No, I chided silently, staring around the pitiful shack, blank. I had left with a heart: I’d left with Bree, the love of my second life, and that little heart had kept me tethered to life until I’d found myself again.
….but the heart with which I’d entered? That was no more.
They were still here, watching me from the
damp, dark corners of the cottage: the fragments. I could feel them. Aching.
Yes, this is where you left us. You made it out, but we
remained. Here we shall remain, now that…
Now.
My body was a no-man’s land. On the one side, grief: staggering in detail…unending…ripping me to shreds with every breath; on the other, utter nothingness: numbed oblivion…the absence of anything human. One force would rise up to charge, emboldened, and then be summarily routed, annihilated. The process would reverse and repeat over and over, leaving nothing but a throbbing, bleeding stalemate between. Mutually-Assured Destruction.
I closed my eyes and swayed, my arms limp at my sides, a finger searching for the mark at the base of my thumb.
‘I want to take away your touch with me.’
A past me had said that, here within these walls.
‘…to have something of you that will stay with me always.’
‘Always.’
Only, nothing was ‘always.’ Not even that.
True, I could see it, still, the faintest of white lines forming the letter J; but any palpable scar had vanished into the smooth landscape of the skin.
Strange: I had never once allowed myself to acknowledge that fact. Doing so now—It plunged me into a cold, chill darkness, where only my terror was heard. Over the years, as I felt it fade, and fade, and fade, I had let myself cling to the fantasy of ‘always’; had permitted myself to never actually touch the spot, nor look at it—only to tell myself it was there, to cling to the safety and comfort of this one, tiny delusion. Yet, the cruel reality was that Jamie’s last touch was now no more than a photograph: a single moment in time, captured in the record, visible, but with no dimension. An image. A hint at a memory.
Jesus H, Christ, but it’s the *memory* that matters, Beauchamp, so stop being foolish. You’re a physician, damn you: you should know better than anyone that scars are *supposed* to heal. It doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change the memory.
Yes, the body, so perfectly adapted to regenerate and prolong us, will do everything in its power to erase the imperfections life inflicts upon it. The platelets will descend; the threads of fibrin will lash and bind; the white blood cells will attack infection at the breach, keeping the small hurt from becoming fatal. It is how we—physically, fundamentally—go on.
The body cannot comprehend that its healing power, that very erasure, is a wound in and of itself; that our hurts and imperfections might be nothing less than our deepest desire; that even pain—
‘…I don’t care if it hurts; nothing could hurt more than leaving you.’
“Wrong again, Beauchamp,” I whispered, my voice catching. This could hurt more. Leaving him again, half our lives gone; facing the remaining half alone….and that, after rising from loneliness up to a great peak of hope—only to—
But you know he’s alive, this time, Beauchamp. You know he’s happy! You know he’s going to live to be an old man, perhaps to see his grandchildren. For Pete’s sake, you maudlin creature, surely you can agree that that fact makes this day far better than the eve of Culloden.
Yes. Better.
….but I didn’t expect to endure anything of the like again.
But now you *shall* endure it, Beauchamp. Now, you move on.
‘Move on?’ How?…. I can’t even move from this spot.
I blinked hard up at the ceiling, fists and teeth clenched, tears falling. “Damn you, Jamie, how did you bloody do this?”
He’d been so brave—so fucking brave in those final hours under this roof. He’d known that he must send me away, must do so because it was the best chance for me, for our child. He’d touched me; roused me; smiled for me; reassured me; joked and laughed, even, as best he could. He had been strong and HIMSELF, to the end.
And here I was
—
twenty-odd years later, leaving by the very same route for his sake, for his chance for a good and happy existence, just as genuinely assured in my conviction as he—falling apart.
How had he remained in one piece? How the bloody hell had he managed to say goodbye without even shedding a tear, damn him?
‘I would sleep once more this way—holding you, holding the babe.’
Because he had known for a fact that he would die the next morning. He wouldn’t have to live with that emptiness, with a broken heart, or so he had supposed; and so he’d kept his tears at bay because he knew I would. I had to go on, and so he’d rallied for my sake, presented himself to me as a man calm and at peace, so as not to make my task—my grief, the reality that I would have to be the one to walk away forever—any more excruciating than it already was.
So brave. Strong.
I would do the same for you, Jamie, if it fell to me. I hope I could be strong for you.
But if there were any grace that had been granted to me, in this final, broken chapter of our story, it was that I was spared having to look my love in the eye as I gave him up to a better life;
that I, at least, could let my tears fall freely.
A sudden draft stirred my flimsy skirt, bringing me sharply to awareness. I shivered against the frigid air, mindful through my disorientation of how sharply my knees ached. The light outside had shifted since I entered the cottage. The sun had long since disappeared behind the horizon, leaving only the dim grey-pink of November twilight.
Time, Beauchamp. Walk out the door. Only a quick walk up the hill, and it’s over. No sense in prolonging it any further.
It was time; and I found myself moving with purpose, though not toward the door.
There, at the back wall, in that opening where the boards had long since fallen away, I stood, silent and still. Snowflakes—scattered, sporadic— brushed my cheeks, but I paid them no heed.
The very last place I’d seen him; felt his touch; felt him within me.
The damp, rotten wood felt so soft and smooth under my bare palm. Warm. Living.
‘Name him Brian…for my father.’
“Come find me, will you?” I whispered to the wind, forcing a smile. “When we’re both gone into what comes after, c—”
My throat closed.
I pictured seeing the outline of a tall, etherial figure, in that after-place…and seeing his arm circle around the waist of a small woman; the both of them stretching their arms out toward two little girls, running to them.
Would he even see me?
And yet…
‘I will find you….
I promise.’
“I shall hold you to it, Jamie Fraser.” I rubbed my thumb once over the plank. “Til then, my love.”
It was a much more strenuous climb than I remembered. The icy, twilight air stung my lungs as I gulped it down, the burning in my muscles only heightening the sensations of grief, of panic, of regret, and loss. I wanted to let myself fall, there on the slope, and weep, just sleep until I vanished into nothing.
But the thought of Bree’s face kept me going up that hill, step after aching step.
You’ll see her, soon.
Only a hundred yards more.
You’d prepared yourself to never see her again, and now you’ll have years and years
Almost six months ago, I learned that you survived Culloden.
You made history, my darling! Q.E.D.
As many nights as I’ve lain awake in those months cursing myself for not having looked sooner, I know I shall thank God every day of my life for the series of events that led me at last to the right pages, to you. When I fully realized what it meant— that you had been spared the death you faced so bravely that April morning, the death that has haunted my thoughts and my nightmares for so long— It was like a wound, the oldest and deepest scar ripped back open, inch by inch. I was completely laid bare from it, from the storm of emotions warring within me: such joy, such anguish for the lost time (how many more years could we have had, Jamie, had I looked?), such fear—and then joy again, because the years of grief could now be ended, and *against all reason!* I could see you again.
Likewise will I thank God every day for the small voice in my head that nudged me at the very last moment to go first to Lallybroch, rather than to your shop in Edinburgh. Please thank Jenny for me. She explained everything.
It is for the best, that it happened this way; easier, I think, for all concerned. Perversely, despite the shock, I find myself smiling in this moment: for we promised there would be no lies between us, remember? It is a promise I make to you again, today. You can know, then, with absolute certainty, that it can be no lie when I tell you that I am glad— glad and on-my-knees grateful to Heaven—that you have found true happiness.
After all the pain and the loss, the war and the hunger and the suffering you’ve endured, to know that you have a wife with whom you’ve found something new and wonderful; that you have had the joy of holding your own children in your arms, to have seen them be born and grow? It is a balm, Jamie, a comfort to know that despite all the cruelty fate has dealt you—dealt us— you have been blessed with such great and abundant joy. Never would I wish anything less for you, just as I know you would not for me.
It is my deepest prayer that as you read these words, you will know the truth of them, will be able to feel my heart through the page, and KNOW that from its very depths, I wish you every happiness with your wife and your daughters.
And yet I couldn’t leave, couldn’t go back from whence I came, without telling you about another little girl, who was born the 23rd of November the year of Culloden.
I hope the contents of the brown packet, here enclosed, tell you more than any words could about your daughter—our daughter—Brianna Ellen.
Jamie was shaking—no, he was
—
crumbling.
Every breath wrenched through him, agonizing, and the tears were falling, blurring his vision. He had to sit back on his haunches to keep them from dropping onto the page and blurring her precious words.
Her words
CLAIRE’s
His hands were quaking with
November
with EVERYTHING
Jesus, GOD in
Couldn’t
He COULD NOT think
Thoughts, words, they were—
They failed him, simply abandoned him as he shook on the study rug. Only his body seemed to know the way, for he was snatching for the parcel, tearing at the string binding the paper. There was an oily, unidentifiable wrapping within, then a layer of soft flannel, and then
—
The sound that escaped him—He didn’t even know there existed such a sound within him. It was terrible and beautiful at once, and though it was in no language, what he felt, his lips over and over formed a word, the only word he could muster: “No….NO….”
For as though a great knife had cut through those terrible, looming stones on the accursed hill, Jamie held his infant daughter, newly-born, sleeping there in the palms of his hands. The portrait—picture?—painting?—was all in shades of grey, and yet somehow lifelike as a true bairn in miniature before him, like peering through a spyglass straight into that distant life.
He had not a single thought to spare for how, or by what means…
He could only trace the bitty wee fists curled on the blanket, the sweet wisps of hair on the tiny skull.
“Oh, mo chridhe…”
He couldn’t look away, could not even blink, though tears were coursing downward.
God, the child —this very child —
—delivered safely into the world and into the arms of her mother—her mother.…
The babe had lived—LIVED.
The pad of his thumb caught slightly as he caressed her cheek, and the portrait slid upward just enough to reveal — “Ohh…Jesus…”
She was grown to a toddling child, eating a cake that was smeared all about her face. And damn him if he didn’t LAUGH amidst the weeping to see just how pleased with herself she looked for it, a cuddly toy raised in triumph like a sword, four wee teeth visible as she giggled out a victory cry.
There she was again, older, standing in a great snowfall, naught but wee cheeks and grinning eyes visible under the great padded suit she wore against the cold.
Older, still. Three? Four? Sitting proper-like in a pretty frock with her hair combed smooth.
Such a sweet face—
Older, still, standing with a wee box in her hand beside a giant something with wheels, proud and eager, eyes bright.
And then he was gasping as the spyglass world ignited into blazing, brilliant colors. He saw his daughter’s hair, red and victorious and shining against the black coat of the huge dog she hugged tight; saw the pink flush of her cheeks, spread down her neck as it always did his, when he was happy and exuberant.
On and on flashed the paintings, these captured momentsof his daughter’s life.
Going fishing and doing a damn fine job of it.
Playing uproariously in the sea-surf, splashing and laughing with complete abandon.
Absolutely lovely as as she grew out of girlhood, and God, how vividly he could see Claire in her, as she did—in the lines of her, the way she held her mouth, tilted her head—that broad, clear brow that begged to be kissed, reverently—
Laughing, carefree, safe.
Braw and strong as she chopped wood. Good lass!
Gazing softly out a window, seeming not even to notice her image being captured.
On
and on
and on
until he was gasping and looking at the last portrait, of an achingly beautiful young woman sitting on a rock before a fire, making camp for the night, perhaps. Her face was cast in the same golds and red as her hair; the dreams of her heart seeming to dance across her eyes—as they always did her mother’s. His daughter…grown.
The paintings were strewn all around him on the carpet, a tableau of her; her life. On his knees he bowed over them, overwhelmed and shuddering with great sobs as he looked, and looked, and looked.
She was—
She would be—
…..she was well.
The child HAD been safe.
It hadn’t been for naught.
He fell, then, and sheltered her like a cloak, keeping his child, his daughter, safe and shielded from the world for just one moment; safe…his….
Brianna
It was only sudden, ripping, screaming panic that yanked him out of the quiet calm, searching wildly, fumbling with desperate hands—
But relief tore from his throat just as suddenly as he found a second page:
Not everything can be captured in a photograph, of course (that’s what they’re called. Did I ever tell you about them?), and there’s so much I long to tell you about this wonderful person.
Will you believe she’s been taller than me since the age of thirteen? She carries it like a queen, though, like I imagine your mother did. She doesn’t slouch or try to hide. Not Bree.
Oh, yes: most people call her Bree, for short.
She bites her nails, when she’s thinking hard. I don’t even think she notices when she’s doing it.
She’s absolutely brilliant, Jamie, studying at one of the top universities in the world to be a historian. You would be so very proud of her.
She’s not perfect, of course. Perhaps her biggest flaw as half-Scottish is that she HATES whisky, haha. I’ll do my best to win her over, though, don’t you worry.
She’s a spectacular artist, another way in which she takes after her grandmother. She captures you, completely.
That statement, actually, is true in more ways than one. Our Brianna is captivating, in every way.
She’s an absolute wonder with maths and figures
—as natural to her as breathing, it seems, just like they are for you.
She smiles in her sleep, just like her father.
She’s so like you, Jamie, it breaks my heart.
After Frank died—But Lord, I haven’t said anything of him.
It was two years ago. He had a good, full life, and he loved Bree more than anything in the world. He could have been cruel, could have taken out his anger upon the child, the very breathing manifestation of the ways in which I’d betrayed him—but he didn’t. From the moment he first held her, Frank loved her as his own, and while things between he and I were tenuous, to say the least, I will always love him for the father he was to her, for the sacrifices he made for her. I hope that is a comfort to you, and not a blow.
After he was gone, after giving her time to grieve, it felt important that Bree should know about you, about the stones. It took—well, it frankly took a bloody lot of luck and a jolly good miracle to get her to believe, *but she does.* She loved Frank with all her heart, but she knows now that Jamie Fraser was her father. IS her father.
You should know that she was instrumental in finding you. She persisted when I would have faltered under the doubts and the fears. As ecstatic and overjoyed as I was at the news that you were alive, I was so afraid Jamie, for you, for me, for Bree.
Even though I know she, too, was plagued with fears, she remained strong; and she kept ME strong. Even at the very stones, when I was so wracked with guilt over leaving her forever that I would have stayed, for her sake, she was there to strengthen me, to tell me not to look back. She said that she was giving me back to you, and that if I didn’t go, *she* would. ‘Someone has to find him and tell him I was born,’ she said, and she meant it.
THAT is the kind of person your daughter is growing to be, Jamie: determined, and brilliant, and selfless for the sake of those she loves; *and that includes you.* She asked me to give you a kiss, just from her. I’ve left it here, on the page, for you to keep, always.
Brianna has been the greatest joy of my life since we parted, a joy that would have been richer only if I had been granted the grace to raise her with you at my side. Thank you for her. THANK YOU for making me go on, for her sake. Despite everything, it has been a good life. Even in those long years of grief, I had the joy of seeing you every day, of seeing your spirit, there in the child of our love. And I’m so very grateful.
I’ll keep telling her about you. There wasn’t enough time, before I left. She’ll be able hear everything, now. I promise.
Jamie shook his head hard, fast, feeling for a third page that wasn’t there. “No…”
Be happy, Jamie Fraser, and LIVE.
“No,” he moaned. his eyes clinging to the fleeting words, even as he begged them not to stop. “Claire…”
Love, always,
“Mo nighean donn, don’t
—
Claire
Those next seconds were everlasting, each terrible, catastrophic truth echoing in his soul like the toll of a great bell, over and over.
She had been here
Claire had been here
She left
Claire left
Because Jenny—
She was sitting at the bottom of the staircase, crying hard into Ian’s shoulder. When the study door crashed open, her head shot up and she jumped to her feet, her face pure terror. “Jamie, mo ch—”
“When?” He snarled it, and Jenny convulsed with a deep sob like a swallowed scream, and covered her face with her hands.
Jamie was thundering toward her, a veil of red over his vision as he demanded, “WHEN?”
Ian—in a shockingly deft and smooth movement given the leg—shot to his feet, shielding Jenny from Jamie’s rage with his body.
In all truth, the rational parts of Jamie’s mind were glad for Ian’s presence, for that was the only thing keeping the blood rage from taking control, from taking revenge. “WHEN was she here, woman?” he bellowed over Ian’s shoulder, “How fucking long did ye see fit to keep—”
Ian shoved him, eyes blazing. “You’ll NOT talk that way to—”
“Mor—ning—”Jenny sobbed, her voice a strangled whisper, “—gone before—Jamie! Oh, Jamie, I ken I’ll—never for—give mys—for—”
“HOW MANY MONTHS?” he roared, overtaken by despair, overtaken by rage, becoming a nameless beast under it. “HOW MANY YEARS, JENNY?”
“This morning—” she wailed, “To—TO—DAY—”
Nothing.
Silence.
And then a great wave, tall as a mountain, rose up within Jamie, blasting out everything within him in a single cataclysmic moment of clarity.
Today
T O D A Y
Then she was—
She could be no more than—
He vaulted up the stairs four at a time, paying no heed to Janet and Wee Ian and the others who were gathered at the top of the staircase, wide-eyed and pale and gaping.
Less than a minute later, he thundered back down past them all, breeks only half-laced under his boots, traveling bag on his back.
“No,” Jenny moaned, grasping at his sleeve as he passed and trying to hold him back. “Jamie, ye canna—Ye CANNA catch her, she's—GONE—she’s—”
He shook her off, hard enough to knock her off-balance, and ran to the kitchen, shoving what food he could lay his hands on into his sack and moving straight to the door, so crazed with determination he could barely see what it was he took. Food didn’t matter. Fatigue, already tugging at him, didn’t matter. Claire was—
“Jamie, she’s nearly a day ahead—” Jenny caught the handle just as he did, eyes absolutely wild. “Ye dinna even ken where she’s bound or—”
He spared his sister one look, and let all the hate and contempt, the rage and the betrayal show there as he growled, “I ken precisely where she’s bound.”
Many a red-headed man I’d passed on the long road from Lallybroch. Every single time, my stupid, desperate heart had leapt with joy; and every time, I cursed myself for the fool that I was.For Christ’s SAKE, why the bloody hell should he be on the road from Inverness, Beauchamp?Jamie Fraser is south, in Edinburgh, with his wife. With his daughters. Happy. So, pull yourself together.
So deep had been my longing, though, that my traitorous eyes had tried over and over to convince me that it might be, it MIGHT be this time! (even when the actual travelers hadn’t looked remotely like Jamie). Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, one had been a very tall boy no more than twelve, and I still had had to see his face from ten feet before I would allow my heart to quiet. Not him. Not him.
Blind hope, indeed.
But this time, as I whirled and fell on the hillside, heart exploding, in a single moment, I was certain. Even from a great distance, even two decades later, even not yet able to see his face through the snow-flecked gloom, even had he not been screaming my name, yes, I’d know the shape of that man anywhere. It was Jamie, tearing toward me on horseback, riding like the hounds of hell were at his heels. And the SIGHT of him? A relief and a love smashed through me, so deep and so visceral that I staggered downward; not running, not even making my way down the hill; just slipping, pulled toward his orbit.
Alive. I had known for months, believed, had confirmation from Jenny herself, and yet the proof was now there before my eyes. Not under a stone on Culloden Moor; that nightmare was now banished forever. Jamie Fraser was ALIVE.
I saw him kick hard, spurring the horse to an even more astonishing pace—how loudly must he have been screaming that I had been able to hear him from so far away?—and found myself bursting out with joyous laughter at the way his shirt flapped like a sail in the wind. Nothing changed, then, if the ridiculous man had ridden without a coat or a cloak against the wind and the sn—
Wife.
No.
Daughters.
Please….please, no.
This changes absolutely nothing, Beauchamp. This ends with you going through those stones, sooner or later. Make it sooner.
But he came for me—Jamie came! He’s HERE.
He’s happy. He may have come, but he’s happy. Don’t make him suffer by forcing this impossible choice.
Just let me say goodbye.
Please.
Let me hold him, just for
—
Beauchamp:
Can you honestly do what needs to be done if you have to look him in the eye and pull yourself out of his arms?
“CLAIRE!—What are ye—? S T O P !”
I was running up the hill, stumbling and tripping, going as fast as I could. I couldn’t stop. If I looked at him—If I touched him…
Everything seemed to slow to single frames, impressions:
The slow shrill cry of my breaths,
the grass suddenly inches from my nose as I staggered low over a boulder.
Hoofbeats, closer, louder.
I’m running for my life through quicksand,
every footfall sinking me deeper, and slower, as the monster gets closer and closer and—
A fierce whinny, a curse.
A voice— my voice—screaming. “STAY AWAY!”
Boots hitting the ground,
“CLAIRE, STOP!”
Running, both of us running,
and I couldn’t stop.
I must not st—
Time smashed into its normal pace again as I fell, mere yards from the crest of the hill, and cried out in pain.
“CLAIRE!” God, he was so close, pounding up the hill behind me, no more than thirty—
“Don’t!” I shouted as I scrambled to my feet.
“CLAI—”
“DO—NOT—TOUCH—ME!” I screamed it over my shoulder with all the violence I possessed, a feral beast, cornered and ready to go for the throat as it went down.
Silence fell on the faerie hill. Stillness, and absolute silence.
When human thought returned, I was on my feet at the very top of the hill, the stones screaming their evil song behind me. My body was slung sideways, both arms raised in defense; my head hung at an improbable angle so as to look nowhere, see nothing: not the stones, not him. It was elemental in my body, in that moment: the absolute imperative not to look at him. If I could keep from looking, keep from getting trapped in those eyes, everything would be alright.
It was a ridiculous logic, I knew; somewhere in the recesses of my consciousness, that was obvious. Jamie Fraser was HERE. He wouldn’t simply let me walk away unacknowledged;but such was the depth of my panic and hysteria that I couldn’t move. I was bare millimeters from completely falling apart, abandoning all my noble resolve, and flinging myself into his arms, begging him to choose me
— take me
—and damn the fucking consequences.
But it still wouldn’t change a bloody thing, the rational half of my mind whimpered. He would still be married. He would still have his children. We still could not be together, or at least not under any circumstances that honor would permit. I still could not force him to make that choice.
Hold yourself together, Beauchamp. No tears, remember? You said you could do the same for him; could be calm and sure for him. Now, do it. Stand strong.
“….Mo nighean donn?”
That flower-stem snap.
That voice—Jamie’s sweet, clear voice; my very heart speaking aloud, quietly, but with every ounce of pain and longing thatI felt in my own breast.
“Look at me, mo nighean donn.”
Stand. strong.
My mouth was dry and my entire body was shaking, each word an effort. “— Can't—”
A sudden, vicious snarl. “LOOK at me!”
I half-growled, half screamed, “I—CANT!”
Desperate. So desperate, that ‘can’t’. I was shaking. Going into shock, in fact. Could feel the darkness and the manic energy and the absolute inability to retrieve words or actions closing—
“Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp.”
He said it like he always said his own name: low and distinct, with honor in every syllable.
BE STRONG.
“I have ridden,” he said, in a voice so quiet and deep and measured, “night and day for nigh on a week, terrified that—terrified th—*Please,*” His calm vanished and the words were tumbling out of him in a frantic rush. “Please, for the love ye bear me, for the love that brought ye to find me: TURN.”
STAND.
God, but I can’t stand.
“By everything that is holy…”
A whispered moan.
“Let me see your face, mo ghraidh.”
….and damn my weak, foolish heart, I turned. I looked.
Day and night for a week, he’d said, and I believed it. Even at a distance of twenty feet down the hill, I could see just how bloodshot his eyes were, wide and wild.
He was pale, underneath the red of wind and exertion, paler than I remembered. That glorious hair was now worn long. If it had been tied back, the ride and the wind had undone it. It was wild and tangled, whipping about his face, his chin covered in stubble that nearly amounted to a beard. His clothes—nothing but shirt, breeks and boots— were filthy and torn and splattered with mud. He looked, quite simply, dead on his feet.
He was the most beautiful sight I’d ever beheld.
God, you’re so like her, I wanted to moan.
I’d known it, had had my heart broken every day to see the proof of him in our daughter, and yet seeing him now before me, I was absolutely run through to find her broad, good-humored face there, the same dark blue eyes aslant the high, flat cheekbones and wide mouth.
He’d aged, of course, as had I. The lines around eyes and mouth were deeper, the skin more weathered and coarse, but it was still him. His nose had been broken, at some point. It made him look fiercer, though perhaps that was simply fatigue and the vast waves of emotion obviously rushing through him, through us both.
Jamie had staggered back a pace or two back as he stared up at me, nearly toppling down the steep incline. “Jesus….Christ…” he whispered. The back of his hand was pressed to his mouth as though to stifle a cry, “You’re….You….” The hand became a fist and he shook his head as a gasping smile broke from him. “Claire—God, Claire, mo chridhe!” He moved, about to sprint up the hill.
I jumped backward. Raised my arms against him. No.
Hurt. Betrayal. Pain. It was as though I had shot him at point-blank range…And something deeper shone beneath it all: some blazing intensity I couldn’t quite identify. He looked as though he would bleed out there on the spot, from this newest wound.
So will I, my love.
But he heeded me, standing completely still. His hands shook, half-raised before him. He simply didn’t know what to do with them—I knew because I didn’t know what to do with mine. His mouth worked as he tried to speak, to ask, to say something, but failing. Those eyes held everything, though. Pleading.
Silence on the hill. Silence and screaming.
“You—survived,” I managed at last, weakly, with something like a laugh.
“Aye—” He exhaled in a huge rush, clearly grateful that I’d broken the stalemate. “It was a verra close thing.”
He spoke fast and frantically, babbling, even, as though terrified to let silence fall again. “I should have died in the battle, or from the firing squads after, or of my wounds festering, but— Aye, I—I was—spared.”
“Thank God,” I whispered, and his eyes lit with such hope and relief that I could have cut my bloody tongue out at the root.
STOP this instant, Beauchamp. Nothing has changed.
Jamie was the one to break the silence, this time. “Your letter,” he gasped out.
“You read it, then?” A stupid thing to say. He’d obviously read it, but I clung to conversation just as he had. The stupid words were something, something to keep from falling off the edge of this insanity. “When?”
“By providence, I arrived at Lallybroch the same day you’d left, and….Oh, God, CLAIRE….”
Oh, God, Jamie.
Each time my name left him, it seemed to tear a piece out of both of us. I could only look down at him, waiting.
“When I saw your hand on that letter,” he said, voice shaking uncontrollably, “the print of your ring in the wax, I …”
He shook his head, at a loss, mouthing it over and over. I…I….
Through the snow, though darkness was creeping steadily around us, I could see the first tear sliding down his cheek. “….I felt as though I were dying.”
So did I. So do I.
“To know you’d survived—that you’d come back, and—and,” his eyes lit up. “Brianna.”
From his lips, our daughter’s name sounded like strange music from another world, and I wanted to listen to it forever.
“It would have been enough—more than enough—only to ken our bairn had lived, that the both of ye had lived and been cared for, but to….Claire, I simply couldna believe my eyes.” He shook his head, violently. “To see…to SEE the lass…our daughter.” Jamie released his sobbing breath and closed his eyes, holding out his hands before him, tears streamed down his cheeks. “Her entire life, there before me… and she so happy and so braw and bonny and—God, it tore out my beating heart.” He heaved a breath and smiled up at me, beaming with love and joy, though it was difficult for him to get out the words. “She’s—more wonderful than I ever could have imagined, mo ghraidh….Our Brianna.”
I forced a smile and choked down a sob. “I’m so honored,” I whispered, so haltingly, so carefully, so, so carefully, “to have been able—to bring her to you, in some way.”
My love.
My own love.
Nothing has changed.
I know.
I took a step, two steps, backward toward the stones. This was the part where I was to be strong.
Jamie’s eyes snapped into laser-focus, a predator’s, and that unknown intensity I’d seen earlier flamed now into life. It was anger.
“Why would ye just GO?” His voice was still wretched with pain but he was snarling, stammering, growling in mounting fury. “Ye—ye came for me and—Ye came all the way from your time through the stones and then meant to go back and leave forever wi’out even—Damn ye, woman, ye didna even—If I hadna come just in time—Foolish—wretched, FOOLISH—” He hurled the demand toward me with his entire body. “WHY?”
“You *know* why.” It was all but a moan.
He growled again. “Ye dinna ken
—”
“I know that you’re married,” I got out, moving sideways around the rim of the hill, countering his advance. “I know you have children. Jenny told me everything—how hap—”
“No, Claire, ye dinna understand!” Something had shifted in his eyes
— relief?
— and he was once again still, though scarcely fifteen feet in front of me down the hill. “Jenny lied. She lied, Claire,” he insisted, the words falling out of him. “She lied and made ye think I was—”
“You’re not —
??”
Jenny lied! Thank the bloody stars above, the horrible bitch LIED!!! Jesus H—
My smile broke through like the dawn, a blaze of glorious, raging happiness as I gasped out, “Then, you’re not married?”
And I watched as that hope shriveled and vanished to dust. His eyes dropped to the ground. “I am marrit.”
I swayed, eyes closed. I couldn’t bear this any longer, couldn’t take this agony raging in my heart, both the emotional and the physical heart. I felt light-headed, felt pain in my limbs. I couldn’t be strong. I couldn’t.
Just a little while longer. Say your farewell, and be gone. It will be alright, Beauchamp.
“Then she didn’t lie,” I said, simply, my throat burning with the effort not to wail. “You have a wife and two beautiful daughters.” I caught my breath and opened my eyes, managing to smile, though I was so very near the brink. “I meant what I wrote in the letter. Every single word. I want you to be happy—and I’m glad that you are. I’m glad that you have a family and that they have made you happy.”
His brows were drawn up, making him look absolutely crazed. He mouthed the word like he’d never heard it before. Happy?
“But I—” Somehow, I kept up the smile as I whispered through wooden lips and burning throat and the tears. “—but it means—that I have—to go, now— before—”
“NO,” he snarled, springing with sudden force. I staggered still further away around the hill as he bellowed, “You’ll NOT—”
“BE STILL!” I bellowed back.
And once again, he heeded me.
“For God’s fucking SAKE, you bloody
—
Scot!” I shouted down at him, suddenly just as furious as he. “Have you NO notion of what
— Don’t you understand? I’m giving you up! I’m letting you go!” I gestured wildly behind me to the stones, choking on my tears. “I’m leaving so you don’t have to choose! Do you think I’m so arrogant as to believe I’m worth upending your happy—”
“DAMN YOU, woman, I havena been HAPPY in TWENTY YEARS!”
Silence on the faerie hill. Silence and screaming.
When he spoke again, it was once more in that quiet, aching whisper.
“Jenny led ye to believe otherwise and may she be damned for it.”
He took a step forward, pointing.
“But in that letter, ye renewed a promise to me; and I’ll give ye the same, now.” Another step.
I stepped back.
He surrendered, went to his knees, hands clenched in the posture of oath-taking. “No lies, Claire.” His eyes blazed into mine. “Nor secrets. Not ever. Not now. I swear it on Brianna’s life.”
God, my heart…
“Will ye hear what I have to tell?”
…it simply couldn’t take this.
But I nodded.
“I left Laoghaire more than a year past.”
“LAOGHAIRE?!?”
The outburst was so violent, so loud and so shrill in the wake of my long silence, that it startled us both. Jamie had to put a hand out to steady himself as he jumped, and the acute panic of a fresh hell showed across his face. “She—Jenny didna—?”
“No, she BLOODY well DIDN’T!”
“Aye, well—ah …ehm…Claire?”
He was peering leerily up at me, and little wonder, for I was laughing—actually, CACKLING with laughter, hands clutched to my belly as I doubled over with it.
“No, Jenny didn’t tell me who,” I sighed, when I had calmed down (marginally). “The only detail your darling sister deigned to divulge about your wife—”
Of all people. Of ALL the marriageable women in all the bleeding Highlands. He had married —had had children with—loved—
All levity, all scorn dropped out of me, and my voice cracked, a whispering shell. “—was that you were happier with her than she’d ever seen you….And that you had two little girls that call you Da.”
“But they’re not mine, Claire. They’re not mine,” Jamie said again more urgently as I stared. He gritted his teeth. “And I shall wring my sister’s neck for a wicked liar when next I see her, for she kens fine that I’ve not had ninety-nine happy minutes in that marriage since it began.”
I was so cold. Frozen, in every cell.
“Two years ago, we wed,” he began carefully. “She was marrit before, twice, and found herself a widow wi’ two bairns to feed just as I was newly come back from England.”
His words were running together, a bit. There was so much warring within him, so much he clearly wished to say, but cold and fatigue and emotion were taking their devastating toll.
“I’m fond of her lassies—Marsali and Joan. They’re aged fifteen and twelve and have had a cruel, rough way of it, in lives so short. Wi’ all that they’ve endured, I was glad—honored, even— for them to take me into their hearts as a father, but hear me, Claire.” He held my eye. “I’ve shared scarce more wi’ them than what loving gentleness I could offer, and a scant few months of meals shared ‘round the same table. No more.” He shook his head with a sound of shame and regret. “Christ, I sound an unfeeling wretch. I do care for them, I do.”
But they weren’t born of his love; nor had he had a hand in raising them.
“Their mother…She…”
She.
“I did have hope, at the beginning; hope that perhaps there could be some
—
tenderness between us. Nothing like—” He make a vain gesture up at me and closed his eyes, as though he couldn’t bear it. “—like what I kent it could be between a husband and wife, but somethinggood to keep me sane; keep me alive….Can ye see?…Have ye kent that same hope, Claire?…. Only she couldna; or I couldna. I’ll accept the blame in full, but in the end, the ‘why’ and ‘who’ dinna matter. It was a broken thing within months, and I knew that if I’d stayed….”
He hung his head, and for the first time, I could truly see the twenty years that had gone from his life.
“I left for Edinburgh; have been there ever since. I provide for them, but I havena called Balriggan home for over a year…nor shared her bed since long before that.”
The wind whistled between us. What he was saying…
I was numb. I was…It was like I was underwater, with news being shouted to me from dry land as I slowly drowned.
“I’ve lain wi’ three women, since you’ve been gone,” he blurted suddenly, urgently against my silence, his voice so miserable, his eyes imploring. “Laoghaire, and two single-night encounters, and from one of those—From one of those nights…”
Oh, Jesus…
“William,” he whispered, nodding in confirmation, his eyes absolutely wretched but shining with the need to confess. “He’s a
— a bastard, in England, and I shall never see him again. I’ve never told anyone of him, not even Jenny or Ian. His mother, his putative father—they’re both dead. He’s highborn, in the care of a man I trust. John will give him a good life; better than ever a convicted traitor could.”
He closed his eyes and I could see his mouth working furiously as he tried both to form words and to hold back his weeping. “But he’s my son,” he whispered. “My only son, alive in the world because of me, and he’s bonny and canty and strong, just like Brianna, and there are days when I canna seem to live wi’out seeing him, holding him, or
—” And he went silent, hiding his face in his hands until he could manage to speak. “Nor can I regret that he lives, for those years I had near Willie were the closest thing I’ve had to—to
—
And that only a shellof what….”
He raised a hand up as though he would cup my cheek across the chasm between us; then dropped it. Both hands lay on his thighs, aimless.
“No. Happiness has not been granted me, Claire.” He stared at his palms, speaking in the barest, broken murmur. “My heart left wi’ you and the bairn; and while it is my dutyto go on, to care for those under my protection, as I shall do, I’ve had little joy save the knowledge that at the end, I’d die and be able to find ye, just as I promised. Two hundred years, I said I’d wait. I’ve been counting.”
The snowflakes danced around us in the near-night, oblivious to desperation or to miraculous sparks catching in dark, deep places.
“And to then learn in a moment that you’d come back…”
I tried to speak; but I was shaking so hard that I couldn’t open my mouth. I clenched it tight, feeling the tears slipping over my lips.
“Claire?” he moaned, reaching out a hand. “…Lass?…Love?…I feel as if I shall die if I canna touch ye….Please.”
My knees had locked
— everything within me had locked, between Jamie and the cold— and as I tried to adjust my footing, I accidentally stumbled backward a pace.
Despair escaped out of him and he jumped up as though to run to me, but he thought better of it, and came back down to his knees.
“Twice, I brought ye here to send ye away, mo nighean donn, because I knew a better life awaited ye on the other side of those accursed stones. Perhaps it does, this day, as well, but this time, I shall beg. Don’t go.”
He raised both clawed hands to me. The tears were flowing so violently and his face was so deeply contorted so as to be barely recognizable.
“Don’t go. Stay wi’ me. Stay. I canna…I canna do it…Please….*please*….”
I was paralyzed, completely immobilized by
—
by
—
“Is it too much to forgive, Claire?” came the cracked moan of my heart through the darkness that had suddenly hidden him from me entirely. “Laoghaire and—and William? Do… do ye not want me?”
“God, Jamie…” I whispered, so softly that surely only the grass and the snow could hear.
It was the first time I had said his name aloud to him.
“….you’re all I want.”
“Then what else matters?”
“….Nothing.”
Nothing else mattered.
And I was flying down to him, and he was flying off his knees to catch me, and the feeling of his arms around me, of Jamie’s arms around me at last was
—
Like lightning, striking upon the sand. A flash of light, of power, instantly transforming the hundreds of tiny fragments— the millions of shards weathered to all but nothing by time—into a single, molten one. A whole.
Jenny didn’t answer; she didn’t even bother to raise her eyes as she arranged the tea, bannocks, butter, and preserves between us on the study table. I wasn’t surprised. She hadn’t said more than two words to me since we’d entered the house, nor had she allowed me any opportunity to walk about and reminisce. The sounds of whispers and laughter had echoed through the hall even from the first moment of entry, but my sister-in-law had left me no opportunity to investigate the other occupants of the house—would I know any of them, I wondered? She’d marched me into the study in a way that offered no room for protest and bade me sit while she went to fetch the tea (the best teapot, I noticed; not the one used for family).
No, I wasn’t at all surprised, at this point, given my reception in the dooryard, not by any any of it —
only hurt.
Talk to me, Jenny….just TALK to me…
She didn’t speak, but I did catch her watching me with a laser-sharp focus as I lifted a bannock and took a small bite, not from hunger, just for something to do; andI could have sworn those eyes flared with
— surprise? confirmation?
Whatever it had been, the next moment, it was gone, hidden once more behind a mask of boiling control, intent upon this soulless hospitality. So intently, pointedly was Jenny focused, in fact, that she didn’t even notice when the study door opened behind her.
She was younger than Bree, but not much; perhaps sixteen or seventeen. I certainly had never laid eyes on her, but I knew her at once. That dark, curly hair; those warm, honey-brown eyes! Even in that brief instant in which our eyes met, I felt such a strong rush of affection, the lump in my throat made it hard to smile at her; but smile I did. My niece.
And to my astonishment
— not to mention, relief that someone in this house might not despise me—she smiled back; warmly, not taking those bright, questioning eyes off me, even as she gave a cursory knock and said. “Mam? D’ye need–?”
Jenny bolted like a startled deer, that frigid calm vanished in a second. In one fluid motion, she turned to the door and lunged into my line of sight, barking, “Out, Janet!” No, not into my line of sight: into her daughter’s….to keep me from view. “Out,” she snapped again.
A very unladylike curse from the daughter, a “NOW!” from the mother, and the thunk of the heavy door snapping closed, trapping me inside once more. Stunned, I managed a nervous laugh, to stammer in the direction of Jenny’s back that the girl was more than welcome to come in and share our tea. While eager to meet this young Janet Murray, I was still more desperate for another person’s presence, ANY person, to ease the tension in the room.
…and exactly one blink later, I realized in panic that Jenny had whirled to face me, that she had said something at the exact same moment, and that her EYES
—
I should have been able to match her; Claire Beauchamp was not of the wilting violet genus; but Jesus H Roosevelt CHRIST, that look had me absolutely terrified as I asked her to repeat herself.
“I said…”
Each word was slow and distinct; a hammer blow nailing me to the pillory. “Where. have. you. been?”
My thoughts, my explanations, they turned to vapor under her gaze, and I could do little more than gape up at her from my seat.
“You’re clearly no’ deid, as we were told.“ She was blazing, a snake coiled to strike. “And you’re no’ a fetch.”
I didn’t know what a fetch was, but it didn’t seem like something one would want to be.“No,” I confirmed, carefully, waiting. “I’m not.”
“Then, where in God’s name have ye been these twenty years, Claire?”
“Abroad,” I answered at once, relieved, recovering my composure enough to scrabble at the story I’d rehearsed on my long ride from Inverness. “I’ve been abroad,” I said, more confidently. “Working as an apothecary in the Colonies.”
She gave a soft, vicious laugh and turned her eyes upward for a moment. Then, she struck. “Had a *pleasant* life, have ye?”
The bite was bad enough, those fangs; but they had poison in them, too, coursing through my body, a promise of slow, creeping pain.
“Jenny,” I murmured gently, rallying myself into calm as I set down my teacup. This wouldn’t be easy. “I do understand how this must seem; but please, listen—”
“No, you’ll listen to me.” She was absolutely lethal with quiet fury, and didn’t blink once as she spoke in a low, rapid hiss. “Many’s the thing that’s been whispered of ye, before and after the ‘45. That ye were a spy that brought the English down upon us—that ye caused the great famine—that ye were a filthy witch or a hoor or both —
”
I tried to interrupt but she silenced me with a shaking finger and a basilisk glare. “But of all things, of ALL things, Claire, I would have gone to my grave swearing that ye loved my brother more than life itself.”
“I did.” RAGE had boiled instantly up in me and the accusation. “I DO.”
“Love doesna do what ye did to Jamie,” she spat, disgust manifested in every pore. “LOVE doesna allow a man to think the very heart of him has died
—
doesna let him go on living as an empty shell for near twenty years.”
No, it bloody well doesn’t, Jenny.
The strain of this tug-o-war of emotion was too much for my heart
—
my physical, frantically-beating heart. From bewilderment to terror to fury, I felt exhaustion and stress in every muscle and bone, the fatigue in every pumping of that poisoned blood — and now, shame.
If only I’d looked. If I’d looked sooner…not expecting to find him alive, but to honor his memory. Damn me to hell for it, I should have LOOKED.
I wanted to shrivel up and fade from existence, but Jenny would not have it. “Ye didna see him come back from Culloden, Claire,” she was saying, practically towering over me in my seat. “Ye werena here to drag him back from the brink.”
“I couldn’t be—”
“—But long after the wounds healed, the GRIEF kept Jamie near to death,” she seethed. “The pain ye caused him, Claire?—the agony of needing YOU, only you, and knowing ye gone forever? It was there on his face, in his bones—every day since—” she leveled a finger at me, “—since ye LEFT him.”
“I did NOT leave him.” I was on my feet, wanting to wrap my hands around her throat. “Jamie was dead. For twenty years, I’ve thought him dead and in his grave, so you can shut your damned mouth about matters of which you don’t know one bloody—
”
“Oh, I think I ken the way of things just fine,” she sneered, not shrinking back one bit before me. “Ye kent well the disaster to come
— dinna deny it, for ye told me to plant the damn potatoes, did ye not? You KNEW—and so ye arranged a better life, a life less destitute than the one we —”
“Jamie SENT me away, Jenny.”
My teeth were gritted hard, the war between indignant rage and tearing guilt wracking through me. “I begged him to let me die with him that day
—
BEGGED him; but he wouldn’t allow it, said it was his duty to die, and that I had to go on without him, had to go far away. And it KILLED me, Jenny.”
I could smell my own sweat, could smell the salt and tang and fear in it as I tried to hold myself together, to say, “If Jamie’s been a shell for twenty years, well, so have I.”
She said nothing, but faced me down with the same fury.
“Every single day, I have grieved and I have wished
—
have cursed the Bonnie fucking Prince Charlie and his fucking war that slaughtered my husband and left me to go on without him
—
”
“Only he wasna slaughtered. Jamie survived, and his own WIFE didna even bother to come back to check if— “
“He MEANT to die,” I shouted, hoarse and desperate, hoping volume would drown out the shame screaming in my ears. “Jamie MEANT to let himself be killed! He didn’t leave me any room for doubt on that point; you know precisely how he is.”
I was shaking uncontrollably. “I stayed away for twenty years because that was how I could bear it; the only way I could BEAR to keep on living. But as soon as I learned that he’d survived, I came. I gave up EVERYTHING to come find him, because Jamie was
—
is
—everything to me.” I shook my head, seething. “And to have you stand here and accuse me—”
“Did ye think I was dead, Claire?”
Her voice had gone suddenly light; conversational, as though she had merely asked if I’d like more jam. With a shock, I found that I recognized that practiced, calculated calm, those razor-sharp meanings cloaked so expertly in cordial tones. Colum MacKenzie, manifested here in the niece who had never met him; the spitting rage of the past minutes subsumed in something deeper; something far more lethal roiling beneath the skin. A wildcat prowling.
At my silence, she smiled a cat-smile, shrugged, and looked around the room, her hands palm-up as if in mild curiosity. “And what of Ian? Did ye assume he’d died also? Along wi’ your wee nieces and nephews? Your wee Fergus? Remember them?”
“Of course I do,” I whispered, that avalanche of shame continuing to crash all around me.
She nodded, considering, almost amiably. “I dinna recall getting any letters or messages betwixt folk letting us know that ye might be thinking of us.” Her voice went hard with every word, each syllable distinct as her emotions started to break through that MacKenzie wall. “Nothing from ye, not even to ask had we yet starved to death in the famine you kent was coming.”
“Jenny…” My control broke and I was weeping before her. “Oh, Jenny…”
And as I stared pleadingly into her face, her own dam shattered, and I was utterly run through to find that the emotion pent up behind it was not merely rage
—
it was grief, too.
“Did ye think ye meant nothing to us, Claire? To me?”
Jesus…
There came a terrible, stricken sound in her throat as she tried to speak through the torrent, as she stared up at me with tears in her eyes as her face contorted.
“Even if Jamie… had been gone—If the Lord had seen fit to—to take him on that accursed field…. “ She took a step toward me, not in threat, this time. “…did it truly never cross your mind that there would be joy in us knowing that you at least had lived?”
“Oh, Jenny.” I crossed the distance between us and clutched her tight, holding her so hard I thought she would snap; but she held me, too, her head pressed tight into my shoulder, the both of us falling apart together.
“Jenny…Jenny…I’m so sorry…”
God as my witness, I had mourned for her; for Ian, the children, for dear Fergus. They had been my family, and knowing the pain and hunger and grief they would face in the years after Culloden, without Jamie to watch over them
— For Jamie, I’d had to live with only grief; for those remaining at Lallybroch, I’d borne twenty years of fear.
“I’m so sorry….I can’t— It’s—” I kissed and touched her hair as we swayed, as I grappled for how to explain—how to give some kind of acceptable reason for why I hadn’t been able to get word— “It’s so much more complicated than you—”
I almost fell on my backside as I flew backward, my shoulders screaming with the sudden, violent assault as Jenny pushed me away with both hands, eyes once again wide with disbelieving fury as she repeated the word. “Complicated?”
“No, that’s not
—” I silently cursed myself. “Please, just let me
—
”
“How dare you,” she whispered, shaking her head, the tenuous bridge that had sprung up between us now plummeting back down into the gorge below. “How. dare. you.”
“Jenny,” I pleaded as she turned her back to me, her entire frame shaking. “Jenny, listen
—”
“I’ve heard enough.”
I reached out a hand to touch her shoulder, to beg her; but then lowered it again, and squared my shoulders: face this, Beauchamp.
“I love your brother with my entire heart, Jenny Murray. I left because he made me do so; and I came as soon as I learned he had survived.” A deep breath; a whiff of pine through the window giving me a sort of bracing strength. “There was a good reason that I couldn’t come
— couldn’t write to you
— and I will do anything, everything to explain why, in time. I swear it to you.”
Silence.
“But first…please….I have to see Jamie.”
Silence.
“I know he’s been working as a printer, in Edinburgh. All I ask is for you to confirm that he’s still there, and
—”
“He’s marrit, Claire.”
My first week as an active-duty battlefield nurse, I was assigned overnight duty in the convalescent ward.
There were still emergency surgeries and intensive cases from the recent battle going on, leaving me the only one that could be spared to watch over those who needed no urgent treatment; those who were still mortally wounded—but for whom nothing more needed to be, or could be done. Determined to perform my duties well, I’d walked between the columns of beds in that wretched, foul-smelling tent, changing bandages by lantern-light, giving water to those that could swallow, and comfort where I could.
There was one man
—
Robertson, his name had been….He’d received horrific burns over a vast percentage of his body, and his moans of pain and panic were the heartbeat of that long night. Nothing I did, nothing I offered, nothing I said could soothe him
—he just kept moaning, groaning, crying and whimpering like an animal…and staring up at me with one wild eye through his bandages. I’d been so chilled by that sight, by that man—who became not a patient to me, but a haunting.
I’d avoided him, eventually, stopped going to his bedside, even when his groans were at their most agonized—and the shame of that….It was like being pursued by wild dogs. I’d busied myself with other patients; busied myself with re-rolling bandages; busied myself with absolutely anything to keep from focusing on those anguished, pitiful moans; anything to keep out of that brown, pleading stare.
And there came a time in the night when his moans tapered
—and then ceased entirely, with one…final….whimper….and even then, I didn’t go to him. I spent more than an hour telling myself that Mr. Robertson had fallen asleep at last, and wasn’t it a relief that the poor man had found some solace in somnolence at last.
I’d known
—I’d KNOWN that he was dead—and yet I was too afraid to acknowledge it, to go to his bedside and confirm.
I’d cowered, refusing to face the agonizing truth
knowing that once I learned it, the truth—
not my fantasy, not my coping mechanism, but the TRUTH—
I couldn’t ever be the same.
Nothing could ever be the same.
“When?” My voice was a husk. A form.“To whom?”
“Does it matter?”
I was silent.
“He’s got a wife,” Jenny said, quiet, but slowly, carefully, so I wouldn’t miss a single word. “A home. A new life.”
The fabric of my skirt was rough and comfortless in my grasping hands.
“…And two wee lassies that love their Da.”
Da.
Something within me popped—a thread, maybe, one of many clumsy things that had been holding my heart together. I’d come back so blithely sure of myself; brimming with the anticipation of bringing Jamie news of that one child of his blood—To give him hope
—
to give him JOY.
Not just two children….two daughters.
What would news of another girl—one he’d never met—never would meet—even one conceived of the deepest love
—
mean in comparison to that? To having held his own little girls in his arms?
It would mean something…but not enough.
“Is he happy?”
My words were a choked bark of a thing; hurt and anger and longing as I hauled on those threads, forcing them to hold.
Jenny didn’t answer.
I was standing. I needed to know. “Is. He. Happy?”
If somehow this new life of his wasn’t blessed
—If even despite the girls, the marriage was damaged, maybe —
“Aye,” Jenny said at last, meeting my eye with frank hardness. “Happiest I’ve ever seen him.”
Happier even than with you.
And just like that, the raw seams of my heart—so crude, so fragile, those threads—split open, the remnants fluttering into the shadows.
“You should be on your way,” Jenny was saying, “without delay, before you’re recognized and word travels.” She didn’t want me under her roof even for one night. It was written in every bone and muscle of her as she moved to the door. “I’ll be off to have Mary pack up food for your journey.”
“Please, might I
—
” started to beg, then shut my mouth.
She turned, tight-lipped, impatient. “What is it ye need? A fresh horse?”
“Only paper. A quill.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Absolutely not.”
I held out my hands in surrender. “I’ll go, Jenny,” I whispered. “I’m going, at once, as you say. I swear it. I’ll leave and I’ll never come back.” My entire body hunched before her, pleading. “But for mercy’s sake, let me leave him my last words.”
She stared; but something stirred in her eyes.
“He won’t know where I’m bound,” I swore, panting with the effort to hold back the tears. “I’ll be long gone before he reads it. Please. Please, Jenny.”
I stared at the blank parchment for a very long time.
I made plans
—
I let my mind run rampant, schemes for how I would reach him, how I would FIND him in Edinburgh. Jenny didn’t bloody need to know. Jamie would WANT to see me! No matter what his sister
— He had loved me first
— He would want
—
he was —
Happier
even than with you.
I wept
…letting all the heartbreak wash out of me onto that page,
drop by drop,
my fingers wrenching in my hair,
until the page was damp with grief.
No future here.
Not for you.
Not with him.
And a long time after that, I wiped my eyes.
I wrapped something tight and impenetrable around my heart
Then wrote what needed to be said, what I needed him to know.
My hand did not shake. I did not let a single tear blur the ink.
I would be strong for Jamie.
He had been strong for me.
I would not take anything away from him.
About a week prior EDINBURGH
“Uncle, please, please, PLEASE can I stay?”
“Ian, for the last time,” he said over his shoulder, paying the tavernmaid for the stores and nodding his thanks, “your Mam will up and geld me if I harbor her wee fugitive; and fond as I undoubtedly am of ye, lad, I’m no’ yet willing to lose my parts over it.”
“But we dinna have to keep it secret-like!” Young Ian insisted, bouncing on his toes like a toadling. “Ye can write to her! Tell her you’re taking me on as apprentice in the print shop! She’ll be fashed that I left, aye, right enough—but she canna object o’ermuch to me learning such a valuable trade, not wi’ her own brother watching over me!”
Not for the first time, that day, Jamie wavered.
Ian saw it and redoubled his pleading. “Come onnnnnn, Uncle Jamie, PLEASE?”
There were two important reasons that his whole being screamed at him to grant Ian’s wish, to let the boy stay on….but both were selfish; deeply so; and if he truly loved this lad, the nephew who was like a son—the only son he’d know, henceforth— it was his duty to show him the ways of honorable men.
…even as joyless as honor tended to be.
He jerked his head toward the door. “Get out to the stableyard, Ian. It’s past time we were off.”
“Uncllllllllle!” the boy groaned, running both hands through his hair, distraught. “Ye can tell Mam ye gave me a good beating for it before taking me on! Hell, ye can GIVE me the beating, and I willna make a yip!”
Jamie repressed the twitching corners of his mouth, keeping up his show of stern reproach. “On wi’ ye. It’s time to get ye home.”
I’d run upstairs the instant Claire was gone through the door—first to the bedchamber overlooking the road, then up still further to the upper floors, so I could see her for just a moment longer. For, damn me, but I couldna take my eyes off her…just kept—watchin’ her— until the last.
And even when the shape of her had long vanished over the horizon, I was still watchin’, staring into the spot where she’d been, the last place she’d inhabited before she’d gone away….just as she’d promised.
The letter—God, Claire’s letter—was clutched tight in my hand and heavy on my heart. But it was also heavy in my hand, I realized. There was more than paper, therein, I’d swear to it; firm, whatever it was, but not rigid, exactly, for I could still bend it easily.
I had the nail of my finger under the edge of the wax before somethin’….somethin’ stopped me—or could it be someone?—and I shivered.
“Jenny?”
Claire was in the doorway of the kitchen, cloak on, the letter clutched to her breast.
I stood, awkwardly. “You’ve finished?”
She nodded, and her eyes closed, of a sudden, and she looked so very young, like one of the bairns in a thunderstorm, all scared and—small—So sad, and—
—and I wavered.
But before I could say anythin’, Claire was there right before my face, pressin’ the envelope hard into my hands. She didna let go, just kept—holdin’ on to me, eyes boring into mine so I couldna even blink.
“Whatever hurt there is between you and me, Jenny—” Those whisky-colored eyes were shining wi’ feeling, ready to spill over wi’ it. “—I beg you to see that Jamie gets this.” She added her other hand and squeezed me so hard that own hands were shakin’ along wi’ hers. “Please don’t wait too long to give it to him.”
My voice cracked, and I couldna look away. “Why’s that?”
“There are things in here, that—” the paper crinkled, loud and violent, that bitty sound, “—that will give him peace….I hope.” A small, broken breath.
Peace…Peace for Jamie…
“Please, Jenny—PLEASE—promise me that you’ll give it to him.” Those wildcat eyes begged, and I could do nothing but nod. She heaved an enormous sigh and closed them, nodding, herself. “Thank you.”
She released me, then and made for the door, pulling her cloak tight about her. Her eyes were on the handle as she said, “Goodbye.”
And then before I could blink, she’d come back again and thrown both her arms ‘round me. Unnaturally tall as she was, my arms were trapped down at my sides, so I couldna have hugged her back, even had I wished to.
Her voice was a ragged sob of a whisper. “I do love you, Jenny.” She kissed my cheek.
And then she was out the door, gone. Forever.
And it was only as she was far, far gone, a vanished speck through a frozen windowpane, that I realized….
I *had* wished to.
“Mam?”
I nearly leapt out of my skin as I whirled like a guilty bairn to the door behind, where Maggie stood wi’ her own babe on her hip.
“Ye’ve been up here for an age and a half, Mam. Did…” She gave me a significant look, “….something give ye a turn?”
“I’m fine, mo chridhe,” I promised, flustered-like, bustling past her down the stairs to resume my work and hide my face. “Perfectly fine, nothin’ to—”
“But who was she, Mam?” Maggie’s voice, her footsteps, chased me down the stairs. “The dark-haired Englishwoman? Why was she here?”
“She was a traveler. No one ye need be worrit about.”
“Mam, I’m no’ a wee bairn. We all heard the great skelloch the two of ye were makin’. Clearly she was someone ye kent well, and it sounded as though she had come were wi’ a purpose, and
—
“
“Maggie, do not—
”
“But what was it she wanted of ye, Mam? Shestayed hardly an hour, and we — “
“I dinna wish to DISCUSS it, Margaret.”
From the look on her face, I’d shouted it, violently. She went all meek-like and left me standing alone on the stairs landing without another word. I started to go after her, but—I let my hands fall back to my side, clenching into shaking fists.
What was it the Englishwoman had wanted of me, Maggie, love? The woman who saw ye delivered into this world? Only to come make peace and to mend your Uncle Jamie’s heart…and I…
*I*….
Hands of guilt seemed to shove me toward the door, toward the stables.
Janet Murray, go after Claire. Go after her right this moment. There’s still time to catch her up!
“Aye, and WHY should I?” I muttered under my breath, stormin’ to the pantry and busyin’ my hands, furiously flyin’ from task to task.
WHY? Because it was doomed from the start!
Dinna lay the troubles of their marriage at my feet. It was GOOD for Jamie to be marrit. He NEEDED a woman.
You saw her fetch at the wedding. Jesus God, woman, THAT was your warning. THIS is the test.
I wasna going to see my brother die alone, and I couldna have dreamed that she’d saunter in one day after—
No one could have supposed Claire was alive; but now that you know, you MUST make this right.
Go and stop her…GO!
She had no right —No RIGHT to just vanish as she did. God, the —the arrogance of it — I threw an old jar against the wall, the crash of the pottery against the stone some kind of satisfaction amid the storms of rage and of shame within me. —
not to even CHECK !—And ‘complicated,’ she says…COMPLICATED!
She said she’d be able to explain.
All can be made right, Janet Murray. Go after her, beg her to —
I'll no’ beg that Sassenach witch for anythin’. The rage was boiling up within me, and suddenly even the promise of delivering her letter seemed like the vilest of insults. ‘Will bring him peace,’ she says…How could she POSSIBLY ken what can bring him peace, having been gone from him for twenty
—
YOU would know, just fine, if it were Ian. Separation couldn’t change your knowing of him, could it?
I ignored that pleading, reasonable voice and stormed back up the stairs. The only sensible thing was to pretend as though the letter had never existed.
Jamie need never know. If he wasna precisely at *peace,* now, he’d at least settled into a living, and found a certain
—
He hasn’t.
NO sense at all in opening up old
—
And since when were love or mercy about *sense*?
What he doesna know canna pain him, and that’s all there is to it.
I stormed upstairs and threw the letter resolutely into the back of the drawer, coverin’ it over wi’ old underthings and rags where Ian wouldna find it.
But all the rest of the day, that stern voice haunted me, warred with me.
Go after her.
Leave me be.
What’s done is done.
No, it isn’t.
GO AFTER HER.
Claire let him suffer.
She stayed away for TWENTY—
She doesna DESERVE —
That was Jamie’s judgment to make, woman. Not yours.
I told her only the bare facts.
No. You lied to her.
He DOES have a wife!
He DOES have two daughters that called him Da!
You told her all the difficult truths and made them as painful to her as you could.
And you told one lie.
That Jamie is happy.
Is he?
No…
The guilt shuddered through me, a fist wrapped around my throat.
He’s broken…
He’s still hurting…still raw….
From want of Her.
And you sent her away.
The look on her face as she begged me to give him that letter—
But the THINGS she did to —
What you’ve just done is worse, still
—For you did it from spite, Janet Murray; of your own pride and
—
Across the house a door CRASHED open and I reeled back from the spice cupboard as though shot, my blood poundin’ in my ears as footsteps came thunderin’ in from the front door. “What in GOD’s holy name—???”
“I dinna need to WASH to see Mam,” a grumpy voice protested from the foyer.
“Oh Mary, Michael, and Bride—IAN!!” I’d forgotten—completely FORGOTTEN to be sick with worry for my wee scoundrel who’d run away. Lord forgive me, what sort of mother FORGETS
—
I flew across the house, my guilt over Claire momentarily replaced by outrage at myself and fury at my son and RELIEF. “Ian!!” I sobbed as I threw my arms around his thin frame. “Ian you –YOU–oh—!” I swore violently, a great string of things, but all grateful, all emphatic with love as I squeezed him tight, wetting his shirtfront “—I’m so glad you’re safe, a chuisle.”
“I’m fine, mam,” he said with a sigh, though he returned the hug.
I pulled back and slapped his shoulder, hard. “Well ye WILLNA be by the time I’m done wi’ ye! What were ye THINKING, Ian Murray, runnin’ away like that wi’ no word???”
“I DID leave word, Mam!”
“Oh, ye think a wee note is enough? Not in this house, Ian. God, I’m so fashed and so happy in one single moment—” True enough; I was panting with the rush of the relief and the fright of the last two weeks. I hugged him again, then pushed him toward the stairs. “Off wi’ ye—we’ll deal wi’ your punishment later.”
I turned from one Ian (well, the back of one, as he sulked off) to sigh in relief at sight of the other. “There’s my sweet lass,” he said, grinnin’ that bright, warm smile that I loved so well and holding out his arms to me.
All but fell into them, I did. “Mo ghraidh, ye found him.” I pressed my head against his chest, so happy to have him close; so happy for the relief of havin’ him hold me. There, against his heart, all could be well; all the voices and the shame and the rage could be silent.
He kissed me, touched my cheek, then turned for the study. “I didna do much.“ He thudded into an armchair and pulled me into his lap. “In fact, I didna even get to Edinburgh.”
“No?” I grinned, kissin’ his dear face. “Was he making such puir time? Chasin’ after lost pups and rabbits, again, aye?”
“Nay, he’d already been to Edinburgh. When I came upon him, it was head on, already on their way back to us.”
I jolted back. “Their?”
“Aye, Ian and Jamie.”
“JAMIE?”
Go after her
“Aye, who else?” Ian kissed me, blithe as ye please. “Said he didna trust Wee Ian to come back unescorted, and rightly so.”
Go after her
“Well, and
—
it’s good ye were able to meet Jamie on the way.” I brushed my hands nervously down my skirt, tryin’ not to give in to the feelings risin’ up in my gullet. “He’ll have needed to be back in his shop as soon as possible.”
“Oh, nay, he left Fergus in charge. Said he was past due for a visit. No sense in him making the journey twice, now, is there?”
“Jamie’s
—
He’s
— ?” I felt as though I were going to faint.
Go NOW
What if he finds out?
You MUST tell him.
I canna
— I CANNA
—
I screamed it at my conscience, but it wasna like the rage of before: a scream of panic. The weight of what I’d done—it was fallin’ down all around me and over me, smashin’ apart my anger and my stubbornness and my pride only to reveal beneath all my darkest shame and regret and —
“Jamie’s gone to Balriggan, then?”
“NO, a nighean,” came a grinnin’ voice that paralyzed me as surely as the bolt of a crossbow in my spine, “he’s behind ye.”
I started and jumped from the pillow in the dark, my whole body seizing and splintering wi’ panic—
But it was only Ian, of course, half-asleep at my back. He pulled me closer against him and kissed my shoulder. “Yr—tossin’ and turnin’ about like—S’matter?”
“Nothin’…Nothin’, only somethin’ I ate,” I whispered, tryin’ to catch my breath.
“Get—ye somethin’?”
“Nay, lad, I’ll—I’ll do,” I panted, my blood racing and pounding. “Go b—back to sleep, mo ghriadh.” I pulled back the quilts and made to sit up. “I’ll—go take a turn— settle meself.” Nearly midnight, it must be.
Ian groped clumsily for me and caught my hand. “Lov’ye…”
Tears prickled in my eyes, sharp and hot against the air of the night. God, the tenderness of him—the sweetness and care and love this good man lavished upon me, always—
“D’ye think me a good person, Ian?” I whispered into the dark between us.
“Mm?”
My throat felt sore, the words as raw and frail and desperate as my pathetic heart. “Am I truly good? Or have I only been good at pretendin’ to be…while I’m no more than the verra worst kind of filth?”
The question rang out into the silence; unanswered. He’d have reassured me, had he actually heard, had the soft, familiar whiffle of his snorin’ not already resumed. It was as well not to be coddled wi’ comforting lies. I kent the truth well enough.
Oh, but how I ached to wake him, to tell him at least of Claire and the evil that I’d done; to let him hold me tight and safe while I wept into his chest; let the comfort of him surround me, soothe me, as he convinced me wi’ gentle kisses and soft words that all would be well, that he’d carry the burden wi’ me—that I wouldna be alone, ever.
Alone like Jamie.
Alone like Claire.
This was my penance: this coldness—this regret—this utter, writhing, blistering shame. I’d taken away any chance for their happiness, so for the rest of my life, I had to bear it; to atone, myself, however I might. Emptiness, carried alone: a fitting punishment for my crime.
I kissed Ian’s brow, slipped out of bed, found my shawl, and made my way down the stairs toward the study. I reeled a bit on the treads, my head achin’ and spinnin’, and small bloody wonder, for I’d drunk heavily all the evenin’.
At first, it were only that I was preparin’ myself for the task at hand, hopin’ the drink would brace me, give me courage for when I found the right moment to face Jamie. Every time I looked at him, though, the gentle hunger in his eyes that lit over bein’ wi’ family; the smile on his face as he played with the wee bairns, as he joyed in the balm of home—of love—God, my coward’s heart had bucked and fled, at every opportunity.
And by the time I might have finally confronted things, the drink had taken hold, bringing my fears to bear, and I’d staggered up to my bed long before anyone else, and dreamt of screams of pain—and sorrow—and—
Now, I was surprised and relieved to find as I reached the bottom of the stairs that I was hardened, a wall of conviction slowly rising up around me, protectin’ me. Jamie need not know; Jamie must not be told. It was too late, after all; Claire was too far gone. I’d done wrong, to my everlasting shame. I’d committed a terrible, cruel evil against them both. But what good would it do to torture him wi’ that knowledge, now? When he had no chance of findin’ her? None. T’would be only agony to him, that wisp of hope, now vanished by my hand.
No. He couldna ever be told. It was the kindest thing I could do, now, to keep the secret from hurting him further.
All that remained was for me to find a way to live wi’ myself—drink and distraction; and there was always a good decanter of whisky in the study along wi’ the books. I pushed through the study door and was no more than two steps in before I collided wi’ something solid and—
“JESUS!”
“WHAT IN—?”
My candle was somersaulting through the air and onto the good rug, and just as suddenly, quick fingers snatched it up again before it could catch.
“I’m so sorry, Jen,” Jamie was sayin’, settin’ the candlestick on the table next to one of his own before turnin’ back to grin at me, all sheepish in only his shirt. “I couldna sleep and came down for a dram and was looking at the books just there by the door, and—” He stopped and blinked, surveying me in alarm. “Lass, you’re white as a sheet and shaking like— Are ye hurt, dove?”
“No, its—I’m fine—” I shrank back from his touch, from the heartbreaking sweetness of the endearment.
Tell him.
Only—agony to him, now.
It’s far pa—past—(breathe)—too late—damn me to hell for it.
I turned hastily for the door. “I didna mean to intrude upon your quiet, Jamie, I’ll just—”
“No-no-no, dinna be daft,” Jamie laughed, eagerly, stepping swiftly around me to block the door. “Stay! Sit wi’ me a time—have a drink.”
“No, really, I should—”
“Jen, we barely got to speak all this evening,” he said, and there was more than a touch of hurt in that soft voice, those soft eyes. “Please? Stay wi’ me?”
Brother, if ye only kent what I was, you’d cast me out into the cold this moment, and have me walk until the very sea swallowed me up.
And I’d deserve it.
[Jamie]
“Come on, wee fool,” Jamie said, gently, but in truth, he was begging. He wanted her to stay. He needed her to stay, to help drive this terrible sadness away, tonight.
At last, she relented, and let him close the door. He held out his arms to her, and after a very long moment, she came to him. “It’s very glad I am to see ye, lass,” he whispered into her hair, trying not to let his voice crack with just how glad he was of it.
“Aye—well—”
Lord, why did she sound so tentative around him, tonight? She had been cool toward him all the evening, busying herself with the meal and with clearing it, and with taking another whisky, offering him one, but then bustling onward to the next task and retiring early before they could exchange more than a dozen words.
“Tell me true.” He gently took her by the shoulders and held her far enough away to look her in the eye, beseeching. “Have I done something to wrong ye, lass?”
She gaped at him, going even paler than before. “Wrong me?”
“I dinna think I’m mistaken in noticing you’re no’ pleased to see me, this visit. So I’ll ask again….Have I done something that’s wronged ye?” Even moments ago, she had seemed barely to touch him as he embraced her. “I’ll do anythin’ I can to make it right, I swear it.”
“Never.” To his astonishment, her face fell, and she made a little sound almost like a sob as she at last hugged him tight, a real embrace. “You would never do anything to wrong me, Jamie.”
He held her close, the sense of home finally settling around him. His blood—his sister.
“I’m sorry, Jamie,” she said, muffled into his chest, “I am glad to see ye. I’m just—no’ quite myself, tonight.”
“Is something amiss wi’ ye then, dove? Are ye feeling ill?”
“No, I’ll do.” He could have sworn she shuddered, but she pulled back and put her hands on her hips to study at him with brows drawn, as she always did, the dear, wee busybody. “Lord above, you’re too thin, ye great toad.”
“Are great toads typically thin?” he laughed, placing a kiss on the top of her head and moving to settle onto the plump cushions of the settee.
“Aye, and your voice all scratchit like one, to boot,” she laughed with something like her usual fire, curling her legs under her on the armchair facing him. “But truly, do ye get yourself fed at all, in Edinburgh?”
“Aye,” he said, passing her a whisky glass, “not grand fare, mind,” he winked, or tried to, “but dinna fash: I make it a special point of policy to eat every day.”
“Well, that’s good. Do it more, aye? You’re—” She shook her head, looking actually pained as she took him in again. “You’re….wasting away, Jamie.”
He waved a hand in dismissal. “That’s why I must visit my sister, whose excellent cooks will always get me fattened up again.”
“I must thank ye again for seeing my wee Ian safely home to me.”
“’Course, Jen,” he murmured, “happy to do it. The lad continues to be quite the handful, I see.”
“God,” she groaned, “I’ve not the faintest idea what’s to be done about the wee eejit. S’like tryin’ to trap a breeze upon a mountaintop. I’m sure he’ll ask to be allowed to go back wi’ ye wi’ our blessing this time, but—”
“I’d no’ mind it, owermuch” He tried to sound casual, not as desperately eager as he felt. “In fact, I verra nearly let him talk me into letting him stay, this time.”
“Wheedles something fierce, does wee Ian,” Jenny agreed ruefully. “I suppose ‘tis good for his hope of catchin’ a wife one day. A boy that’s so plain best ken how to wield charm to his good uses, at least,” she said with a grimace and a deep draught from her glass.
“Aye, that’s so,” Jamie laughed. “He can argue the black off a boot. Though, it was less to do wi’ him than me,” he added quietly, a moment later.
“How’s that?”
“I’d have been happy for the company.” He shrugged, trying for nonchalance, but it was a shrug of unease. “It’s quite lonely, there in the shop.” His emptiness rang into the very corners of the room in the saying of it.
Jenny heard it too, and put on a cheery, winning manner as she scoffed, “Nonsense, you’ve got Fergus, aye?”
“Fergus is a great help, true, and an even greater comfort to me,” he agreed. The boy—Christ, he was fifteen years or more past being a *boy,* but Fergus would always be so, to Jamie—was his pride and his right hand.
“But, of course, ye may not ken how often Fergus is gone from Edinburgh seeing to—other business. Scarce half the days of the month, do I see him, in fact.” He shrugged. “And of course, I’m alone in my rooms, after the shop closes. Wi’ only myself for company, the conversation tends to be a trifle repetitive.”
He meant it as a wee jest to lighten the mood. It didn’t work, for either of them. There was a fair-sized lump in his throat. Jenny’s hands were tight around her glass, her eyes down. He knew he shouldn’t speak so, so wretchedly self-pitying, but damn him, he needed to have someone hear him and understand.
“Sometimes, I go an entire week or more wi’out anyone—not a soul— speaking to me as if they knew me. And it can be longer, even, wi’out anyone saying my real name to me….In Edinburgh, ken, I’m Alexander Malcolm.”
She gave a weak smile, whispering, “Sawney.”
“Aye. And folk smile and bow and say, ‘Good Day, Mr. Malcolm.’….‘Shall we see ye on Saturday, Sawney?’….’When are ye thinking of taking a wife, Mr. Malcolm?’”
The empty glass shot from Jenny’s hands and spun ‘round on the carpet. Neither of them moved to pick it up, and Jamie found he couldn’t stop talking.
He swallowed. “Before the cave—prison—England——”
Lord, that he might be safe.
“—I didna truly ken how much it meant to me to be….known. Myself. And after everything that’s happened these twenty years, I now find most days as though—” He shook his head. “—as though I’ll just fall away and vanish into naught, from lack of it. I havena….” He dropped his eyes, too ashamed to look her in the eye as he spoke the darkest desolation of his heart, “I can hardly even name the broken pieces of me, any longer…..let alone hope to put them back together.”
Jenny blinked hard as though holding back tears. Lord, no, there were tears in her eyes, to his shame. He wasn’t saying these things for pity. It was simply the truth of his heart, and it was a true gift to be given the grace to say it aloud, rather than having it tear him apart in the quiet of his mind, day after day. And yet it pained him to grieve Jenny so, to give her any more reason to fear and fret for him.
He started to say so, but she suddenly blurted, “Maybe—” She was pale, and Jamie could swear she was trembling. “Maybe ‘tis time to—to come back to Balriggan.”
“No,” he said at once with half a laugh, standing and walking over to one of the bookcases.
“Jamie…”
“No, I said.”
“I ken things wi’ Laoghaire—”
“There’s no’ moving me on this,” he said, more sharply. He had no desire for her to dream up another scheme for rehabilitating his personal happiness. “I’ll continue to do right by them, of course, see them taken care of but…No. I’ll no’ try to find comfort, there, again.”
“Jamie, mo chridhe, please just listen—” She was right on the verge of weeping, from the sound at his back. “I ken she’s not—that she’s… what she is…but I dinna want—” There came the sound of Jenny throwing up her hands in desperation, “—Ye shouldna spend the rest of your days alone, Jamie, wi’—wi’ no JOY! The thought of—”
“There is no joy to be had at Balriggan, sister. Not that kind.”
“If—”
He turned to her and gently grasped her shoulders. “You’ve known me all my life, Jen,” he said softly down into her face, contorted as it was with shockingly-vehement feeling. “I’ve been wrong about many things; been hasty and reckless and a fool, when my emotions got ahead of my better judgment, or before I kent proper facts—” He cupped her cheek, his voice hoarse. “—but trust me to ken my own heart, at least: to be alone, to be empty, is better than—than that; to lose what pieces of me still remain to—anger…bitterness….”
She stared up into his face, lips pursed, eyes red and glistening, voice trembling uncontrollably. “But can ye no’—?”
He released her and kissed her cheek, putting all his self into being strong and brave-faced once more, as was his duty. “Dinna fash yourself about me. I’m sorry I let myself carry on down such a maudlin road, this night.”
Jamie smiled, as warm and broad a smile as he could, as he walked past her back to the settee, meaning to sit. “But it means a great deal to me how much ye do trouble yourself for my sake, truly. I ken ye always mean the best for me, Jenny, and I’m—”
The sob burst out of Jenny like a cannon blast in the night and Jamie whirled, reaching for an absent dirk. “Jen, WH—”
Her face was a broken thing behind her hands. “I’m so—sss—soSORRY, brother.”
“Sorry?” Jamie felt as though he’d been hit by a charging horse. That wasn’t pity in her ‘sorry’: it was true apology. “Whatever for??”
“For the fool that I am,” she sobbed, the tears flowing over her fingers. “After all ye’ve been through—your own sister ought—OUGHT to—Christ, Jamie, I’m so—ashamed.”
“Jenny, dove, mo chridhe,” he whispered as he reached for her, “what on earth are are ye going on ab—?”
“Wait here—” she managed to choke, already staggering for the door. Her eyes were wild and she put out a staying hand as she went. “Dinna move, just—Just—wait!!”
Too stunned to do otherwise, Jamie stood unmoving on the study rug, mind racing, absolutely at a loss to guess what had come over her.
When at last she came back through the door, she was white as death, a paper, or envelope, perhaps, clasped against her breast.
“Jenny, you’re frightening me. Tell me at once what’s happened.”
“I’ve done—” Her chest seemed to cave in around the envelope, wracked with her sobs. “I’ve done a terrible wrong against ye, brother.”
“Nonsense,” he vowed, moving toward her to sort things out. “Whatever’s the—”
“Don’t,” she hissed, halting him with a frantic shake of the the head, her teeth gritted. “Just—stop.”
He raised both his hands to her in desperate plea.“I dinna understand, Jenny.”
She closed the distance between them with halting steps and forced the envelope into his hands, holding her own tight around them. He couldn’t take his eyes off her face, for it was an expression he’d never seen there—absolute anguish and absolute shame.
His eyes dropped to his hands. Aye, a thick envelope, the face bare and unmarked.
He turned it over and saw the single word there written:
J a m i e
He might have been screaming—he might have been crying—he might have fallen into a dark pit, with the earth closed in over him.
He was on the ground, his leg aching from where he’d fallen against something. The envelope stared up at him from the floor and he stared back.
those five letters
written in Claire’s hand
a thin interlace pattern pressed into the blood-red seal.
Jenny was sobbing. “She was here— Claire was here, Jamie—”
“Claire’s gone—” he was screaming or whimpering, “Claire—is—GONE—”
“She came back.”
“—GONE—”
“No, she came for ye—CAME here—
Nothing made sense
“—And I did such grievous wrong by ye in the things I said to her.”
There was no damned SENSE in the words that she—
C l a i r e
Jenny kneeling before him.
Claire—
Jenny, grabbing his hand, hard. “She said it would give ye peace, what’s inside.”
’CAME for’—?
Jenny, pressing the packet against his chest wi’ his own hand, holding it there, tight.
CLAIRE?
Jenny’s face, mere inches from his, breaking apart with weeping—all but mute from the violence of her pain. “I'm—so—sorry, Jamie.”
A kiss on his cheek, and then she was gone.
Watching like one paralyzed as the envelope fluttered once more to the ground onto its face.
J a m i e
…his real name.
He lunged, but he couldn’t even lift the envelope. His fingers felt like claws—lacking thumbs—lacking everything except brute force. He managed to rip off the seal and force open the pages, but he could only press it flat onto the floor with both his hands, hunched over it like a starving beast over its kill.
And though he’d feared it some nightmare, his soul burst like the lungs of a drowning man as he read—as he believed— the words beneath him:
Hi :) not exactly a prompt, but more of a musing. What do you think would happen if Claire went to Lallybroch first, instead of Edinburgh/printshop? Thanks for your great fics, girls!
Welp, musing it might have been, but here we now are! Thank you for an inspiring prompt!! -Mod Bonnie
One
November, 1766
“Hello, again.”
A breeze carried my words overtop the horse’s head, bearing them toward the neat stone walls just visible in the distance; and having said it, I felt something—yes—relief shudder down my spine. Despite the years, despite everything…it did still feel like my home. Divinely-sent or mere desperation, I took the reassurance with all my heart, and kicked my mount hard toward Lallybroch; toward home.
It had been a last-minute decision, to come here, instead of to Edinburgh. In fact, I’d been fully through the stones and in Inverness boarding the carriage that would deliver me south! Then something clicked into place and before I even stopped to question myself, I was exchanging the coach fare for a horse and saddle, wondering why Lallybroch hadn’t been my plan from the start.
Well, no—I knew exactly why. Because the idea of going anywhere but directly into Jamie’s arms had seemed ludicrous.
He was ALIVE. And so close—I was *so close* to having him again, it was like a physical pain in my chest. the longing—the wanting….
But *think*, Beauchamp, I’d counseled myself in those vital seconds on the mounting block: a visit to Lallybroch will yield me *actual* information as to the whereabouts of those arms; a far cry more reliable than your hunch from a two-hundred year old artifact! I mean, *good Lord*, consider all the variables, here! Perhaps he’s moved to new premises across town! What if he’s abandoned his nom de plume for another and there is no longer an A. Malcolm printing in Edinburgh? What if he’s been so successful in his business, he’s moved to London to join a larger firm? Hell, what if he’s decided to make his fortune as a fur trader in Canada, for heaven’s sake??
Yes, the closer I got to Lallybroch, the more confident I was in the wisdom of my sudden volte-face. Even overlooking the more remote possibilities that may have taken him out of Scotland, a quick chat with Jenny and Ian could easily save me days or even weeks of roaming around Edinburgh asking after red-headed printers; and as an unarmed woman traveling alone and with limited funds, this was more than prudent, no matter how you looked at it.
AND…. well…
I mean, surely, even if he did still occupy the shop in Carfax Close, he would visit home occasionally….
….and there was always the chance that even NOW, he might be…he COULD be…
Don’t get ahead of yourself, Beauchamp. One leap at a time.
I dismounted and led the horse on foot for the final approach up the road toward the house, as much for my own pounding heart as for the beast’s sake. Dear God…almost exactly the same as I left it twenty years ago.
The trees overhanging the dooryard; the sounds of cooking and chatting and children playing from inside the house; even the customary pack of dogs that heralded my arrival through the archway, howling and barking as befitted their time-honored station…Yes, it was home. My home.
“What do you think, lads?” I laughed softly, holding out my knuckles for the slobbering, leaping home guard to sniff. “Do I pass muster?”
Apparently I did, for they all began vying for my attention. I obliged happily, scratching behind ears with my free hand and murmuring dog-lover-nonsense to each of them in turn, wondering if goodwill and trust could be passed down canine generations.
“A good morning to ye, Mistress!”
I turned to see a stableboy of about ten hurrying across the dooryard toward me. A stranger, to my eyes, but with a warm, friendly manner, he bobbed a quick bow.
“Good morning!” I replied with a grateful smile as I relinquished the horse. “And what’s your name, lad?”
At my words, he jumped and uttered a gaelic curse, his reaction so violent that he dropped the reins and caused the horse to rear. It wasn’t until I’d reclaimed the beast—nearly getting my teeth knocked in— and turned panting back to the boy, to his pale and frightened face, that I realized what had been his curse: sassenach. Said not in affection, the way Jamie had from the beginning, and Jenny and others had picked up from time to time in jest: but in fear and disgust. The vehemence of it felt like a blow to my gut, and for the first time, I felt afraid, ludicrous as it was to be bowed before a young boy. Before, I’d been only suspicious to Highlanders. Now, after Culloden, after the Clearances—I was, objectively, the enemy.
The boy, to his credit, recovered with a good show of politeness, retrieving the reins and offering a murmured apology. He did *not*, though, offer his name. “Are ye expected at the house this morn, Mistress?” (Do you have a reason for being here, or are you an English informant fixing to burn the place down?)
“I’m an old friend of the family,” I said, with a concerted confidence and ease that I hoped would reassure him, “but, no, I’m not expected.”
In fact, I could say with absolute confidence that I would be the least expected person ever to darken Lallybroch’s door.
“Oh, aye,” the boy said. Polite. Wary. “If you’ll just follow me, Mistress, I’ll put awa’ the horse and then show ye inside until someone will be in to receive ye.”
Someone. Someone.
My heart thumped and my hope screamed piercingly in my ears:
Jamie. Jamie. JAMIE.
My hands were shaking. I had to swallow and moisten my mouth to get the words out as I followed behind the boy toward the hitching post. “I beg your pardon, but does the…?” Nothing to lose, at this point, I suppose. “Is the laird in residence?”
“Mr. Jamie?” the boy asked over his shoulder, clearly surprised by the inquiry. “Aye, ‘course.”
He was here.
I nearly fainted where I stood.
Thank God!! Thank GOD I trusted my gut and came here instead of going to Edinburgh.
Jamie was near. My Jamie could be HERE at any moment!
God, what will—
“But he’s no’ to home just at present,” the boy added hastily. “Went up to Broch Morda for the day.”
“Oh! Oh, that’s—that’s quite alright.” In fact, it was a relief. I would have time to think, to plan; to prepare myself.
Dear God, Jamie!
“Shall I send a message after him to let him know you’ve business wi’ him, Mistress?”
It should be alone, when we met
—
to give him time to react in private
—
Lord, would he faint? Scream? Regardless, I did not want to be responsible for giving Jamie a premature cardiac arrest.
“That’s very kind, lad, but no, I’ll wai—”
“It’s Jamie Murray, he means.”
I whirled, my heart crushed with realization before I even finished the turn. Of *course* Jamie Fraser was no longer the laird; I’d known that; I KNEW that.
But even the ache of my desperation for Jamie vanished for that moment as I took in the sight of the woman standing in the open kitchen doorway. Older, weathered, just like me–but the same. My eyes filled with tears of joy and love and relief and I gave a little sob as I made to run to her, to embrace her.
But I was halted by a cold voice I didn’t recognize. “He’s no’ here.”
I stared as a dead person stares, looking but without conscious thought. It was a stranger speaking, a hostile stranger showing not a scrap of surprise or pleasure at my appearance. And her eyes—God, those blue eyes so very like his—staring me down—
so bone-chillingly cold
—
No, not just distant…..
LIVID
—
Jesus, I wanted to whimper, Don’t you recognize me, sister? It’s ME…
But she did recognize me; and she did not like what she saw.
I braced my shoulders. Met her eye. And tried not to let my wounds show.
Are you still writing "A Hundred Lesser faces"? Don´t stop there - that was perfectly wonderful, but I want more. I need more. What happened next? What about Jenny!!?? What Laoghaire? ... What about Fraser Ridge? Do you planing another chapters?
A Hundred Lesser Faces: Eleven
Section One {A Hundred Lesser Faces} what if Voyager!Claire had gone first to Lallybroch instead of directly to the print shop in Edinburgh?: [(One) (Two) (Three) (Four) (Five) (Six) (Seven)
Section Two {A Hundred More}, the aftermath of Claire and Jamie’s reunion, following their journey as they work to build a new life together [(Eight) (Nine) (Ten) ]
Eleven
Previously: Jamie and Claire are still at the Inverness inn to which they traveled after reuniting at the stones (in the nick of time). After talking through a number of things, particularly Claire’s built-up fears around sex, they managed it….with distinction :D. They fell asleep happy and safe in one another, having experienced that sense of ‘heat and light’ together that they each have lacked for so long.
Waking to see the morning sunlight igniting his curls into radiance, framing his still-sleeping face….
Watching him, waiting eagerly, as though for a shooting star, to perhaps glimpse a fleeting, somnolent smile…
Leaning over and kissing his face, smoothing away that long, beautiful hair and whispering a secret that only his dreams would know:
‘God…how I do love you, Jamie Fraser….’
Yes, that’s how I would have LIKED to awaken on this blissfully-complete morning.
As it was, I was JOLTED out of sleep by a great cataclysm taking place on the mattress beneath me and a stream of unintelligible curses ricocheting around the walls like so many whizzing demons straight out of the bloody pit.
“JESUSHAYCH—Rizz—Vel— SHHHIT—”
Damn me, I couldn’t manage to get my tongue to catch up with my brain or my eyes to unblur, but I managed to rally and slur out like a lunatic: “HURT??”
“M’back,” came the strangled reply as my hands found him.
As my eyes adjusted, the room revealed my bare-arsed husband contorted into an impossible shape on his side, trying to both clutch at and keep from moving the muscles of his lower back.
“Roll onto your belly,” I instructed at once, supporting his hips with both hands to help keep the motion steady. Lord, I thought he would lose a tooth at any moment from how tightly that jaw was clenched against the pain. “Has this happened before? Did you injure it? When? Wh—”
“Sassenach, a moment,” he moaned. Using the strength of his arms, he lowered his chest the few inches to the mattress with a great gasp, exhaling stertorously before answering. “Not injured, not anytime that I can recall, but aye, this has happened bef—gahh—” Another shudder as he laid his forehead to rest on his arms. “Several times over the last few years. Canna explain it, it just—Christ— seems to come on as it damn well pleases.”
“And in the times that it’s happened?” I balanced on my knees as I ran my hands over his bare skin, checking for any herniation or trace of a tear, though I thought either to be unlikely. “What have you done to get rid of it?”
He gave an approximation of a shrug. “Waited for it to pass.”
“For how long?”
“One, maybe two days.”
“Of course you did, bloody hero.”
Laying both palms flat on the small of his back, I applied a gentle pressure, then jumped as he arched in a great spasm of pain. He was strung tight as a bowstring, the poor man, the muscles taut and convulsing like mad.
“But where are ye going?” he blurted in acute distress as he felt me leave the mattress. “Sassenach, please, dinna—”
“If you lasted one or two days in pain last time,” I said firmly, adjusting my blanket toga at the door, “you can wait twenty minutes for me to fetch some oil and hot water.”
It actually only took ten.
“The cook was very helpful,” I explained as I carefully climbed back onto the bed with my tray of supplies. “Grinning at me like a cat in cream all the while. Do I have you to thank for that, by any chance?”
An interrogatory grunt.
“Ded ye have a PLAYSENT evening, then, lassie?’ I drawled in imitation of Ms. Fiona’s jocular teasing below. “Ye wairked him that WEE BET too hard, sounds to me! Och, but I’ll wager he’s no’ altogether fashed aboot et, backache or noo! Ye braw wee thing!”
“Terrrrrrible,” Jamie laughed, then instantly regretted it.
“Oof, sorry, darling, here you are,” I said, sobering at once and lifting the hot brick wrapped in rags. “Show me where?” Feeling the gentle heat settle on the spot, Jamie moaned again, but this time in relief. “Try to relax your back as best you can, my love….That’s it….Let the heat soak in….try not to tense up again….Good….This will help, I promise.”
I couldn’t help admiring him while he lay obediently still, stretched out on his belly like a cat in the sun. His body, though not quite as it had looked at twenty-five, was still firm and beautifully fit. It seemed—fuller, somehow; muscled, certainly, perhaps even more densely than before, but with a less chiseled aspect, to my eye, that paradoxically made him look all the more more powerful.
I couldn’t resist laying a hand on his buttocks to feel the neat, shaped muscles beneath. He started a bit, but then relaxed, humming a happy, contented note. “It’s wonderful to have ye touching me again, Sassenach,” he said huskily.
“It’s wonderful to do the touching,” I murmured, meaning it. I surveyed him eagerly, each long-lined limb and gentle curve, and felt a sudden twinge of something like annoyance. “How bloody have you managed to stay so fit?”
I mean honestly! The man was a goddamned Adonis.
He snorted, but answered readily enough. “A bachelor’s diet… That in addition to lifting heavy crates and operating the printing press day after day—It all does a man good, I suppose.”
“Evidently so!’ I adjusted the position of the brick. “Truly, you look wonderful, Jamie, whatever you did to maintain yourself.”
“Well, I…” He stopped, sounding surprised and a little hesitant. “Ye ken, I suppose I’m grateful that, in all the confusion and rushing about, I didna have much time to worry about my vanity.”
“Didn’t you?”
“I had to catch ye first, after all,” he said, with a smile, reaching back to touch my thigh. “But I do wonder…. Do I look verra much an old man, Sassenach? Seen now in all my flesh, I mean?”
“Old?” I shorted. “At three-and-forty? Hardly.”
“Well, but many a man in this time looks considerably the worse for years at such an age, Sassenach. Surely you’ll remember that yourself, from before.”
“True… but you’re hardly the sort likely to waste away from bodily neglect, Jamie Fraser.”
“No, indeed,” he said, smiling and sounding more than a bit relieved. “I did always—well—”
He broke off, shyly, enough so that I was grinning like a fool in anticipation of the secret he obviously wanted to share. “What did you do, exactly?”
He shrugged, and this time, it didn’t hurt him. “I tried to do all the wee things ye’d taught me, ken? Cleaning my teeth of an evening or dipping a blade into boiling water before touching food wi’ it, and the like. Eating live things, as often as I could, too.” I was beaming, but he wasn’t finished. “Even when I was in prison, I made it my duty to see that all my men ate as many green plants as could be scavenged, to ward off the scurvy, so….” He broke off, still that shy, pleased smile in his voice. “Those things could only have helped in terms of preservation, aye?”
“Most definitely,” I said, genuinely touched and not a little choked up. “The nutrition, especially.” I couldn’t help bending over him and kissing the warm skin behind his exposed ear, then the russet curls above. “Thank you for taking it all to heart and taking care of yourself; and doing your best to share it. I do hope it helped others, but if it meant that you alone were able to keep all your teeth, then I’ll still thank my lucky stars.” I kissed his temple. “And on a purely aesthetic level…’all your flesh’ looks incredible, Jamie.”
“That’s most kind of ye to say, mo nighean donn,” he said, his voice a soft purr in his ever-relaxing state. “I’m no’ saying this only to be kind in return, but…” He turned his head to lay on one cheek, craning his neck around. With a fiendish grin, he tugged the blanket from out of its tuck under my armpits and growled in soft appreciation at the sight left in its wake. “Ye look unbelievably fine, yourself.”
I flushed and grinned, for, much to my own surprise, I believed him, my not inconsiderable insecurities and fears of the night before having evaporated into the dawn. “Ten or more years of working on one’s feet does a lass good, herself, I suppose.”
“Your feet?” he grunted as he reluctantly turned his head back forward, his voice muffling into his arm. “How do ye mean?”
Had I not mentioned in the letter? No….I suppose I hadn’t been able to bring myself to say much about what *I* had been up to in our twenty years apart. It had been easier to focus upon the news of Bree. No use giving him anything of me to drive him mad, I’d thought at the time.
Shaking off the remembered despair of that day, I brightened and said, a little shy now, myself, “After Bree was grown old enough to go to school, I got my medical degree. I became a doctor.”
Jamie’s head whipped back around over his shoulder, a movement simultaneous with the immediate unbidden ‘GAHH!’ of pain that ensued.
“CAREFUL!!” I snapped, “Don’t you dare thrash about like that! Lay your head back down this minute!”
He obeyed, grunting and wincing, but tugged me up toward the pillows so he could look me in the eye without twisting. His eyes were wide and blue as he stared. “Ye became a doctor? A physician?”
“Yes?” I said, suddenly rather nervous, given the intensity of his disbelief. “Erm….a surgeon, more specifically, a doctor that cuts people up to fix the ailments inside the body— cutting out sickness and so forth, then stitching them up again. It’s…” I cleared my throat. “Well, it’s a rather prestigious specialty, even as far as physicians go.”
“Claire…. That’s—” He’d been watching me intently as I spoke, his smile growing wider and wider. Now, he was unabashedly beaming. “That’s marvelous, lass. Did ye no’ say once that all the doctors were men?”
“I was the one and only woman in my class,” I admitted, glowing with no little pride under his eye.
“Oh, well done, Sassenach!” He beamed up at me, running his hand over my leg, squeezing. “Tell me ye showed them all up tidily—Made them think twice or thrice about underestimating a woman’s capabilities?”
I grinned and nodded. “Made something of a point of it, I must say.”
He laughed, delighted. “God, how I should have loved to see the looks on their faces.”
“Well, it wasn’t always good fun, seeing those faces, but the end satisfaction more than compensated for the occasional nastiness.”
Removing the brick from his back, I poured some sweet oil into my palms. As the heels of my hands met the now-supple skin, he gave an ecstatic groan of pleasure.
“Lord, Jamie! You’ll give Fiona even more to smirk about if you carry on like that!”
“Feels grand,” he said in his defense into the pillow.
“So I can HEAR! Wake the whole tavern, why don’t you!”
Despite the rather lewd soundtrack, the massage did work wonders, and soon, he was able to move his head and neck about with no pain to the strained back. “Whatever it was about the profession that kept ye on your feet,” he said, doing so to look back at me again, “it did do ye much good. I mean, Christ, lass, ye look scarcely a day over thirty.”
I snorted so loudly my hands skidded off his rump and the resultant disturbance made the bed timbers squeak.
“It’s true!” he insisted, almost affronted. “I mean, look at ye! What is your age? Forty….?”
“Forty-eight.” I groaned with all the agony of defeat, working my thumbs into the base of his spine.
“Mm-HM!” he grunted in triumph, a suspicion confirmed.
“….What?”
“Witch.”
“Where I come from, witches are well-known for looking old,” I said, rolling my eyes. “And if I’m a witch, what does that make you, being married to one, mm?”
“Happy. Lucky.”
“Too right!”
I could feel the muscles easing under my hands. “You know, I’m fairly confident I massaged you like this once or twice before.”
“I recall. My neck was terribly tight once on Charlie’s campaign, and ye sorted it right out. You’ve always had a good touch, mo chridhe.”
“Did it not occur to you to try massage, then, those other times you threw out your back like this? Rather than waiting about for days for it to pass on its own?”
A too-long pause followed, and when he spoke, his voice was clipped. “Aye, it did.”
I let the silence ask the question for me.
“There are verra few people I’d allow to see my bared back, Sassenach…. let alone touch it.”
And somehow, that single statement made me sadder than nearly anything else could in relation to what Jamie’s life had been like since we parted.
I wondered suddenly whether he had allowed Laoghaire, but then banished the thought, feeling it an intrusion even to speculate on the possibilities. Still, to have no one in his life—either to hand when needed, or at all—who could do such a task for him; no one he trusted enough to render him such an intimate service…
I leaned down, filled with tenderness and heartache, both, and kissed his shoulder, then the broadest of his scars, laying my head gently upon him, just to have him know I was there. Here. Always,
My heart thumped with a sudden warmth, a memory. He’d allowed me to see these scars that first night at Leoch. For whatever reason, by whatever nudging of fate, he’d decided to trust me, nearly at once, before I even knew his real identity or he, mine.
The shoulder beneath my cheek heaved with a slight shrug. “You’ve always been a special case, my Sassenach.”
“Mindreader,” I muttered in mock-accusation, planting one more kiss and sitting up, grateful for the lightening of the mood. “Bloody great warlock.”
As I finished the massage, he stretched and began to sit up with intake of breath that, quite suddenly, broke off; not in pain, but from an unspoken word abruptly halted.
“What is it? Does it still hurt?”
“No, it—Well, a bit, still, but no, I can move now, at least. Only…would ye be willing to have a look at my leg as well? Medically speaking, I mean. It doesna pain me all the time,” he added hastily with a sad smile, “and certainly not at the moment, but as you’re a physician now?”
My gut clenched. I had all but forgotten the passage from the Lord Melton’s journal. ‘A great wound, festering and pustulant.’ I swallowed, nodded, and whispered, “Of course, Jamie.”
He rolled onto his back, eyes carefully cast aside, though I don’t think it was lost on him that it took all my will and restraint not to gasp from the shock and grief that welled up in me at the sight, the sheer fury at whoever had dared to hurt him so. The fact that a twenty-year-old wound could still look as gruesome as that—
“Jamie,” I moaned in a whisper, spanning my hand across his thigh to better see the eight full inches of twisted, ghost-white scarring running up the thigh and toward his groin. “My God.”
“It’s no’ a pretty sight, certainly,” he said, uneasy, reaching for the blanket, meaning to cover himself. “I’m sorry, lass, ye dinna have to—”
“No!” I breathed, reaching out my other hand and laying it over his belly. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, it—It just—” I swallowed, but the lump in my throat still remained as I looked into his face. “It makes it so real…. What you went through. You didn’t die, but—God, how you suffered.”
He opened his mouth several times, different responses dancing through his eyes. In the end, all he could do was nod.
A tear rolled down my cheek as I ran my thumb across the mangled bit of scar barely covering his femoral artery. “How on earth did you survive this?” I whispered.
“….Jenny.”
The silence rang around us for a long time, unbroken.
Jenny, beloved sister who had watched over him all his life, who had saved it after Culloden; to whom I must owe my own, if she personally had stood herself between him and this certain death, refusing to let it claim him.
….Jenny, who out of spite and God-knew-what-else, had nearly cost us both this second chance at a life together.
However would we—could we ever— reconcile the two?
“I suppose,” Jamie sighed, reading my thoughts once again, “we really must be discussing what’s to be done, about Jenny. Laoghaire. Us.”
I nodded, knowing he was perfectly correct, but with my own thoughts still many, many years away, on Culloden field, where my heart had lain and suffered. On impulse, I bent over him and kissed slowly along the entire length of the scar, pressing my cheek against his thigh afterward, as though touch and sheer will and desperate love could erase the vestiges of his agony, all of it.
“I’m glad ….that ye didna have to see me that way, Claire, when I lay in fever…” His voice was choked and hoarse with emotion. His hand came to rest on my scalp, warm and complete as an embrace. “…..but I’d have done anything to have ye there wi’ me, even so.”
I reached up and found his other hand, squeezing hard. “So would I.”
Section One {A Hundred Lesser Faces} what if Voyager!Claire had gone first to Lallybroch instead of directly to the print shop in Edinburgh?: [(One) (Two) (Three) (Four) (Five) (Six) (Seven)
Section Two {A Hundred More}, the aftermath of Claire and Jamie’s reunion, following their journey as they work to build a new life together [(Eight) (Nine)]
“Mind yourself, laddie,” chided the cook from behind as she passed by the doorway. “Pay heed to that blade, or ye’ll be cuttin’ your throat along wi’ the beard!”
He answered with something lighthearted and offhand, for she was a kind woman and he greatly appreciative of her generosity. Whereas the innkeeper had shuffled sleepily off to bed as soon as he’d paid for their lodging, she—a lady of advanced years who bade him address him as Flora— had ushered him to her own chamber off the kitchens and settled him before the glass with soap, water, and razor, ‘at no charge, laddie, dinna fash yerself.’
Jamie saw to his surprise that the face in the reflection was nearly smooth. He’d been shaving mindlessly, it seemed, only the skill of long habit guiding his hand while his mind wandered—raced.
God in Heaven, did I not survive all those years of loneliness only by dreaming of being in Claire’s bed? And yet here he was, about to walk up the stairs and enter that very place, that sacred, hallowed place, and damn him, his hands were trembling.
Thank God they’d managed to exchange those few words after their hasty meal. She knew for certain now that he wanted her. That worry had weighed on them both, he thought; a natural insecurity given their age and long absence. But even as he’d left her standing there at the table, he’d known she was still hesitant, that something about the impending intimacy between them still troubled her. Damn his eyes, he ought not to have left her side until he’d discovered what it was, that nothing might be between them. As it was….all he could do was wonder.
Did she take other men in our time apart?
…Apart from Frank, he supposed he meant. She had gone to be the bastard’s wife again, after all, and certainly there would have come a day when they resumed—when they likely would have— Well, and they had loved one another before Claire had fallen into his own life, had they not?
But after the Englishman died? Did she seek out comfort in other lovers? Were they on her mind, tonight?
Though it made his blood heat and boil to consider it, he could hardly cast the first stone with regards to that possibility. He thought of Geneva, of Mary, and despite the accustomed pangs of shame, he couldn’t truly regret those nights, after all. Mary, in particular, had given him the gift of touch, something for which he’d starved himself for seven long years. Her tenderness, her softness with him had kept him feeling human for a long time after. If Claire had felt such emptiness in her time, if someone had offered her the same gift, that ounce of sanity, his most reasonable self (not to say the loudest of the voices in his mind) could hardly begrudge her for having taken it.
If that’s indeed the case, though….what will she be thinking on, this night? About….how those other men were good to her? Or because they were cruel? Jesus, what if—
“I must say,” came Flora’s voice again as he finished and set the razor down, “we dinna often get folk hereabouts that care so verra much about how they look.” Glancing up at her in the mirror, he saw that she was examining him appreciatively—not lewdly, but as though taking genuine pleasure in the sight.
He gave a gracious bow, grateful for the interruption from his uneasy thoughts. “Then I’m all the more grateful, Mistress Flora, that ye were able to accommodate the needs of a poor, vain wretch so down on his luck.”
She hummed graciously and dipped her head, wiping her hands on her apron. “Bound somewhere important in the mornin’, are ye?”
“Nay, it’s only that I’m here wi’—” He cleared his throat. “Wi’ my wife, this night.”
“The brown-haired lass? Well, an’ I should ha’ HOPED she was your wife, a ruiadh!” she snorted. “We’re no’ runnin’ a house of ill-repute!”
Jamie wondered what she would say were he to divulge that he was, technically, willfully engaging in bigamy. Technically only, thank God. “Aye, she’s my wife,” he said firmly, to reassure both Flora and himself. “We’re reunited, this day, after a long separation.”
“Separation?” she repeated dubiously.
“We…” He needn’t say anything at all, of course, for it was no one’s business but their own; but even despite his worries, he couldn’t help but grin (and feel the prickling of tears in his eyes) to share their news, even with a stranger. “We each thought the other dead for many years, and found each other again only hours ago.”
“Oh, how GRAND!” Flora beamed, clapping her hands together, then coming over to clasp his own warmly. “And what a blessing! God was smilin’ upon ye, and no mistakin’ it.”
With a startling flood of both affection and grief, he realized that it was Glenna Fitzgibbons she minded him of. Corpulent of body and cheery of feature, she moved with that same indomitable energy, certain of her domain and any that chose to enter it, and yet warm and lavish in showing love and care to those in her charge.
She took a step back to look him over again, then gave a derisive pfft. “Well, in THAT case, a shave isna goin’ to be enough. I’ll draw ye some hot water so ye can wash up a bit wi’ a cloth. I’ll fetch some of my best chamomile soap for ye, too.”
“That’s most kind, Mistress Flora, I thank ye,” he said in genuine gratitude. With sudden inspiration, he asked, “Will ye offer the same to my wife? Not—” He flushed. “Take care that she doesna think I’m insinuating that she—ah—”
“She already requested a basin and got it, dinna fash, though I didna ken the grandeur of the occasion.” Flora was already bustling about, and he could hear the sounds of water being ladled into a ewer from the hearth. “We’ll reserve the insinuatin’ for comment on your own person. Beggin’ your pardon, a ruiadh, but ye stink to highest heaven and back.”
“Canna just say that you’re wrong,” he laughed.
“A long-lost wife…restored….” Flora murmured contemplatively as she returned and walked about, gathering the bathing supplies. “All the more reason to scrub the road off ye, then, for as bonnie as ye are, I dinna think I’m wrong in observin’ that she’s a good sight fairer, even on yer best day.”
“Aye, she is certainly that,” he said, laughing at the spirit of Mrs. Fitz present here, that could make him feel warm and happy even while being fussed and picked over like an unruly bairn that’s fallen in the manure pile.
Ten minutes later, he was wrapped in linen towels, shivering from the icy drafts of night air on his wet skin, but clean for the first time in weeks. Flora had left him be as he bathed, but as he was casting about for clothing, she reappeared, tsked, bade him ‘Be still, wee gomeral. You’re far from done,’ and plunked him down onto a stool with surprising force. A moment later, a warm, woolen rug settled around his shoulders and she took up a spot behind him, beginning to work through the snarls in his hair with a comb.
After a time of sitting tense and ramrod-straight, he closed his eyes and surrendered to the calm of it, to the soothing sensation of the tiny tugs at his scalp. His mother had brushed his hair just so, when he was a wee one prone to snarls from rough days at play. Years later, his Claire had done the same, her touch light and soft. She had always brought his face around, when she had finished, to kiss him, sometimes melting down into his lap and wrapping her arms around his neck…
God…
Claire.
That very woman, his beloved wife….She was upstairs, waiting for him. He could still scarcely comprehend the joy of that simple truth. She was whole. She was here.
She’s expecting me…
Expecting a man that can please her.
And therein was the greater part of the worry that had caused his hands to shake. Jamie wanted so badly to give her pleasure as he used to, and yet he hadn’t satisfied a woman—not in that way, not to his knowledge—in over twenty years. With Mary, and then with Willie’s mother, it hadn’t felt the time or place for that kind of passion. With Laoghaire—God, how he’d tried, but with no success. Try as he might to justify himself by insisting that she had been cold long before they wed, and there naught HE could have done about it, the icy fingers of doubt gripped at him, now.
I wasna able to please one wife. What if it wasna Laoghaire that was the problem at all? What if I canna—
“There, laddie,” Flora interrupted with fond finality, smoothing the back of his head tenderly before moving to the table. “That’smuch better, aye? And here’s the fresh shirt. Tis many years old, but clean and sturdy, and should fit ye well enough.”
“You’re verra kind, a nighean,” he said, touched by her care and not a little hoarse from it. He examined the shirt. “‘Tis extremely well-made,” he commented appreciatively, seeing the fine, strong stitches, the linen showing hardly any signs of wear.
“Made it for my youngest….Tàmhas,” she said, with a catch in her voice. “…Drumossie, ken?” He gripped her hand. He knew.
A long time after she’d excused herself, Jamie stood before the mirror, staring at the man therein; and, unbidden, the vice around his heart eased, a calming peace flooding inward in its wake.
Even if he made a grand mess of this, even if he couldn’t please her the way he used, or made himself to look a fool, this was still a day of miracles. Here he stood, in the garment of a man who had died on Culloden field—died as and where he himself should have died—and yet, he had his sight, his freedom, the use of his hands and legs, a home, and a living…and Claire had been restored to him, beyond all reason and all hope.
He brought his hand up and kissed the scar at the base of his thumb, pressing it to his heart, as he had done for twenty years. It was theirs, now, this world, to do with as they wished, and though he didn’t know what those wishes might be, he knew there was no fear greater than the hope he had in his wife. In them.
As she’d said herself only hours ago, ‘we’ll manage with the rest. All the rest.’
“Come in,” came her startled answer.
The candlelight danced beautifully around the walls, bathing all in a warm, red glow. Claire was already underneath the blankets, but they fell away as he entered, showing that she’d a sheet wrapped around her, tucked under her oxters like a garment. “Sorry,” she mumbled as he stared at her bare, elegant shoulders framed by the dark curtain of her curls. Her cheeks reddened and she dropped her eyes. “I—didn’t have a shift or anything.”
“No, dinna be sorry,” he said hastily. Lord, there ought to be no sense of forwardness between them now. They were married, after all, and in fact, the very notion that she’d undressed for him made his heart lighten even more than it had downstairs. If he had had any doubts, still, that she truly wished him to—
“You shaved,” she said. She was smiling, weakly, nervously, but with real happiness across the dim room. “Let me see?”
He set his things on the table by the door and came to her, kneeling beside her on the mattress. She came up on her knees before him and took his face between her hands, gasping a bit as she ran them up and down. “God…you’re just the same, too.”
“A bit worn ‘round the edges,” he murmured, following her touch with his cheek, savoring her.
“But beautiful,” she whispered. She traced the lines around his eyes, the crooked knot—yes, that would be new to her—that now shaped his nose.
They knelt there, knee to knee for a long time, clothed in their linen wrappings, just drinking in the sight of one another.
She swayed precariously of a sudden and he reached out a hand to catch her round the middle but she fell backward onto her hand. Her eyes went wide with shock as she realized what she had done, and she covered her face with both hands, shaking. “Oh, Jesus…”
It was almost like being back on the hill, that shock and hurt. “Mo ghraidh….?”
No, she hadn’t just fallen. She had recoiled from him.
“Mo ghraidh?” he implored, reaching out a hand but not daring to touch her. “Claire?”
She was crying. He thought she wouldn’t reply, and she didn’t, but she did reach out blindly and grab onto his hand, hard. He clung to it, nudged closer and pressed it to his lips, then his heart.
“I’m sorry—” she was whispering, hanging her head. “I’m so—so sorry—”
“You’ve naught to be sorry over,” he said intently, keeping her hand pressed tight to his chest. “What is it, lass? Is it— same as was troubling ye below? Over…going to bed wi’ me?”
“I want this—” she gasped out, “I want it—Want to touch you—want you to touch me— but I’m so—just so—”
“…what, Claire?”
“—afraid,” she gasped out at last, her voice a strained whisper between quick, shallow breaths. “I’m so afraid.”
He forced himself to speak softly. “….Of me?”
“NO!” she breathed at once, shaking her head, hard. “Jesus Christ, no….Just—Damn, I don’t—It’s just—FRANK, and—”
“Fr—?” Jamie felt rage boil up within him, revising his conclusions from those earlier speculations and feeling them burning through his mind. “Did he hurt you, Claire? If the bastard forced—”
“NO,” she moaned, vehemently, “NO, Frank would never do that. No. Not his fault. It’s me. My fault.”
His chest eased, but the thought of what else the bastard Englishman might have done to her for all those years—MUST have done to her to make her feel these things, to be ‘afraid’ in a man’s bed—was enough to make him wish to slash his way through the goddamn stones and kill him… were he not already dead.
“Claire, hear me,” Jamie said with decision, squeezing her hand in both his own. “We dinna have to do this, tonight. We shall—”
“I’ve wanted you every day these last twenty years—” she interrupted, her eyes squeezed tight shut as she laid one hand on his chest. “And I want you now, Jamie, I do. God,” she moaned, “more than I can—” She took a deep, shuddering breath and trailed off.
“Mo chridhe… you can say anything to me. Anything. Ye ken that, aye?”
“It’s just been so long,” she whispered, trying to keep the tears at bay. “Frank was the only man who touched me since you and I parted, and I—I can barely wrap my mind around what it’s supposed to be, anymore.”
Christ, it shouldn’t matter to him—and he cursed himself roundly for a shameful, wretched hypocrite—but he silently rejoiced and shuddered in relief. Only Frank.
“I don’t know the way, anymore, Jamie,” she was saying; so mournful and heartbroken, that voice. “Something—It took something from me, to be…to be without…to not…Damn…Fucking, fucking damn….”
He remained kneeling beside her as her breaths stayed shrill and strained, waiting, trying to think. Frank hadn’t forced himself on her, and yet their intimacy had left her with fears and doubts, had her struggling to look him in the eye.
Could it simply be that they never found the secret of one another after she returned? Just as Laoghaire and I did not?
“It’s…maybe no’ precisely what ye mean, Claire…” he began slowly, very quietly, “…but I can say in truth that I havena felt— joy in a woman’s bed since ye went away….Is it anything like that?”
She stilled and looked up at him, then nodded, whisky eyes glassy. “Yes.”
A pulse of relief and love filled him and he grasped at it, reaching out and cupping her cheek, holding onto her lest she slip away again.“To be hungry and desperate?” he went on, holding her eye with such sadness in both their hearts, “and to get something of it, to crave it again and again because ye think that this time it will be better, but to always leave the bed all the emptier in your heart? And feel that emptiness hardening ye into someone ye scarce recognize?”
“Twenty years—of—”
It was a long time before she could manage to finish. When she did so, it was so faint he couldn’t understand her.
“Heat,” she repeated in a whisper as desolate as the winter wind outside, “without light.”
…Heat without light….
Aye, that was just the way of it. Need and hunger and the fire rousing to slake it, but no accompanying brightness, no beam of light in which to bask and be soothed in one’s heart. No relief or comfort: just rippling scalding, choking air that suffocated, rather than sustained.
“And it used to come so easily, with you, the heat and the light together,” she whispered, trying not to fall apart, “I need it again so badly, and yet I’m afraid… of what I’ll do if I can’t give you that same—”
“Sorcha.”
The word fairly burst from him, breaking his face into a smile of pure joy without his bidding.
“W-what?” she croaked.
“Sorcha,” he said again, brushing the hair from her eyes. “’Tis your name in Gaelic, mo chridhe. Did I never call ye that, before?”
“Not that I can recall.”
He’d thought of her by that name for so long a time: her very self in his own language. His forehead pressed against hers, he looked deep and long and lovingly. “It means ‘light.’”
She inhaled sharply and gasped out something like a laugh. “You’re making that up.”
“Even in English, the root of your name has to do wi’ light, or brightness, or clarity….Et en Français, aussi.”
“Au clair de la lune….” she recited. By the light of the moon.
“Aye, just so.” He had her face in both his hands now, and he thumbed away her tears, kissing the tracks left behind. “You are my light, Sassenach. Ye always have been, in name or no.’”
Her lips trembled as she smiled. “And you’re mine.”
“Then we’ve everything we’ll ever need.” He kissed her. “We can love, and never fear.”
Claire fell slowly into him, then, wrapping her arms around his neck, weeping, not in despair, but in the sweet surrender of trusting, of loving.
“When we wed,” he whispered into her ear, kissing the dear, warm spot just behind, “we barely kent one another. Ye didna want me for your husband, that was clear enough, and I had resigned myself to what ye could and couldna give me…. And yet that light was upon us even that first day, aye? Even wi’out your willing it, ye felt it, that—that— rightness between us?”
“Yes.” She was nodding, hard, her hands gripped tightly in the back of his shirt, her lips softly caressing his neck. “I felt it.”
He held her tight, rocking them gently. “We didna earn or deserve it, that day. We hadna prepared for it or practiced it as to be ready or worthy. It was a GIFT, that joy and ease between us. I believe it shall be granted us again, just as freely.”
And in saying it, he, too, believed, the last of his own fears and insecurities loosening their grip and floating away.
He kissed her neck, her hair, then tucked her to his chest and laid them down, holding close around her back as they lay facing one another. “Tell me what’s in your heart, Claire.”
“Thought I had been,” she sniffed, wiping her eyes, though he could hear the hint of a smile.
“Nay, but if we were to stay just like this until morn, only sleeping in one another’s arms, and leaving the rest for another—”
She made a frustrated sound. “I’m not saying I don’t WANT—”
“I know,” he cut her off gently, half-laughing, “I ken, Sassenach, but there’s nay hurry, aye? There’s the two of us now, and I’ll not let ye go.”
She touched his face and exhaled, trying to smile.
“Aside from any fears, what is in your heart right at this moment?”
“….Happiness….” she said at last. “…such unfathomable happiness.”
“Aye…”
“I…I can hardly believe you’re here. That I’m here.” Her voice cracked. “I’m still reeling from relief and joy from the hill….and I’m…overjoyed….” She ran the back of her knuckles down his cheek, staring intently into his face. “…that you finally know about our daughter…that you’ve gotten to see her face and learn that she’s safe….. that I’ll have the rest of my life to tell you about her.”
He kissed her hand, pressing it tight against his lips. She kept on, the sorrow and abating from her voice with every word, replaced with warmth and joy. “I’m grateful that I know about Laoghaire…and the girls….and William…. I want to know more, in time, but there are no secrets between us, now, and that’s—You are who you appear to be….as I remembered you to be…..And Jamie, I’m so happy you’re alive,” she choked out as she pressed her forehead to his, her voice trembling, “and I can’t believe we finally get to keep one another this time…. To have you and hold you… I couldn’t ask for anything more….Nothing.”
“I have two hands,” Jamie said hoarsely as he held her, “and they’re yours…. I have a body, and it is yours….. Anything that I am, I give to ye freely again today, Claire Fraser.”
At hearing her name, that name, she let out a tiny, broken sound and pulled him down to her mouth. Almost at once, the kiss changed, became harder, urgent. His mouth and his hands and his body responded to hers without conscious thought, seeking her with every movement, every breath.
His arousal was strong, violent, but he forced himself to pull back enough to look into her eye…..and at last, there was no fear written there.
With a ferocity that startled and ignited him, he captured her mouth and slid his hand beneath her head as she rolled onto her back. With the other, he untucked the sheet from beneath her arms and bared her, sliding his hand down her length. She moaned into his mouth as he cupped her boldly, felt the warm, wet fullness of her there between her thighs, and that sound was honey to his soul.
She moved with him, the two of them joined by the trailing of his fingers through the slick center of her; her gasps when he moved up toward that small, precious spot; the exquisite pain of her fingertips digging into his flesh as he circled and caressed it. Claire was coming alive for him, moving against his touch to double every sensation. He could have wept only to feel her rouse to him so, but to watch her face breaking again and again with that beauty, to hear against his neck the same sounds that he’d treasured in his heart all those lonely years—He felt as though he were running up a mountain and down it again all at once. “Claire,” he could only groan into her hair, her skin, scarcely aware of his own body, enthralled to hers, “Jesus, Claire….”
“Jamie—” She was mounting and gathering under his touch, her legs and hips moving languidly, her cries becoming more urgent and and more frantic with every stroke.
“Aye, Sassenach,” he moaned, circling and pressing harder, feeling the throbbing wetness of her. “Now—please—”
“Wait,” she panted, slipping out from beneath him and pushing him back onto the pillows. It didn’t cross his mind to question her. He obeyed by instinct, pulling off his shirt and emerging from the cloud of white to see her straddling him, poising her body—Jesus, her exquisite body—just above him. He was half-sitting, hard and aching for her. Her legs trembled with wanting, too, but she reached slowly forward to pull him up, to kiss him, to press herself against his chest and twine her fingers in his hair. Their eyes locked and the world vanished for a moment in a burst of breath and light as she sheathed him to her.
He grasped her tight, hands gripping and holding as the two of them gasped and shuddered from the shock and wonder of being joined and naked; ONE. Her breasts were so full, begging for him to put his mouth on them, but he couldn’t look away from her face.
“Jamie—Love—” she moaned, settling him still more deeply within her body.
“Claire—”
He could see tears gathering in her eyes even as her entire body trembled and shuddered with the growing tension. She gasped and rolled her hips, her hands shaking and her breath catching, eyes fluttering. “I’m going—to—”
“Please,” he begged, “please—let me feel you—” He moved within her, and she upon him— And almost instantly she cascaded around him, pulsing and rushing and crying out with that sound—THAT SOUND— “Sorcha,” he moaned, her release nearly taking him, too. He couldn’t hold her close enough, couldn’t treasure her deeply enough. “Mo sorcha….”
“More,” she moaned before he could say more, grabbing his face and moving along his length with a ferocity that tore from him a feral sound to match her own, “More.”
He lost all speech and all restraint. He plunged up into her, his mouth on her neck, her breasts; his hands raking across hips and thighs and arse. They moved together, he taking her and she, him, joined in a fury of need and love that had them both gasping and snarling and moaning and near-weeping.
At one pass, she thrust down upon him such a way that he nearly lost himself, and in a flash, he was throwing himself forward with a growl so that she was beneath him, his hands under her buttocks, pulling her to him fiercely with every movement. Claire cried out, a sound of both need and satisfaction that echoed around the room. They were on fire, the two of them, thrusting and seeking with such wild energy, it was like nothing he had ever felt before. Every inch of him burned for her.
But there WAS light along with the burning. Even as they raced and tore and pounded, her eyes were in his and she was shining, smiling even as she destroyed him. As they each neared the end, they were beaming, glowing with such the most glorious joy. The most glorious light.
After it was over, after she had come around him and he within her, there had been no slumping of exhaustion, none of that immediate, selfish isolation of the mind and body in adapting to the altered state. He had pulled her at once back up and knelt; knelt so that she could hold him as much as he, her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and cupped his head in both hands, touching his hair, his face, saying his name again and again like a prayer, as he was hers. They were both crying, hard, but they were tears of joy, a cleansing of all fears and all sorrows.
“Thank you,” he gasped out suddenly, broken with it, “for coming back for me.”
She had left everything. She had left EVERYTHING she knew, the entire life she had built, on the mere hope that he still needed her. He did need her. He always would.
Section One {A Hundred Lesser Faces} what if Voyager!Claire had gone first to Lallybroch instead of directly to the print shop in Edinburgh?: [(One) (Two) (Three) (Four) (Five) (Six) (Seven)
Section Two {A Hundred More}, the aftermath of Claire and Jamie’s reunion, following their journey as they work to build a new life together [(Eight) (Nine) (Ten) (Eleven) ]
“There ye are, Sassenach,” Jamie boomed, pushing off from the wall against which he’d been leaning and adjusting a new black tricorn and cloak smartly. “Took ye long enough! What kept ye?”
I bristled a bit, snorting. I’d risen promptly enough, I thought, when Fiona knocked at the door and gave me Jamie’s message, a feat of which I’d been rather proud, given the utter rock-like state from which I’d had to rouse.
“May I ask WHY you felt it necessary to have me meet you out here?” I asked, quite politely. He gave me a mild look in return. “Four blocks away? Outdoors? Before noon? In November?”
“Och, that’s simple,” he said at once, with a cheeriness that suggested it should be perfectly obvious to anyone in possession of wits (God, how I’d missed this man and all his nonsense). “I should have thought the events of the past day had made it clear enough that we’ve absolutely no chance, you and I, of having any sort of logistical conversation in that room.”
Crankiness vanished, I now suppressed a sheepish grin. “I do think you enjoyed that day and that room, though?”
“Supremely,” he said, his fine teeth flashing devilishly. “And if we didna have onlookers at present, I’d invite ye against yon wall to show ye just how much.”
We’d glutted ourselves in every way it was feasible to glut. At Jamie’s direction, Fiona’s kitchenmaids had kept the wine and food and whisky coming, all making the last twenty-four-or-more hours little more than a hedonistic blur, punctuated by wild, luxurious lovemaking that even now had my legs wobbly and loose; a blur from which I would have been more than happy never to refocus.
“Still,” Jamie went on, “casting aside the appealing prospect of rumpling your petticoats on this fine morn, might I alternately earn forgiveness by saying I’ve brought breakfast?”
“It’s a jolly good first step,” I said, stepping close and letting him see the laughter in my eyes before kissing his chilly lips.
He’d brought mulled wine and savory pies, both still piping hot, leaving me the high ground to scold him for giving me hell about alleged lateness, which I did, all chastisement met only, of course, by grins and kisses, damn his wonderful hide.
We sat on a bench by the river and devoured our little feast, watching the boats and waterfowl inching their way around the choppy expanse. As loathe as I had been to drag myself out of bed, put on clothing and venture into the chill, I had to admit, there was something singularly wonderful about being out in the crisp grey of mid-morning, the cold bracing and clearing to the senses.
“So,” I said at last, those cleared senses steeling themselves against the necessary topics. “Logistical conversation time, mm?”
“Aye,” he said with decision (and perhaps that same frisson of dread), taking one last swig from the wine jug.
“Laoghaire, I suppose, should—”
He took my hand, cutting me off. “Perhaps even before that…”
“Oh? Seems to me that’s—she’s, I mean, the most significant hurdle in our path, don’t you?”
“No—I mean yes, aye, she is. Still…” He squeezed my fingers and looked out to the river, weighing his words carefully. “I think perhaps we ought first to decide what it is we’re striving toward.”
Well! That was a rather grandiose way of putting it, and I said as much.
“I only mean,” he clarified, letting go my hand and turning toward me on the seat, “what is it that ye want?”
“Isn’t that obvious?” I said, assuming his own earlier sweet smugness. “I want you.”
“I want ye, too.” He leaned in and kissed me with a happy hum. “Always. Though, I am being serious, Sassenach. It will make things clearer if we can say aloud what it is we envision for these years ahead, as many as are granted to us, so that naught is lost by dint of assumption.”
“Well, then… I want to be your wife,” I said, a little lamely. Then I rallied, and began to think it through more clearly. “No—I want us to be man and wife with no ambiguity as to other spouses.”
“Aye. Agreed.”
“I want…” I went on slowly, thinking, “for each of us to pursue occupations that give us pleasure.” I cast a glance at him. “Does printing do that for you, by the way? Do you actually enjoy it?”
“Do ye ken…” He scratched his jaw meditatively. “I dinna think anyone has ever asked me such a thing, in reference to printing or anything else.”
“Well, I come from a very individualistic time, my dear. Can’t help but carry it over.”
“Aye, you’re a verra peculiar woman, Sassenach. But, aye, the printing trade is methodical and needful, and I’ve got the tools already acquired, so I see no reason to learn a new one.”
“Not exactly what I asked,” I laughed, “but I suppose that’s as close as you’ll come to self-actualization. So: you, able to print; me, able to practice medicine. Simple enough, as long as we stick to a city. But, speaking of assuming, I’d more or less taken it for granted that we would both go to Edinburgh, to your shop. I’m certain I can find my way as a healer, there, even if it means starting very small. Are you thinking otherwise?”
“Maybe so,” he admitted, brows drawn in thought, going quiet for a few moments too long.
“Tell me what you want, Jamie.”
“Everything you yourself said,” he said quickly. “The only thing more I would wish, in terms of specifics, is … to live under my own name. Our name.”
“Not as Alexander Malcolm,” I said, understanding beginning to spark.
“I didna care a mite when it was only me, ken. I wanted a life on my own, or rather, a life away from Laoghaire, and if an assumed name was the requirement, then so be it. But now, wi’ you returned, back in my life and my arms for good, the thought of living out my years as Sawny Malcolm…still worse to oblige you to assume the role of Mrs. Malcolm—”
“I should scarcely mind, Jamie,” I said at once. “I hope you know that.”
“And I thank ye for it,” he said, with a genuine, albeit strained smile, “yet now I’ve pride and joy in my heart that I hadn’t before, and not to be able to spend the rest of my days under my own name, that of my own family…?” He trailed off, shaking his head and setting his jaw.
I certainly could understand his point and his unease. Had it not rankled me, from time to time, when I allowed myself to think of such things, to be living out my own days as Claire Randall? The constant itch of feeling that it was naught but a sham identity, neither who I was born nor who I would have chosen to be?
“Would your clientele desert you, do you think, if you came clean and began going by James Fraser in Edinburgh?”
“A good many. Though, perhaps not all, only—Well, Laoghaire would be the greatest danger in that regard, as well.”
“Oh? How so? Would she come to your shop and set it ablaze?”
For, if I knew anything of Laoghaire Fraser née MacKenzie, it was that she was dangerous when the ‘woman scorned.’
“Not that I’d put it past her,” he said with an unhappy smirk, “but should all the legal proceedings run afoul and scandal spread over it, the news will be known in Edinburgh eventually. To be kent for the one-time traitor Red Jamie might just bring a certain profitable notoriety (particularly to those many that supported Charles and his cause), but to be whispered about as a recent bigamist scoundrel… It—wouldna be good.”
“No….No, I suppose not.” I scratched my nose, thinking.
“Then there’s the smuggling to consider,” he said gamely, though his eyes went a little shifty with discomfort.
He’d told me about his other business ventures offhand sometime in the last day. I’d been very drunk at the time and had found the entire prospect hilarious for some reason. By the light of day, though, it was certainly far more sobering.
“In that enterprise, at least, I am already known as Jamie Roy, not Mr. Malcolm. I mean to step out of that operation altogether,” he said suddenly, looking sharply at me, “but it may take some time to do so, find a buyer I hope, wi’out bringing my government protectors down upon me. They’ll no’ take kindly to the loss of their take, aye?”
I nodded. “Then…once you’ve removed yourself from the smuggling business in some form, we relocate and start fresh? In Glasgow, perhaps? Even here in Inverness? This place is big enough to need printing services, surely?”
“Aye, certainly,” he said, his gaze casting appreciatively around the expanse of Inverness, “and perhaps, it shall come to all that; though I think only in the colonies might we truly begin anew, wi’out the whispers following us.”
My throat constricted. “You want to emigrate?”
“It’s the last thing I wish,” he said fervently, lacing his fingers in mine. “I never wish to leave Scotland. Still, I willna have ye tormented by gossip and scandal for my sake.”
“It’s hardly your sake, as I’m the bloody reason there’s to be scandal in the first place!”
Despite himself, he laughed. I seized the opportunity and squeezed his hand tighter. “Jamie, it doesn’t matter if we’re the Malcolms in Edinburgh or the Frasers in Glasgow or Mr. and Mrs. Von Trapp in a Hobbithole in Norway!”
“In a what-hole?”
“The point is,” I went doggedly on, “as long as I can publicly call you my husband, and as long as I can be a healer, I will be happy. That’s all I need. As to the where and the by-what-means… lead on, my love. I’ll be there.”
His hand, big and warm and solid, came up to gently hold my nape as he kissed me.
“Oh, no, wait, forgot one,” I said abruptly as we pulled back, counting my wishlist out on my fingers. “Husband-calling. Healer. Not being burned as witch for it.”
“I think that’s more than reasonable,” he said fairly, a twinkle in his eye. “Speaking of which…Laoghaire.”
“Better add a fourth: a day when we never have to speak that name again.” We shared commiserating sighs. “Will you be seeking an annulment, then?”
“Aye, that or some sort of divorce settlement, if such can be managed. I dinna wish to cause her shame, but I willna conscience the possibility of having her as my wife in any form to be going on with.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“If you agree, I shall write to Ned Gowan today.”
“NED!?” I shouted in delight, startling two stately gentlemen passing by. “Don’t tell me he’s still alive?!”
“He is, and still practicing the law, forbye, in Edinburgh. I’ve encountered him several times over the years, passing in the streets. He’s quite the spry wee thing. Shriveled as dried beef but sharp as a knifepoint, still.”
“Well, I’ll be damned!”
“Well, I hope ye won’t be, nor I. In any case, I should like to write to Ned and ask if he might travel to Broch Morda at once upon receipt of the letter, to assist in settling the matter.”
“At once?” My glowing heart fell into my boots. “Does that mean we’ll be going back to Lallybroch? Directly?”
“Believe me when I say that a part of me wishes nothing more than to stay here at the inn forever.”
“Three guesses which part.”
“But I also ken,” he went on, passing over my lewdness, which sadly did not have the desired impact of distraction, “that I willna be able to sleep easy until this is all put to rest. I dinna wish to be seen as sneaking about wi’ ye. Besides,” he said, raising a hand and tucking a strand of curls behind my ear, running the backs of his knuckles gently over my brow and temple, “every day spent curled up in our wee nesting place, here, unspeakably happy as I would be every moment, there should always be the nagging in the corners of my mind, reminding me that I’m only on borrowed time ‘til all is resolved for good. ….What do ye think?”
I sighed. “I think you’re likely right about that.” I rested my head on his shoulder. “It doesn’t make the prospect of leaving said love nest any more pleasant, though.”
“Indeed, it does not. Still,” He tilted my chin up with a finger and kissed me, his mouth warm and comforting and tasting of sweet wine, “we’ll make it a pleasant journey.” Another kiss. “And ye willna convince me to give up our warm bed for the road until tomorrow morn, at least.”
“Well then,” I said meaningfully with a raised eyebrow, “we’ll have to make the most of that warm bed between now and then, won’t we?”