Written in My Own Heart's Blood (Outlander)

She made a low rumbling noise in her throat but seemed to see the sense in this; she nodded and began to collect the brandy glasses instead.

“What’ll you be wanting for supper, then? I got a cold boiled ham, but I was thinking to make a chicken fricassee, William liking that so much.” She cast a bleak look at the hallway, where the bloody smudges on the wallpaper had now turned brown. “You think he’s coming back for his supper?” William had an official billet somewhere in the town, but frequently spent the night at the house—particularly when Mrs. Figg was making chicken fricassee.

“God knows,” I said. I hadn’t had time to contemplate the William situation, what with everything else. Might he come back, when he’d cooled down, determined to have things out with John? I’d seen a Fraser on the boil, many times, and they didn’t sulk, as a rule. They tended to take direct action, at once. I eyed Jenny speculatively; she returned the look and casually leaned her elbow on the table, chin in hand, and tapped her fingers thoughtfully against her lips. I smiled privately at her.

“Where is my nephew?” Hal asked, finally able to take note of something other than his next breath. “For that matter where is my brother?”

“I don’t know,” I told him, putting my own glass on Mrs. Figg’s tray and scooping his up to add to it. “I really wasn’t lying about that. But I do expect he’ll be back soon.” I rubbed a hand over my face and smoothed my hair back as well as I could. First things first. I had a patient to tend.

“I’m sure John wants to see you as much as you want to see him. But—”

“Oh, I doubt it,” the duke said. His eyes traveled slowly over me, from bare feet to disheveled hair, and the faint look of amusement on his face deepened. “You must tell me how John happened to marry you when there’s time.”

“A counsel of desperation,” I said shortly. “But in the meantime we must get you to bed. Mrs. Figg, is the back bedroom—”

“Thank you, Mrs. Figg,” the duke interrupted, “I shan’t be requiring . . .” He was trying to struggle up out of the chair and hadn’t enough breath to talk. I walked up to him and gave him my best piercing head-matron look.

“Harold,” I said in measured tones. “I am not merely your sister-in-law.” The term gave me an odd frisson, but I ignored it. “I am your physician. If you don’t—what?” I demanded. He was staring up at me with a most peculiar expression on his face, something between surprise and amusement. “You invited me to use your Christian name, didn’t you?”

“I did,” he admitted. “But I don’t think anyone has actually called me Harold since I was three years old.” He did smile then, a charming smile quite his own. “The family call me Hal.”


“Hal, then,” I said, smiling back but refusing to be distracted. “You’re going to have a nice refreshing sponge bath, Hal, and then you’re going to bed.”

He laughed—though he cut it short, as he began to wheeze. He coughed a little, fist balled under his ribs, and looked uneasy, but it stopped, and he cleared his throat and glanced up at me.

“You’d think I was three years old. Sister-in-law. Trying to send me to bed without my tea?” He pressed himself gingerly upright, getting his feet under him. I put a hand on his chest and pushed. He hadn’t any strength in his legs and fell back into the chair, astonished and affronted. And afraid: he hadn’t realized—or at least had not admitted—his own weakness. A severe attack usually left the victim completely drained, and often with the lungs still dangerously twitchy.

“You see?” I said, tempering my tone with gentleness. “You’ve had attacks like this before, haven’t you?”

“Well yes,” he said unwillingly, “but . . .”

“And how long were you in bed after the last one?”

His lips compressed.

“A week. But the fool doctor—”

I put a hand on his shoulder and he stopped—as much because he’d temporarily run short of air as because of the touch.

“You. Cannot. Breathe. Yet. On. Your. Own,” I said, separating the words for emphasis. “Listen to me, Hal. Look what’s happened this afternoon, will you? You had a fairly severe attack in the street; had that crowd on Fourth Street decided to set upon us, you would have been quite helpless—don’t argue with me, Hal, I was there.” I narrowed my eyes at him. He did the same back at me but didn’t argue.

“Then the walk from the street to the door of the house—a distance of some twenty feet—threw you straight into a full-blown status asthmaticus; have you heard that term before?”

“No,” he muttered.

“Well, now you have, and now you know what it is. And you were in bed for a week the last time? Was it as bad as this?”

His lips were a thin line and his eyes sparking. I imagined most people didn’t speak to a duke—let alone the commander of his own regiment—like this. Be good for him, I thought.

“Bloody doctor said it was my heart.” His fist had uncurled and the fingers were slowly rubbing his chest. “Knew it wasn’t that.”

“I think you’re probably right about that,” I conceded. “Was this the same doctor who gave you smelling salts? Complete quack, if so.”

He laughed, a brief, breathless sound.

“Yes, he is.” He paused to breathe for a moment. “Though in justice, he he didn’t give me salts. Got them myself. For fainting told you.”

“So you did.” I sat down beside him and took hold of his wrist. He let me, watching curiously. His pulse was fine; it had slowed and was thumping along very steadily.

“How long have you been subject to fainting spells?” I asked, bending to look closely into his eyes. No sign of petechial hemorrhage, no jaundice, pupils the same size . . .

“A long time,” he said, and pulled his wrist abruptly away. “I haven’t time to chat about my health, madam. I—”

“Claire,” I said, and put a restraining hand on his chest, smiling amiably at him. “You’re Hal, I’m Claire—and you aren’t going anywhere, Your Grace.”

“Take your hand off me!”

“I’m seriously tempted to do just that and let you fall on your face,” I told him, “but wait until Mrs. Figg finishes brewing the tincture. I don’t want you thrashing about on the floor, gasping like a landed fish, and no way of getting the hook out of your mouth.”



I did in fact take my hand off his chest, though, and, rising, I went out into the hall before he could find breath to say anything. Jenny had taken up a stand by the open doorway, looking up and down the street.

“What’s going on out there?” I asked.

“I dinna ken,” she said, not taking her eyes off a couple of rough-looking men who were lounging down the other side of the street. “But I dinna like the feel of it a bit. D’ye think he’s right?”

“That the British army is leaving? Yes. They are. And very likely half the Loyalists in the city with them.” I knew exactly what she meant by not liking the feel of things. The air was hot and thick, buzzing with cicadas, and the leaves of the chestnut trees along the street hung limp as dishrags. But something was moving in the atmosphere. Excitement? Panic? Fear? All three, I thought.

“Had I best go to the printshop, d’ye think?” she asked, turning to me with a slight frown. “Would Marsali and the weans be safer if I fetched them here, I mean? If there was to be a riot or the like?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t think so. They’re well-known Patriots. It’s the Loyalists who will be in danger, if the British army is leaving. They won’t have any protection, and the Rebels may well do things to them. And”—a very unpleasant feeling snaked down my backbone, like a cold, slimy finger—“this is a Loyalist household.” “Without even a door to shut and bolt,” I might have added, but didn’t.

There was a loud thump from the parlor, as of a body hitting the floor, but Jenny didn’t turn a hair, nor did I. We’d both had a lot of experience with stubborn men. I could hear him panting; if he started wheezing again, I’d go in.

“Will it put ye in danger, then, to have him here?” she asked, sotto voce, with a tilt of her head toward the parlor. “Maybe ye’d best come to the printshop.”

I grimaced, trying to evaluate the possibilities. The notes I’d sent with Germain would delay inquiries, and I could put off anyone who did come. But that also meant I could expect no immediate help from the army, if help was needed. And it might be; someone in that hostile crowd on Fourth Street might well have heard where I’d told the chairmen to come. That hostility now showed itself in a different light.

If the Rebels in the city were about to rise and turn upon the defenseless Loyalists—and the currents I sensed beginning to swirl through the streets were dark ones—

“Someone might just show up on your porch wi’ a keg of tar and a bag o’ feathers,” Jenny observed, preempting my thought in a most unnerving way.

“Well, that wouldn’t help His Grace’s asthma a bit,” I said, and she laughed.

“Had ye maybe better give him back to General Clinton?” she suggested. “I’ve had soldiers search my house, wi’ a wanted man hidin’ in the bottom o’ my wardrobe and my newborn bairn in his arms. I dinna think it would be a great deal easier on the nerves to have the Sons o’ Liberty come in here after His Grace, if half what Marsali told me about them is true.”

“It probably is.” A gunshot smacked through the heavy air, flat and dull, from somewhere near the river, and we both tensed. It wasn’t repeated, though, and after a moment I drew breath again.

“The thing is, he’s not stable. I can’t risk taking him through streets filled with dust and tree pollen and then leaving him in the care of an army surgeon, or even that quack Hebdy. Were he to have another attack and no one able to get him through it . . .”

Jenny grimaced.

“Aye, ye’re right,” she said reluctantly. “And ye canna leave him here and go yourself, for the same reason.”

“That’s right.” And Jamie would be coming here, to find me. I wouldn’t leave.

“Ken, if Jamie came and didna find ye here, he’d go to the printshop next thing,” Jenny observed, making the hair prickle on the back of my neck.

“Will you stop doing that!?”

“What?” she said, startled.

“Reading my mind!”

“Oh, that.” She grinned at me, blue eyes creasing into triangles. “Everything ye think shows on your face, Claire. Surely Jamie’s told ye that?”

A deep flush burned upward from my low-cut décolletage, and only then did I recall that I was still wearing the amber-colored silk, which was now soaked with sweat, rimed with dust, and altogether rather the worse for wear. And which had very tight stays. I rather hoped that everything I was thinking didn’t show on my face, because there was quite a bit of information I didn’t mean to share with Jenny just yet.

“Well, I canna tell everything ye think,” she admitted—doing it again, dammit!—“but it’s easy to tell when ye’re thinking about Jamie.”

I decided that I really didn’t want to hear what I looked like when thinking about Jamie and was about to excuse myself to look in on the duke, who I could hear coughing and swearing breathlessly to himself in German, when my attention was distracted by a boy sprinting down the street as though the devil were after him, his coat on inside out and shirttails streaming.

“Colenso!” I exclaimed.

“What?” Jenny said, startled.

“Not what. Who. Him,” I said, pointing at the grubby little creature panting up the walk. “Colenso Baragwanath. William’s groom.”

Colenso, who always looked as though he should be squatting atop a toadstool, came hurtling toward the door with such violence that Jenny and I both leapt out of the way. Colenso tripped on the doorsill and fell flat on his face.


“Ye look as though Auld Hornie himself was after ye, lad,” Jenny said, bending down to hoick him to his feet. “And whatever’s become of your breeks?”

Sure enough, the boy was barefoot and wearing only his shirt beneath his coat.

“They took ’em,” he blurted, gasping for breath.

“Who?” I said, pulling his coat off and turning it right side out again.

“Them,” he said, gesturing hopelessly toward Locust Street. “I put me head into the ordinary, to see was Lord Ellesmere there—he is, sometimes—and there was a knot o’ men all buzzin’ like a hive o’ bees together. They was big lads with ’em, and one of ’em as knew me saw me and raises up a great cry, shoutin’ as I’m a-spyin’ on ’em and mean to take word back to the army, and then they grabbed me and they called me a turncoat and put me coat on backward and the one man said he’d beat me and teach me not to do such as that and pulled off me breeches and and anyway, I squirmed out of his hand and fell down on the floor and crawled out under the tables and took off a-runnin’.” He wiped a sleeve under his runny nose. “His lordship here, ma’am?”

“No,” I said. “Why do you want him?”

“Oh, I don’t, ma’am,” he assured me, with evident sincerity. “Major Findlay wants him. Now.”

“Hmm. Well wherever he is at the moment, he’ll likely go back to his regular billet this evening. You know where that is, don’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am, but I’m not a-goin’ back in the street ’thout my breeches!” He looked both horrified and indignant, and Jenny laughed.

“Dinna blame ye a bit, lad,” she said. “Tell ye what, though—my eldest grandson’s likely got an old pair of breeches he could spare. I’ll step round to the printshop,” she said to me, “fetch the breeches, and tell Marsali what’s ado.”

“All right,” I said, a little reluctant to see her go. “But hurry back. And tell her not to print any of this in the newspaper!”





THE DESCENT OF THE HOLY GHOST UPON A RELUCTANT DISCIPLE

DAN MORGAN’S “IT” WAS nearby: a ramshackle cabin set in a little elm grove, down a short dirt lane off the main road. There was a big gray gelding hobbled and cropping grass nearby, his tack resting on the porch; he looked up briefly and whinnied at the newcomers.



Jamie ducked under the lintel after Dan and found himself in a dark, shabby room that smelled of cabbage water, grime, and the sharp reek of urine. There was one window, its shutters left open for air, and the sunlight coming in silhouetted the long-skulled head of a large man sitting at the table, who raised his head at the opening of the door.

“Colonel Morgan,” he said, in a soft voice touched with the drawl of Virginia. “Have you brought me good news?”