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“Your skill as a physician, and your complete discretion. In exchange for such information as I possess regarding the movements and plans of the Elector’s troops,” he answered promptly.
“I am informed that I am fortunate to be alive, Madam,” he answered coldly. “The point is debatable.”
“I do not fear you, Madam. You cannot have it both ways, you know. You sought to terrify me at Wentworth, by giving me the day of my death. But having told me that, you cannot now threaten me, for if I shall die in April of next year, you cannot harm me now, can you?”
“Yes. I can help it, at least. And the heart palpitations; I can make you a digitalin extract that will help.”
While I doubted that Jamie would recognize Randall’s hand, I couldn’t explain a regular source of information without outright lying.
However, I had concluded that while honesty between husband and wife was essential, there was such a thing as carrying it too bloody far.
Scotland, they pointed out, already belonged to Charles, lock, stock, and barrel. Men were still pouring in from the north, while from the south there seemed little promise of support. And the Scottish lords were all too aware that the Highlanders, while fierce fighters and loyal followers, were also farmers. Fields needed to be tilled for the spring planting; cattle needed to be provisioned for overwintering. Many of the men would resist going deeply into the South in the winter months.
Somehow every garment that Murtagh put on, no matter how new or how well tailored, immediately assumed the appearance of something narrowly salvaged from a rubbish heap.
“Why! Why can I see what will happen, when there’s no mortal thing I can be doin’ to change it or stop it? What’s the good of a gift like that?
“I’m your chief, man,” he said, with a quivering half-smile. “Ye’ll not order me; I shall grieve ye and I like.” He clasped Rupert’s hand, where it lay across his chest, and held it tightly.
“I am a sassenach, after all,” I said, seeing it. He touched my face briefly with a rueful smile. “Aye, mo nighean donn. But you’re my sassenach.”
“Now, then,” he said, with as much firmness as a man who sounded like Mickey Mouse could manage.
I must say, Mrs. Fraser, that you are amazingly difficult to kill”—he bowed slightly in my direction, that smile still on his lips—“but I feel sure that it could be accomplished, given sufficient determination.”
He giggled in that high-pitched way again,
It doesn’t do to employ a man like that without having a means at hand to control him, you know. And money is a good bridle, but a weak rein.”
He cocked his head to one side, so far as the multiple chins allowed.
But if you want so badly to know which side I’m on, you aren’t going to kill me before finding out, now, are you?”
“I bring ye your vengeance, lady,” he said, as quietly as I’d ever heard him speak. He straightened and inclined his head in turn to Mary and Mrs. Munro. “And justice for the wrong done to ye.” Mary sneezed, and wiped her nose hastily with a fold of her plaid. She stared at Murtagh, eyes wide and baffled. I gazed down at the bulging saddle-bag, feeling a sudden deep chill that owed nothing to the weather outside. But it was Hugh Munro’s widow who sank to her knees, and with steady hands opened the bag and drew out the head of the Duke of Sandringham.
“You’re mine, damn ye, Claire Fraser! Mine, and I wilna share ye, with a man or a memory, or anything whatever, so long as we both shall live. You’ll no mention the man’s name to me again. D’ye hear?” He kissed me fiercely to emphasize the point. “Did ye hear me?” he asked, breaking off. “Yes,” I said, with some difficulty. “If you’d … stop … shaking me, I might … answer you.”
“I will find you,” he whispered in my ear. “I promise. If I must endure two hundred years of purgatory, two hundred years without you—then that is my punishment, which I have earned for my crimes. For I have lied, and killed, and stolen; betrayed and broken trust. But there is the one thing that shall lie in the balance. When I shall stand before God, I shall have one thing to say, to weigh against the rest.” His voice dropped, nearly to a whisper, and his arms tightened around me. “Lord, ye gave me a rare woman, and God! I loved her well.”
“it’s only the essence of a thing that counts. When time strips everything else away, it’s only the hardness of the bone that’s left.”
“I? I, who read souls for the King of France?” She brushed down her skirt and set it swinging. “This will be pie.”
As Master Raymond had told me in Paris, the power and the danger of magic lie in the people who believe it.
It was late April. Only a few days until May Day—the Feast of Beltane. That was when I had made my own impromptu voyage into the past. I supposed it was possible that there was something about the date—or just the general time of year? It had been mid-April when I returned—that made that eerie passage possible. Or maybe not; maybe the time of year had nothing to do with it.
It could be that only certain people had the ability to penetrate a barrier that was solid to everyone else—something in the genetic makeup? Who knew? Jamie had not been able to enter it, though I could. And Geillis Duncan obviously had—or would. Or wouldn’t, depending. I thought of young Roger Wakefield, and felt mildly queasy.
