“Bugger off,” he said abruptly, standing up. “Just—bugger off. I don’t want to look at you.”
Buck gave him a long look, as though debating whether to say something, but then shrugged, got up, and disappeared. He was back within five minutes, though, and sat down with the air of someone who had something to say. Fine, Roger thought. Get on with it.
“Did it not occur to the two of ye, whilst reading those letters, that there’s another way for the past to speak to the future?”
“Well, of course,” Roger said, impatient. He stabbed his dirk into one of the turnips to test it; still hard as a rock. “We thought of all sorts of things—diaries left under stones, newspaper notices”—he grimaced at that one—“and a number of less-useful notions. But most of those options were either too unsure or too risky; that’s why we arranged to use the banks. But . . .”
He trailed off. Buck was looking smugly superior.
“And I suppose you’ve thought of something better?” Roger said.
“Why, man, it’s right under your nose.” With a smirk, Buck bent to test his own turnip and, evidently finding the results acceptable, lifted it out of the ashes on the point of his dirk.
“If ye think I’m going to ask you—”
“Beyond that—” Buck said, blowing on the hot turnip between phrases, “beyond that—it’s the only way for the future to speak to the past.”
He gave Roger a straight, hard look, and Roger felt as though he’d been stabbed with a screwdriver.
“What—you?” he blurted. “You mean you—”
Buck nodded, eyes casually on his smoking turnip.
“Can’t be you, can it?” He looked up suddenly, green eyes catching the firelight. “You won’t go. Ye wouldn’t trust me to keep looking.”
“I—” The words caught in Roger’s throat, but he was well aware that they showed in his face.
Buck’s own face twisted in a lopsided smile. “I would keep looking,” he said. “But I see how ye’d not believe me.”
“It’s not that,” Roger said, clearing his throat. “It’s only—I can’t leave while Jem might be here. Not when I don’t know for sure that I could come back if I left and he . . . wasn’t at the other end.” He made a helpless gesture. “Go, and know I was maybe abandoning him forever?”
Buck nodded, looking down. Roger saw the other man’s throat move, too, and was struck by a pang of realization.
“Your Jem,” Roger said softly. “You do know where he is, at least. When, I mean.” The question was clear: if Buck was willing to risk the stones again, why would he not do it in search of his own family, rather than to carry a message to Bree?
“Ye’re all mine, aren’t ye?” Buck said gruffly. “My blood. My . . . sons.”
Despite everything, Roger was moved by that. A little. He coughed, and it didn’t hurt.
“Even so,” he said. He gave Buck a direct look. “Why? Ye ken it might do for you; it might have done this last time, if McEwan hadn’t been there.”
“Mmphm.” Buck poked his turnip again and put it back into the fire. “Aye. Well, I meant it; I’m no a very good person. No such a waste, I mean, if I didna make it.” His lips twisted a little as he glanced up at Roger. “Ye’ve maybe got a bit more to offer the world.”
“I’m flattered,” Roger said dryly. “I imagine the world can get on well enough without me, if it came to that.”
“Aye, maybe. But maybe your family can’t.”
There was a long silence while Roger digested that, broken only by the pop of a burning twig and the distant hooting of courting owls.
“What about your own family?” he asked at last, quietly. “Ye seem to think your wife would be happier without ye. Why? What did ye do to her?”
Buck made a short, unhappy noise that might have been meant for a wry laugh.
“Fell in love wi’ her.” He took a deep breath, looking down into the fire. “Wanted her.”
He’d met Morag Gunn just after he’d begun reading law with a solicitor in Inverness. The lawyer had been called to go out to a farm near Essich, to draw up a will for an old man, and had taken his junior along to see the way of it.
“It took three days, for the auld man was that ill, he couldna attend more than a few minutes at a time. So we stayed wi’ the family, and I’d go out to help wi’ the pigs and the chickens when I wasna needed inside.” He shrugged. “I was young and no bad-looking, and I had the trick of makin’ women like me. And she did like me—but she was in love wi’ Donald McAllister, a young farmer from Daviot.”
But Buck had been unable to forget the lass, and whenever he had a day free from the law, would ride out to visit. He came for Hogmanay, and there was a cèilidh, and . . .
“And wee Donald had a dram—or two or three or four—too many and was found in a stall wi’ his hand down Mary Finlay’s bodice. God, the stramash there was!” A rueful smile flickered over Buck’s face. “Mary’s twa brothers gave Donald laldy and laid him out like a mackerel, and all the lasses were screamin’ and the lads shoutin’ like it was Judgment Day. And poor wee Morag was off behind the cow byre, greetin’ her heart out.”
“You, um, comforted her,” Roger suggested, not trying to keep the skeptical note out of his voice. Buck shot him a sharp glance, then shrugged.