“Claire.” It was the first time he had ever used my first name, and it frightened me still further.
“Claire,” he said again, loosening his grip so that I could look up at him, “do ye not think I’d do all I could to free the lad, did I think there was the slightest chance? Damn it, he’s my own foster-son! But there is no chance—none!” He shook me slightly, to emphasize his words.
“Jamie wouldna have me throw away good men’s lives in a vain venture. Ye know that as well as I do.”
I could keep back the tears no longer. They burned down my icy cheeks as I pushed against him, seeking to free myself. He held me tighter, though, trying to force my head against his shoulder.
“Claire, my dear,” he said, voice gentler. “My heart’s sore for the lad—and for you. D’ye come away wi’ me. I’ll take ye safe. To my own house,” he added hastily, feeling me stiffen. “Not to Leoch.”
“To your house?” I said slowly. A horrible suspicion was beginning to form in my mind.
“Aye,” he said. “Ye dinna think I’d take ye back to Cranesmuir, surely?” He smiled briefly before the stern features relaxed back into seriousness. “Nay. I’ll take ye to Beannachd. You’ll be safe there.”
“Safe?” I said, “or helpless?” His arms dropped away at the tone of my voice.
“What d’ye mean?” The pleasant voice was suddenly cold.
I felt rather cold myself, and pulled my cloak together as I moved away from him.
“You kept Jamie away from his home by telling him his sister had borne a child to Randall,” I said, “so that you and that precious brother of yours would have a chance to lure him into your camp. But now the English have him, you’ve lost any chance of controlling the property through Jamie.” I backed up another step, swallowing.
“You were party to your sister’s marriage contract. It was by your insistence—yours and Colum’s—that Broch Tuarach might be held by a woman. You think that if Jamie dies, Broch Tuarach will belong to me—or to you, if you can seduce or force me into marrying you.”
“What?!” His voice was incredulous. “Ye think … ye think this is all some plot? Saint Agnes! Do ye think I’m lying to ye?”
I shook my head, keeping my distance. I didn’t trust him an inch.
“No, I believe you. If Jamie weren’t in prison, you’d never dare to tell me he was. It’s too easy to check that. Nor do I think you betrayed him to the English—not even you could do something like that to your own blood. Besides, if you had, and word of it ever reached your men, they’d turn on you in a second. They’d tolerate a lot in you, but not treachery against your own kinsman.” As I spoke I was reminded of something.
“Was it you who attacked Jamie near the Border last year?”
The heavy brows rose with surprise.
“Me? No! I found the lad near death, and saved him! Does that sound as though I meant him harm?”
Under cover of my cloak, I ran my hand down my thigh, feeling for the comforting bulk of my dagger.
“If it wasn’t you, who was it?”
“I dinna ken.” The handsome face was wary, but not hiding anything. “ ’Twas one of three men—broken men, outlaws—that hunted wi’ Jamie then. All of them accused each other, and there was no way of findin’ out the truth o’ the matter, not then.” He shrugged, the traveling cloak falling back from one broad shoulder.
“It doesna matter much now; twa of the men are dead, and the third in prison. Over another matter, but it makes little difference, do ye think?”
“No, I don’t suppose so.” It was in a way a relief to find that he wasn’t a murderer, whatever else he might be. He had no reason to lie to me now; so far as he knew, I was completely helpless. Alone, he could compel me to do whatever he wished. Or at least he likely thought so. I took a grip on the handle of my dirk.
The light was poor in the cave, but I was watching carefully, and I could see indecision flicker momentarily across his face as he chose his next move. He stepped toward me, hand out, but stopped when he saw me flinch away.
“Claire. My sweet Claire.” The voice was soft now, and he ran an insinuating hand lightly down my arm. So he had decided to try seduction rather than compulsion.
“I know why ye talk so cold to me, and why ye think ill of me. You know that I burn for ye, Claire. And it’s true—I’ve wanted ye since the night of the Gathering, when I kissed your sweet lips.” He had two fingers resting lightly on my shoulder, inching toward my neck. “If I’d been a free man when Randall threatened ye, I’d ha’ wed ye myself on the spot, and sent the man to the devil for ye.” He was moving his body gradually closer, crowding me against the stone wall of the cavern. His fingertips moved to my throat, tracing the line of my cloak-fastening.
He must have seen my face then, for he stopped his advance, though he left his hand where it was, resting lightly above the rapid pulse that beat in my throat.
“Even so,” he said, “even feeling as I do—for I’ll hide it from ye no longer—even so, ye couldna imagine I’d abandon Jamie if there were any hope of saving him? Jamie Fraser is the closest thing I’ve got to a son!”
“Not quite,” I said. “There’s your real son. Or perhaps two, by now?” The fingers on my throat increased their pressure, just for a second, then dropped away.
“What d’ye mean?” And this time all pretense, all games, were dispensed with. The hazel eyes were intent and the full lips a grim line in the russet beard. He was very large, and very close to me. But I had gone too far already for caution.
“It means I know who Hamish’s father really is,” I said. He had been half-expecting it, and had his face well under control, but the last month spent telling fortunes had not been in vain. I saw the tiny flicker of shock that widened his eyes and the sudden panic, swiftly quelled, that tightened the corners of his mouth.
Bull’s-eye. In spite of the danger, I knew a moment’s fierce exultation. I had been right, then, and the knowledge might just possibly be the weapon I needed.
“Do ye, then?” he said softly.
“Yes,” I said, “and I imagine Colum knows as well.”
That stopped him for a moment. The hazel eyes narrowed, and I wondered for an instant whether he was armed.
“He thought it was Jamie for a time, I think,” I said, staring directly into his eyes. “Because of the rumors. You must have started those, feeding them to Geillis Duncan. Why? Because Colum got suspicious of Jamie and started to question Letitia? She couldn’t hold out for long against him. Or was it that Geilie thought you were Letitia’s lover, and you told her it was Jamie to quiet her suspicions? She’s a jealous woman, but she can’t have any reason to protect you now.”
Dougal smiled cruelly. The ice never left his eyes.
“No, she can’t,” he agreed, still speaking softly. “The witch is dead.”
“Dead!” The shock must have shown as plainly on my face as in my voice. His smile broadened.
“Oh, aye,” he said. “Burnt. Stuck feet first in a barrel of pitch and heaped about with dry peats. Bound to a stake and lit like a torch. Sent to the devil in a pillar of flame, under the branches of a rowan tree.”
I thought at first this merciless recitation of detail was meant to impress me, but I was wrong. I shifted to one side, and as the light shone fresh on his face, I could see the lines of grief etched around his eyes. It wasn’t a catalog of horror, then, but a lashing of himself. I felt no pity for him, under the circumstances.
“So you were fond of her,” I said coldly. “Much good it did her. Or the child. What did you do with that?”
He shrugged. “Saw it placed in a good home. A son, and a healthy babe, for all its mother was a witch and an adulteress.”
“And its father an adulterer and a betrayer,” I snapped. “Your wife, your mistress, your nephew, your brother—is there anyone you haven’t betrayed and deceived? You … you …” I choked on the words, quite sick with loathing. “I don’t know why I’m surprised,” I said,
trying to speak calmly. “If you’ve no loyalty to your king, I suppose there’s no reason to think you’d feel it for your nephew or your brother, either.”
His head snapped round and he glared at me. He raised his thick dark brows, the same shape as Colum’s, as Jamie’s, as Hamish’s. The deepset eyes, the broad cheekbones, the beautifully shaped skull. Old Jacob MacKenzie’s legacy was a strong one.
A big hand clamped hard on my shoulder.
“My brother? You think I’d betray my brother?” For some reason, that had stung him; his face was dark with anger.
“You’ve just admitted that you did!” And then I realized.
“The both of you,” I said slowly. “You did it together, you and Colum. Together, as you’ve always done things.” I pulled his hand off my shoulder and flung it back at him.
“Colum couldn’t be chieftain, unless you would go to war for him. He couldn’t hold the clan together, without you to travel for him, to collect the rents and settle the claims. He couldn’t ride, he couldn’t travel. And he couldn’t father a son, to pass the chieftainship on to. And you had no son by Maura. You swore to be his arms and legs”—I was beginning to feel a little hysterical by this time—“why shouldn’t you be his cock, as well?”
Dougal had lost his anger; he stood watching me speculatively for a moment. Deciding that I was going nowhere, he sat down on one of the bales of goods and waited for me to finish.
“So you did it with Colum’s knowledge. Was Letitia willing?” Knowing by now just what sort of ruthlessness they possessed, I wouldn’t put it past the brothers MacKenzie to have forced her.
Dougal nodded. His anger had evaporated.
“Oh, aye, willing enough. She didna fancy me particularly, but she wanted a child—enough to take me to her bed for the three months it took to start Hamish. A boring damn job it was too,” Dougal added reflectively, scraping a bit of mud from his boot heel. “I’d as soon swive a warm bowl of milk pudding.”
“And did you tell Colum that?” I asked. Hearing the edge in my voice, he looked up. He regarded me levelly for a moment, then a faint smile lightened his face.
“No,” he said quietly. “No, I didna tell him that.” He looked down at his hands, turning them over as though looking for some secret hidden in the lines of his palms.
“I told him,” he said softly, not looking at me, “that she was tender and sweet as a ripe peach, and all that a man could want in a woman.”
He closed his hands abruptly and looked up at me, that momentary glimpse of Colum’s brother submerged once more in the sardonic eyes of Dougal MacKenzie.
“Tender and sweet is not precisely what I’d say of you,” he observed. “But all that a man could want …” The deepset hazel eyes traveled slowly downward over my body, lingering on the roundness of breast and hip that showed through my open cloak. One hand moved unconsciously back and forth, stroking lightly across the muscles of his thigh as he watched me.
“Who knows?” he said, as though to himself. “I might have yet another son—legitimate, this time. True”—he tilted his head appraisingly, looking at my midsection—“it hasna happened yet wi’ Jamie. You may be barren. But I’ll take the chance. The property is worth it, at any rate.”
He stood suddenly and took a step toward me.
“Who knows?” he said again, very softly. “If I were to plow that pretty brown-haired furrow and seed it deep each day …” The shadows on the cavern wall shifted suddenly as he took another step toward me.
“Well, you took your bloody time about it,” I said crossly.
A look of incredulous shock spread across his features before he realized that I was looking beyond him, toward the cave mouth.
“It didna seem mannerly to interrupt,” said Murtagh, advancing into the cave behind a loaded pair of flintlock pistols. He held one trained on Dougal, using the other to gesture with.
“Unless ye mean to accept that last proposal here and now, I’d suggest ye leave. And if ye do mean to accept it, then I’ll leave.”
“Nobody’s leaving yet,” I said shortly. “Sit down,” I said to Dougal. He was still standing, staring at Murtagh as though at an apparition.
“Where’s Rupert?” he demanded, finding his voice.
“Oh, Rupert.” Murtagh scratched his chin thoughtfully with the muzzle of one pistol. “He’s likely made it to Belladrum by now. Should be back before dawn,” he added helpfully, “wi’ the keg of rum he thinks ye sent him to fetch. The rest o’ your men are still asleep in Quinbrough.”
Dougal had the grace to laugh, if a little grudgingly. He sat down again, hands on his knees, and glanced from me to Murtagh and back again. There was a momentary silence.
“Well?” Dougal inquired. “Now what?”
That, I realized, was rather a good question. Surprised at finding Dougal instead of Jamie, shocked by his revelations, and infuriated at his consequent proposals, I had had no time to think of what ought to be done. Luckily, Murtagh was better prepared. Well, after all, he hadn’t been occupied in fighting off lecherous advances.
“We’ll need money,” he said promptly. “And men.” He cast an eye appraisingly over the bundles stacked against the wall. “Nay,” he said thoughtfully. “That’ll be for King James. But we’ll take what ye’ve got on your person.” The small black eyes swiveled back to Dougal and the muzzle of one pistol gestured gently in the vicinity of his sporran.
One thing to be said for life in the Highlands was that it apparently gave one a certain fatalistic attitude. With a sigh, Dougal reached into the sporran and tossed a small purse at my feet.
“Twenty gold pieces and thirty-odd shillings,” he said, lifting one brow in my direction. “Take it and welcome.”
Seeing my look of skepticism, he shook his head.
“Nay, I mean it. Think what ye like of me. Jamie’s my sister’s son, and if ye can free him, then God be wi’ ye. But ye can’t.” His tone was final.
He looked at Murtagh, still holding his pistols steady.
“As to the men, no. If you and the lass mean to commit suicide, I canna stop ye. I’ll even offer to bury ye, one on either side of Jamie. But you’ll not take my men to hell with ye, pistols or no.” He crossed his arms and leaned back against the cavern wall, calmly watching us.
Murtagh’s hands didn’t waver from his aim. His eyes flickered toward me, though. Did I wish him to shoot?
“I’ll make you a bargain,” I said.
Dougal raised one brow.
“You’re in a bit better position to bargain than I am at present,” he said. “What’s your offer?”
“Let me talk to your men,” I said. “And if they’ll come with me of their own accord, then let them. If not, we’ll go as we came—and we’ll hand back your purse, as well.”
One side of his mouth came up in a lopsided smile. He looked me over carefully, as though assessing my persuasiveness and my skills as an orator. Then he sat back, hands on his knees. He nodded once.
“Done,” he said.
* * *
In the event, we left the glen of the cave with Dougal’s purse and five men, in addition to Murtagh and myself: Rupert, John Whitlow, Willie MacMurtry, and the twin brothers, Rufus and Geordie Coulter. It was Rupert’s decision that swayed the others; I could still see—with a feeling of grim satisfaction—the look on Dougal’s face when his squat, black-bearded lieutenant eyed me speculatively, then patted the dags at his belt and said, “Aye, lass, why not?”
Wentworth Prison was thirty-five miles away. A half-hour’s ride in a fast car over good roads. Two days’ hard slog over half-frozen mud by horseback. Not long. Dougal’s words echoed in my ears, and kept me in my saddle long past the point where I might have dropped from fatigue.
My body was pushed to its limits to keep to the saddle through the long weary miles, but my mind was free to worry. To keep it from thoughts of Jamie, I spent the time remembering my interview in the cave with Dougal.
And the last thing he h
ad said to me. Standing outside the small cave, waiting as Rupert and his companions brought their horses down from a hiding place higher up the glen, Dougal had turned to me abruptly.
“I’ve a message for ye,” he had said. “From the witch.”
“From Geilie?” To say I was startled was the least of it.
I couldn’t make out his face in the dark, but I saw his head tilt in affirmation.
“I saw her the once,” he said softly, “when I came to take the child.” Under other circumstances, I might have felt some sympathy for him, parting for the last time from his mistress, who was condemned to the stake, holding the child they had made together, a son whom he could never acknowledge. As it was, my voice was icy.
“What did she say?”
He paused; I wasn’t sure if it was merely the disinclination to reveal information, or if he was trying to make sure of his words. Apparently it was the latter, for he spoke carefully.
“She said if ever I saw you again, I was to tell you two things, just as she told them to me. The first was, “I think it is possible, but I do not know.” And the second—the second was just numbers. She made me say them over, to be sure I had them right, for I was to tell them to you in a certain order. The numbers were one, nine, six, and seven.” The tall figure turned toward me in the dark, inquiring.
“Mean anything to ye?”
“No,” I said, and turned away to my horse. But it did, of course, mean something to me.
“I think it is possible.” There was only one thing she could mean by that. She thought, though she did not know, that it was possible to go back, through the circle of stone, to my proper place. Clearly she hadn’t tried it herself, but had chosen—to her cost—to stay. Likely she had had her own reasons. Dougal, perhaps?
As for the numbers, I thought I knew what those meant, too. She had told them to him separately, for the sake of a secrecy which must have gone bone-deep in her by that time, but they were all part of one number, really. One, nine, six, seven. Nineteen-sixty-seven. The year of her disappearance into the past.
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