3
FRANK AND FULL DISCLOSURE
Inverness
May 9, 1968
The foot traffic was heavy on the bridge over the River Ness, with folk streaming home to their teas. Roger moved in front of me, his wide shoulders protecting me from the buffets of the crowd around us.
I could feel my heart beating heavily against the stiff cover of the book I was clutching to my chest. It did that whenever I paused to think what we were truly doing. I wasn’t sure which of the two possible alternatives was worse; to find that Jamie had died at Culloden, or to find that he hadn’t.
The boards of the bridge echoed hollowly underfoot, as we trudged back toward the manse. My arms ached from the weight of the books I carried, and I shifted the load from one side to the other.
“Watch your bloody wheel, man!” Roger shouted, nudging me adroitly to the side, as a workingman on a bicycle plowed head-downward through the bridge traffic, nearly running me against the railing.
“Sorry!” came back the apologetic shout, and the rider gave a wave of the hand over his shoulder, as the bike wove its way between two groups of schoolchildren, coming home for their teas. I glanced back across the bridge, in case Brianna should be visible behind us, but there was no sign of her.
Roger and I had spent the afternoon at the Society for the Preservation of Antiquities. Brianna had gone down to the Highland Clans office, there to collect photocopies of a list of documents Roger had compiled.
“It’s very kind of you to take all this trouble, Roger,” I said, raising my voice to be heard above the echoing bridge and the river’s rush.
“It’s all right,” he said, a little awkwardly, pausing for me to catch him up. “I’m curious,” he added, smiling a little. “You know historians—can’t leave a puzzle alone.” He shook his head, trying to brush the windblown dark hair out of his eyes without using his hands.
I did know historians. I’d lived with one for twenty years. Frank hadn’t wanted to leave this particular puzzle alone, either. But neither had he been willing to solve it. Frank had been dead for two years, though, and now it was my turn—mine and Brianna’s.
“Have you heard yet from Dr. Linklater?” I asked, as we came down the arch of the bridge. Late in the afternoon as it was, the sun was still high, so far north as we were. Caught among the leaves of the lime trees on the riverbank, it glowed pink on the granite cenotaph that stood below the bridge.
Roger shook his head, squinting against the wind. “No, but it’s been only a week since I wrote. If I don’t hear by the Monday, I’ll try telephoning. Don’t worry”—he smiled sideways at me—“I was very circumspect. I just told him that for purposes of a study I was making, I needed a list—if one existed—of the Jacobite officers who were in Leanach farmhouse after Culloden, and if any information exists as to the survivor of that execution, could he refer me to the original sources?”
“Do you know Linklater?” I asked, easing my left arm by tilting the books sideways against my hip.
“No, but I wrote my request on the Balliol College letterhead, and made tactful reference to Mr. Cheesewright, my old tutor, who does know Link-later.” Roger winked reassuringly, and I laughed.
His eyes were a brilliant, lucent green, bright against his olive skin. Curiosity might be his stated reason for helping us to find out Jamie’s history, but I was well aware that his interest went a good bit deeper—in the direction of Brianna. I also knew that the interest was returned. What I didn’t know was whether Roger realized that as well.
Back in the late Reverend Wakefield’s study, I dropped my armload of books on the table in relief, and collapsed into the wing chair by the hearth, while Roger went to fetch a glass of lemonade from the manse’s kitchen.
My breathing slowed as I sipped the tart sweetness, but my pulse stayed erratic, as I looked over the imposing stack of books we had brought back. Was Jamie in there somewhere? And if he was…my hands grew wet on the cold glass, and I choked the thought off. Don’t look too far ahead, I cautioned myself. Much better to wait, and see what we might find.
Roger was scanning the shelves in the study, in search of other possibilities. The Reverend Wakefield, Roger’s late adoptive father, had been both a good amateur historian, and a terrible pack rat; letters, journals, pamphlets and broadsheets, antique and contemporary volumes—all were crammed cheek by jowl together on the shelves.
Roger hesitated, then his hand fell on a stack of books sitting on the nearby table. They were Frank’s books—an impressive achievement, so far as I could tell by reading the encomiums printed on the dust jackets.
“Have you ever read this?” he asked, picking up the volume entitled The Jacobites.
“No,” I said. I took a restorative gulp of lemonade, and coughed. “No,” I said again. “I couldn’t.” After my return, I had resolutely refused to look at any material dealing with Scotland’s past, even though the eighteenth century had been one of Frank’s areas of specialty. Knowing Jamie dead, and faced with the necessity of living without him, I avoided anything that might bring him to mind. A useless avoidance—there was no way of keeping him out of my mind, with Brianna’s existence a daily reminder of him—but still, I could not read books about the Bonnie Prince—that terrible, futile young man—or his followers.
“I see. I just thought you might know whether there might be something useful in here.” Roger paused, the flush deepening over his cheekbones. “Did—er, did your husband—Frank, I mean,” he added hastily. “Did you tell him…um…about…” His voice trailed off, choked with embarrassment.
“Well, of course I did!” I said, a little sharply. “What did you think—I’d just stroll back into his office after being gone for three years and say, ‘Oh, hullo there, darling, and what would you like for supper tonight?’”
“No, of course not,” Roger muttered. He turned away, eyes fixed on the bookshelves. The back of his neck was deep red with embarrassment.
“I’m sorry,” I said, taking a deep breath. “It’s a fair question to ask. It’s only that it’s—a bit raw, yet.” A good deal more than a bit. I was both surprised and appalled to find just how raw the wound still was. I set the glass down on the table at my elbow. If we were going on with this, I was going to need something stronger than lemonade.
“Yes,” I said. “I told him. All about the stones—about Jamie. Everything.”
Roger didn’t reply for a moment. Then he turned, halfway, so that only the strong, sharp lines of his profile were visible. He didn’t look at me, but down at the stack of Frank’s books, at the back-cover photo of Frank, leanly dark and handsome, smiling for posterity.
“Did he believe you?” Roger asked quietly.
My lips felt sticky from the lemonade, and I licked them before answering.
“No,” I said. “Not at first. He thought I was mad; even had me vetted by a psychiatrist.” I laughed, shortly, but the memory made me clench my fists with remembered fury.
“Later, then?” Roger turned to face me. The flush had faded from his skin, leaving only an echo of curiosity in his eyes. “What did he think?”
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. “I don’t know.”
The tiny hospital in Inverness smelled unfamiliar, like carbolic disinfectant and starch.
I couldn’t think, and tried not to feel. The return was much more terrifying than my venture into the past had been, for there, I had been shrouded by a protective layer of doubt and disbelief about where I was and what was happening, and had lived in constant hope of escape. Now I knew only too well where I was, and I knew that there was no escape. Jamie was dead.
The doctors and nurses tried to speak kindly to me, to feed me and bring me things to drink, but there was no room in me for anything but grief and terror. I had told them my name when they asked, but wouldn’t speak further.
I lay in the clean white bed, fingers clamped tight together over my vulnerable belly, and kept my eyes shut. I visualized over and over the last things I had seen before I stepped through the stones—the rainy moor and Jamie’s face—knowing that if I looked too long at my new surroundings, these sights would fade, replaced by mundane things like the nurses and the vase of flowers by my bed. I pressed one thumb secretly against the base of the other, taking an obscure comfort in the tiny wound there, a small cut in the shape of a J. Jamie had made it, at my demand—the last of his touch on my flesh.
I must have stayed that way for some time; I slept sometimes, dreaming of the last few days of the Jacobite Rising—I saw again the dead man in the wood, asleep beneath a coverlet of bright blue fungus, and Dougal MacKenzie dying on the floor of an attic in Culloden House; the ragged men of the Highland army, asleep in the muddy ditches; their last sleep before the slaughter.
I would wake screaming or moaning, to the scent of disinfectant and the sound of soothing words, incomprehensible against the echoes of Gaelic shouting in my dreams, and fall asleep again, my hurt clutched tight in the palm of my hand.
And then I opened my eyes and Frank was there. He stood in the door, smoothing back his dark hair with one hand, looking uncertain—and no wonder, poor man.
I lay back on the pillows, just watching him, not speaking. He had the look of his ancestors, Jack and Alex Randall; fine, clear, aristocratic features and a well-shaped head, under a spill of straight dark hair. His face had some indefinable difference from theirs, though, beyond the small differences of feature. There was no mark of fear or ruthlessness on him; neither the spirituality of Alex nor the icy arrogance of Jack. His lean face looked intelligent, kind, and slightly tired, unshaven and with smudges beneath his eyes. I knew without being told that he had driven all night to get here.
“Claire?” He came over to the bed, and spoke tentatively, as though not sure that I really was Claire.
I wasn’t sure either, but I nodded and said, “Hullo, Frank.” My voice was scratchy and rough, unaccustomed to speech.
He took one of my hands, and I let him have it.
“Are you…all right?” he said, after a minute. He was frowning slightly as he looked at me.
“I’m pregnant.” That seemed the important point, to my disordered mind. I had not thought of what I would say to Frank, if I ever saw him again, but the moment I saw him standing in the door, it seemed to come clear in my mind. I would tell him I was pregnant, he would leave, and I would be alone with my last sight of Jamie’s face, and the burning touch of him on my hand.
His face tightened a bit, but he didn’t let go of my other hand. “I know. They told me.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “Claire—can you tell me what happened to you?”
I felt quite blank for a moment, but then shrugged.
“I suppose so,” I said. I mustered my thoughts wearily; I didn’t want to be talking about it, but I had some feeling of obligation to this man. Not guilt, not yet; but obligation nonetheless. I had been married to him.
“Well,” I said, “I fell in love with someone else, and I married him. I’m sorry,” I added, in response to the look of shock that crossed his face, “I couldn’t help it.”
He hadn’t been expecting that. His mouth opened and closed for a bit and he gripped my hand, hard enough to make me wince and jerk it out of his grasp.
“What do you mean?” he said, his voice sharp. “Where have you been, Claire?” He stood up suddenly, looming over the bed.
“Do you remember that when I last saw you, I was going up to the stone circle on Craigh na Dun?”
“Yes?” He was staring down at me with an expression somewhere between anger and suspicion.
“Well”—I licked my lips, which had gone quite dry—“the fact is, I walked through a cleft stone in that circle, and ended up in 1743.”
“Don’t be facetious, Claire!”
“You think I’m being funny?” The thought was so absurd that I actually began to laugh, though I felt a good long way from real humor.
“Stop that!”
I quit laughing. Two nurses appeared at the door as though by magic; they must have been lurking in the hall nearby. Frank leaned over and grabbed my arm.
“Listen to me,” he said through his teeth. “You are going to tell me where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing!”
“I am telling you! Let go!” I sat up in bed and yanked at my arm, pulling it out of his grasp. “I told you; I walked through a stone and ended up two hundred years ago. And I met your bloody ancestor, Jack Randall, there!”
Frank blinked, entirely taken aback. “Who?”
“Black Jack Randall, and a bloody, filthy, nasty pervert he was, too!”
Frank’s mouth hung open, and so did the nurses’. I could hear feet coming down the corridor behind them, and hurried voices.
“I had to marry Jamie Fraser to get away from Jack Randall, but then—Jamie—I couldn’t help it, Frank, I loved him and I would have stayed with him if I could, but he sent me back because of Culloden, and the baby, and—” I broke off, as a man in a doctor’s uniform pushed past the nurses by the door.
“Frank,” I said tiredly, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to happen, and I tried all I could to come back—really, I did—but I couldn’t. And now it’s too late.”
Despite myself, tears began to well up in my eyes and roll down my cheeks. Mostly for Jamie, and myself, and the child I carried, but a few for Frank as well. I sniffed hard and swallowed, trying to stop, and pushed myself upright in the bed.
“Look,” I said, “I know you won’t want to have anything more to do with me, and I don’t blame you at all. Just—just go away, will you?”
His face had changed. He didn’t look angry anymore, but distressed, and slightly puzzled. He sat down by the bed, ignoring the doctor who had come in and was groping for my pulse.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, quite gently. He took my hand again, though I tried to pull it away. “This—Jamie. Who was he?”
I took a deep, ragged breath. The doctor had hold of my other hand, still trying to take my pulse, and I felt absurdly panicked, as though I were being held captive between them. I fought down the feeling, though, and tried to speak steadily.
“James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser,” I said, spacing the words, formally, the way Jamie had spoken them to me when he first told me his full name—on the day of our wedding. The thought made another tear overflow, and I blotted it against my shoulder, my hands being restrained.
“He was a Highlander. He was k-killed at Culloden.” It was no use, I was weeping again, the tears no anodyne to the grief that ripped through me, but the only response I had to unendurable pain. I bent forward slightly, trying to encapsulate it, wrapping myself around the tiny, imperceptible life in my belly, the only remnant left to me of Jamie Fraser.
Frank and the doctor exchanged a glance of which I was only half-conscious. Of course, to them, Culloden was part of the distant past. To me, it had happened only two days before.
“Perhaps we should let Mrs. Randall rest for a bit,” the doctor suggested. “She seems a wee bit upset just now.”
Frank looked uncertainly from the doctor to me. “Well, she certainly does seem upset. But I really want to find out…what’s this, Claire?” Stroking my hand, he had encountered the silver ring on my fourth finger, and now bent to examine it. It was the ring Jamie had given me for our marriage; a wide silver band in the Highland interlace pattern, the links engraved with tiny, stylized thistle blooms.
“No!” I exclaimed, panicked, as Frank tried to twist it off my finger. I jerked my hand away and cradled it, fisted, beneath my bosom, cupped in my left hand, which still wore Frank’s gold wedding band. “No, you can’t take it, I won’t let you! That’s my wedding ring!”
“Now, see here, Claire—” Frank’s words were interrupted by the doctor, who had crossed to Frank’s side of the bed, and was now bending down to murmur in his ear. I caught a few words—“not trouble your wife just now. The shock”—and then Frank was on his feet once more, being firmly urged away by the doctor, who gave a nod to one of the nurses in passing.
I barely felt the sting of the hypodermic needle, too engulfed in the fresh wave of grief to take notice of anything. I dimly heard Frank’s parting words, “All right—but Claire, I will know!” And then the blessed darkness came down, and I slept without dreaming, for a long, long time.
Roger tilted the decanter, bringing the level of the spirit in the glass up to the halfway point. He handed it to Claire with a half-smile.
“Fiona’s grannie always said whisky is good for what ails ye.”
“I’ve seen worse remedies.” Claire took the glass and gave him back the half-smile in change.
Roger poured out a drink for himself, then sat down beside her, sipping quietly.
“I tried to send him away, you know,” she said suddenly, lowering her glass. “Frank. I told him I knew he couldn’t feel the same for me, no matter what he believed had happened. I said I would give him a divorce; he must go away and forget about me—take up the life he’d begun building without me.”
“He wouldn’t do it, though.” Roger said. It was growing chilly in the study as the sun went down, and he bent and switched on the ancient electric fire. “Because you were pregnant?” he guessed.
She shot him a sudden sharp look, then smiled, a little wryly.
“Yes, that was it. He said no one but a cad would dream of abandoning a pregnant woman with virtually no resources. Particularly one whose grip on reality seemed a trifle tenuous,” she added ironically. “I wasn’t quite without resources—I had a bit of money from my uncle Lamb—but Frank wasn’t a cad, either.” Her glance shifted to the bookshelves. Her husband’s historical works stood there, side by side, spines gleaming in the light of the desklamp.
“He was a very decent man,” she said softly. She took another sip of her drink, closing her eyes as the alcoholic fumes rose up.
“And then—he knew, or suspected, that he couldn’t have children himself. Rather a blow, for a man so involved in history and genealogies. All those dynastic considerations, you see.”
“Yes, I can see that,” Roger said slowly. “But wouldn’t he feel—I mean, another man’s child?”
“He might have.” The amber eyes were looking at him again, their clearness slightly softened by whisky and reminiscence. “But as it was, since he didn’t—couldn’t—believe anything I said about Jamie, the baby’s father was essentially unknown. If he didn’t know who the man was—and convinced himself that I didn’t really know either, but had just made up these delusions out of traumatic shock—well, then, there was no one ever to say that the child wasn’t his. Certainly not me,” she added, with just a tinge of bitterness.
She took a large swallow of whisky that made her eyes water slightly, and took a moment to wipe them.
“But to make sure, he took me clean away. To Boston,” she went on. “He’d been offered a good position at Harvard, and no one knew us there. That’s where Brianna was born.”
The fretful crying jarred me awake yet again. I had gone back to bed at 6:30, after getting up five times during the night with the baby. A bleary-eyed look at the clock showed the time now as 7:00. A cheerful singing came from the bathroom, Frank’s voice raised in “Rule, Britannia,” over the noise of rushing water.
I lay in bed, heavy-limbed with exhaustion, wondering whether I had the strength to endure the crying until Frank got out of the shower and could bring Brianna to me. As though the baby knew what I was thinking, the crying rose two or three tones and escalated to a sort of periodic shriek, punctuated by frightening gulps for air. I flung back the covers and was on my feet, propelled by the same sort of panic with which I had greeted air raids during the War.
I lumbered down the chilly hall and into the nursery, to find Brianna, aged three months, lying on her back, yelling her small red head off. I was so groggy from lack of sleep that it took a moment for me to realize that I had left her on her stomach.
“Darling! You turned over! All by yourself!” Terrorized by her audacious act, Brianna waved her little pink fists and squalled louder, eyes squeezed shut.
I snatched her up, patting her back and murmuring to the top of her red-fuzzed head.
“Oh, you precious darling! What a clever girl you are!”
“What’s that? What’s happened?” Frank emerged from the bathroom, toweling his head, a second towel wrapped about his loins. “Is something the matter with Brianna?”
He came toward us, looking worried. As the birth grew closer, we had both been edgy; Frank irritable and myself terrified, having no idea what might happen between us, with the appearance of Jamie Fraser’s child. But when the nurse had taken Brianna from her bassinet and handed her to Frank, with the words “Here’s Daddy’s little girl,” his face had grown blank, and then—looking down at the tiny face, perfect as a rosebud—gone soft with wonder. Within a week, he had been hers, body and soul.
I turned to him, smiling. “She turned over! All by herself!”
“Really?” His scrubbed face beamed with delight. “Isn’t it early for her to do that?”
“Yes, it is. Dr. Spock says she oughtn’t to be able to do it for another month, at least!”
“Well, what does Dr. Spock know? Come here, little beauty; give Daddy a kiss for being so precocious.” He lifted the soft little body, encased in its snug pink sleep-suit, and kissed her button of a nose. Brianna sneezed, and we both laughed.
I stopped then, suddenly aware that it was the first time I had laughed in nearly a year. Still more, that it was the first time I had laughed with Frank.
He realized it too; his eyes met mine over the top of Brianna’s head. They were a soft hazel, and at the moment, filled with tenderness. I smiled at him, a little tremulous, and suddenly very much aware that he was all but naked, with water droplets sliding down his lean shoulders and shining on the smooth brown skin of his chest.
The smell of burning reached us simultaneously, jarring us from this scene of domestic bliss.
“The coffee!” Thrusting Bree unceremoniously into my arms, Frank bolted for the kitchen, leaving both towels in a heap at my feet. Smiling at the sight of his bare buttocks, gleaming an incongruous white as he sprinted into the kitchen, I followed him more slowly, holding Bree against my shoulder.
He was standing at the sink, naked, amid a cloud of malodorous steam rising from the scorched coffeepot.
“Tea, maybe?” I asked, adroitly anchoring Brianna on my hip with one arm while I rummaged in the cupboard. “None of the orange pekoe leaf left, I’m afraid; just Lipton’s teabags.”
Frank made a face; an Englishman to the bone, he would rather lap water out of the toilet than drink tea made from teabags. The Lipton’s had been left by Mrs. Grossman, the weekly cleaning woman, who thought tea made from loose leaves messy and disgusting.
“No, I’ll get a cup of coffee on my way to the university. Oh, speaking of which, you recall that we’re having the Dean and his wife to dinner tonight? Mrs. Hinchcliffe is bringing a present for Brianna.”
“Oh, right,” I said, without enthusiasm. I had met the Hinchcliffes before, and wasn’t all that keen to repeat the experience. Still, the effort had to be made. With a mental sigh, I shifted the baby to the other side and groped in the drawer for a pencil to make a grocery list.
Brianna burrowed into the front of my red chenille dressing gown, making small voracious grunting noises.
“You can’t be hungry again,” I said to the top of her head. “I fed you not two hours ago.” My breasts were beginning to leak in response to her rooting, though, and I was already sitting down and loosening the front of my gown.
“Mrs. Hinchcliffe said that a baby shouldn’t be fed every time it cries,” Frank observed. “They get spoilt if they aren’t kept to a schedule.”
It wasn’t the first time I had heard Mrs. Hinchcliffe’s opinions on child-rearing.
“Then she’ll be spoilt, won’t she?” I said coldly, not looking at him. The small pink mouth clamped down fiercely, and Brianna began to suck with mindless appetite. I was aware that Mrs. Hinchcliffe also thought breast-feeding both vulgar and insanitary. I, who had seen any number of eighteenth-century babies nursing contentedly at their mothers’ breasts, didn’t.
Frank sighed, but didn’t say anything further. After a moment, he put down the pot holder and sidled toward the door.
“Well,” he said awkwardly. “I’ll see you around six then, shall I? Ought I to bring home anything—save you going out?”
I gave him a brief smile, and said, “No, I’ll manage.”
“Oh, good.” He hesitated a moment, as I settled Bree more comfortably on my lap, head resting on the crook of my arm, the round of her head echoing the curve of my breast. I looked up from the baby, and found him watching me intently, eyes fixed on the swell of my half-exposed bosom.
My own eyes flicked downward over his body. I saw the beginnings of his arousal, and bent my head over the baby, to hide my flushing face.
“Goodbye,” I muttered, to the top of her head.
He stood still a moment, then leaned forward and kissed me briefly on the cheek, the warmth of his bare body unsettlingly near.
“Goodbye, Claire,” he said softly. “I’ll see you tonight.”
He didn’t come into the kitchen again before leaving, so I had a chance to finish feeding Brianna and bring my own feelings into some semblance of normality.
I hadn’t seen Frank naked since my return; he had always dressed in bathroom or closet. Neither had he tried to kiss me before this morning’s cautious peck. The pregnancy had been what the obstetrician called “high-risk,” and there had been no question of Frank’s sharing my bed, even had I been so disposed—which I wasn’t.
I should have seen this coming, but I hadn’t. Absorbed first in sheer misery, and then in the physical torpor of oncoming motherhood, I had pushed away all considerations beyond my bulging belly. After Brianna’s birth, I had lived from feeding to feeding, seeking small moments of mindless peace, when I could hold her oblivious body close and find relief from thought and memory in the pure sensual pleasure of touching and holding her.
Frank, too, cuddled the baby and played with her, falling asleep in his big chair with her stretched out atop his lanky form, rosy cheek pressed flat against his chest, as they snored together in peaceful companionship. He and I did not touch each other, though, nor did we truly talk about anything beyond our basic domestic arrangements—except Brianna.
The baby was our shared focus; a point through which we could at once reach each other, and keep each other at arm’s length. It looked as though arm’s length was no longer close enough for Frank.
I could do it—physically, at least. I had seen the doctor for a checkup the week before, and he had—with an avuncular wink and a pat on the bottom—assured me that I could resume “relations” with my husband at any time.
I knew Frank hadn’t been celibate since my disappearance. In his late forties, he was still lean and muscular, dark and sleek, a very handsome man. Women clustered about him at cocktail parties like bees round a honeypot, emitting small hums of sexual excitement.
There had been one girl with brown hair whom I had noticed particularly at the departmental party; she stood in the corner and stared at Frank mournfully over her drink. Later she became tearfully and incoherently drunk, and was escorted home by two female friends, who took turns casting evil looks at Frank and at me, standing by his side, silently bulging in my flowered maternity dress.
He’d been discreet, though. He was always home at night, and took pains not to have lipstick on his collar. So, now he meant to come home all the way. I supposed he had some right to expect it; was that not a wifely duty, and I once more his wife?
There was only one small problem. It wasn’t Frank I reached for, deep in the night, waking out of sleep. It wasn’t his smooth, lithe body that walked my dreams and roused me, so that I came awake moist and gasping, my heart pounding from the half-remembered touch. But I would never touch that man again.
“Jamie,” I whispered, “Oh, Jamie.” My tears sparkled in the morning light, adorning Brianna’s soft red fuzz like scattered pearls and diamonds.
It wasn’t a good day. Brianna had a bad diaper rash, which made her cross and irritable, needing to be picked up every few minutes. She nursed and fussed alternately, pausing to spit up at intervals, making clammy wet patches on whatever I wore. I changed my blouse three times before eleven o’clock.
The heavy nursing bra I wore chafed under the arms, and my nipples felt cold and chapped. Midway through my laborious tidying-up of the house, there was a whooshing clank from under the floorboards, and the hot-air registers died with a feeble sigh.
“No, next week won’t do,” I said over the telephone to the furnace-repair shop. I looked at the window, where the cold February fog was threatening to seep under the sill and engulf us. “It’s forty-two degrees in here, and I have a three-month-old baby!” The baby in question was sitting in her baby seat, swaddled in all her blankets, squalling like a scalded cat. Ignoring the quacking of the person on the other end, I held the receiver next to Brianna’s wide open mouth for several seconds.
“See?” I demanded, lifting the phone to my ear again.
“Awright, lady,” said a resigned voice on the other end of the line. “I’ll come out this afternoon, sometime between noon and six.”
“Noon and six? Can’t you narrow it down a little more than that? I have to get out to the market,” I protested.
“You ain’t the only dead furnace in town, lady,” the voice said with finality, and hung up. I glanced at the clock; eleven-thirty. I’d never be able to get the marketing done and get back in half an hour. Marketing with a small baby was more like a ninety-minute expedition into Darkest Borneo, requiring massive amounts of equipment and tremendous expenditures of energy.
Gritting my teeth, I called the expensive market that delivered, ordered the necessities for dinner, and picked up the baby, who was by now the shade of an eggplant, and markedly smelly.
“That looks ouchy, darling. You’ll feel much better if we get it off, won’t you?” I said, trying to talk soothingly as I wiped the brownish slime off Brianna’s bright-red bottom. She arched her back, trying to escape the clammy washcloth, and shrieked some more. A layer of Vaseline and the tenth clean diaper of the day; the diaper service truck wasn’t due ’til tomorrow, and the house reeked of ammonia.
“All right, sweetheart, there, there.” I hoisted her up on my shoulder, patting her, but the screeching went on and on. Not that I could blame her; her poor bottom was nearly raw. Ideally, she should be let to lie about on a towel with nothing on, but with no heat in the house, that wasn’t feasible. She and I were both wearing sweaters and heavy winter coats, which made the frequent feedings even more of a nuisance than usual; excavating a breast could take several minutes, while the baby screamed.
Brianna couldn’t sleep for more than ten minutes at a time. Consequently, neither could I. When we did drift off together at four o’clock, we were roused within a quarter of an hour by the crashing arrival of the furnace man, who pounded on the door, not bothering to set down the large wrench he was holding.
Jiggling the baby against my shoulder with one hand, I began cooking the dinner with the other, to the accompaniment of screeches in my ear and the sounds of violence from the cellar below.
“I ain’t promising nothin’, lady, but you got heat for now.” The furnace man appeared abruptly, wiping a smear of grease from his creased forehead. He leaned forward to inspect Brianna, who was lying more or less peacefully across my shoulder, loudly sucking her thumb.
“How’s that thumb taste, sweetie?” he inquired. “They say you shouldn’t oughta let ’em suck their thumbs, you know,” he informed me, straightening up. “Gives ’em crooked teeth and they’ll need braces.”
“Is that so?” I said through my own teeth. “How much do I owe you?”
Half an hour later, the chicken lay in its pan, stuffed and basted, surrounded by crushed garlic, sprigs of rosemary, and curls of lemon peel. A quick squeeze of lemon juice over the buttery skin, and I could stick it in the oven and go get myself and Brianna dressed. The kitchen looked like the result of an incompetent burglary, with cupboards hanging open and cooking paraphernalia strewn on every horizontal surface. I banged shut a couple of cupboard doors, and then the kitchen door itself, trusting that that would keep Mrs. Hinchcliffe out, even if good manners wouldn’t.
Frank had brought a new pink dress for Brianna to wear. It was a beautiful thing, but I eyed the layers of lace around the neck dubiously. They looked not only scratchy, but delicate.
“Well, we’ll give it a try,” I told her. “Daddy will like you to look pretty. Let’s try not to spit up in it, hm?”
Brianna responded by shutting her eyes, stiffening, and grunting as she extruded more slime.
“Oh, well done!” I said, sincerely. It meant changing the crib sheet, but at least it wouldn’t make the diaper rash worse. The mess attended to and a fresh diaper in place, I shook out the pink dress, and paused to carefully wipe the snot and drool from her face before popping the garment over her head. She blinked at me and gurgled enticingly, windmilling her fists.
I obligingly lowered my head and went “Pfffft!” into her navel, which made her squirm and gurgle with joy. We did it a few more times, then began the painstaking job of getting into the pink dress.
Brianna didn’t like it; she started to complain as I put it over her head, and as I crammed her chubby little arms into the puffed sleeves, put back her head and let out a piercing cry.
“What is it?” I demanded, startled. I knew all her cries by now and mostly, what she meant by them, but this was a new one, full of fright and pain. “What’s the matter, darling?”
She was screaming furiously now, tears rolling down her face. I turned her frantically over and patted her back, thinking she might have had a sudden attack of colic, but she wasn’t doubled up. She was struggling violently, though, and as I turned her back over to pick her up, I saw the long red line running up the tender inside of her waving arm. A pin had been left in the dress, and had scored her flesh as I forced the sleeve up her arm.
“Oh, baby! Oh, I’m so sorry! Mummy’s so sorry!” Tears were running down my own face as I eased the stabbing pin free and removed it. I clutched her to my shoulder, patting and soothing, trying to calm my own feelings of panicked guilt. Of course I hadn’t meant to hurt her, but she wouldn’t know that.
“Oh, darling,” I murmured. “It’s all right now. Yes, Mummy loves you, it’s all right.” Why hadn’t I thought to check for pins? For that matter, what sort of maniac would package a baby’s clothes using straight pins? Torn between fury and distress, I eased Brianna into the dress, wiped her chin, and carried her into the bedroom, where I laid her on my twin bed while I hastily changed to a decent skirt and a fresh blouse.
The doorbell rang as I was pulling on my stockings. There was a hole in one heel, but no time to do anything about it now. I stuck my feet into the pinching alligator pumps, snatched up Brianna, and went to answer the door.
It was Frank, too laden with packages to use his key. One-handed, I took most of them from him and parked them on the hall table.
“Dinner all ready, dear? I’ve brought a new tablecloth and napkins—thought ours were a bit shabby. And the wine, of course.” He lifted the bottle in his hand, smiling, then leaned forward to peer at me, and stopped smiling. He looked disapprovingly from my disheveled hair to my blouse, freshly stained with spit-up milk.
“Christ, Claire,” he said. “Couldn’t you fix yourself up a bit? I mean, it’s not as though you have anything else to do, at home all day—couldn’t you take a few minutes for a—”
“No,” I said, quite loudly. I pushed Brianna, who was wailing again with fretful exhaustion, into his arms.
“No,” I said again, and took the wine bottle from his unresisting hand.
“NO!” I shrieked, stamping my foot. I swung the bottle widely, and he dodged, but it was the doorjamb I struck, and purplish splatters of Beaujolais flew across the stoop, leaving glass shards glittering in the light from the entryway.
I flung the shattered bottle into the azaleas and ran coatless down the walk and into the freezing fog. At the foot of the walk, I passed the startled Hinchcliffes, who were arriving half an hour early, presumably in hopes of catching me in some domestic deficiency. I hoped they’d enjoy their dinner.
I drove aimlessly through the fog, the car’s heater blasting on my feet, until I began to get low on gas. I wasn’t going home; not yet. An all-night cafe? Then I realized that it was Friday night, and getting on for twelve o’clock. I had a place to go, after all. I turned back toward the suburb where we lived, and the Church of St. Finbar.
At this hour, the chapel was locked to prevent vandalism and burglary. For the late adorers, there was a push-button lock set just below the door handle. Five buttons, numbered one to five. By pushing three of them, in the proper combination, the latch could be sprung to allow lawful entry.
I moved quietly along the back of the chapel, to the logbook that sat at the feet of St. Finbar, to record my arrival.
“St. Finbar?” Frank had said incredulously. “There isn’t such a saint. There can’t possibly be.”
“There is,” I said, with a trace of smugness. “An Irish bishop, from the twelfth century.”
“Oh, Irish,” said Frank dismissively. “That explains it. But what I can’t understand,” he said, careful to be tactful, “is, er, well…why?”
“Why what?”
“Why go in for this Perpetual Adoration business? You’ve never been the least devout, no more than I have. And you don’t go to Mass or anything; Father Beggs asks me every week where you are.”
I shook my head. “I can’t really say, Frank. It’s just something…I need to do.” I looked at him, helpless to explain adequately. “It’s…peaceful there,” I said, finally.
He opened his mouth as though to speak further, then turned away, shaking his head.
It was peaceful. The car park at the church was deserted, save for the single car of the adorer on duty at this hour, gleaming an anonymous black under the arc lights. Inside, I signed my name to the log and walked forward, coughing tactfully to alert the eleven o’clock adorer to my presence without the rudeness of direct speech. I knelt behind him, a heavyset man in a yellow windcheater. After a moment, he rose, genuflected before the altar, turned and walked to the door, nodding briefly as he passed me.
The door hissed shut and I was alone, save for the Sacrament displayed on the altar, in the great golden sunburst of the monstrance. There were two candles on the altar, big ones. Smooth and white, they burned steadily in the still air, without a flicker. I closed my eyes for a moment, just listening to the silence.
Everything that had happened during the day whirled through my mind in a disjointed welter of thoughts and feelings. Coatless, I was shaking with cold from the short walk through the parking lot, but slowly I grew warm again, and my clenched hands relaxed in my lap.
At last, as usually happened here, I ceased to think. Whether it was the stoppage of time in the presence of eternity, or only the overtaking of a bone-deep fatigue, I didn’t know. But the guilt over Frank eased, the wrenching grief for Jamie lessened, and even the constant tug of motherhood upon my emotions receded to the level of background noise, no louder than the slow beating of my own heart, regular and comforting in the dark peace of the chapel.
“O Lord,” I whispered, “I commend to your mercy the soul of your servant James.” And mine, I added silently. And mine.
I sat there without moving, watching the flickering glow of the candle flames in the gold surface of the monstrance, until the soft footsteps of the next adorer came down the aisle behind me, ending in the heavy creak of genuflection. They came once each hour, day and night. The Blessed Sacrament was never left alone.
I stayed for a few minutes more, then slid out of the pew, with my own nod toward the altar. As I walked toward the back of the chapel, I saw a figure in the back row, under the shadow of the statue of St. Anthony. It stirred as I approached, then the man rose to his feet and made his way to the aisle to meet me.
“What are you doing here?” I hissed.
Frank nodded toward the form of the new adorer, already kneeling in contemplation, and took my elbow to guide me out.
I waited until the chapel door had closed behind us before pulling away and whirling to confront him.
“What is this?” I said angrily. “Why did you come after me?”
“I was worried about you.” He gestured toward the empty car park, where his large Buick nestled protectively next to my small Ford. “It’s dangerous, a lone woman walking about in the very late night in this part of town. I came to see you home. That’s all.”
He didn’t mention the Hinchcliffes, or the dinner party. My annoyance ebbed a bit.
“Oh,” I said. “What did you do with Brianna?”
“Asked old Mrs. Munsing from next door to keep an ear out in case she cried. But she seemed dead asleep; I didn’t think there was much chance. Come along now, it’s cold out.”
It was; the freezing air off the bay was coiling in white tendrils around the posts of the arc lights, and I shivered in my thin blouse.
“I’ll meet you at home, then,” I said.
The warmth of the nursery reached out to embrace me as I went in to check Brianna. She was still asleep, but restless, turning her russet head from side to side, the groping little mouth opening and closing like the breathing of a fish.
“She’s getting hungry,” I whispered to Frank, who had come in behind me and was hovering over my shoulder, peering fondly at the baby. “I’d better feed her before I come to bed; then she’ll sleep later in the morning.”
“I’ll get you a hot drink,” and he vanished through the door to the kitchen as I picked up the sleepy, warm bundle.
She had only drained one side, but she was full. The slack mouth pulled slowly away from the nipple, rimmed with milk, and the fuzzy head fell heavily back on my arm. No amount of gentle shaking or calling would rouse her to nurse on the other side, so at last I gave up and tucked her back in her crib, patting her back softly until a faint, contented belch wafted up from the pillow, succeeded by the heavy breathing of absolute satiation.
“Down for the night, is she?” Frank drew the baby blanket, decorated with yellow bunnies, up over her.
“Yes.” I sat back in my rocking chair, mentally and physically too exhausted to get up again. Frank came to stand behind me; his hand rested lightly on my shoulder.
“He’s dead, then?” he asked gently.
I told you so, I started to say. Then I stopped, closed my mouth and only nodded, rocking slowly, staring at the dark crib and its tiny occupant.
My right breast was still painfully swollen with milk. No matter how tired I was, I couldn’t sleep until I took care of it. With a sigh of resignation, I reached for the breast pump, an ungainly and ridiculous-looking rubber contraption. Using it was undignified and uncomfortable, but better than waking up in an hour in bursting pain, sopping wet from overflowing milk.
I waved a hand at Frank, dismissing him.
“Go ahead. It will only take a few minutes, but I have to…”
Instead of leaving or answering, he took the pump from my hand and laid it down on the table. As though it moved of its own will, without direction from him, his hand rose slowly through the warm, dark air of the nursery and cupped itself gently around the swollen curve of my breast.
His head bowed and his lips fastened softly on my nipple. I groaned, feeling the half-painful prickle of the milk rushing through the tiny ducts. I put a hand behind his head, and pressed him slightly closer.
“Harder,” I whispered. His mouth was soft, gentle in its pressure, nothing like the relentless grasp of a baby’s hard, toothless gums, that fasten on like grim death, demanding and draining, releasing the bounteous fountain at once in response to their greed.
Frank knelt before me, his mouth a supplicant. Was this how God felt, I wondered, seeing the adorers before Him—was He, too, filled with tenderness and pity? The haze of fatigue made me feel as though everything happened in slow motion, as though we were under water. Frank’s hands moved slowly as sea fronds, swaying in the current, moving over my flesh with a touch as gentle as the brush of kelp leaves, lifting me with the strength of a wave, and laying me down on the shore of the nursery rug. I closed my eyes, and let the tide carry me away.
The front door of the old manse opened with a screech of rusty hinges, announcing the return of Brianna Randall. Roger was on his feet and into the hall at once, drawn by the sound of girls’ voices.
“A pound of best butter—that’s what you told me to ask for, and I did, but I kept wondering whether there was such a thing as second-best butter, or worst butter—” Brianna was handing over wrapped packages to Fiona, laughing and talking at once.
“Well, and if ye got it from that auld rascal Wicklow, worst is what it’s likely to be, no matter what he says,” Fiona interrupted. “Oh, and ye’ve got the cinnamon, that’s grand! I’ll make cinnamon scones, then; d’ye want to come and watch me do it?”
“Yes, but first I want supper. I’m starved!” Brianna stood on tiptoe, sniffing hopefully in the direction of the kitchen. “What are we having—haggis?”
“Haggis! Gracious, ye silly Sassenach—ye dinna have haggis in the spring! Ye have it in the autumn when the sheep are killed.”
“Am I a Sassenach?” Brianna seemed delighted at the name.
“Of course ye are, gowk. But I like ye fine, anyway.”
Fiona laughed up at Brianna, who towered over the small Scottish girl by nearly a foot. Fiona was nineteen, prettily charming and slightly plump; next to her, Brianna looked like a medieval carving, strong-boned and severe. With her long, straight nose and the long hair glowing red-gold beneath the glass bowl of the ceiling fixture, she might have walked out of an illuminated manuscript, vivid enough to endure a thousand years unchanged.
Roger was suddenly conscious of Claire Randall, standing near his elbow. She was looking at her daughter, with an expression in which love, pride, and something else were mingled—memory, perhaps? He realized, with a slight shock, that Jamie Fraser too must have had not only the striking height and Viking red hair he had bequeathed to his daughter, but likely the same sheer physical presence.
It was quite remarkable, he thought. She didn’t do or say anything so out of the ordinary, and yet Brianna undeniably drew people. There was some attraction about her, almost magnetic, that drew everyone near into the glow of her orbit.
It drew him; Brianna turned and smiled at him, and without consciousness of having moved, he found himself near enough to see the faint freckles high on her cheekbones, and smell the whiff of pipe tobacco that lingered in her hair from her expeditions to the shops.
“Hullo,” he said, smiling. “Any luck with the Clans office, or have you been too busy playing dogsbody for Fiona?”
“Dogsbody?” Brianna’s eyes slanted into blue triangles of amusement. “Dogsbody? First I’m a Sassenach, and now I’m a dogsbody. What do you Scots call people when you’re trying to be nice?”
“Darrrrlin’,” he said, rolling his r’s exaggeratedly, and making both girls laugh.
“You sound like an Aberdeen terrier in a bad mood,” Claire observed. “Did you find anything at the Highland Clans library, Bree?”
“Lots of stuff,” Brianna replied, rummaging through the stack of photocopies she had set down on the hall table. “I managed to read most of it while they were making the copies—this one was the most interesting.” She pulled a sheet from the stack and handed it to Roger.
It was an extract from a book of Highland legends; an entry headed “Leap O’ the Cask.”
“Legends?” said Claire, peering over his shoulder. “Is that what we want?”
“Could be.” Roger was perusing the sheet, and spoke absently, his attention divided. “So far as the Scottish Highlands go, most of the history is oral, up to the mid-nineteenth century or so. That means there wasn’t a great distinction made between stories about real people, stories of historical figures, and the stories about mythical things like water horses and ghosts and the doings of the Auld Folk. Scholars who wrote the stories down often didn’t know for sure which they were dealing with, either—sometimes it was a combination of fact and myth, and sometimes you could tell that it was a real historical occurrence being described.
“This one, for instance”—he passed the paper to Claire-“sounds like a real one. It’s describing the story behind the name of a particular rock formation in the Highlands.”
Claire brushed the hair behind her ear and bent her head to read, squinting in the dim light of the ceiling fixture. Fiona, too accustomed to musty papers and boring bits of history to be interested, disappeared back into her kitchen to see to the dinner.
“‘Leap O’ the Cask,’” Claire read. “‘This unusual formation, located some distance above a burn, is named after the story of a Jacobite laird and his servant. The laird, one of the few fortunates to escape the disaster of Culloden, made his way with difficulty to his home, but was compelled to lie hidden in a cave on his lands for nearly seven years, while the English hunted the Highlands for the fugitive supporters of Charles Stuart. The laird’s tenants loyally kept his presence a secret, and brought food and supplies to the laird in his hiding place. They were careful always to refer to the hidden man only as the “Dunbonnet,” in order to avoid any chance of giving him away to the English patrols who frequently crossed the district.
“‘One day, a boy bringing a cask of ale up the trail to the laird’s cave met a group of English dragoons. Bravely refusing either to answer the soldiers’ questions, or to give up his burden, the boy was attacked by one of the dragoons, and dropped the cask, which bounded down the steep hill, and into the burn below.’”
She looked up from the paper, raising her eyebrows at her daughter.
“Why this one? We know—or we think we know,” she corrected, with a wry nod toward Roger, “that Jamie escaped from Culloden, but so did a lot of other people. What makes you think this laird might have been Jamie?”
“Because of the Dunbonnet bit, of course,” Brianna answered, as though surprised that she should ask.
“What?” Roger looked at her, puzzled. “What about the Dunbonnet?”
In answer, Brianna picked up a hank of her thick red hair and waggled it under his nose.
“Dunbonnet!” she said impatiently. “A dull brown bonnet, right? He wore a hat all the time, because he had hair that could be recognized! Didn’t you say the English called him ‘Red Jamie’? They knew he had red hair—he had to hide it!”
Roger stared at her, speechless. The hair floated loose on her shoulders, alive with fiery light.
“You could be right,” Claire said. Excitement made her eyes bright as she looked at her daughter. “It was like yours—Jamie’s hair was just like yours, Bree.” She reached up and softly stroked Brianna’s hair. The girl’s face softened as she looked down at her mother.
“I know,” she said. “I was thinking about that while I was reading—trying to see him, you know?” She stopped and cleared her throat, as though something might be caught in it. “I could see him, out in the heather, hiding, and the sun shining off his hair. You said he’d been an outlaw; I just—I just thought he must have known pretty well…how to hide. If people were trying to kill him,” she finished softly.
“Right.” Roger spoke briskly, to dispel the shadow in Brianna’s eyes. “That’s a marvelous job of guesswork, but maybe we can tell for sure, with a little more work. If we can find Leap O’ the Cask on a map—”
“What kind of dummy do you think I am?” Brianna said scornfully. “I thought of that.” The shadow disappeared, replaced by an expression of smugness. “That’s why I was so late; I made the clerk drag out every map of the Highlands they had.” She withdrew another photocopied sheet from the stack and poked a finger triumphantly near the upper edge.
“See? It’s so tiny, it doesn’t show up on most maps, but this one had it. Right there; there’s the village of Broch Mordha, which Mama says is near the Lallybroch estate, and there”—her finger moved a quarter-inch, pointing to a line of microscopic print. “See?” she repeated. “He went back to his estate—Lallybroch—and that’s where he hid.”
“Not having a magnifying glass to hand, I’ll take your word for it that that says ‘Leap O’ the Cask,’” Roger said, straightening up. He grinned at Brianna. “Congratulations, then,” he said. “I think you’ve found him—that far, at least.”
Brianna smiled, her eyes suspiciously bright. “Yeah,” she said softly. She touched the two sheets of paper with a gentle finger. “My father.”
Claire squeezed her daughter’s hand. “If you have your father’s hair, it’s nice to see you have your mother’s brains,” she said, smiling. “Let’s go and celebrate your discovery with Fiona’s dinner.”
“Good job,” Roger said to Brianna, as they followed Claire toward the dining room. His hand rested lightly on her waist. “You should be proud of yourself.”
“Thanks,” she said, with a brief smile, but the pensive expression returned almost at once to the curve of her mouth.
“What is it?” Roger asked softly, stopping in the hall. “Is something the matter?”
“No, not really.” She turned to face him, a small line visible between the ruddy brows. “It’s only—I was just thinking, trying to imagine—what do you think it was like for him? Living in a cave for seven years? And what happened to him then?”
Moved by an impulse, Roger leaned forward and kissed her lightly between the brows.
“I don’t know, darlin’,” he said. “But maybe we’ll find out.”