But I clambered down the stony hill behind Jamie and said nothing when he turned away from the trail to Lallybroch. We wandered down toward the little loch, well content.
“Perhaps I did have something to do wi’ the books, aye?” Jamie said, after a bit. “I mean, I read to the wee maids in the evenings now and again. They’d sit on the settle with me, one on each side, wi’ their heads against me, and it was—” He broke off with a glance at me and coughed, evidently worried that I might be offended at the idea that he’d ever enjoyed a moment in Laoghaire’s house. I smiled and took his arm.
“I’m sure they loved it. But I really doubt that you read anything to Joan that made her want to become a nun.”
“Aye, well,” he said dubiously. “I did read to them out of the Lives of the Saints. Oh, and Fox’s Book of the Martyrs, too, even though there’s a good deal of it to do wi’ Protestants, and Laoghaire said Protestants couldna be martyrs because they were wicked heretics, and I said bein’ a heretic didna preclude being a martyr, and—” He grinned suddenly. “I think that might ha’ been the closest thing we had to a decent conversation.”
“Poor Laoghaire!” I said. “But putting her aside—and do let’s—what do you think of Joan’s quandary?”
He shook his head dubiously.
“Well, I can maybe bribe Laoghaire to marry yon wee cripple, but it would take a deal of money, since she’d want more than she gets from me now. I havena got that much left of the gold we brought, so it would need to wait until I can get back to the Ridge and extract some more, take that to a bank, arrange for a draft… I hate to think of Joan having to spend a year at home, trying to keep yon lust-crazed weasels apart.”
“Lust-crazed weasels?” I said, entertained. “No, really. Did you see them at it?”
“Not exactly,” he said, coughing. “Ye could see there was an attraction atween them, though. Here, let’s go along the shore; I saw a curlew’s nest the other day.”
The wind had quieted and the sun was bright and warm—for the moment. I could see clouds lurking over the horizon, and doubtless it would be raining again by nightfall, but for the moment it was a lovely spring day, and we were both disposed to enjoy it. By unspoken consent, we put aside all disagreeable matters and talked of nothing in particular, only enjoying each other’s company, until we reached a shallow, grass-covered mound where we could perch and enjoy the sun.
Jamie’s mind seemed to return now and then to Laoghaire, though—I supposed he couldn’t help it. I didn’t really mind, as such comparisons as he made were entirely to my benefit.
“Had she been my first,” he said thoughtfully at one point, “I think I might have a much different opinion of women in general.”
“Well, you can’t define all women in terms of what they’re like—or what one of them is like—in bed,” I objected. “I’ve known men who, well…”
“Men? Was Frank not your first?” he demanded, surprised.
I put a hand behind my head and regarded him.
“Would it matter if he wasn’t?”
“Well…” Clearly taken aback by the possibility, he groped for an answer. “I suppose—” He broke off and eyed me, meditatively stroking one finger down the bridge of his nose. One corner of his mouth turned up. “I don’t know.”
I didn’t know, myself. On the one hand, I rather enjoyed his shock at the notion—and at my age, I was not at all averse to feeling mildly wanton, if only in retrospect. On the other hand…
“Well, where do you get off, anyway, casting stones?”
“Ye were my first,” he pointed out, with considerable asperity.
“So you said,” I said, teasing. To my amusement, he flushed up like the rosy dawn.
“Ye didna believe me?” he said, his voice rising in spite of himself.
“Well, you did seem rather well informed, for a so-called virgin. To say nothing of… imaginative.”
“For God’s sake, Sassenach, I grew up on a farm! It’s a verra straightforward business, after all.” He looked me closely up and down, his gaze lingering at certain points of particular interest. “And as for imagining things … Christ, I’d spent months—years!—imagining!” A certain light filled his eyes, and I had the distinct impression that he hadn’t stopped imagining in the intervening years, not by any means.
“What are you thinking?” I asked, intrigued.
“I’m thinking that the water in the loch’s that wee bit chilly, but if it didna shrink my c**k straight off, the feel of the heat when I plunged into ye … Of course,” he added practically, eyeing me as though estimating the effort involved in forcing me into the loch, “we wouldna need to do it in the water, unless ye liked; I could just dunk ye a few times, drag ye onto the shore, and—God, your arse looks fine, wi’ the wet linen of your shift clinging to it. It goes all transparent, and I can see the weight of your bu**ocks, like great smooth round melons—”
“I take it back—I don’t want to know what you’re thinking!”
“You asked,” he pointed out logically. “And I can see the sweet wee crease of your arse, too—and once I’ve got ye pinned under me and ye canna get away… d’ye want it lying on your back, Sassenach, or bent over on your knees, wi’ me behind? I could take a good hold either way, and—”
“I am not going into a freezing loch in order to gratify your perverted desires!”
“All right,” he said, grinning. Stretching himself out beside me, he reached round behind and took a generous handful. “Ye can gratify them here, if ye like, where it’s warm.”
OENOMANCY
LALLYBROCH WAS A working farm. Nothing on a farm can stop for very long, even for grief. Which is how it came to be that I was the only person in the front of the house when the door opened in the middle of the afternoon.
I heard the sound and poked my head out of Ian’s study to see who had come in. A strange young man was standing in the foyer, gazing round appraisingly. He heard my step and turned, looking at me curiously.
“Who are you?” we said simultaneously, and laughed.
“I’m Michael,” he said, in a soft, husky voice with the trace of a French accent. “And ye’ll be Uncle Jamie’s faery-woman, I suppose.”
He was examining me with frank interest, and I felt therefore free to do the same.
“Is that what the family’s been calling me?” I asked, looking him over.
He was a slight man, lacking either Young Jamie’s burly strength or Young Ian’s wiry height. Michael was Janet’s twin but did not resemble her at all, either. This was the son who had gone to France, to become a junior partner in Jared Fraser’s wine business, Fraser et Cie. As he took off his traveling cloak, I saw that he was dressed very fashionably for the Highlands, though his suit was sober in both color and cut—and he wore a black crepe band around his upper arm.
“That, or the witch,” he said, smiling faintly. “Depending whether it’s Da or Mam who’s talking.”
“Indeed,” I said, with an edge—but couldn’t help smiling back. He was quiet but an engaging young man—well, relatively young. He must be near thirty, I thought.
“I’m sorry for your… loss,” I said, with a nod toward the crepe band. “May I ask—”
“My wife,” he said simply. “She died two weeks ago. I should have come sooner, else.”
That took me aback considerably.
“Oh. I … see. But your parents, your brothers and sisters—they don’t know this yet?”
He shook his head and came forward a little, so the light from the fanshaped window above the door fell on his face, and I saw the dark circles under his eyes and the marks of the bone-deep exhaustion that is grief’s only consolation.
“I am so sorry,” I said, and, moved by impulse, put my arms around him. He leaned toward me, under the same impulse. His body yielded for an instant to my touch, and there was an extraordinary moment in which I sensed the deep numbness within him, the unacknowledged war of acknowledgment and denial. He knew what had happened, what was happening—but could not feel it. Not yet.
“Oh, dear,” I said, stepping back from the brief embrace. I touched his cheek lightly, and he stared at me, blinking.
“I will be damned,” he said mildly. “They’re right.”
A DOOR OPENED and closed above, I heard a foot on the stair—and an instant later, Lallybroch awoke to the knowledge that the last child had come home.
The swirl of women and children wafted us into the kitchen, where the men appeared, by ones and twos through the back door to embrace Michael or clap him on the shoulder.
There were outpourings of sympathy, the same questions and answers repeated several times—how had Michael’s wife, Lillie, died? She had died of the influenza; so had her grandmother; no, he himself had not caught it; her father sent his prayers and concerns for Michael’s father—and eventually the preparations for washing and supper and the putting of children to bed began, and Michael slipped out of the maelstrom.
Coming out of the kitchen myself to fetch my shawl from the study, I saw him at the foot of the stair with Jenny, talking quietly. She touched his face, just as I had, asking him something in a low voice. He half-smiled, shook his head, and, squaring his shoulders, went upstairs alone to see Ian, who was feeling too poorly to come down to supper.
ALONE AMONG THE Murrays, Michael had inherited the fugitive gene for red hair, and burned among his darker siblings like a coal. He had inherited an exact copy of his father’s soft brown eyes, though. “And a good thing, too,” Jenny said to me privately, “else his da would likely be sure I’d been at it wi’ the goatherd, for God knows, he doesna look like anyone else in the family.”
I’d mentioned this to Jamie, who looked surprised but then smiled.
“Aye. She wouldna ken it, for she never met Colum MacKenzie face-to-face.”
“Colum? Are you sure?” I looked over my shoulder.
“Oh, aye. The coloring’s different—but allowing for age and good health … There was a painting at Leoch, done of Colum when he was maybe fifteen, before his first fall. Recall it, do ye? It hung in the solar on the third floor.”
I closed my eyes, frowning in concentration, trying to reconstruct the floor plan of the castle.
“Walk me there,” I said. He made a small amused noise in his throat but took my hand, tracing a delicate line on my palm.
“Aye, here’s the entrance, wi’ the big double door. Ye’d cross the courtyard, once inside, and then …”
He walked me unerringly to the exact spot in my mind, and sure enough, there was a painting there of a young man with a thin, clever face and look of far-seeing in his eyes.
“Yes, I think you’re right,” I said, opening my eyes. “If he is as intelligent as Colum, then… I have to tell him.”