Zeb sagged with relief.
“Thank you, sir!”
“And go see one of the surgeons and have that arm tended to!” William shouted after him, above the rising sound of braying and whickering. The boy’s shoulders rose up around his ears and he walked faster, pretending he hadn’t heard.
William saddled Goth himself—he always did, not trusting anyone else to check tack that his life might depend on—then left him with his other horse, Madras, and went to find Lord Sutherland’s groom. Despite the bustle, he had no trouble finding the string; Sutherland had ten horses, all prime creatures of sixteen hands or so, and at least a dozen grooms to tend them. William was just concluding negotiations with one of these when he caught sight of a familiar face among the throng.
“Shit,” he said, under his breath, but Captain Richardson had seen him and was coming toward him, smiling genially.
“Captain Lord Ellesmere. Your servant, sir.”
“Yours, sir,” William said, as pleasantly as he could. What did the scoundrel want now? he wondered. Not that Richardson was a scoundrel—or not necessarily one, despite Randall’s warning. It might, after all, be Randall who was the scoundrel. But he did hold rather a grudge against Richardson, on Mother Claire’s account, as well as his own. The thought of Mother Claire stabbed him unexpectedly, and he forced it back. None of it was her fault.
“I’m surprised to see you here, your lordship,” Richardson said, glancing round at the roiling camp. The sun was up, and bands of gold lit the fog of dust rising from the mules’ rough coats. “You are a conventioneer, are you not?”
“I am,” William said coldly. Richardson certainly knew he was. William felt obliged to defend himself, though against what, he wasn’t sure. “I cannot fight.” He spread his arms slightly. “As you see, I carry no weapons.” He made polite motions indicating his immediate need to be elsewhere, but Richardson went on standing there, smiling with that very ordinary face, so unremarkable that his own mother probably couldn’t pick him out of a crowd, save for a large brown mole on the side of his chin.
“Ah, to be sure.” Richardson drew a little closer, lowering his voice. “That being the case . . . I wonder whether—”
“No,” William said definitely. “I am one of General Clinton’s aides, and I cannot leave my duty. You will excuse me, sir; I am expected.”
He turned on his heel and made off, his heart hammering—and realized rather belatedly that he had left his horse behind. Richardson was still standing at the far side of the horse park, talking to a groom who was taking down the pickets, coiling the rope around one shoulder as he did so. The crowd of horses and mules was swiftly diminishing, but there were enough still near Visigoth to enable William to duck in and pretend to be fiddling with his saddlebags, head bent to hide his face until Richardson should go away.
The conversation had left him with an unsettling image of his erstwhile stepmother as he had last seen her, disheveled and en déshabillé but glowing with a radiant life he had never seen. He didn’t suppose she was his stepmother anymore, but he’d liked her. Belatedly, it occurred to him that Claire now-Fraser still was his stepmother—by a different father. . . . Bloody hell.
He set his teeth, rummaging in the saddlebag for his canteen. Now that that Scotch bugger had returned from his watery grave, throwing everything and everyone into confusion . . . why couldn’t he have drowned and never come back?
Never come back.
“You are a stinking Papist, and your baptismal name is James.” He froze as though shot in the back. He bloody remembered it. The stables at Helwater, the warm smell of horses and mash, and the prickle of straw that worked its way through his stockings. Cold stone floors. He’d been crying . . . Why? All he recalled was a huge wash of desolation, total helplessness. The end of the world. Mac leaving.
He took a long, slow breath and pressed his lips together. Mac. The word didn’t bring back a face; he couldn’t remember what Mac had looked like. He’d been big, that was all. Bigger than Grandfather or any of the footmen or the other grooms. Safety. A sense of constant happiness like a soft, worn blanket.
“Shit,” he whispered, closing his eyes. And had that happiness been a lie, too? He’d been too little to know the difference between a groom’s deference to the young master and real kindness. But . . .
“‘You are a stinking Papist,’” he whispered, and caught his breath on something that might have been a sob. “ ‘And your baptismal name is James.’”
“It was the only name I had a right to give ye.”
He realized that his knuckles were pressed against his chest, against his gorget—but it wasn’t the gorget’s reassurance that he sought. It was that of the little bumps of the plain wooden rosary that he’d worn around his neck for years, hidden under his shirt where no one would see it. The rosary Mac had given him . . . along with his name.
With a suddenness that shocked him, he felt his eyes swim. You went away. You left me!
“Shit!” he said, and punched his fist so hard into the saddlebag that the horse snorted and shied, and a bolt of white-hot pain shot up his arm, obliterating everything.
DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT
IAN WOKE JUST BEFORE dawn to find his uncle squatting beside him.
“I’m away to break bread wi’ the captains of my companies,” Jamie said without preamble. “Ye’ll report to Colonel Wilbur as a scout. And will ye see about horses, Ian? I’ll need a spare mount, gun-broke, and so will you.” He dropped a purse on Ian’s chest, smiled, and vanished into the morning mist.