Текст книги "Written in My Own Heart's Blood"

Автор книги: Diana Gabaldon

Соавторы: Diana Gabaldon
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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 74 страниц)

“Friend Jamie,” Denny interrupted, holding out the pistol. “I should feel much happier was thee to release Dorothea’s father and take charge of this. I think that might increase the civility of our conversation.”

“It might,” Jamie said dubiously, but let go of Pardloe and took the pistol.

Denny approached the duke, edging glass shards out of the way, and looked carefully into his face.

“I will be pleased to speak and counsel with thee, Friend, and offer any reassurances that lie within my power regarding thy daughter. But thy breathing alarms me, and I would examine thee first.”

The duke was in fact making a faint wheezing noise, and Jamie noted that the purple tinge to his face had become more pronounced. At Denzell’s remark, this was augmented by a wash of dull red.

“You don’t touch me, you qu … quack-salver!”

Denzell glanced round and seized upon Jenny as the most likely source of information.

“What did Friend Claire say regarding him, in terms of ailment and treatment?”

“Asthma, and joint fir brewed in coffee. She calls it Ephedra.” Jenny replied promptly, turning to add to Pardloe, “Ye ken, I didna have to tell him that. I might ha’ let ye strangle, but I suppose that’s no a Christian way to carry on. Are Quakers Christians, by the by?” she asked Denny curiously.

“Yes,” he replied, advancing cautiously on Pardloe, whom Jamie had forced to sit down by pressing on his shoulder. “We believe the light of Christ is present in all men—though in some cases, perceiving it is somewhat difficult,” he added, under his breath but loud enough for Jamie—and the duke—to hear.

Pardloe appeared to be trying to whistle, blowing with pursed lips, meanwhile glaring at Denzell. He gasped in air and managed a few more words.

“I will … not be doctored … by you, sir.” Another pause for blowing and gasping. Jamie noticed Mrs. Figg stir uneasily and take a step toward the door. “I will not … leave my … daughter in your … clutches—” Blow. Gasp. “If you kill me.” Blow. Gasp. “Nor risk … you sav … ing my life … and putting … me in … your … debt.” The effort involved in getting that one out turned him a ghastly gray, and Jamie was seriously alarmed.

“Has he medicine, Jenny?” he asked urgently. His sister compressed her lips but nodded, and, with a final glare at the duke, scurried out of the room.

With the ginger air of one embracing a crocodile, Denzell Hunter crouched, took hold of the duke’s wrist, and peered closely into his eyes, these organs repaying his inspection by narrowing in the most threatening fashion manageable by a man dying of suffocation. Not for the first time, Jamie suffered a reluctant admiration for Pardloe’s strength of character—though he was likewise obliged to admit that Hunter’s nearly matched it.

His concentration on the tableau before him was broken by the sound of an excited fist hammering the front door below. The door opened, and he heard his nephew Ian exclaim, “Mam!” in a hoarse voice, concurrent with his sister’s astonished “Ian!” Jamie stepped out of the room and, reaching the shattered banister in a few steps, saw his sister engulfed and all but obliterated by her tall son’s embrace.

Ian’s eyes were closed and his cheeks wet, arms wrapped tight round his small mother, and Jamie felt a sudden lump in his own throat. What would he not give to embrace his daughter that way once more?

A slight motion drew his eye, and he saw Rachel Hunter standing shyly back, smiling at mother and son, her own eyes filled with tears. She dabbed at her nose with a handkerchief, then, happening to glance up, saw Jamie above and blinked.

“Miss Rachel,” he said, smiling down at her. He pointed at a jug standing on the occasional table by the door, which he assumed was Pardloe’s medicine. “Might ye bring that wee jug up here? Quickly?” He could hear Pardloe’s heavy breathing from the room behind him; it didn’t seem to be getting worse but was still worrying.

The gasping was momentarily drowned out by the footsteps of Mrs. Figg, appearing behind him with her fowling piece. She peered over the banister at the touching scene below, then at Rachel Hunter, trotting up the stairs, jug in hand.

“And who is this?” she demanded of Jamie, not quite brandishing her weapon under his nose.

“Dr. Hunter’s sister,” he told her, interposing his body between Rachel, who looked taken aback, and the agitated housekeeper. “Your brother wants the stuff in the jug, Miss Rachel.”

Mrs. Figg made a low rumbling noise but stepped back and allowed Rachel to pass. With a bleak look down at Jenny and Ian, who had now separated enough to speak and were waving their hands and interrupting each other in excited Gàidhlig, she vanished back into the bedroom on Rachel’s heels. Jamie hesitated, wanting to rush out the front door and head for Kingsessing, but a sense of morbid responsibility obliged him to follow her.

Denny had pulled up the stool from the dressing table and was still holding Pardloe’s wrist, addressing him in calm tones.

“Thee is in no immediate danger, as thee likely knows. Thy pulse is strong and regular, and while thy breathing is clearly compromised, I think—ah, is this the tincture the Scotswoman mentioned? I thank thee, Rachel; will thee pour—” But Rachel, long accustomed to medical situations, was already decanting into the brandy glass some blackish-brown stuff that looked like the contents of a spittoon.

“Shall I—” Denzell’s attempt to hold the glass for the duke was preempted by Pardloe’s seizing the glass for himself and taking a gulp that all but choked him on the spot. Hunter calmly observed the coughing and spluttering, then handed him a handkerchief.

“I have heard it theorized that such cataclysms of breath as thee is experiencing may be precipitated by violent exercise, a rapid change of temperature, exposure to smoke or dust, or, in some cases, by a surge of violent emotion. In the present instance, I believe I may possibly have caused thy crisis by my appearance, and if so, I ask thy pardon.” Denny took the handkerchief and handed Pardloe back the glass, wise enough not to tell him to sip the stuff.

“Perhaps I may make some recompense for this injury, though,” he said. “I gather thy brother is not at home, since I can’t suppose that he would remain absent from this gathering unless he were dead in the cellar, and I should hope that’s not the case. Has thee seen him recently?”

“I have—not.” Pardloe’s breathing was in fact growing smoother and his face a more normal color, though the expression on it was still feral. “Have you?”

Hunter took off his spectacles and smiled, and Jamie was struck by the kindness of his eyes. He glanced at Rachel; her eyes were hazel, rather than her brother’s soft olive brown, and, while good-natured, were much warier. Jamie thought wariness a good thing in a woman.

“I have, Friend. Thy daughter and I discovered him in a militia camp some distance from the city. He had been taken prisoner, and—” Pardloe’s exclamation collided with Jamie’s, and Hunter patted the air with his hand, begging attention. “We were able to assist his escape, and, since he’d been injured during his capture, I treated him; his injuries were not intrinsically serious.”

“When?” Jamie asked. “When did ye see him?” His heart had given a small, disquietingly happy lurch at the news that John Grey was not dead.

“Last night,” Denny told him. “We heard of his escape this morning and heard nothing of his recapture as we made our way back to Philadelphia, though I asked each group of regulars or militia we encountered. He will have needed to go with care, both woods and roads being alive with men, but I imagine he’ll be with you soon.”

Pardloe drew a long, deep breath.

“Oh, God,” he said, and closed his eyes.



WELCOME COOLNESS IN THE HEAT, COMFORT IN THE MIDST OF WOE

THERE WAS PLENTY OF cool greenery available; the gardens covered the best part of a hundred acres, with trees, bushes, shrubs, vines, and flowers of all descriptions—and the odd exotic fungus thrown in here and there for variety. John Bartram had spent the greater part of a long life combing the Americas for botanical specimens, most of which he had hauled home and induced to grow. I regretted not having met the old gentleman; he had died a year before, leaving his famous garden in the capable hands of his children.

I found Young Mr. Bartram—he was about forty, but so called to distinguish him from his elder brother—in the center of the gardens, sitting under the shade of an immense creeper that covered half the porch of his house, a sketchbook open on the table before him, making careful drawings of a handful of pale, leggy roots that lay on a napkin.

“Ginseng?” I asked, bending to peer at them.

“Yes,” he said, not taking his eyes off the delicate line of his pen. “Good morning, Lady John. You’re familiar with the root, I see.”

“It’s fairly common in the mountains of North Carolina, where I … used to live.” The casual sentence caught in my throat with a sudden unexpectedness. Out of nowhere, I smelled the woods on Fraser’s Ridge, pungent with balsam fir and poplar sap, heavy with the musty scent of wood ears and the tang of wild muscats.

“Yes, indeed.” Reaching the end of his line, he set down his pen, removed his spectacles, and looked up at me with the bright face of a man who lives for plants and fully expects the world to share his obsession. “These are Chinese ginseng; I want to see whether I might be able to persuade it to grow here—” He waved a hand toward the encompassing acres of lush garden. “The Carolina variety languishes, and the Canadian ginseng stubbornly refuses even to try!”

“How very perverse of it. Though I expect it’s too hot,” I observed, taking the stool he gestured me to and setting down my basket on the floor. My shift was sticking to me, and I could feel a large splotch of spreading wetness between my shoulder blades, where my hair dripped sweat down my back. “They like cold weather.”

The vivid memory of the woods had blossomed into a visceral longing for the Ridge, so immediate that I felt the ghost of my vanished house rise around me, a cold mountain wind thrumming past its walls, and thought that, if I reached down, I could feel Adso’s soft gray fur under my fingers. I swallowed, hard.

“It is hot,” he said, though he himself looked as dry as one of the roots on the table, dappled with shade from his vine. “May I offer you some refreshment, Lady John? I have some iced negus in the house.”

“I’d love it,” I said, meaning it. “But—iced?”

“Oh, we have quite a large icehouse by the river, Sissy and I,” he said proudly. “Let me just tell her …”

I had had sufficient forethought as to bring a fan with me and now pulled this out of my basket. The sense of longing had turned suddenly into a new—and wonderful—realization. We could go home. Jamie had been released from service with the Continental army in order to see his cousin’s body back to Scotland. He’d meant, when we returned, to go back to North Carolina, reclaim his printing press, and take up arms on behalf of the revolution via the pen rather than the sword.

That plan had vanished, along with the rest of my life, when he’d been reported drowned. But now … A thrill of excitement ran through me and must have shown on my face, for Mr. and Miss Bartram both blinked at me as they came out onto the porch. They were twins, and while their faces bore only a faint similarity of feature, they often shared the same expression and were doing so presently, both looking slightly bewildered but pleased.

I could barely keep myself from sharing my wonderful thought with them, but that wouldn’t do, and I managed to sip the negus—port mixed with hot water, sugar, and spices, then chilled to a cold—truly cold!—water-beaded delight—and engage in civil admiration of the ongoing improvements to Bartram’s Garden, these being already famous for their beauty and variety. Old Mr. Bartram had been planning and planting and extending them for fifty years, and his children had evidently inherited the family mania, as well as the gardens.

“… and we’ve improved the river path, and we’ve just put up a much bigger potting shed,” Sissy Bartram was saying eagerly. “So many customers wanting potted vines and flowers for their drawing rooms and conservatories! Though I don’t know …” Her eagerness faded a little, and she made a moue of doubt. “With all this kerfuffle—war is so bad for business!”

Mr. Bartram coughed a little. “It does depend on the sort of business,” he said mildly. “And I’m afraid we shall have a much increased demand for the medicinals.”

“But if the army is leaving …” Miss Bartram began hopefully, but her brother shook his head, his face growing sober.

“Does thee not feel it in the air, Sissy?” he said softly. “Something is coming.” He lifted his face, as though scenting something on the heavy air, and she reached to put a hand on his arm, silent, listening with him for the sound of distant violence.

“I hadn’t realized that you were Friends, Mr. Bartram,” I said, to break the ominous quiet. Both of them blinked and smiled at me.

“Oh,” said Miss Bartram. “Father was read out of meeting some years ago. But sometimes the habits of childhood come back when you least expect them.” She lifted one plump shoulder, smiling, but with something regretful behind it. “I see you have a list, Lady John?”

That recalled me abruptly to my business, and the next hour was spent in busy exploration, discussion of the merits and drawbacks of various medicinals, the selection of dried herbs from the vast drying sheds, and cutting of fresh ones from the beds. With my sudden realization that we might return to the Ridge quite soon, and Mr. Bartram’s very acute observation about the impending demand for medicinals, I bought much more than I had originally intended, replenishing not only my usual stocks (including a pound of dried Chinese joint fir, just in case. What was I going to do with the bloody man?), but also a good quantity of Jesuit bark, elecampane, and even lobelia, plus the asafoetida and ginseng I’d promised Denny.

In the end, there was too much for my basket, and Miss Bartram said she would put it up into a package and have one of the assistant gardeners who lived in Philadelphia bring it into the city when he went home in the evening.

“Would you like to see the river path, before you go?” she asked me, with a quick glance skyward. “It’s not finished yet, of course, but we have some amazing things put in, and it is wonderfully cool at this time of day.”

“Oh, thank you. I really—wait. You wouldn’t have fresh arrowhead down there, would you?” I hadn’t thought to put that on my list, but if it was available …

“Oh, yes!” she cried, beaming. “Masses of it!” We were standing in the largest of the drying sheds, and the late-afternoon light falling through the boards striped the walls with bars of swimming gold, illuminating the constant rain of tiny pollen grains from the drying flowers. There was a scatter of tools on the table, and she plucked a wooden trowel and a stubby knife from the litter without hesitation. “Would you like to dig your own?”

I laughed with pleasure. The opportunity to grub around in the wet mud wasn’t an offer that most women would have made—especially to another woman dressed in pale-blue muslin. But Miss Bartram spoke my language. I hadn’t had my hands in the earth in months, and the mere suggestion made my fingers tingle.



THE RIVER PATH was lovely, edged with willow and silver birch that cast a flickering shade over banks of nasturtium and azalea and the floating masses of dark-green cress. I felt my blood pressure drop as we strolled, chatting of this and that.

“Do you mind if I ask you something about the Friends?” I asked. “I have a colleague who was read out of meeting—he and his sister—because he volunteered as a surgeon with the Continental army. Since you mentioned your father … I wondered, how important a thing is that? Belonging to a meeting, I mean?”

“Oh!” She laughed, rather to my surprise. “I imagine it depends upon the individual—everything does, really, as a Friend. My father, for instance: he was read out of meeting, for refusing to acknowledge the divinity of Jesus Christ, but he went right on going to meeting; it made no particular difference to him.”

“Oh.” That was rather reassuring. “What if—what is a Quaker marriage like? Would one have to belong to a meeting in order to get married?”

She thought that interesting and made low humming noises for a bit.

“Well, a marriage between Friends is … between the Friends marrying. No clergyman, I mean, and no specific prayer or service. The two Friends marry each other, rather than it being considered a sacrament administered by a priest or the like. But it does need to be done before witnesses—other Friends, you know,” she added, a small crease forming between her brows. “And I think that there might be considerable objection if the Friends involved—or one of them—had been formally expelled.”

“How interesting—thank you.” I wondered how this might affect Denzell and Dorothea; even more, how it might affect Rachel and Ian. “Can a Friend marry a, er, non-Friend?”

“Oh, yes, of course. Though I think they would be put out of meeting as a result,” she added dubiously. “But there might be special consideration for dire circumstances. The meeting would appoint a committee of clearness to look into the situation, I suppose.”

I hadn’t got so far as worrying about dire circumstances, but thanked her, and the conversation went back to plants.

She’d been right about the arrowhead: there were masses of it. She smiled happily at my amazement but then left me to my digging, assuring me that I might take some of the lotus and some Sweet Flag rhizomes, as well, if I liked. “And fresh cress, of course!” she added over her shoulder, waving a blithe hand at the water. “All you like!”

She’d thoughtfully brought along a burlap sack for me to kneel on; I spread it carefully, not to crush anything, and kirtled up my skirts out of the way as best I could. There was a faint breeze; there always is, over moving water, and I sighed in relief, both at the coolness and the sudden sense of solitude. The company of plants is always soothing, and after the incessant—well, you couldn’t call it sociability, exactly, but at least the incessant presence of people requiring to be conversed with, directed, hectored, scolded, conferred with, persuaded, lied to—that I had experienced over the last few days, I found the rooted silence, rushing stream, and rustling leaves balm to the spirit.

Frankly, I thought, my spirit could use a bit of balm. Between—or rather, among—Jamie, John, Hal, William, Ian, Denny Hunter, and Benedict Arnold (to say nothing of Captain Richardson, General Clinton, Colenso, and the whole bloody Continental army), the male of the species had been rather wearing on my nerves of late.

I dug slowly and peaceably, lifting the dripping roots into my basket and packing each layer between mats of watercress. Sweat was running down my face and between my breasts, but I didn’t notice it; I was melting quietly into the landscape, breath and muscle turning to wind and earth and water.

Cicadas buzzed heavily in the trees nearby, and gnats and mosquitoes were beginning to collect in uneasy clouds overhead. These were luckily only a nuisance when they flew up my nose or hovered too close to my face; apparently my twentieth-century blood wasn’t attractive to eighteenth-century insects, and I was almost never bitten—a great blessing to a gardener. Lulled into mindlessness, I had quite lost track of time and place, and when a pair of large, battered shoes appeared in my field of view, I merely blinked at them for a moment, as I might at the sudden appearance of a frog.

Then I looked up.



“OH,” I SAID, a little blankly. Then, “There you are!” I said, dropping my knife and scrambling to my feet in a surge of joyous relief. “Where the bloody hell have you been?”

A smile flickered briefly across Jamie’s face, and he took my hands, wet and muddy as they were. His were large and warm and solid.

“In a wagon full of cabbages, most recently,” he said, and the smile took hold as he looked me over. “Ye look well, Sassenach. Verra bonny.”

“You don’t,” I said frankly. He was grubby, very thin, and he plainly hadn’t been sleeping well; he had shaved, but his face was gaunt and shadowed. “What’s happened?”

He opened his mouth to reply but then seemed to think better of it. He let go my hands, cleared his throat with a low Scottish noise, and fixed his eyes on mine. The smile had gone.

“Ye went to bed with John Grey, aye?”

I blinked, startled, then frowned at him. “Well, no, I wouldn’t say that.”

His eyebrows rose.

“He told me ye did.”

“Is that what he said?” I asked, surprised.

“Mmphm.” Now it was his turn to frown. “He told me he’d had carnal knowledge of ye. Why would he lie about such a thing as that?”

“Oh,” I said. “No, that’s right. Carnal knowledge is a very reasonable description of what happened.”

“But—”

“‘Going to bed,’ though … For one thing, we didn’t. It started on a dressing table and ended—so far as I recall—on the floor.” Jamie’s eyes widened noticeably, and I hastened to correct the impression he was obviously forming. “For another, that phraseology implies that we decided to make love to each other and toddled off hand in hand to do so, and that wasn’t what happened at all. Umm … perhaps we should sit down?” I gestured toward a rustic bench, standing knee-deep in creamy drifts of ranunculus.

I hadn’t had a single thought of that night since learning Jamie was alive, but it was beginning to dawn on me that it might quite possibly seem important to Jamie—and that explaining what had happened might be somewhat tricky.

He nodded, rather stiffly, and turned toward the bench. I followed, noting with some concern the set of his shoulders.

“Have you hurt your back?” I asked, frowning as I saw the care with which he sat down.

“What did happen?” he asked, ignoring the question. Politely, but with a distinct edge.

I took a deep breath, then blew out my cheeks in a helpless gesture.

He growled. I glanced at him, startled, having never heard such a noise from him before—at least, not aimed at me. Apparently it was somewhat more than important.

“Er …” I said cautiously, sitting down beside him. “What did John say, exactly? After telling you about the carnal knowledge, I mean?”

“He desired me to kill him. And if ye tell me ye want me to kill you rather than tell me what happened, I warn ye, I willna be responsible for what happens next.”

I looked at him narrowly. He seemed self-possessed, but there was an undeniable tension in his posture.

“Well … I remember how it began, at least… .”

“Start there,” he suggested, the edge more pronounced.

“I was sitting in my room, drinking plum brandy and trying to justify killing myself, if you must know,” I said, with an edge of my own. I stared at him, daring him to say something, but he merely cocked his head at me in a “Go on, then” gesture.

“I ran out of brandy and was trying to decide whether I might walk downstairs to look for more without breaking my neck, or whether I’d had enough not to feel guilty about drinking the whole bottle of laudanum instead. And then John came in.” I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry and sticky, as it had been that night.

“He did say there was drink taken,” Jamie observed.

“Lots. He seemed nearly as drunk as I was, save that he was still on his feet.” I could see John’s face in memory, white as bone save for his eyes, which were so red and swollen that they might have been sandpapered. And the expression in those eyes. “He looked the way a man looks just before he throws himself off a cliff,” I said quietly, eyes on my folded hands. I took another breath.

“He had a fresh decanter in his hand. He put it down on the dressing table beside me, glared at me, and said, ‘I will not mourn him alone tonight.’” A deep quiver ran through me at the memory of those words.

“And … ?”

“And he didn’t,” I said, a little sharply. “I told him to sit down and he did, and he poured out more brandy and we drank it, and I have not one single notion what we said, but we were talking about you. And then he stood up, and I stood up. And … I couldn’t bear to be alone and I couldn’t bear for him to be alone and I more or less flung myself at him because I very much needed someone to touch me just then.”

“And he obliged ye, I take it.”

The tone of this was distinctly cynical, and I felt a flush rise in my cheeks, not of embarrassment but of anger.

“Did he bugger you?”

I looked at him for a good long minute. He meant it.

“You absolute bastard,” I said, as much in astonishment as anger. Then a thought occurred to me. “You said he desired you to kill him,” I said slowly. “You … didn’t, did you?”

He held my eyes, his own steady as a rifle barrel.

“Would ye mind if I did?” he asked softly.

“Yes, I bloody well would,” I said, with what spirit I could summon up amongst the growing confusion of my feelings. “But you didn’t—I know you didn’t.”

“No,” he said, even more softly. “Ye don’t know that.”

Despite my conviction that he was bluffing, a small chill prickled the hairs on my forearms.

“I should have been within my rights,” he said.

“You would not,” I said, chill fading into crossness. “You didn’t have any rights. You were bloody dead.” Despite the crossness, my voice broke a bit on the word “dead,” and his face changed at once.

“What?” I said, turning my own face away. “Did you think it didn’t matter?”

“No,” he said, and took my mud-stained hand in his. “But I didna ken it mattered quite that much.” His own voice was husky now, and when I turned back to him, I saw that tears stood in his eyes. With an incoherent noise, I flung myself into his arms and clung to him, making foolish hiccuping sobs.

He held me tight, his breath warm on the top of my head, and when I stopped at last, he put me away a little and cupped my face in his hands.

“I have loved ye since I saw you, Sassenach,” he said very quietly, holding my eyes with his own, bloodshot and lined with tiredness but very blue. “I will love ye forever. It doesna matter if ye sleep with the whole English army—well, no,” he corrected himself, “it would matter, but it wouldna stop me loving you.”

“I didn’t think it would.” I sniffed and he pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve and handed it to me. It was worn white cambric and had the initial “P” embroidered awkwardly in one corner in blue thread. I couldn’t imagine where he’d got such a thing but didn’t bother asking, under the circumstances.

The bench was not very large, and his knee was within an inch or two of mine. He didn’t touch me again, though, and my heart rate was beginning to speed up noticeably. He meant it, about loving me, but that didn’t mean the next while was going to be pleasant.

“It was my impression that he told me because he was sure that you would tell me,” he said carefully.

“So I would have,” I said promptly, wiping my nose. “Though I might possibly have waited ’til you’d got home, had a bath, and been fed supper. If there’s one thing I know about men, it’s that you don’t break things like this to them on an empty stomach. When did you last eat?”

“This morning. Sausages. Dinna be changing the subject.” His voice was level, but there was a good deal of feeling bubbling under it; he might as well have been a pan of simmering milk. One extra degree of heat and there’d be an eruption and scorched milk all over the stove. “I understand, but I want—I need—to know what happened.”

“You understand?” I echoed, sounding surprised even to my own ears. I hoped he did understand, but his manner was more than a little at odds with his words. My hands were no longer cold; they were starting to sweat, and I gripped the skirt over my knees, heedless of mud stains.

“Well, I dinna like it,” he said, not quite between clenched teeth. “But I understand it.”

“You do?”

“I do,” he said, eyeing me. “Ye both thought I was dead. And I ken what ye’re like when you’re drunk, Sassenach.”

I slapped him, so fast and so hard that he hadn’t time to duck and lurched back from the impact.

“You—you—” I said, unable to articulate anything bad enough to suit the violence of my feelings. “How bloody dare you!”

He touched his cheek gingerly. His mouth was twitching.

“I … uh … didna quite mean that the way it sounded, Sassenach,” he said. “Besides, am I no the aggrieved party here?”

“No, you bloody aren’t!” I snapped. “You go off and get—get drowned, and leave me all alone in the m-midst of spies and s-soldiers and with children—you and Fergus both, you bastards! Leave me and Marsali to-to—” I was so choked with emotion that I couldn’t go on. I was damned if I’d cry, though, damned if I’d cry any more in front of him.

He reached out carefully and took my hand again. I let him, and let him draw me closer, close enough to see the faint dusting of his beard stubble, to smell the road dust and dried sweat in his clothes, to feel the radiant heat from his body.

I sat quivering, making small huffing sounds in lieu of speech. He ignored this, spreading my fingers out between his own, gently stroking the palm of my hand with a large, callused thumb.

“I didna mean to imply that I think ye a drunkard, Sassenach,” he said, making an obvious effort to be conciliatory. “It’s only that ye think wi’ your body, Claire; ye always have.”

With a tremendous effort of my own, I found words.

“So I’m a—a—what are you calling me now? A loose woman? A trollop? A strumpet? And you think that’s better than calling me a drunkard?!?”

He gave a small snort of what might have been amusement. I yanked at my hand, but he wouldn’t let go.

“I said what I meant, Sassenach,” he said, tightening his grip on my hand, and augmenting it with another hand on my forearm, preventing me from rising. “Ye think wi’ your body. It’s what makes ye a surgeon, no?”

“I—oh.” Overcoming my dudgeon momentarily, I was obliged to admit that there was something in this observation.