Текст книги "A Breath Of Snow And Ashes"

Автор книги: Diana Gabaldon

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Текущая страница: 43 (всего у книги 94 страниц)

“No, I’m not,” he said quickly, firmly. “Not in a million years. As for what they might think—or say—” His face twitched, caught between dismay and determination. “If they’re not willing to accept it, well … they can just go to hell, that’s all.”

She burst out laughing, and he followed her, his laugh cracked, but without restraint.

“The Minister’s Cat is an irreverent cat,” she teased. “And how do you say that in Gaelic?”

“I’ve no idea. But the Minister’s Cat is a relieved cat,” he added, still smiling. “I didn’t know what ye might think about it.”

“I’m not totally sure what I do think about it,” she admitted. She squeezed his hand lightly. “But I see that you’re happy.”

“It shows?” He smiled, and the last of the evening light glowed briefly in his eyes, a deep and lambent green.

“It shows. You’re sort of … lighted up inside.” Her throat felt tight. “Roger—you won’t forget about me and Jem, will you? I don’t know that I can compete with God.”

He looked thunderstruck at that.

“No,” he said, his hand tightening on hers, hard enough to make her ring cut into her flesh. “Not ever.”

They sat silent for a little, the fireflies drifting down like slow green rain, their silent mating song lighting the darkening grass and trees. Roger’s face was fading as the light failed, though she still saw the line of his jaw, set in determination.

“I swear to ye, Bree,” he said. “Whatever I’m called to now—and God knows what that is—I was called to be your husband first. Your husband and the father of your bairns above all things—and that I always shall be. Whatever I may do, it will not ever be at the price of my family, I promise you.”

“All I want,” she said softly to the dark, “is for you to love me. Not because of what I can do or what I look like, or because I love you—just because I am.”

“Perfect, unconditional love?” he said just as softly. “Some would tell ye only God can love that way—but I can try.”

“Oh, I have faith in you,” she said, and felt the glow of him reach her own heart.

“I hope ye always will,” he said. He raised her hand to his lips, kissed her knuckles in formal salutation, his breath warm on her skin.

As though to test the resolution of his earlier declaration, Jem’s voice rose and fell on the evening breeze, a small, urgent siren. “DadddeeeDaaaddeeeDAAADDDEEE …”

Roger sighed deeply, leaned over, and kissed her, a moment’s soft, deep connection, then rose to deal with the emergency of the moment.

She sat for a bit, listening. The sound of male voices came from the far end of the clearing, high and low, demand and question, reassurance and excitement. No emergency; Jem wanted to be lifted into a tree too high for him to climb alone. Then laughter, mad rustling of leaves—oh, good grief, Roger was in the tree, too. They were all up there, hooting like owls.

“What are ye laughing at, a nighean?” Her father loomed out of the night, smelling of horses.

“Everything,” she said, scooching over to make room for him to sit beside her. It was true. Everything seemed suddenly bright, the candlelight from the windows of the Big House, the fireflies in the grass, the glow of Roger’s face when he told her his desire. She could still feel the touch of his mouth on hers; it fizzed in her blood.

Jamie reached up and fielded a passing firefly, holding it for a moment cupped in the dark hollow of his hand, where it flashed on and off, the cool light seeping through his fingers. Far off, she heard a brief snatch of her mother’s voice, coming through an open window; Claire was singing “Clementine.”

Now the boys—and Roger—were howling at the moon, though it was no more than a pale sickle on the horizon. She felt her father’s body shake with silent laughter, too.

“It reminds me of Disneyland,” she said on impulse.

“Oh, aye? Where’s that?”

“It’s an amusement park—for children,” she added, knowing that while there were such things as amusement parks in places like London and Paris, these were purely adult places. No one ever thought of entertaining children now, beyond their own games and the occasional toy.

“Daddy and Mama took me there every summer,” she said, slipping back without effort to the hot, bright days and warm California nights. “The trees all had little sparkling lights in them—the fireflies reminded me.”

Jamie spread his palm; the firefly, suddenly free, pulsed to itself once or twice, then spread its wings with a tiny whir and lifted into the air, floating up and away.

“Dwelt a miner, forty-niner, and his daughter, Clementine …”

“What was it like, then?” he asked curiously.

“Oh … it was wonderful.” She smiled to herself, seeing the brilliant lights of Main Street, the music and mirrors and beautiful, beribboned horses of King Arthur’s Carrousel. “There were … rides, we called them. A boat, where you could float through the jungle on a river, and see crocodiles and hippopotamuses and headhunters …”

“Headhunters?” he said, intrigued.

“Not real ones,” she assured him. “It’s all make-believe—but it’s … well, it’s a world to itself. When you’re there, the real world sort of disappears; nothing bad can happen there. They call it ‘The Happiest Place on Earth’—and for a little while, it really seems that way.”

“Light she was, and like a fairy, and her shoes were number nine, Herring boxes without topses, sandals were for Clementine.”

“And you’d hear music everywhere, all the time,” she said, smiling. “Bands—groups of musicians playing instruments, horns and drums and things—would march up and down the streets, and play in pavilions… .”

“Aye, that happens in amusement parks. Or it did, the once I was in one.” She could hear a smile in his voice, as well.

“Mm-hm. And there are cartoon characters—I told you about cartoons—walking around. You can go up and shake hands with Mickey Mouse, or—”

“With what?”

“Mickey Mouse.” She laughed. “A big mouse, life-size—human-size, I mean. He wears gloves.”

“A giant rat?” he said, sounding slightly stunned. “And they take the weans to play with it?”

“Not a rat, a mouse,” she corrected him. “And it’s really a person dressed up like a mouse.”

“Oh, aye?” he said, not sounding terribly reassured.

“Yes. And an enormous carrousel with painted horses, and a railroad train that goes through the Rainbow Caverns, where there are big jewels sticking out of the walls, and colored streams with red and blue water … and orange-juice bars. Oh, orange-juice bars!” She moaned softly in ecstatic remembrance of the cold, tart, overwhelming sweetness.

“It was nice, then?” he said softly.

“Thou art lost and gone forever, Dreadful sor-ry … Clementine.”

“Yes,” she said, sighed, and was silent for a moment. Then she leaned her head against his shoulder, and wrapped her hand around his arm, big and solid.

“You know what?” she said, and he made a small interrogatory noise in reply.

“It was nice—it was great—but what I really, really loved about it was that when we were there, it was just the three of us, and everything was perfect. Mama wasn’t worrying about her patients, Daddy wasn’t working on a paper—they weren’t ever silent or angry with each other. Both of them laughed—we all laughed, all the time … while we were there.”

He made no reply, but tilted his head so it rested against hers. She sighed again, deeply.

“Jemmy won’t get to go to Disneyland—but he’ll have that. A family that laughs—and millions of little lights in the trees.”

PART SEVEN

 Rolling Downhill

53



PRINCIPLES

From Fraser’s Ridge, North Carolina,

on the Third day of July, Anno Domini 1774,

James Fraser, Esq.To his Lordship, John Grey, at Mount Josiah

Plantation, in the colony of VirginiaMy Dear Friend,I cannot begin to express our Gratitude for your kind Behavior in sending a Draft drawn upon your own Bank, as advance Payment against the eventual Sale of the Objects I confided to your disposition. Mr. Higgins, in delivering this Document, was of course most tactful—and yet, I gathered from his anxious Demeanor and his efforts at Discretion that you may perhaps believe us to be in dire Straits. I hasten to assure you that this is not the Case; we will do well enough, so far as Matters of Victuals, Clothes, and the Necessities of Life.I said that I would tell you the Details of the Affair, and I see that I must, if only to disabuse you of the Vision of rampant Starvation among my family and tenants.Beyond a small legal Obligation requiring Cash, I have a Matter of Business in Hand, involving the acquisition of a Number of Guns. I had been in Hopes of acquiring these through the good offices of a Friend, but find that this Arrangement will no longer answer; I must look further abroad.I and my Family are invited to a Barbecue in honor of Miss Flora MacDonald, the Heroine of the Rising—you are familiar with the Lady, I believe? I recall your telling me once of your meeting with her in London, whilst she was imprisoned there—to take place next month at my aunt’s Plantation, River Run. As this Affair will be attended by a great many Scots, some coming from considerable Distances, I am in Hopes that with Cash in Hand, I may make Arrangements to procure the requisite Weapons via other Avenues. In re which, should your own Connexions suggest any such useful Avenues, I should be grateful to hear of them.I write quickly, as Mr. Higgins has other Errands, but my Daughter bids me send herewith a box of Matchsticks, her own Invention. She has schooled Mr. Higgins most carefully in their Use, so if he does not burst inadvertently into Flame on the way back, he will be able to demonstrate them to you.Your humble and ob’t. servant, James FraserP.S. I require thirty Muskets, with as much Powder and Ammunition as may be possible. These need not be of the latest Manufacture, but must be well-kept and functional. 

“‘OTHER AVENUES?’” I said, watching him sand the letter before folding it. “You mean smugglers? And if so, are you sure that Lord John will understand what you mean?”

“I do, and he will,” Jamie assured me. “I ken a few smugglers myself, who bring things in through the Outer Banks. He’ll know the ones who come through Roanoke, though—and there’s more business there, because of the blockade in Massachusetts. Goods come in through Virginia, and go north overland.”

He took a half-burned beeswax taper from the shelf and held it to the coals in the hearth, then dripped soft brown wax in a puddle over the seam of the letter. I leaned forward and pressed the back of my left hand into the warm wax, leaving the mark of my wedding ring in it.

“Damn Manfred McGillivray,” he said, with no particular heat. “It will be three times the cost, and I must get them from a smuggler.”

“Will you ask about him, though? At the barbecue, I mean?” Flora MacDonald, the woman who had saved Charles Stuart from the English after Culloden, dressing him in her maid’s clothes and smuggling him to a rendezvous with the French on the Isle of Skye, was a living legend to the Scottish Highlanders, and her recent arrival in the colony was the subject of vast excitement, news of it coming even as far as the Ridge. Every well-known Scot in the Cape Fear valley—and a good many from farther away—would be present at the barbecue to be held in her honor. No better place to spread the word for a missing young man.

He glanced up at me, surprised.

“Of course I will, Sassenach. What d’ye think I am?”

“I think you’re very kind,” I said, kissing him on the forehead. “If a trifle reckless. And I notice you carefully didn’t tell Lord John why you need thirty muskets.”

He gave a small snort, and swept the grains of sand carefully off the table into the palm of his hand.

“I dinna ken for sure myself, Sassenach.”

“Whatever do you mean by that?” I asked, surprised. “Do you not mean to give them to Bird, after all?”

He didn’t answer at once, but the two stiff fingers of his right hand tapped gently on the tabletop. Then he shrugged, reached to the stack of journals and ledgers, and pulled out a paper, which he handed to me. A letter from John Ashe, who had been a fellow commander of militia during the War of the Regulation.

“The fourth paragraph,” he said, seeing me frown at a recounting of the latest contretemps between the Governor and the Assembly. I obligingly skimmed down the page, to the indicated spot, and felt a small, premonitory shiver.

“A Continental Congress is proposed,” I read, “with delegates to be sent from each colony. The lower house of the Connecticut Assembly has moved already to propose such men, acting through Committees of Correspondence. Some gentlemen with whom you are well-acquainted propose that North Carolina shall do likewise, and will meet to accomplish the matter in mid-August. I could wish that you would join us, friend, for I am convinced that your heart and mind must lie with us in the matter of liberty; surely such a man as yourself is no friend to tyranny.

“Some gentlemen with whom you are well-acquainted,” I repeated, putting down the letter. “Do you know who he means?”

“I could guess.”

“Mid-August, he says. Before the barbecue, do you think, or after?”

“After. One of the others sent me the date of the meeting. It’s to be in Halifax.”

I put down the letter. The afternoon was still and hot, and the thin linen of my shift was damp, as were the palms of my hands.

“One of the others,” I said. He shot me a quick glance, with a half-smile, and picked up the letter.

“In the Committee of Correspondence.”

“Oh, naturally,” I said. “You might have told me.” Naturally, he would have found a means of inveigling himself into the North Carolina Committee of Correspondence—the center of political intrigue, where the seeds of rebellion were being sown—meanwhile holding a commission as Indian agent for the British Crown and ostensibly working to arm the Indians, in order to suppress precisely those seeds of rebellion.

“I am telling ye, Sassenach,” he said. “This is the first time they’ve asked me to meet wi’ them, even in private.”

“I see,” I said softly. “Will you go? Is it—is it time?” Time to make the leap, declare himself openly as a Whig, if not yet a rebel. Time to change his public allegiance, and risk the brand of treason. Again.

He sighed deeply and rubbed a hand through his hair. He’d been thinking; the short hairs of several tiny cowlicks were standing on end.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “It’s two years yet, no? The fourth of July, 1776—that’s what Brianna said.”

“No,” I said. “It’s two years until they declare independence—but, Jamie, the fighting will have started already. That will be much too late.”

He stared at the letters on the desk, and nodded bleakly.

“Aye, it will have to be soon, then.”

“It would be likely safe enough,” I said hesitantly. “What you told me about Henderson buying land in Tennessee: if no one’s stopping him, I can’t see anyone in the government being agitated enough to come up here and try to force us out. And surely not if you were only known to have met with the local Whigs?”

He gave me a small, wry smile.

“It’s no the government I’m worrit by, Sassenach. It’s the folk nearby. It wasna the Governor who hanged the O’Brians and burnt their house, ken? Nor was it Richard Brown, nor Indians. That wasna done for the sake of law nor profit; it was done for hate, and verra likely by someone who knew them.”

That made a more pronounced chill skitter down my spine. There was a certain amount of political disagreement and discussion on the Ridge, all right, but it hadn’t reached the stage of fisticuffs yet, let alone burning and killing.

But it would.

I remembered, all too well. Bomb shelters and ration coupons, blackout wardens and the spirit of cooperation against a dreadful foe. And the stories from Germany, France. People reported on, denounced to the SS, dragged from their houses—others hidden in attics and barns, smuggled across borders.

In war, government and their armies were a threat, but it was so often the neighbors who damned or saved you.

“Who?” I said baldly.

“I could guess,” he said, with a shrug. “The McGillivrays? Richard Brown? Hodgepile’s friends—if he had any. The friends of any of the other men we killed? The Indian ye met—Donner?—if he’s still alive. Neil Forbes? He’s a grudge against Brianna, and she and Roger Mac would do well to remember it. Hiram Crombie and his lot?”

“Hiram?” I said dubiously. “Granted, he doesn’t like you very much—and as for me—but …”

“Well, I do doubt it,” he admitted. “But it’s possible, aye? His people didna support the Jacobites at all; they’ll no be pleased at an effort to overthrow the King from this side of the water, either.”

I nodded. Crombie and the rest would of necessity have taken an oath of loyalty to King George, before being allowed to travel to America. Jamie had—of necessity—taken the same oath, as part of his pardon. And must—of an even greater necessity—break it. But when?

He’d stopped drumming his fingers; they rested on the letter before him.

“I do trust ye’re right, Sassenach,” he said.

“About what? What will happen? You know I am,” I said, a little surprised. “Bree and Roger told you, too. Why?”

He rubbed a hand slowly through his hair.

“I’ve never fought for the sake of principle,” he said, reflecting, and shook his head. “Only necessity. I wonder, would it be any better?”

He didn’t sound upset, merely curious, in a detached sort of way. Still, I found this vaguely disturbing.

“But there is principle to it, this time,” I protested. “In fact, it may be the first war ever fought over principle.”

“Rather than something sordid like trade, or land?” Jamie suggested, raising one eyebrow.

“I don’t say trade and land haven’t anything to do with it,” I replied, wondering precisely how I’d managed to become a defender of the American Revolution—an historical period I knew only from Brianna’s school textbooks. “But it goes well beyond that, don’t you think? We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

“Who said that?” he asked, interested.

“Thomas Jefferson will say it—on behalf of the new republic. The Declaration of Independence, it’s called. Will be called.”

“All men,” he repeated. “Does he mean Indians, as well, do ye think?”

“I can’t say,” I said, rather irritated at being forced into this position. “I haven’t met him. If I do, I’ll ask, shall I?”

“Never mind.” He lifted his fingers in brief dismissal. “I’ll ask him myself, and I have the opportunity. Meanwhile, I’ll ask Brianna.” He glanced at me. “Though as to principle, Sassenach—”

He leaned back in his chair, folded his arms over his chest, and closed his eyes.

“As long as but a hundred of us remain alive,” he said precisely, “never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom—for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.”

“The Declaration of Arbroath,” he said, opening his eyes. He gave me a lopsided smile. “Written some four hundred years ago. Speaking o’ principles, aye?”

He stood up then, but still remained standing by the battered table he used as a desk, looking down at Ashe’s letter.

“As for my own principles …” he said, as though to himself, but then looked at me, as though suddenly realizing that I was still there.

“Aye, I think I mean to give Bird the muskets,” he said. “Though I may have cause to regret it, and I find them pointing at me, two or three years hence. But he shall have them, and do with them what seems best, to defend himself and his people.”

“The price of honor, is it?”

He looked down at me, with the ghost of a smile.

“Call it blood money.”

54



FLORA MACDONALD’S

BARBECUE

River Run Plantation

August 6, 1774

WHATEVER DID ONE SAY to an icon? Or an icon’s husband, for that matter?

“Oh, I shall faint, I know I shall.” Rachel Campbell was fluttering her fan hard enough to create a perceptible breeze. “Whatever shall I say to her?”

“‘Good day, Mrs. MacDonald’?” suggested her husband, a faint smile lurking at the corner of his withered mouth.

Rachel hit him sharply with her fan, making him chuckle as he dodged away. For all he was thirty-five years her senior, Farquard Campbell had an easy, teasing way with his wife, quite at odds with his usual dignified demeanor.

“I shall faint,” Rachel declared again, having evidently decided upon this as a definite social strategy.

“Well, ye must please yourself, of course, a nighean, but if ye do, it will have to be Mr. Fraser picking you up from the ground; my ancient limbs are scarcely equal to the task.”

“Oh!” Rachel cast a quick glance at Jamie, who smiled at her, then hid her blushes behind her fan. While plainly fond of her own husband, she made no secret of her admiration for mine.

“Your humble servant, madam,” Jamie gravely assured her, bowing.

She tittered. I shouldn’t like to wrong the woman, but she definitely tittered. I caught Jamie’s eye, and hid a smile behind my own fan.

“And what will you say to her, then, Mr. Fraser?”

Jamie pursed his lips and squinted thoughtfully at the brilliant sun streaming through the elm trees that edged the lawn at River Run.

“Oh, I suppose I might say that I’m glad the weather has kept fine for her. It was raining the last time we met.”

Rachel’s jaw dropped, and so did her fan, bouncing on the lawn. Her husband bent to pick it up for her, groaning audibly, but she had no attention to spare for him.

“You’ve met her?” she cried, eyes wide with excitement. “When? Where? With the prin—with him?”

“Ah, no,” Jamie said, smiling. “On Skye. I’d gone wi’ my father—a matter of sheep, it was. We chanced to meet Hugh MacDonald of Armadale in Portree—Miss Flora’s stepfather, aye?—and he’d brought the lass into the town with him, for a treat.”

“Oh!” Rachel was enchanted. “And was she beautiful and gracious as they say?”

Jamie frowned, considering.

“Well, no,” he said. “But she’d a terrible grippe at the time, and no doubt would have looked much improved without the red nose. Gracious? Well, I wouldna say so, really. She snatched a bridie right out of my hand and ate it.”

“And how old were you both at the time?” I asked, seeing Rachel’s mouth sag in horror.

“Oh, six, maybe,” he said cheerfully. “Or seven. I doubt I should remember, save I kicked her in the shin when she stole my bridie, and she pulled my hair.”

Recovering somewhat from the shock, Rachel was pressing Jamie for further reminiscences, a pressure he was laughingly deflecting with jokes.

Of course, he had come prepared to this occasion; all over the grounds, there were stories being exchanged—humorous, admiring, longing—of the days before Culloden. Odd, that it should have been the defeat of Charles Stuart, and his ignominious flight, that made a heroine of Flora MacDonald and united these Highland exiles in a way that they could never have achieved—let alone sustained—had he actually won.

It struck me suddenly that Charlie was likely still alive, quietly drinking himself to death in Rome. In any real way, though, he was long since dead to these people who had loved or hated him. The amber of time had sealed him forever in that one defining moment of his life—Bliadha Tearlach; “Charlie’s Year,” it meant, and even now, I heard people call it that.

It was Flora’s coming that was causing this flood of sentiment, of course. How strange for her, I thought, with a pang of sympathy—and for the first time, wondered what on earth I might say to her myself.

I had met famous people before—not the least of them the Bonnie Prince himself. But always before, I had met them when they—and I—were in the midst of their normal lives, not yet past the defining events that would make them famous, and thus still just people. Bar Louis—but then, he was a king. There are rules of etiquette for dealing with kings, since after all, no one ever does approach them as normal people. Not even when—

I snapped my own fan open, hot blood bursting through my face and body. I breathed deeply, trying not to fan quite as frantically as Rachel, but wanting to.

I had not once, in all the years since it happened, ever specifically recalled those two or three minutes of physical intimacy with Louis of France. Not deliberately, God knew, and not by accident, either.

Yet suddenly, the memory of it had touched me, as suddenly as a hand coming out of the crowd to seize my arm. Seize my arm, lift my skirts, and penetrate me in a way much more shockingly intrusive than the actual experience had been.

The air around me was suffused with the scent of roses, and I heard the creak of the dress cage as Louis’s weight pressed upon it, and heard his sigh of pleasure. The room was dark, lit by one candle; it flickered at the edge of vision, then was blotted out by the man between my—

“Christ, Claire! Are ye all right?” I hadn’t actually fallen down, thank God. I had reeled back against the wall of Hector Cameron’s mausoleum, and Jamie, seeing me go, had leapt forward to catch hold of me.

“Let go,” I said, breathless, but imperative. “Let go of me!”

He heard the note of terror in my voice, and slackened his grip, but couldn’t bring himself to let go altogether, lest I fall. With the energy of sheer panic, I pulled myself upright, out of his grasp.

I still smelled roses. Not the cloying scent of rose oil—fresh roses. Then I came to myself, and realized that I was standing next to a huge yellow brier rose, trained to climb over the white marble of the mausoleum.

Knowing that the roses were real was comforting, but I felt as though I stood still on the edge of a vast abyss, alone, separate from every other soul in the universe. Jamie was close enough to touch, and yet it was as though he stood an immeasurable distance away.

Then he touched me and spoke my name, insistently, and just as suddenly as it had opened, the gap between us closed. I nearly fell into his arms.

“What is it, a nighean?” he whispered, holding me against his chest. “What’s frightened ye?” His own heart was thumping under my ear; I’d scared him, too.

“Nothing,” I said, and an overwhelming wave of relief went over me, at the realization that I was safely in the present; Louis had gone back into the shadows, an unpleasant but harmless memory once more. The staggering sense of violation, of loss and grief and isolation, had receded, no more than a shadow on my mind. Best of all, Jamie was there; solid and physical and smelling of sweat and whisky and horses … and there. I hadn’t lost him.

Other people were clustering round, curious, solicitous. Rachel fanned me earnestly, and the breeze of it felt soothing; I was drenched with sweat, wisps of hair clinging damply to my neck.

“Quite all right,” I murmured, suddenly self-conscious. “Just a bit faint … hot day …”

A chorus of offers to fetch me wine, a glass of syllabub, lemon shrub, a burned feather, were all trumped by Jamie’s production of a flask of whisky from his sporran. It was the three-year-old stuff, from the sherry casks, and I felt a qualm as the scent of it reached me, remembering the night we had got drunk together after he had rescued me from Hodgepile and his men. God, was I about to be hurled back into that pit?

But I wasn’t. The whisky was merely hot and consoling, and I felt better with the first sip.

Flashback. I’d heard colleagues talk about it, arguing as to whether this was the same phenomenon as shell shock, and if it was, whether it truly existed, or should be dismissed as simply “nerves.”

I shuddered briefly, and took another sip. It most assuredly existed. I felt much better, but I had been shaken to the core, and my bones still felt watery. Beyond the faint echoes of the experience itself was a much more unsettling thought. It had happened once before, when Ute McGillivray attacked me. Was it likely to happen again?

“Shall I carry ye inside, Sassenach? Perhaps ye should lie down a bit.”

Jamie had shooed away the well-wishers, had a slave fetch me a stool, and was now hovering over me like an anxious bumblebee.

“No, I’m all right now,” I assured him. “Jamie …”

“Aye, lass?”

“You—when you—do you …”

I took a deep breath—and another sip of whisky—and tried again.

“Sometimes, I wake up during the night and see you—struggling—and I think it’s with Jack Randall. Is it a dream that you have?”

He stared down at me for a moment, face blank, but trouble moving in his eyes. He glanced from side to side, but we were quite alone now.

“Why?” he asked, low-voiced.

“I need to know.”

He took a breath, swallowed, and nodded.

“Aye. Sometimes it’s dreams. That’s … all right. I wake, and ken where I am, say a wee prayer, and … it’s all right. But now and then—” He shut his eyes for a moment, then opened them. “I am awake. And yet I am there, with Jack Randall.”

“Ah.” I sighed, feeling at once terribly sad for him, and at the same time somewhat reassured. “Then I’m not losing my mind.”

“Ye think so?” he said dryly. “Well, I’m that glad to hear it, Sassenach.”

He stood very close, the cloth of his kilt brushing my arm, so that I should have him for support, if I suddenly went faint again. He looked searchingly at me, to be sure that I wasn’t going to keel over, then touched my shoulder and with a brief “Sit still” went off.

Not far; just to the tables set up under the trees at the edge of the lawn. Ignoring the slaves arranging food for the barbecue, he leaned across a platter of boiled crayfish and picked up something from a tiny bowl. Then he was back, leaning down to take my hand. He rubbed his fingers together, and a pinch of salt sprinkled into my open palm.

“There,” he whispered. “Keep it by ye, Sassenach. Whoever it is, he’ll trouble ye no more.”

I closed my hand over the damp grains, feeling absurdly comforted. Trust a Highlander to know precisely what to do about a case of daylight haunting! Salt, they said, kept a ghost in its grave. And if Louis was still alive, the other man, whoever he had been, that pressing weight in the dark, was surely dead.

There was a sudden rush of excitement, as a call came from the river—the boat had been sighted. As one, the crowd drew itself up on tiptoe, breathless with anticipation.