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“He’s got the grooviest eyes,” Brianna said, dreamily ignoring the question of his brain. “Aren’t they the greenest you’ve ever seen?”
The roll that had listed the names in the Master of Lovat’s regiment had shown those thirty men as being under the command of a Captain James Fraser—of Broch Tuarach. This man was the only apparent link between Broch Tuarach and the Frasers of Lovat. He wondered why James Fraser had not appeared on Claire’s list.
“Mother, you can’t get married accidentally!” Brianna was losing her kindly-nurse-with-mental-patient attitude.
Worse than that, she was what I was—a traveler through the standing stones.
But my last vision of her, screaming defiance at the judges who would condemn her to burn, was of a tall, fair woman, arms stretched high, showing on one arm the telltale round of a vaccination scar. I felt automatically for the small patch of roughened skin on my own upper arm, beneath the comforting folds of my cloak, and shuddered when I found it.
The Comte took a step toward me, eyes glittering. “Have you any notion what you have done?” he snarled. “Be warned, Madame; you will pay for this day’s work!”
I was still more impressed at Jared’s success in business, until I realized just how little the servants were paid: a new pair of shoes and two livres per year for the footmen, a trifle less for the housemaids and kitchenmaids, a little more for such exalted personages as Madame Vionnet, the cook, and the butler, Magnus.
At this hour, the favored few chosen to attend the King’s toilette should be assembled in the antechamber, ready to join the procession of nobles and attendants who were necessary to assist the monarch in greeting the new day.
The Duc de Neve had the unspeakable honor,” he added ironically, “of wiping His Majesty’s arse for him. I didna notice what they did wi’ the towel; took it out and had it gilded, no doubt. “A verra wearisome business it was, too,” he added, bending over and setting his hands on the floor to stretch the muscles of his legs. “Took forever; the man’s tight as an owl.”
Jamie had by now thrown himself on the floor and was doing the Royal Air Force exercises I had recommended to strengthen the muscles of his back.
Mary Hawkins was not meant to be the wife of the decrepit Vicomte Marigny. She was to marry Jonathan Randall, in the year of our Lord 1746.
“If he’s dead, Jamie—if he won’t exist, because Jonathan is dead—then why do I still have the ring he gave me?”
Perhaps Jack Randall didna die at Culloden Field, because the battle there will never happen.”
“The ladies and gentlemen of the Court are fortunately more trusting in nature, not that trust is the emotion that springs immediately to mind when one thinks of an aristocrat. No, in fact it is pig’s blood, madonna. Pigs being so much more available than crocodiles.” “Mm, yes,” I agreed. “That one must have cost you a pretty penny.”
“Not a professional liar, at any rate,” he said, eyeing me in amusement. “Rather a pity. Still, how may I have the pleasure of serving you, madonna?”
“Come along,” she urged. “Have no fear for your lady”—she cast an appreciative glance at my gown—“she won’t be alone long.” “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Jamie muttered under his breath.
“Go to hell, Jamie,” I said at last, wiping my eyes. “Go directly to hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. There. Do you feel better now?”
“But I talk to you as I talk to my own soul,” he said, turning me to face him. He reached up and cupped my cheek, fingers light on my temple.
I patted the skinny hand gently, and murmured something in farewell, my exhilaration at having made a correct diagnosis substantially quenched by the knowledge that there was no possible cure for diabetes mellitus in this day; the woman before me was doomed.
Social prejudice is a strong force, but no match for simple competence when skill is in urgent demand and short supply.
Promptly obeying the dictates of his cervical vertebrae, he turned left instead of right at the next corner, ducked around a whelk-seller’s stall, cut between a barrow filled with steamed puddings and another of fresh vegetable marrows, and into a small charcuterie.
An enormous red barbarian was going to be conspicuous, no matter how thick the crowd.
“Poison,” she said. The pain shifted abruptly lower with an ominous interior gurgle, and I realized finally what it was. Not a miscarriage. Not appendicitis, still less a chilled liver. Nor was it poison, precisely. It was bitter cascara.
But for the hours of the night, I was helpless; powerless to move as a dragonfly in amber.
“I knelt at Ellen’s feet, as I kneel now by yours,” the little clansman went on, narrow chin held high. “And I swore to her by the name o’ the threefold God, that I would follow ye always, to do your bidding, and guard your back, when ye became a man grown, and needing such service.”
“I charge ye, then, by your oath to me and your word to my mother—find the men. Hunt them, and when they be found, I do charge ye wi’ the vengeance due my wife’s honor—and the blood of Mary Hawkins’s innocence.”
“It’s only … I told Glengarry that you were La Dame Blanche.”
“I am called Lord Broch Tuarach for formality’s sake,” the soft Scottish voice above me said. “And beyond the requirements of formality, you will never speak to me again—until you beg for your life at the point of my sword. Then, you may use my name, for it will be the last word you ever speak.”
“I am your lawful husband, as much as he ever was—or will be. You do not even know that ye could have returned to him; mo nighean donn, ye might have gone still further back, or gone forward to a different time altogether. You acted as ye thought ye must, and no one can do better than that.”
“I think it will not happen, Claire; I think we will stop him. And if not, then still I dinna expect anything to happen to me. But if it should …” He was in deadly earnest now, speaking soft and urgently. “If it does, then I want there to be a place for you; I want someone for you to go to if I am … not there to care for you. If it canna be me, then I would have it be a man who loves you.” His grasp on my fingers grew tighter; I could feel both rings digging into my flesh, and felt the urgency in his hands. “Claire, ye know what it cost me to do this for you—to spare Randall’s life. Promise me
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“Kind hearts are more than coronets,”
All I could do was wait, to see which of my men would die.
“St. Raymond is not one to be picky,” she said, absently reproving. “I myself take help where it can be found; a course I would recommend to you.”
Neat job, Beauchamp, I thought. All this political intrigue is teaching you things they never dreamt of in nursing school, no doubt about it.
“It was a girl,” I said after a moment. My voice sounded funny; hoarse and husky. “Mother Hildegarde baptized her. Faith. Faith Fraser. Mother Hildegarde has a very odd sense of humor.”
“A wonder ye put up wi’ Jamie and me,” Ian teased, hearing her, “seein’ ye’ve such a low opinion of men.” Jenny waved her soup ladle dismissively at husband and brother, seated side by side on the ground near the kettle. “Och, you two aren’t ‘men.’ ” Ian’s feathery brows shot upward, and Jamie’s thicker red ones matched them. “Oh, we’re not? Well, what are we, then?” Ian demanded. Jenny turned toward him with a smile, white teeth flashing in the firelight. She patted Jamie on the head, and dropped a kiss on Ian’s forehead. “You’re mine,” she said.
“I still have that,” I said softly, caressing the odd little lump of petrified tree sap. Hugh’s chunk of amber, one side sheared off and polished into a small window, had a dragonfly embedded in the matrix, suspended in eternal flight. I kept it in my medicine box, the most powerful of my charms.
One day perhaps he would hold his own child so, small round head cradled in the big hands, small solid body cupped and held firm against his shoulder. And thus he would sing to his own daughter, a tuneless song, a warm, soft chant in the dark.
It was not a scene that bore intrusion. I came back to the still-warm bed, holding in my mind the picture of the laird of Lallybroch, half-naked in the moonlight, pouring out his heart to an unknown future, holding in his lap the promise of his blood.
Aware that I would remain louseless only so long as Jamie did, I administered the same treatment to him, whenever I could get him to sit still long enough.
“I do say so. Look.” I pulled my lips back, baring my teeth. “How many women of my age do you know who still have all their teeth?” A grin bared his own excellent teeth.
“Honor has killed one bloody hell of a lot of men,” I said to the dark groove of his bruised back. “Honor without sense is … foolishness. A gallant foolishness, but foolishness nonetheless.”
You cannot save the world, but you might save the man in front of you, if you work fast enough.
More than once, I had surprised him crossing himself surreptitiously in my presence, or making the quick two-fingered “horns” sign against evil.
“My pleasure, Your Highness,” I said demurely, dropping a brief curtsy.
There’s times to fight wi’out counting the cost, but there’s times ye bite your tongue and bide your time.
Some were explainable on the basis of vaccination, of course. I couldn’t, for example, catch smallpox, typhus, cholera, or yellow fever. Not that yellow fever was likely, but still.
I had learned in nurses’ training that colds are caused by innumerable viruses, each distinct and ever-evolving. Once exposed to a particular virus, the instructor had explained, you became immune to it. You continued to catch cold as you encountered new and different viruses, but the chances of meeting something you hadn’t been exposed to before became smaller as you got older.
Perhaps I never caught cold because I harbored ancestral antibodies to eighteenth-century viruses—benefiting from the colds caught by all my ancestors for the past two hundred years?
I would have allowed him to chop me in pieces before I made a sound that would cause the bedroom door to open.
