take him, so that I could ask your permission—yours and Jenny’s—for the lad to come live wi’ me for a time.”

Ian uttered a short, sarcastic laugh. “Oh, aye! Give our permission for him to be hangit or transported alongside you, eh?”

The anger flashed across Jamie’s features again as he looked up from the cup in his hands.

“Ye know I wouldna let any harm come to him,” he said. “For Christ’s sake, Ian, I care for the lad as though he were my own son, and well ye ken it, too!”

Ian’s breath was coming fast; I could hear it from my place behind the sofa. “Oh, I ken it well enough,” he said, staring hard into Jamie’s face. “But he’s not your son, aye? He’s mine.”

Jamie stared back for a long moment, then reached out and gently set the teacup back on the table. “Aye,” he said quietly. “He is.”

Ian stood for a moment, breathing hard, then wiped a hand carelessly across his forehead, pushing back the thick dark hair.

“Well, then,” he said. He took one or two deep breaths, and turned to his son.

“Come along, then,” he said. “I’ve a room at Halliday’s.”

Young Ian’s bony fingers tightened on mine. His throat worked, but he didn’t move to rise from his seat.

“No, Da,” he said. His voice quivered, and he blinked hard, not to cry. “I’m no going wi’ ye.”

Ian’s face went quite pale, with a deep red patch over the angular cheekbones, as though someone had slapped him hard on both cheeks.

“Is that so?” he said.

Young Ian nodded, swallowing. “I—I’ll go wi’ ye in the morning, Da; I’ll go home wi’ ye. But not now.”

Ian looked at his son for a long moment without speaking. Then his shoulders slumped, and all the tension went out of his body.

“I see,” he said quietly. “Well, then. Well.”

Without another word, he turned and left, closing the door very carefully behind him. I could hear the awkward thump of his wooden leg on each step, as he made his way down the stair. There was a brief sound of shuffling as he reached the bottom, then Bruno’s voice in farewell, and the thud of the main door shutting. And then there was no sound in the room but the hiss of the hearthfire behind me.

The boy’s shoulder was shaking under my hand, and he was holding tighter than ever to my fingers, crying without making a sound.

Jamie came slowly to sit beside him, his face full of troubled helplessness.

“Ian, oh, wee Ian,” he said. “Christ, laddie, ye shouldna have done that.”

“I had to.” Ian gasped and gave a sudden snuffle, and I realized that he had been holding his breath. He turned a scorched countenance on his uncle, raw features contorted in anguish.

“I didna want to hurt Da,” he said. “I didn’t!”

Jamie patted his knee absently. “I know, laddie,” he said, “but to say such a thing to him—”

“I couldna tell him, though, and I had to tell you, Uncle Jamie!”

Jamie glanced up, suddenly alert at his nephew’s tone.

“Tell me? Tell me what?”

“The man. The man wi’ the pigtail.”

“What about him?”

Young Ian licked his lips, steeling himself.

“I think I kilt him,” he whispered.

Startled, Jamie glanced at me, then back at Young Ian.

“How?” he asked.

“Well…I lied a bit,” Ian began, voice trembling. The tears were still welling in his eyes, but he brushed them aside. “When I went into the printshop—I had the key ye gave me—the man was already inside.”

The seaman had been in the backmost room of the shop, where the stacks of newly printed orders were kept, along with the stocks of fresh ink, the blotting papers used to clean the press, and the small forge where worn slugs were melted down and recast into fresh type.

“He was taking some o’ the pamphlets from the stack, and putting them inside his jacket,” Ian said, gulping. “When I saw him, I screeched at him to put them back, and he whirled round at me wi’ a pistol in his hand.”

The pistol had discharged, scaring Young Ian badly, but the ball had gone wild. Little daunted, the seaman had rushed at the boy, raising the pistol to club him instead.

“There was no time to run, or to think,” he said. He had let go my hand by now, and his fingers twisted together upon his knee. “I reached out for the first thing to hand and threw it.”

The first thing to hand had been the lead-dipper, the long-handled copper ladle used to pour molten lead from the melting pot into the casting molds. The forge had been still alight, though well-banked, and while the melting pot held no more than a small puddle, the scalding drops of lead had flown from the dipper into the seaman’s face.

“God, how he screamed!” A strong shudder ran through Young Ian’s slender frame, and I came round the end of the sofa to sit next to him and take both his hands.

The seaman had reeled backward, clawing at his face, and upset the small forge, knocking live coals everywhere.

“That was what started the fire,” the boy said. “I tried to beat it out, but it caught the edge of the fresh paper, and all of a sudden, something went whoosh! in my face, and it was as though the whole room was alight.”

“The barrels of ink, I suppose,” Jamie said, as though to himself. “The powder’s dissolved in alcohol.”

The sliding piles of flaming paper fell between Young Ian and the back door, a wall of flame that billowed black smoke and threatened to collapse upon him. The seaman, blinded and screaming like a banshee, had been on his hands and knees between the boy and the door into the front room of the printshop and safety.

“I—I couldna bear to touch him, to push him out o’ the way,” he said, shuddering again.

Losing his head completely, he had run up the stairs instead, but then found himself trapped as the flames, racing through the back room and drawing up the stair like a chimney, rapidly filled the upper room with blinding smoke.

“Did ye not think to climb out the trapdoor onto the roof?” Jamie asked.

Young Ian shook his head miserably. “I didna ken it was there.”

“Why was it there?” I asked curiously.

Jamie gave me the flicker of a smile. “In case of need. It’s a foolish fox has but one exit to his bolthole. Though I must say, it wasna fire I was thinking of when I had it made.” He shook his head, ridding himself of the distraction.

“But ye think the man didna escape the fire?” he asked.

“I dinna see how he could,” Young Ian answered, beginning to sniffle again. “And if he’s dead, then I killed him. I couldna tell Da I was a m-mur—mur—” He was crying again, too hard to get the word out.

“You’re no a murderer, Ian,” Jamie said firmly. He patted his nephew’s shaking shoulder. “Stop now, it’s all right—ye havena done wrong, laddie. Ye haven’t, d’ye hear?”

The boy gulped and nodded, but couldn’t stop crying or shaking. At last I put my arms around him, turned him and pulled his head down onto my shoulder, patting his back and making the sort of small soothing noises one makes to little children.

He felt very odd in my arms; nearly as big as a full-grown man, but with fine, light bones, and so little flesh on them that it was like holding a skeleton. He was talking into the depths of my bosom, his voice so disjointed by emotion and muffled by fabric that it was difficult to make out the words.

“…mortal sin…” he seemed to be saying, “…damned to hell…couldna tell Da…afraid…canna go home ever…”

Jamie raised his brows at me, but I only shrugged helplessly, smoothing the thick, bushy hair on the back of the boy’s head. At last Jamie leaned forward, took him firmly by the shoulders and sat him up.

“Look ye, Ian,” he said. “No, look—look at me!”

By dint of supreme effort, the boy straightened his drooping neck and fixed brimming, red-rimmed eyes on his uncle’s face.

“Now then.” Jamie took hold of his nephew’s hands and squeezed them lightly. “First—it’s no a sin to kill a man that’s trying to kill you. The Church allows ye to kill if ye must, in defense of yourself, your family, or your country. So ye havena committed mortal sin, and you’re no damned.”

“I’m not?” Young Ian sniffed mightily, and mopped at his face with a sleeve.

“No, you’re not.” Jamie let the hint of a smile show in his eyes. “We’ll go together and call on Father Hayes in the morning, and ye’ll make your confession and be absolved then, but he’ll tell ye the same as I have.”

“Oh.” The syllable held profound relief, and Young Ian’s scrawny shoulders rose perceptibly, as though a burden had rolled off of them.

Jamie patted his nephew’s knee again. “For the second thing, ye needna fear telling your father.”

“No?” Young Ian had accepted Jamie’s word on the state of his soul without hesitation, but sounded profoundly dubious about this secular opinion.

“Well, I’ll not say he’ll no be upset,” Jamie added fairly. “In fact, I expect it will turn the rest of his hair white on the spot. But he’ll understand. He isna going to cast ye out or disown ye, if that’s what you’re scairt of.”

“You think he’ll understand?” Young Ian looked at Jamie with eyes in which hope battled with doubt. “I—I didna think he…has my Da ever killed a man?” he asked suddenly.

Jamie blinked, taken aback by the question. “Well,” he said slowly, “I suppose—I mean, he’s fought in battle, but I—to tell ye the truth, Ian, I dinna ken.” He looked a little helplessly at his nephew.

“It’s no the sort of thing men talk much about, aye? Except sometimes soldiers, when they’re deep in drink.”

Young Ian nodded, absorbing this, and sniffed again, with a horrid gurgling noise. Jamie, groping hastily in his sleeve for a handkerchief, looked up suddenly, struck by a thought.

“That’s why ye said ye must tell me, but not your Da? Because ye knew I’ve killed men before?”

His nephew nodded, searching Jamie’s face with troubled, trusting eyes. “Aye. I thought…I thought ye’d know what to do.”

“Ah.” Jamie drew a deep breath, and exchanged a glance with me. “Well…” His shoulders braced and broadened, and I could see him accept the burden Young Ian had laid down. He sighed.

“What ye do,” he said, “is first to ask yourself if ye had a choice. You didn’t, so put your mind at ease. Then ye go to confession, if ye can; if not, say a good Act of Contrition—that’s good enough, when it’s no a mortal sin. Ye harbor no fault, mind,” he said earnestly, “but the contrition is because ye greatly regret the necessity that fell on ye. It does sometimes, and there’s no preventing it.

“And then say a prayer for the soul of the one you’ve killed,” he went on, “that he may find rest, and not haunt ye. Ye ken the prayer called Soul Peace? Use that one, if ye have leisure to think of it. In a battle, when there is no time, use Soul Leading—‘Be this soul on Thine arm, O Christ, Thou King of the City of Heaven, Amen.’”

“Be this soul on Thine arm, O Christ, Thou King of the City of Heaven, Amen,” Young Ian repeated under his breath. He nodded slowly. “Aye, all right. And then?”

Jamie reached out and touched his nephew’s cheek with great gentleness. “Then ye live with it, laddie,” he said softly. “That’s all.”