"We'll miss you, too," I told him, truthfully. There were other people I would miss—Louise, Mother Hildegarde, Herr Gerstmann. Master Raymond most of all. Yet I looked forward to returning to Scotland, to Lallybroch. I had no wish to go back to Paris, and there were people there I most certainly had no desire to see again—Louis of France, for one.
Charles Stuart, for another. Cautious probing amongst the Jacobites in Paris had confirmed Jamie's initial impression; the small burst of optimism fired by Charles's boasting of his "grand venture" had faded, and while the loyal supporters of King James held true to their sovereign, there seemed no chance that this stolid loyalty of stubborn endurance would lead to action.
Let Charles make his own peace with exile, then, I thought. Our own was over. We were going home.
"The baggage is aboard," said a dour Scots voice in my ear. "The master of the ship says come ye along now; we sail wi' the tide."
Jared turned to Murtagh, then glanced right and left down the quay. "Where's the laddie, then?" he asked.
Murtagh jerked his head down the pier. "In the tavern yon. Gettin' stinkin' drunk."
I had wondered just how Jamie had planned to weather the Channel crossing. He had taken one look at the lowering red sky of dawn that threatened later storms, excused himself to Jared, and disappeared. Looking in the direction of Murtagh's nod, I saw Fergus, sitting on a piling near the entrance to one grogshop, plainly doing sentry duty.
Jared, who had exhibited first disbelief and then hilarity when informed of his nephew's disability, grinned widely at this news.
"Oh, aye?" he said. "Well, I hope he's left the last quart 'til we come for him. He'll be hell to carry up the gangplank, if he hasn't."
"What did he do that for?" I demanded of Murtagh, in some exasperation. "I told him I had some laudanum for him." I patted the silk reticule I carried. "It would knock him out a good deal faster."
Murtagh merely blinked once. "Aye. He said if he was goin' to have a headache, he'd as soon enjoy the gettin' of it. And the whisky tastes a good bit better goin' down than yon filthy black stuff." He nodded at my reticule, then at Jared. "Come on, then, if ye mean to help me wi' him."
In the forward cabin of the Portia, I had sat on the captain's bunk, watching the steady rise and fall of the receding shoreline, my husband's head cradled on my knees.
One eye opened a slit and looked up at me. I stroked the heavy damp hair off his brow. The scent of ale and whisky hung about him like perfume.
"You are going to feel exactly like hell when you wake up in Scotland," I told him.
The other eye opened, and regarded the dancing waves of light reflected across the timbered ceiling. Then they fixed on me, deep pools of limpid blue.
"Between hell now, and hell later, Sassenach," he said, his speech measured and precise, "I will take later, every time." His eyes closed. He belched softly, once, and the long body relaxed, rocked at ease on the cradle of the deep.
The horses seemed as eager as we; sensing the nearness of stables and food, they began to push the pace a bit, heads up and ears cocked forward in anticipation.
I was just reflecting that I could do with a wash and a bite to eat, myself, when my horse, slightly in the lead, dug in its feet and came to a slithering halt, hooves buried fetlock deep in the reddish dust. The mare shook her head violently from side to side, snorting and whooshing.
"Hey, lass, what's amiss? Got a bee up your nose?" Jamie swung down from his own mount and hurried to grab the gray mare's bridle. Feeling the broad back shiver and twitch beneath me, I slid down as well.
"Whatever is the matter with her?" I gazed curiously at the horse, which was pulling backward against Jamie's grip on the bridle, shaking her mane, with eyes bugging. The other horses, as though infected by her unease, began to stamp and shift as well.
Jamie glanced briefly over his shoulder at the empty road.
"She sees something."
Fergus raised himself in his shortened stirrups and shaded his eyes, staring over the mare's back. Lowering his hand, he looked at me and shrugged.
I shrugged back; there seemed to be nothing whatever to cause the mare's distress—the road and the fields lay vacant all around us, grain-heads ripening and drying in the late summer sun. The nearest grove of trees was more than a hundred yards away, beyond a small heap of stones that might have been the remnants of a tumbled chimneystack. Wolves were almost unheard of in cleared land like this, and surely no fox or badger would disturb a horse at this distance.
Giving up the attempt to coax the mare forward, Jamie led her in a half-circle; she went willingly enough, back in the direction we had come.
He motioned to Murtagh to lead the other horses out of the way, then swung himself into the saddle, and leaning forward, one hand clutched in the mare's mane, urged her slowly forward, speaking softly in her ear. She came hesitantly, but without resistance, until she reached the point of her previous stopping. There she halted again and stood shivering, and nothing would persuade her to move a step farther.
"All right, then," said Jamie, resigned. "Have it your way." He turned the horse's head and led her into the field, the yellow grain-heads brushing the shaggy hairs of her belly. We rustled after them, the horses bending their necks to snatch a mouthful of grain here and there as we passed through the field.
As we rounded a small granite outcrop just below the crest of the hill, I heard a brief warning bark just ahead. We emerged onto the road to find a black and white shepherd dog on guard, head up and tail stiff as he kept a wary eye on us.
He uttered another short yap, and a matching black and white figure shot out of a clump of alders, followed more slowly by a tall, slender figure wrapped in a brown hunting plaid.
"Ian!"
"Jamie!"
Jamie tossed the mare's reins back to me, and met his brother-in-law in the middle of the road, where the two men clutched each other round the shoulders, laughing and pounding each other on the back. Released from suspicion, the dogs frolicked happily around them, tails wagging, darting aside now and then to sniff at the legs of the horses.
"We didna expect ye 'til tomorrow at the earliest," Ian was saying, his long, homely face beaming.
"We had a good wind crossing," Jamie explained. "Or at least Claire tells me we did; I wasna taking much notice, myself." He cast a glance back at me, grinning, and Ian came up to grasp my hand.
"Good-sister," he said in formal greeting. Then he smiled, the warmth of it lighting his soft brown eyes. "Claire." Impulsively, he kissed my fingers, and I squeezed his hand.
"Jenny's gone daft wi' cleaning and cooking," he said, still smiling at me. "You'll be lucky to have a bed to sleep in tonight; she's got all the mattresses outside, being beaten."
"After three nights in the heather, I wouldn't mind sleeping on the floor," I assured him. "Are Jenny and the children all well?"
"Oh, aye. She's breeding again," he added. "Due in February."
"Again?" Jamie and I spoke together, and a rich blush rose in Ian's lean cheeks.
"God, man, wee Maggie's less than a year old," Jamie said, with a censorious c**k of one brow. "Have ye no sense of restraint?"
"Me?" Ian said indignantly. "Ye think I had anything to do with it?"
"Well, if ye didn't, I should think ye'd be interested in who did," Jamie said, the corner of his mouth twitching.
The blush deepened to a rich rose color, contrasting nicely with Ian's smooth brown hair. "Ye know damn well what I mean," he said. "I slept on the trundle bed wi' Young Jamie for two months, but then Jenny…"
"Oh, you're saying my sister's a wanton, eh?"
"I'm saying she's as stubborn as her brother when it comes to getting what she wants," Ian said. He feinted to one side, dodged neatly back and landed a blow in the pit of Jamie's stomach. Jamie doubled over, laughing.
"Just as well I've come home, then," he said. "I'll help ye keep her under control."
"Oh, aye?" Ian said skeptically. "I'll call all the tenants to watch."
"Lost a few sheep, have ye?" Jamie changed the subject with a gesture that took in the dogs and Ian's long crook, dropped in the dust of the roadway.
"Fifteen yows and a ram," Ian said, nodding. "Jenny's own flock of merinos, that she keeps for the special wool. The ram's a right bastard; broke down the gate. I thought they might have been in the grain up here, but nay sign o' them."
"We didn't see them up above," I said.
"Oh, they wouldna be up there," Ian said, waving a dismissive hand. "None o' the beasts will go past the cottage."
"Cottage?" Fergus, growing impatient with this exchange of civilities, had kicked his mount up alongside mine. "I saw no cottage, milord. Only a pile of stones."
"That's all that's left of MacNab's cottage, laddie," said Ian. He squinted up at Fergus, silhouetted against the late afternoon sun. "And ye'd be well-advised to keep away from there yourself."
The hair prickled on the back of my neck, despite the heat of the day. Ronald MacNab was the tenant who had betrayed Jamie to the men of the Watch a year before, the man who had died for his treachery within a day of its being found out. Died, I remembered, among the ashes of his home, burned over his head by the men of Lallybroch. The pile of chimneystones, so innocent when we had passed them a moment ago, had now the grim look of a cairn. I swallowed, forcing back the bitter taste that rose at the back of my throat.