“I have indeed.” I could tell from his expression that it was good news, and it was—though not for the Stuarts.
“Philip has declined to lend any assistance to the Stuarts,” Jamie said. “He’s had word from the papal office, ye ken; he’s to keep awa’ from the whole question of the Scottish throne.”
“Do we know why?” The latest interception from a papal messenger had contained several letters, but as these were all addressed to James or Charles Stuart, they might well contain no reference to His Holiness’s conversations with Spain.
“Dougal thinks he knows.” Jamie laughed. “He’s fair disgusted, is Dougal. Said he’d been kept cooling his heels in Toledo for nearly a month, and sent awa’ at last with no more than a vague promise of aid ‘in the fullness of time, Deo volente.’ ” His deep voice captured a pious intonation perfectly, and I laughed myself.
“Benedict wants to avoid friction between Spain and France; he doesna want Philip and Louis wasting money that he might have a use for, ye ken,” he added cynically. “It’s hardly fitting for a pope to say so, but Benedict has his doubts as to whether a Catholic king could hold England anymore. Scotland’s got its Catholic chiefs among the Highland clans, but it’s some time since England owned a Catholic king—likely to be the hell of a lot longer before they do again—Deo volente,” he added, grinning.
He scratched his head, ruffling the short red-gold hair above his temple. “It looks verra dim for the Stuarts, Sassenach, and that’s good news. No, there’ll be no aid from the Bourbon monarchs. The only thing that concerns me now is this investment Charles Stuart’s made with the Comte St. Germain.”
“You don’t think it’s just a business arrangement, then?”
“Well, it is,” he said, frowning, “and yet there’s more behind it. I’ve heard talk, aye?”
While the banking families of Paris were not inclined to take the Young Pretender to the throne of Scotland with any seriousness, that situation might easily change, were Charles Stuart suddenly to have money to invest.
“His Highness tells me he’s been talking to the Gobelins,” Jamie said. “St. Germain introduced him; otherwise they’d not give him the time o’ day. And old Gobelin thinks him a wastrel and a fool, and so does one of the Gobelin sons. The other, though—he says that he’ll wait and see; if Charles succeeds with this venture, then perhaps he can put other opportunities in his way.”
“Not at all good,” I observed.
Jamie shook his head. “No. Money breeds money, ye ken. Let him succeed at one or two large ventures, and the bankers will begin to listen to him. The man’s no great thinker,” he said, with a wry twist of his mouth, “but he’s verra charming in person; he can persuade people into things against their better judgment. Even so, he’ll make no headway without a small bit of capital to his name—but he’ll have that, if this investment succeeds.”
“Mm.” I shifted my position once more, wriggling my toes in their hot leather prison. The shoes had fit when made for me, but my feet were beginning to swell a bit, and my silk stockings were damp with sweat. “Is there anything we can do about it?”
Jamie shrugged, with a lopsided smile. “Pray for bad weather off Portugal, I suppose. Beyond the ship sinking, I dinna see much way for the venture to fail, truth be told. St. Germain has contracts already for the sale of the entire cargo. Both he and Charles Stuart stand to triple their money.”
I shivered briefly at the mention of the Comte. I couldn’t help recalling Dougal’s speculations. I had not told Jamie about Dougal’s visit, nor about his speculations as to the Comte’s nocturnal activities. I didn’t like keeping secrets from him, but Dougal had demanded my silence as his price for helping me in the matter of Jonathan Randall, and I had had little choice but to agree.
Jamie smiled suddenly at me, and stretched out a hand.
“I’ll think of something, Sassenach. For now, give me your feet. Jenny said it helped to have me rub her feet when she was wi’ child.”
I didn’t argue, but slipped my feet out of the hot shoes and swung them up onto his lap with a sigh of relief as the air from the window cooled the damp silk over my toes.
His hands were big, and his fingers at once strong and gentle. He rubbed his knuckles down the arch of my foot and I leaned back with a soft moan. We rode silently for several minutes, while I relaxed into a state of mindless bliss.
Head bent over my green silk toes, Jamie remarked casually, “It wasna really a debt, ye ken.”
“What wasn’t?” Fogged as I was by warm sun and foot massage, I hadn’t any idea what he meant.
Not stopping his rubbing, he looked up at me. His expression was serious, though the hint of a smile lit his eyes.
“You said that I owed ye a life, Sassenach, because you’d saved mine for me.” He took hold of one big toe and wiggled it. “But I’ve been reckoning, and I’m none so sure that’s true. Seems to me that it’s nearly even, taken all in all.”
“What you do mean, even?” I tried to pull my foot loose, but he held tight.
“If you’ve saved my life—and ye have—well, I’ve saved yours as well, and at least as often. I saved ye from Jack Randall at Fort William, you’ll recall—and I took ye from the mob at Cranesmuir, no?”
“Yes,” I said cautiously. I had no idea where he was going, but he wasn’t just making idle conversation. “I’m grateful for it, of course.”
He made a small Scottish noise of dismissal, deep in his throat. “It isna a matter for gratitude, Sassenach, on your part or mine—my point is only that it’s no a matter of obligation, either.” The smile had vanished from his eyes, and he was entirely serious.
“I didna give ye Randall’s life as an exchange for my own—it wouldna be a fair trade, for one thing. Close your mouth, Sassenach,” he added practically, “flies will get in.” There were in fact a number of the insects present; three were resting on the Fergus’s shirtfront, undisturbed by its constant rise and fall.
“Why did you agree, then?” I stopped struggling, and he wrapped both hands around my feet, running his thumbs slowly over the curves of my heels.
“Well, it wasna for any of the reasons you tried to make me see. As for Frank,” he said, “well, it’s true enough that I’ve taken his wife, and I do pity him for it—more sometimes than others,” he added, with an impudent quirk of one eyebrow. “Still, is it any different than if he were my rival here? You had free choice between us, and you chose me—even with such luxuries as hot baths thrown in on his side. Oof!” I jerked one foot loose and drove it into his ribs. He straightened up and grabbed it, in time to prevent me repeating the blow.
“Regretting your choice, are you?”
“Not yet,” I said, struggling to repossess my foot, “but I may any minute. Keep talking.”
“Well then. I couldna see that the fact that you picked me entitled Frank Randall to particular consideration. Besides,” he said frankly, “I’ll admit to bein’ just a wee bit jealous of the man.”
I kicked with my other foot, aiming lower. He caught that one before it landed, twisting my ankle skillfully.
“As for owing him his life, on general principles,” he continued, ignoring my attempts to escape, “that’s an argument Brother Anselm at the Abbey could answer better than I. Certainly I wouldna kill an innocent man in cold blood. But there again, I’ve killed men in battle, and is this different?”
I remembered the soldier, and the boy in the snow that I had killed in our escape from Wentworth. I no longer tormented myself with memories of them, but I knew they would never leave me.
He shook his head. “No, there are a good many arguments ye might make about that, but in the end, such choices come down to one: You kill when ye must, and ye live with it after. I remember the face of every man I’ve killed, and always will. But the fact remains, I am alive and they are not, and that is my only justification, whether it be right or no.”
“But that’s not true in this case,” I pointed out. “I
t isn’t a case of kill or be killed.”
He shook his head, dislodging a fly that had settled on his hair. “Now there you’re wrong, Sassenach. What it is that lies between Jack Randall and me will be settled only when one of us is dead—and maybe not then. There are ways of killing other than with a knife or a gun, and there are things worse than physical death.” His tone softened. “In Ste. Anne, you pulled me back from more than one kind of death, mo duinne, and never think I don’t know it.” He shook his head. “Perhaps I do owe you more than you owe me, after all.”
He let go my feet and rearranged his long legs. “And that leads me to consider your conscience as well as mine. After all, you had no idea what would happen when ye made your choice, and it’s one thing to abandon a man, and another to condemn him to death.”
I did not at all like this manner of describing my actions, but I couldn’t shirk the facts. I had in fact abandoned Frank, and while I could not regret the choice I had made, still I did and always would regret its necessity. Jamie’s next words echoed my thoughts eerily.
He continued, “If ye had known it might mean Frank’s—well, his death, shall we say—perhaps you would have chosen differently. Given that ye did choose me, have I the right to make your actions of more consequence than you intended?”
Absorbed in his argument, he had been oblivious of its effect on me. Catching sight of my face now, he stopped suddenly, watching me in silence as we jostled our way through the greens of the countryside.
“I dinna see how it can have been a sin for you to do as ye did, Claire,” he said at last, reaching out to lay a hand on my stockinged foot. “I am your lawful husband, as much as he ever was—or will be. You do not even know that ye could have returned to him; mo duinne, ye might have gone still further back, or gone forward to a different time altogether. You acted as ye thought ye must, and no one can do better than that.” He looked up, and the look in his eyes pierced my soul.
“I’m honest enough to say that I dinna care what the right and wrong of it may be, so long as you are here wi’ me, Claire,” he said softly. “If it was a sin for you to choose me … then I would go to the Devil himself and bless him for tempting ye to it.” He lifted my foot and gently kissed the tip of my big toe.
I laid my hand on his head; the short hair felt bristly but soft, like a very young hedgehog.
“I don’t think it was wrong,” I said softly. “But if it was … then I’ll go to the Devil with you, Jamie Fraser.”
He closed his eyes and bowed his head over my foot. He held it so tightly that I could feel the long, slender metatarsals pressed together; still, I didn’t pull back. I dug my fingers into his scalp and tugged his hair gently.
“Why then, Jamie? Why did you decide to let Jack Randall live?”
He still gripped my foot, but opened his eyes and smiled at me.
“Well, I thought a number of things, Sassenach, as I walked up and down that evening. For one thing, I thought that you would suffer, if I did kill the filthy scut. I would do, or not do, quite a few things to spare you distress, Sassenach, but—how heavily does your conscience weigh, against my honor?
“No.” He shook his head again, disposing of another point. “Each one of us can be responsible only for his own actions and his own conscience. What I do canna be laid to your account, no matter what the effects.” He blinked, eyes watering from the dusty wind, and passed a hand across his hair in a vain attempt to smooth the disheveled ends. Clipped short, the spikes of a cowlick stood up on the crest of his skull in a defiant spray.
“Why, then?” I demanded, leaning forward. “You’ve told me all the reasons why not; what’s left?”
He hesitated for a moment, but then met my eyes squarely.
“Because of Charles Stuart, Sassenach. So far we have stopped all the earths, but with this investment of his—well, he might yet succeed in leading an army in Scotland. And if so … well, ye ken better than I do what may come, Sassenach.”
I did, and the thought turned me cold. I could not help remembering one historian’s description of the Highlanders’ fate at Culloden—“the dead lay four deep, soaking in rain and their own blood.”
The Highlanders, mismanaged and starving, but ferocious to the end, would be wasted in one decisive half-hour. They would be left to lie in heaps, bleeding in a cold April rain, the cause they had cherished for a hundred years dead along with them.
Jamie reached forward suddenly and took my hands.
“I think it will not happen, Claire; I think we will stop him. And if not, then still I dinna expect anything to happen to me. But if it should …” He was in deadly earnest now, speaking soft and urgently. “If it does, then I want there to be a place for you; I want someone for you to go to if I am … not there to care for you. If it canna be me, then I would have it be a man who loves you.” His grasp on my fingers grew tighter; I could feel both rings digging into my flesh, and felt the urgency in his hands.
“Claire, ye know what it cost me to do this for you—to spare Randall’s life. Promise me that if the time should come, you’ll go back to Frank.” His eyes searched my face, deep blue as the sky in the window behind him. “I tried to send ye back twice before. And I thank God ye wouldna go. But if it comes to a third time—then promise me you will go back to him—back to Frank. For that is why I spare Jack Randall for a year—for your sake. Promise me, Claire?”
“Allez! Allez! Montez!” the coachman shouted from above, encouraging the team up a slope. We were nearly there.
“All right,” I said at last. “I promise.”
* * *
The stables at Argentan were clean and airy, redolent of summer and the smell of horses. In an open box stall, Jamie circled a Percheron mare, enamored as a horsefly.
“Ooh, what a bonnie wee lass ye are! Come here, sweetheart, let me see that beautiful fat rump. Mm, aye, that’s grand!”
“I wish my husband would talk that way to me,” remarked the Duchesse de Neve, provoking giggles from the other ladies of the party, who stood in the straw of the central aisle, watching.
“Perhaps he would, Madame, if your own back view provided such stimulation. But then, perhaps your husband does not share my lord Broch Tuarach’s appreciation for a finely shaped rump.” The Comte St. Germain allowed his eyes to drift over me with a hint of contemptuous amusement. I tried to imagine those black eyes gleaming through the slits of a mask, and succeeded only too well. Unfortunately, the lace of his wrist frills fell well past his knuckles; I couldn’t see the fork of his thumb.
Catching the byplay, Jamie leaned comfortably on the mare’s broad back, only his head, shoulders and forearms showing above the bulk of the Percheron.
“My lord Broch Tuarach appreciates beauty wherever it may be encountered, Monsieur le Comte; in animal or woman. Unlike some I might name, though, I am capable of telling the difference between the two.” He grinned maliciously at St. Germain, then patted the mare’s neck in farewell as the party broke out laughing.
Jamie took my arm to lead me toward the next stable, followed more slowly by the rest of the party.
“Ah,” he said, inhaling the mixture of horse, harness, manure, and hay as though it were incense. “I do miss the smell of a stable. And the country makes me sick for Scotland.”
“Doesn’t look a lot like Scotland,” I said, squinting in the bright sun as we emerged from the dimness of the stable.
“No, but it’s country,” he said, “it’s clean, and it’s green, and there’s nay smoke in the air, or sewage underfoot—unless ye count horse dung, which I don’t.”
The sun of early summer shone on the roofs of Argentan, nestled among gently rolling green hills. The Royal stud was just outside the town, much more solidly constructed than the houses of the King’s subjects nearby. The barns and stables were of quarried stone, stone-floored, slate-roofed, and maintained in a condition of cleanliness that surpassed that of L’Hôpital des Anges by a fair degree.
A loud whoopin
g came from behind the corner of the stable, and Jamie stopped short, just in time to avoid Fergus, who shot out in front of us as though fired from a slingshot, hotly pursued by two stable-lads, both a good deal bigger. A dirty green streak of fresh manure down the side of the first boy’s face gave some clue as to the cause of the altercation.
With considerable presence of mind, Fergus doubled on his tracks, shot past his pursuers, and whizzed into the middle of the party, whence he took refuge behind the bulwark of Jamie’s kilted hips. Seeing their prey thus safely gone to earth, his pursuers glanced fearfully at the oncoming phalanx of courtiers and gowns, exchanged a look of decision, and, as one, turned and loped off.
Seeing them go, Fergus stuck his head out from behind my skirt and yelled something in gutter French that earned him a sharp cuff on the ear from Jamie.
“Off wi’ ye,” he said brusquely. “And for God’s sake, dinna be throwin’ horse apples at people bigger than you are. Now, go and keep out of trouble.” He followed up this advice with a healthy smack on the seat of the breeches that sent Fergus staggering off in the opposite direction to that taken by his erstwhile assailants.
I had been of two minds as to the wisdom of taking Fergus with us on this expedition, but most of the ladies were bringing pageboys with them, to run errands and carry the baskets of food and other paraphernalia deemed essential to a day’s outing. And Jamie had wanted to show the lad a bit of country, feeling that he’d earned a holiday. All well and good, except that Fergus, who had never been outside Paris in his life, had got the exhilaration of air, light, and beautiful huge animals right up his nose, and, demented with excitement, had been in constant trouble since our arrival.
“God knows what he’ll do next,” I said darkly, looking after Fergus’s retreating form. “Set one of the hayricks on fire, I expect.”
Jamie was unperturbed at the suggestion.
“He’ll be all right. All lads get into manure fights.”
“They do?” I turned around, scrutinizing St. Germain, immaculate in white linen, white serge, and white silk, bending courteously to listen to the Duchesse, as she minced slowly across the straw-strewn yard.
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