"Aye, maybe," he interrupted. He swung toward me abruptly, and I could see his eyes fixed on me. There was longing there, and a grief that matched mine, but no anger, no reproach.
He shook his head again.
"No," he said once more. "I ken what ye mean, mo duinne. But it isna so. Had ye gone then, matters might still have happened as they have. Maybe so, maybe no. Perhaps it would have come sooner. Perhaps differently. Perhaps—just perhaps—not at all. But there are more folk have had a hand in this than we two, and I willna have ye take the guilt of it upon yourself."
His hand touched my hair, smoothing it out of my eyes. A tear rolled down my cheek, and he caught it on his finger.
"Not that," I said. I flung a hand out toward the dark, taking in the armies, and Charles, and the starved man in the wood, and the slaughter to come. "Not that. What I did to you."
He smiled then, with great tenderness, and smoothed his palm across my cheek, warm on my spring-chilled skin.
"Aye? And what have I done to you, Sassenach? Taken ye from your own place, led ye into poverty and outlawry, taken ye through battlefields and risked your life. D'ye hold it against me?"
"You know I don't."
He smiled. "Aye, well; neither do I, my Sassenach." The smile faded from his face as he glanced up at the crest of the hill above us. The stones were invisible, but I could feel the menace of them, close at hand.
"I won't go, Jamie," I repeated stubbornly. "I'm staying with you."
"No." He shook his head. He spoke gently, but his voice was firm, with no possibility of denial. "I must go back, Claire."
"Jamie, you can't!" I clutched his arm urgently. "Jamie, they will have found Dougal by now! Willie Coulter will have told someone."
"Aye, he will." He put a hand over my arm and patted it. He had reached his decision on the ride to the hill; I could see it in his shadowed face, resignation and determination mingled. There was grief there, and sadness, too, but those had been put aside; he had no time for mourning now.
"We could try to get away to France," I said. "Jamie, we must!" But even as I spoke, I knew I could not turn him from the course he had decided on.
"No," he said again, softly. He turned and lifted a hand, gesturing toward the darkening valley below, the shaded hills beyond. "The country is roused, Sassenach. The ports are closed; O'Brien has been trying for the last three months to bring a ship to rescue the Prince, to take him to safety in France—Dougal told me…before." A tremor passed over his face, and a sudden spasm of grief knit his brows. He pushed it aside, though, and went on, explaining in a steady voice.
"It's only the English who are hunting Charles Stuart. It will be the English, and the clans as well, who hunt me. I am a traitor twice over, a rebel and a murderer. Claire…" He paused, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck, then said gently, "Claire, I am a dead man."
The tears were freezing on my cheeks, leaving icy trails that burned my skin.
"No," I said again, but to no effect.
"I'm no precisely inconspicuous, ye ken," he said, trying to make a joke of it as he ran a hand through the rusty locks of his hair. "Red Jamie wouldna get far, I think. But you…" He touched my mouth, tracing the line of my lips. "I can save you, Claire, and I will. That is the most important thing. But then I shall go back—for my men."
"The men from Lallybroch? But how?"
Jamie frowned, absently fingering the hilt of his sword as he thought.
"I think I can get them away. It will be confused on the moor, wi' men and horses moving to and fro, and orders shouted and contradicted; battles are verra messy affairs. And even if it's known by then what I—what I have done," he continued, with a momentary catch in his voice, "there are none who would stop me then, wi' the English in sight and the battle about to begin. Aye, I can do it," he said. His voice had steadied, and his fists clenched at his sides with determination.
"They will follow me without question—God help them, that's what's brought them here! Murtagh will have gathered them for me; I shall take them and lead them from the field. If anyone tries to stop me, I shall say that I claim the right to lead my own men in battle; not even Young Simon will deny me that."
He drew a deep breath, brows knit as he visualized the scene on the battlefield come morning.
"I shall bring them safely away. The field is broad enough, and there are enough men that no one will realize that we havena but moved to a new position. I shall bring them off the moor, and see them set on the road toward Lallybroch."
He fell silent, as though this were as far as he had thought in his plans.
"And then?" I asked, not wanting to know the answer, but unable to stop myself.
"And then I shall turn back to Culloden," he said, letting out his breath. He gave me an unsteady smile. "I'm no afraid to die, Sassenach." His mouth quirked wryly. "Well…not a lot, anyway. But some of the ways of accomplishing the fact…" A brief, involuntary shudder ran through him, but he tried to keep smiling.
"I doubt I should be thought worthy of the services of a true professional, but I expect in such a case, both Monsieur Forez and myself might find it…awkward. I mean, havin' my heart cut out by someone I've shared wine with…"
With a sound of incoherent distress, I flung my arms around him, holding him as tightly as I could.
"It's all right," he whispered into my hair. "It's all right, Sassenach. A musket ball. Maybe a blade. It will be over quickly."
I knew this was a lie; I had seen enough of battle wounds and the deaths of warriors. All that was true was that it was better than waiting for the hangman's noose. The terror that had ridden with me from Sandringham's estate rose now to high tide, choking, drowning me. My ears rang with my own pulsebeat, and my throat closed so tight that I felt I could not breathe.
Then all at once, the fear left me. I could not leave him, and I would not.
"Jamie," I said, into the folds of his plaid. "I'm going back with you."
He started back, staring down at me.
"The hell you are!" he said.
"I am." I felt very calm, with no trace of doubt. "I can make a kilt of my arisaid; there are enough young boys with the army that I can pass for one. You've said yourself it will all be confusion. No one will notice."
"No!" he said. "No, Claire!" His jaw was clenched, and he was glaring at me with a mixture of anger and horror.
"If you're not afraid, I'm not either," I said, firming my own jaw. "It will…be over quickly. You said so." My chin was beginning to quiver, despite my determination. "Jamie—I won't…I can't…I bloody won't live without you, and that's all!"
He opened his mouth, speechless, then closed it, shaking his head. The light over the mountains was failing, painting the clouds with a dull red glow. At last he reached for me, drew me close and held me.
"D'ye think I don't know?" he asked softly. "It's me that has the easy part now. For if ye feel for me as I do for you—then I am asking you to tear out your heart and live without it." His hand stroked my hair, the roughness of his knuckles catching in the blowing strands.
"But ye must do it, mo duinne. My brave lioness. Ye must."
"Why?" I demanded, pulling back to look up at him. "When you took me from the witch trial at Cranesmuir—you said then that you would have died with me, you would have gone to the stake with me, had it come to that!"
He grasped my hands, fixing me with a steady blue gaze.
"Aye, I would," he said. "But I wasna carrying your child."
The wind had frozen me; it was the cold that made me shake, I told myself. The cold that took my breath away.
"You can't tell," I said, at last. "It's much too soon to be sure."
He snorted briefly, and a tiny flicker of amusement lit his eyes.
"And me a farmer, too! Sassenach, ye havena been a day late in your courses, in all the time since ye first took me to your bed. Ye havena bled now in forty-six days."
"You bastard!" I said, outraged. "You counted! In the middle of a bloody war, you counted!"
"Didn't you?"
"No!" I hadn't; I had been much too afraid to acknowledge the possibility of the thing I had hoped and prayed for so long, come now so horribly too late.
"Besides," I went on, trying still to deny the possibility, "that doesn't mean anything. Starvation could cause that; it often does."
He lifted one brow, and cupped a broad hand gently beneath my breast.
"Aye, you're thin enough; but scrawny as ye are, your br**sts are full—and the ni**les of them gone the color of Champagne grapes. You forget," he said, "I've seen ye so before. I have no doubt—and neither have you."
I tried to fight down the waves of nausea—so easily attributable to fright and starvation—but I felt the small heaviness, suddenly burning in my womb. I bit my lip hard, but the sickness washed over me.
Jamie let go of my hands, and stood before me, hands at his sides, stark in silhouette against the fading sky.
"Claire," he said quietly. "Tomorrow I will die. This child…is all that will be left of me—ever. I ask ye, Claire—I beg you—see it safe."