"Eh?" The boy's mouth hung open in blank incomprehension.
"I am going to shoot you," Jamie explained patiently. "Spies are usually hanged, but in consideration of your gallantry, I am willing to give you a quick, clean death. Do ye prefer to take the ball in the head, or the heart?"
The boy straightened quickly, squaring his shoulders. "Oh, ah, yes, of course." He licked his lips and swallowed. "I think…in the—in the heart. Thank you," he added, as an obvious afterthought. He raised his chin, compressing lips that still held a suggestion of their soft, childish curve.
Nodding, Jamie cocked the pistol with a click that echoed in the silence under the oak trees.
"Wait!" said the prisoner. Jamie looked at him inquiringly, pistol leveled at the thin chest.
"What assurance have I that the lady will remain unmolested after I am— after I have gone?" the boy demanded, looking belligerently around the circle of men. His single working hand was clenched hard, but shook nonetheless. Ross made a sound which he skillfully converted into a sneeze.
Jamie lowered the pistol, and with an iron control, kept his face carefully composed in an expression of solemn gravity.
"Weel," he said, the Scots accent growing broader under the strain, "ye ha' my own word, of course, though I quite see that ye might have some hesitation in accepting the word of a…"—his lip twitched despite himself—"of a Scottish poltroon. Perhaps ye would accept the assurances of the lady herself?" He raised an eyebrow in my direction and Kincaid sprang at once to free me, fumbling awkwardly with the gag.
"Jamie!" I exclaimed furiously, mouth freed at last. "This is unconscionable! How could you do such a thing? You—you—"
"Poltroon," he supplied helpfully. "Or jackal, if ye like that better. What d'ye say, Murtagh," turning to his lieutenant, "am I a poltroon or a jackal?"
Murtagh's seam of a mouth twisted sourly. "I'd say ye're dogsmeat, if you untie yon lass wi'out a dirk in yer hand."
Jamie turned apologetically to his prisoner. "I must apologize to my wife for forcing her to take part in this deception. I assure you that her participation was entirely unwilling." He ruefully examined his bitten hand in the light from the fire.
"Your wife!" The boy stared wildly from me to Jamie.
"I'll assure ye likewise that while the lady on occasion honors my bed with her presence, she has never done so under duress. And won't now," he added pointedly, "but let's no untie her just yet, Kincaid."
"James Fraser," I hissed between clenched teeth. "If you touch that boy, you'll certainly never share my bed again!"
Jamie raised one eyebrow. His canines gleamed briefly in the firelight. "Well, that's a serious threat, to an unprincipled voluptuary such as myself, but I dinna suppose I can consider my own interests in such a situation. War's war, after all." The pistol, which had been allowed to fall, began to rise once more.
"Jamie!" I screamed.
He lowered the pistol again, and turned to me with an expression of exaggerated patience. "Yes?"
I took a deep breath, to keep my voice from shaking with rage. I could only guess what he was up to, and hoped I was doing the right thing. Right or not, when this was over…I choked off an intensely pleasing vision of Jamie writhing on the ground with my foot on his Adam's apple, in order to concentrate on my present role.
"You haven't any evidence whatever that he's a spy," I said. "He says he stumbled on you by accident. Who wouldn't be curious if they saw a fire out in the woods?"
Jamie nodded, following the argument. "Aye, and what about attempted murder? Spy or no, he tried to kill me, and admits as much." He tenderly fingered the raw scratch at the side of his throat.
"Well, of course he did," I said hotly. "He says he knew you were an outlaw. There's a bloody price on your head, for heaven's sake!"
Jamie rubbed his chin dubiously, at last turning to the prisoner. "Well, it's a point," he said. "William Grey, your advocate makes a good case for ye. It's no the policy either of His Highness Prince Charles or myself to execute persons unlawfully, enemy or no." He summoned Kincaid with a wave of the hand.
"Kincaid, you and Ross take this man in the direction he says his camp lies. If the information he gave us proves to be true, tie him to a tree a mile from the camp in the line of march. His friends will find him there tomorrow. If what he told us is not true…"—he paused, cold eyes bent on the prisoner—"cut his throat."
He looked the boy in the face and said, without a shadow of mockery, "I give you your life. I hope ye'll use it well."
Moving behind me, he cut the cloth binding my wrists. As I turned furiously, he motioned toward the boy, who had sat down suddenly on the ground beneath the oak. "Perhaps ye'd be good enough to tend the boy's arm before he goes?" The scowl of pretended ferocity had left his face, leaving it blank as a wall. His eyelids were lowered, preventing me from meeting his gaze.
Without a word, I went to the boy and sank to my knees beside him. He seemed dazed, and didn't protest my examination, or the subsequent manipulations, though the handling must have been painful.
The split bodice of my gown kept sliding off my shoulders, and I muttered beneath my breath as I irritably hitched up one side or the other for the dozenth time. The bones of the boy's forearm were light and angular under the skin, hardly thicker than my own. I splinted the arm and slung it, using my own kerchief. "It's a clean break," I told him, keeping my voice impersonal. "Try to keep it still for two weeks, at least." He nodded, not looking at me.
Jamie had been sitting quietly on a log watching my ministrations. My breath coming unevenly, I walked up to him and slapped him as hard as I could. The blow left a white patch on one cheek and made his eyes water, but he didn't move or change expression.
Kincaid pulled the boy to his feet and propelled him to the edge of the clearing with a hand at his back. At the edge of the shadows he halted and turned back. Avoiding looking at me, he spoke only to Jamie.
"I owe you my life," he said formally. "I should greatly prefer not to, but since you have forced the gift upon me, I must regard it as a debt of honor. I shall hope to discharge that debt in the future, and once it is discharged…" The boy's voice shook slightly with suppressed hatred, losing all its assumed formality in the utter sincerity of his feelings. "…I'll kill you!"
Jamie rose from the log to his full height. His face was calm, free of any taint of amusement. He inclined his head gravely to his departing prisoner. "In that case, sir, I must hope that we do not meet again."
The boy straightened his shoulders and returned the bow stiffly. "A Grey does not forget an obligation, sir," he said, and vanished into the darkness, Kincaid at his elbow.
There was a discreet interval of breathless waiting, as the leaf-shuffling sounds of feet moved off through the darkness. Then the laughter started, first with a soft, fizzing noise through the nostrils of one man, then a tentative chuckle from another. Never raucous, still it gathered volume, spiraling round the circle of men.
Jamie took one step into the circle, face turned toward his men. The laughter stopped abruptly. Glancing down at me, he said briefly, "Go to the tent."
Warned by my expression, he gripped my wrist before I could raise my hand.
"If you're going to slap me again, at least let me turn the other cheek," he said dryly. "Besides, I think I can save ye the trouble. But I'd advise you to go to the tent, just the same."
Dropping my hand, he strode out to the edge of the fire, and with one peremptory jerk of the head, gathered the scattered men into a reluctant, half-wary clump before him. Their faces were big-eyed, orbits scooped with darkness by the shadows.
I didn't understand everything he said, as he spoke in an odd mixture of Gaelic and English, but I gathered sufficient sense to realize that he was inquiring, in a soft, level tone that seemed to turn his listeners to stone, as to the identity of the sentinels on duty for the evening.
There was a furtive glancing to and fro, and uneasy movement among the men, who seemed to clump more strongly together in the face of danger. But then the closed ranks parted, and two men stepped out, glanced up—once—then hastily down, and stood shoulder to shoulder, eyes on the ground, outside the protection of their fellows.
It was the McClure brothers, George and Sorley. Close in age, somewhere in their thirties, they stood hang-dog near each other, fingers of the work-toughened hands twitching as though longing to link and clasp together, as some small protection before the coming storm.
There was a brief, wordless pause as Jamie looked over the two delinquent sentinels. Then followed five solid minutes of unpleasantness, all conducted in that same soft, level voice. There wasn't a sound from the grouped men, and the McClures, both burly men, seemed to dwindle and shrink under the weight of it. I wiped my sweating palms on my skirt, glad that I didn't understand it all, and beginning to regret not following Jamie's order to return to the tent.
I regretted it still more in the next moment, when Jamie turned suddenly to Murtagh, who, expecting the command, was ready with a leather strip, some two feet long, knotted at one end to provide a rough grip.