Written in My Own Heart's Blood

82 EVEN PEOPLE WHO WANT TO GO TO HEAVEN DON’T WANT TO DIE TO GET THERE

I SWAM DIZZILY TO the surface of consciousness, thinking, What was it Ernest Hemingway had said, about how one is supposed to pass out from the pain but you don’t? I just had, but he was more or less right; the unconsciousness hadn’t lasted more than a few seconds. I was curled into a tight ball, both hands pressed against my right side, and I could feel the blood welling between my fingers, hot and cold and sticky, and it was beginning to hurt . . . very much . . .

“Sassenach! Claire!” I swam out of the fog again and managed to open one eye. Jamie was kneeling by me. He was touching me, had his hands on me, but I couldn’t feel it. . . .

Sweat or blood or something ran burning into my eyes. I could hear someone gasping—short, shallow, panting breaths. Me, or Jamie? I was cold. I shouldn’t be cold, it was hot as blazes today. . . . I felt jellied, quivering. And it hurt. A lot.

“Sassenach!”

Hands turned me. I screamed. Tried to. I felt it wrench my throat but couldn’t hear it; there was a roaring in my ears. Shock, I thought. I couldn’t feel my limbs, my feet. I felt the blood leaving my body.

It hurt.

The shock’s wearing off, I thought. Or is it getting worse? I could see the pain now, going off in bursts like black lightning, jagged and searing.

“Sassenach!”

“What?” I said through clenched teeth. “Auh!”

“Are ye dying?”

“Probably.”

Gutshot. The word formed unpleasantly in my mind, and I hoped vaguely that I hadn’t spoken it out loud. Even if I had, though . . . surely Jamie could see the wound . . .

Someone was trying to pull my hands away, and I struggled to keep them in place, keep pressing, but my arms had no strength and I saw one hand hanging limp as they lifted it, the nails outlined black with blood, fingers coated scarlet, dripping. Someone rolled me onto my back and I thought I screamed again.

It hurt unspeakably. Jellied. Impact shock. Cells blasted to shreds and goo. No function . . . organ failure.

Tightness. Couldn’t breathe. Jerking, and someone cursing above me. My eyes were open, I saw color, but the air was thick with pulsing spots.

Shouting. Talk.

I couldn’t draw breath. Something tight around my middle. What’s gone? How much?

God, it hurt. Oh, God.

JAMIE COULDN’T take his eyes off Claire’s face, lest she die in the second when he looked away. He fumbled for a kerchief, but he’d given it to Bixby, and in desperation seized a fold of her skirt and pressed it hard to her side. She made a horrible sound and he nearly let go, but the ground under her was already darkening with blood and he pressed harder, shouting, “Help! Help me, Rachel! Dottie!”

But no one came, and when he risked a split second’s glance around, he saw nothing but clumps of wounded and dead under the trees some distance away and the flickering forms of soldiers, some running, some wandering dazed through the tombstones. If the girls had been nearby, they must have been forced to run when the skirmish rolled through the graveyard.

He felt the slow tickle of Claire’s blood running over the back of his hand and shouted again, his dry throat tearing with the effort. Someone must hear.

Someone did. He heard running footsteps on the gravel and saw a doctor named Leckie whom he knew racing toward him, white-faced, hurdling a tombstone as he came.

“Shot?” Leckie asked, breathless, collapsing onto his knees beside Jamie. Jamie couldn’t speak, but nodded. Sweat was running down his face and the crease of his spine, but his hands seemed frozen to her body; he couldn’t pull them away, couldn’t let go until Leckie, pawing in one of Claire’s baskets, seized a wad of lint and jerked Jamie’s hand out of the way in order to clap it in place.

The surgeon elbowed him ruthlessly aside and he scuttled crabwise a foot or two away, then rose to his feet, swaying helplessly. Jamie couldn’t look away but became slowly aware that a knot of soldiers had gathered, appalled, shuffling among themselves, not knowing what to do. Jamie gulped air, seized the nearest of these, and sent him running to the church in search of Dr. Hunter. She’d want Denny. If she survived long enough for him to come—

“Sir! General Fraser!” Not even the shouting of his own name made him look away from the spectacle on the ground: the blood, so much of it, soaking her clothes, making a hideous dark red puddle that stained the knees of Leckie’s breeches as he knelt over her; her hair, untied and spilling wild, full of grass and bits of leaf from the ground she lay on, her face—oh, Christ, her face.

“Sir!” Someone grabbed his arm to compel his attention. He drove his elbow hard into whoever it was, and the man grunted in surprise and let go.

A gabble of whispers, agitation, people telling the newcomer that it was the general’s wife, hurt, shot, dead or dying . . .

“She’s not dying!” he turned and bellowed at them. He thought dimly that he must look demented; their blackened faces were aghast. Bixby stepped out and touched his shoulder gingerly, as though he were a lighted grenade that might go off in the next second. He thought he might.

“Can I help, sir?” Bixby said quietly.

“No,” he managed to say. “I—he—” He gestured to Leckie, busy on the ground.

“General,” said the newcomer, at his other elbow. He turned to find a blue-clad regular, a very young man in a baggy lieutenant’s uniform, face set in dogged earnestness. “I dislike to intrude, sir, but as your wife’s not dying—”

“Go away!”

The lieutenant flinched, but stood his ground.

“Sir,” he said stubbornly. “General Lee has sent me urgently to find you. He requires that you attend him at once.”

“Bugger Lee,” said Bixby, very rudely, saving Jamie the trouble, and advanced on the newcomer, fists clenched.

The lieutenant was already flushed with heat, but at this grew redder. He ignored Bixby, though, attention focused on Jamie.

“You must come, sir.”

VOICES . . . I heard words, disjointed, coming out of the fog like bullets, striking randomly.

“. . . find Denzell Hunter!”

“General—”

“No!”

“—but you’re needed at—”

“No!”

“—orders—”

“NO!”

And another voice, this one stiff with fear.

“. . . could be shot for treason and desertion, sir!”

That focused my wandering attention and I heard the reply, clearly.

“Then they’ll shoot me where I stand, sir, for I will not leave her side!”

Good, I thought, and, comforted, lapsed into the spinning void again.

“TAKE OFF YOUR coat and waistcoat, lad,” Jamie said abruptly. The boy looked completely bewildered, but—stimulated by a menacing movement from Bixby—did as he was told. Jamie took him by the shoulder, turned him round, and said, “Stand still, aye?”

Stooping swiftly, he scooped a handful from the horrifying puddle of bloody mud and, standing, wrote carefully on the messenger’s white back with a finger:

I resign my commission. J. Fraser.

He made to fling the remnants of mud away but, after a moment’s hesitation, added a smeared and reluctant Sir at the top of the message, then clapped the boy on the shoulder.

“Go and show that to General Lee,” he said. The lieutenant went pale.

“The general’s in a horrid passion, sir,” he said. “I dassen’t!”

Jamie looked at him. The boy swallowed, said, “Yes, sir,” shrugged on his garments, and went at a run, unbuttoned and flapping.

Rubbing his hands heedlessly on his breeches, Jamie knelt again beside Dr. Leckie, who spared him a quick nod. The doctor was pressing a wad of lint and a handful of skirt hard against Claire’s side with both hands. The surgeon’s hands were red to the elbow, and sweat was running down his face, dripping from his chin.

“Sassenach,” Jamie said softly, afraid to touch her. His own clothes were sodden with sweat, but he was cold to the core. “Can ye hear me, lass?”

She’d regained consciousness, and his heart rose into his throat. Her eyes were closed, shut tight in a furious grimace of pain and concentration. She did hear him; the golden eyes opened and fixed on him. She didn’t speak; her breath hissed through clenched teeth. She did see him, though, he was sure of that—and her eyes weren’t clouded with shock, nor dim with imminent death. Not yet.

Dr. Leckie was looking at her face, too, intent. He let out his own breath, and the tension in his shoulders eased a little, though he didn’t relax the pressure of his hands.

“Can you get me more lint, a wad of bandage, anything?” he asked. “I think the bleeding is slowing.”

Claire’s bag lay open a little way behind Leckie. Jamie lunged for it, upended it on the ground, and snatched up a double handful of rolled bandages from the litter. Leckie’s hand made a sucking sound as he pulled it away from the sopping wad of cloth and grabbed the fresh bandages.

“You might cut her laces,” the doctor said calmly. “I need her stays off. And it will help her to breathe more easily.”

Jamie fumbled his dirk free, hands shaking in his haste.

“Un . . . tie . . . them!” Claire grunted, scowling ferociously.

Jamie grinned absurdly at hearing her voice, and his hands steadied. So she thought she’d live to need her laces. He gulped air and set himself to undo the knot. Her stay laces were leather and as usual soaked with sweat—but she used a very simple granny knot, and he got it loose with the tip of his dirk.

The knot fell free and he jerked the laces loose, wrenching the stays wide apart. Her bosom rose white as she gasped, and he felt an instant’s embarrassment as he saw her nipples stiffen through the sweat-soaked fabric of her shift. He wanted to cover her.

There were flies everywhere, black and buzzing, drawn by the blood. Leckie shook his head to dislodge one that lighted on his eyebrow. They were swarming round Jamie’s own ears, but he didn’t bother about them, instead brushing them away as they crawled on Claire’s body, over her twitching, pallid face, her hands half curled and helpless.

“Here,” Leckie said, and, seizing one of Jamie’s hands, pushed it down on the fresh compress. “Press hard on that.” He sat back on his heels, grabbed another bandage roll, and unfurled it. With some lifting and grunting and a terrible moan from Claire, together they contrived to pass the cingulum round her body, securing the dressing in place.

“Right.” Leckie swayed for a moment, then got laboriously to his feet. “The bleeding’s mostly stopped—for now,” he said to Jamie. “I’ll come back when I can.” He swallowed and looked directly at Claire’s face, wiping his chin on his sleeve. “Good luck to you, ma’am.”

And with that, he simply strode off toward the open doors of the church, not looking back. Jamie felt such a rush of fury that he would have gone after the man and dragged him back, could he have left Claire’s side. He’d left—just left her, the bastard! Alone, helpless!

“May the devil eat your soul and salt it well first, you whore!” he shouted in Gàidhlig after the vanished surgeon. Overcome by fright and the sheer rage of helplessness, he dropped to his knees beside his wife and pounded a fist blindly on the ground.

“Did you just . . . call him a . . . whore?” The whispered words made him open his eyes.

“Sassenach!” He was scrambling for his discarded canteen, lost in the rubble of stuff from her bag. “Here, let me get ye water.”

“No. Not . . . yet.” She managed to raise one hand halfway, and he stopped dead, canteen in hand.

“Why not?” She was the gray of rotted oats and slick with sweat, trembling like a leaf. He could see her lips beginning to crack in the heat, for God’s sake.

“I don’t . . . know.” She worked her mouth a moment before finding the next words. “Don’t . . . know where it is.” The trembling hand touched the dressing—already showing a stain of blood seeping through. “If it’s perf . . . perf’rated the . . . bowel. Drink would . . . kill me. Fast. Intestin’l . . . sh-sh-shock.”

He sat down by her slowly and, closing his eyes, breathed deliberately for a few seconds. For the moment, everything had disappeared: the church, the battle, the screams and shouts and the rumble of limber wheels along the rutted road through Freehold. There wasn’t anything but her and him, and he opened his eyes to look on her face, to fix it in his mind forever.

“Aye,” he said, keeping his voice as steady as he could. “And if that’s the case . . . and if it didna kill ye quick . . . I’ve seen men die gutshot. Balnain died that way. It’s long and it’s foul, and I willna have ye die like that, Claire. I won’t!”

He meant it, truly he did. But his hand squeezed the canteen hard enough to dent the tin. How could he give her the water that might kill her right before his eyes, right . . . now?

Not now, he prayed. Please, don’t let it be now!

“I’m not . . . keen . . . either way,” she whispered, after a long pause. She blinked away a green-bellied fly, shining like emerald, that had come to drink her tears. “I need . . . Denny.” A soft gasp. “Quick.”

“He’s coming.” He could barely breathe, and his hands hovered over her, afraid to touch anything. “Denny’s coming. Hold on!”

The answer to this was a tiny grunt—her eyes were squinched shut and her jaw set hard—but she’d heard him, at least. With the vague recollection that she always said you must cover folk suffering from shock and lift their feet, he took off his coat and put it over her, then took off his waistcoat, rolled it up, and shoved it under her feet. At least the coat covered the blood that had now soaked the whole side of her dress. It terrified him to see that.

Her fists were clenched, both driven hard into her wounded side; he couldn’t hold her hand. He put a hand on her shoulder, so she’d know he was there, shut his eyes, and prayed with his whole being.

83 SUNDOWN

THE SUN WAS NEARLY down, and Denzell Hunter was laying out his knives. The air was thick with the sweetness of corn liquor; he’d dipped his instruments in it, and they lay gleaming wetly on the clean napkin Mrs. Macken had put down on the sideboard.

Young Mrs. Macken herself was hovering in the doorway, a hand pressed over her mouth and her eyes big as a cow’s. Jamie tried to give her a reassuring smile, but whatever his expression was, it wasn’t a smile and appeared to alarm her further, for she retreated into the darkness of her pantry.

She’d likely been alarmed all day, like everyone else in the village of Freehold; she was heavily pregnant and her husband was fighting with the Continentals. And still more alarmed for the last hour, ever since Jamie had pounded on her door. He’d battered six doors before hers. She was the first to answer, and, in poor return for her hospitality, now found a badly injured woman lying on her kitchen table, oozing blood like a fresh-killed deer.

That image unnerved him still further—Mrs. Macken was not the only one in the house who was shaken by events—and he came close and took Claire’s hand, as much to reassure himself as her.

“How is it, Sassenach?” he said, low-voiced.

“Bloody awful,” she replied hoarsely, and bit her lip to keep from saying more.

“Had ye best have a wee nip?” He moved to pick up the bottle of rough corn liquor from the sideboard, but she shook her head.

“Not quite yet. I don’t think it struck the bowel—but I’d rather die of blood loss than sepsis or shock, if I’m wrong.”

He squeezed her hand. It was cold, and he hoped she would keep talking, though at the same time he knew he ought not to make her talk. She’d need all her strength. He tried as hard as he could to will some of his own strength into her without hurting her.

Mrs. Macken edged into the room, carrying a candlestick with a fresh wax candle; he could smell the sweetness of the beeswax, and the scent of honey reminded him of John Grey. He wondered for an instant whether Grey had made it back to the British lines, but he had no real attention for anything but Claire.

Right this moment, he was busy regretting that he’d ever disapproved of her making ether. He would have given anything he possessed to spare her awareness of the next half hour.

The setting sun washed the room in gold, and the blood seeping through her bandages showed dark.

“ALWAYS CONCENTRATE when you’re using a sharp knife,” I said weakly. “You might lose a finger, else. My granny used to say that, and my mother, too.”

My mother had died when I was five, my granny a few years later—but I hadn’t seen her often, as Uncle Lamb spent at least half his time on archaeological expeditions round the world, with me as part of his baggage.

“Did you frequently play with sharp knives as a child?” Denny asked. He smiled, though his eyes stayed fixed on the scalpel he was carefully sharpening on a small oilstone. I could smell the oil, a soft murky scent under the tang of blood and the resinous smell of the unfinished rafters baking overhead.

“Constantly,” I breathed, and shifted my position as slowly as I could. I bit my lip hard and managed to ease my back without groaning aloud. It made Jamie’s knuckles go white when I did.

He was standing by the window at the moment, clutching the sill as he looked out.

Seeing him there, broad shoulders outlined by the sinking sun, brought back a sudden memory, surprising in its sharpness. Or rather, memories, for the layers of experience came back altogether, in a wodge, and I was seeing Jamie rigid with his fear and grief, the slight black figure of Malva Christie leaning toward him—and remembered feeling both a vague affront and a tremendous sense of peace as I began to leave my body, carried on the wings of fever.

I shook the memory off at once, frightened even to think of that beckoning peace. The fear was reassuring; I wasn’t yet so close to death as to find it appealing.

“I’m sure it went through the liver,” I said to Denny, gritting my teeth. “That much blood . . .”

“I’m sure thee is right,” he said, pressing gently on my side. “The liver is a great mass of densely vascularized tissue,” he added, turning to Jamie, who didn’t turn from the window but hunched his shoulders against the possibility of being told anything else of a horrifying nature.

“But the excellent thing about a wound to the liver,” Denny added cheerfully, “is that the liver, unlike the other organs of the body, will regenerate itself—or so thy wife tells me.”

Jamie cast me a brief, haunted look, and went back to staring out the window. I breathed as shallowly as I could, trying to ignore the pain, and trying even harder not to think about what Denny was about to do.

That little exercise in self-discipline lasted about three seconds. If we were all lucky, it would be simple, and quick. He had to widen the bullet’s entrance wound enough to see the direction of its track and to insert a probe along it, in hopes of finding the bullet before he had to dig for it. Then a quick—I could only hope—insertion of whichever one of his jawed forceps looked most appropriate. He had three, of different lengths, plus a davier: good for grasping a rounded object, but the jaws were much bigger than the tips of a forceps and would cause more bleeding.

If it wasn’t simple or quick, I’d very likely be dead within the next half hour. Denny was entirely correct in what he’d told Jamie: the liver is hugely vascularized, an enormous sponge of tiny blood vessels crossed by very large ones like the hepatic portal vein. That’s why the wound, superficially tiny, had bled so alarmingly. None of the major vessels had been damaged—yet—because I would have bled to death in minutes if they had been.

I was trying to breathe shallowly, because of the pain, but had an overwhelming need to draw deep, gasping breaths; I needed oxygen, because of the blood loss.

Sally flitted through my mind, and I seized on thought of her as distraction. She’d survived the amputation, screaming through a leather gag, Gabriel—yes, Gabriel, that was the name of the young man with her—white-eyed as a panicked horse, fighting to hold her steady and not to faint himself. She had fainted, luckily, toward the end—So sucks to you, Ernest, I thought blearily—and I’d left them both in Rachel’s care.

“Where’s Rachel, Denny?” I asked, suddenly thinking to wonder. I thought I’d glimpsed her briefly in the churchyard after I’d been shot, but couldn’t be sure of anything that had happened in that blur of black and white.

Denny’s hand stopped for an instant, the cautery iron he was holding suspended over a tiny brazier he’d set fuming at the end of the sideboard.

“She is searching for Ian, I believe,” he said quietly, and laid the iron very gently in the fire. “Is thee ready, Claire?”

Ian, I thought. Oh, God. He hasn’t come back.

“As I’ll ever be,” I managed, already imagining the stench of burning flesh. Mine.

If the bullet was resting near one of the large vessels, Denny’s probing and grasping could rupture it and I’d hemorrhage internally. The cauterization might cause shock suddenly to set in and assassinate me without warning. Most likely, I’d survive the surgery but die of lingering infection. Consoling thought . . . At least in that case I’d have time to write a brief note to Brianna—and perhaps warn Jamie to be more careful about who he married next time. . . .

“Wait,” Jamie said. He didn’t raise his voice, but there was enough urgency in it to freeze Denny.

I closed my eyes, rested a hand gingerly on the dressing, and tried to envision just where the damned bullet might be. Was it only in the liver, or had it gone all the way through? There was so much trauma and swelling, though, that the pain was generalized over the whole right side of my abdomen; I couldn’t pick out a single, vivid line of bright pain leading to the ball.

“What is it, Jamie?” Denny asked, impatient to be about his business.

“Your betrothed,” Jamie said, sounding bemused. “Coming up the road with a gang of soldiers.”

“Does thee think she is under arrest?” Denny asked, with a fair assumption of calm. I saw his hand tremble slightly as he picked up a linen napkin, though.

“I dinna think so,” Jamie said doubtfully. “She’s laughing wi’ a couple of them.”

Denny took his spectacles off and wiped them carefully.

“Dorothea is a Grey,” he pointed out. “Any member of her family would pause on the gallows to exchange witty banter with the hangman before graciously putting the noose about his neck with his own hands.”

That was so true that it made me laugh, though my humor was cut off at once by a jolt of pain that took my breath away. Jamie looked at me sharply, but I flapped a hand weakly at him, and he went to open the door.

Dorothea popped in, turning to wave over her shoulder and call goodbye to her escort, and I heard Denny sigh in relief as he put his spectacles back on.

“Oh, good,” she said, going to kiss him. “I hoped you hadn’t started yet. I’ve brought a few things. Mrs. Fraser—Claire—how are you? I mean, how is thee?” She put down the large basket she was carrying and came at once to the table I was lying on, to take my hand and gaze sympathetically at me with her big blue eyes.

“I’ve been slightly better,” I said, making an effort not to grit my teeth. I felt clammy and nauseated.

“General La Fayette was most concerned to hear that you’d been hurt,” she said. “He has all of his aides telling their rosary beads for you.”

“How kind,” I said, meaning it, but rather hoping the marquis hadn’t sent a complicated greeting that I might need to compose a reply to. Having got this far, I wanted to get the bloody business over with, no matter what happened.

“And he sent this,” she said, a rather smug look on her face as she held up a squat green-glass bottle. “Thee will want this first, I think, Denny.”

“What—” Denny began, reaching for the bottle, but Dorothea had pulled the cork, and the sweet cough-syrup smell of sherry rolled out—with the ghost of a very distinctive herbal scent beneath it, something between camphor and sage.

“Laudanum,” said Jamie, and his face took on such a startling look of relief that only then did I realize how frightened he had been for me. “God bless ye, Dottie!”

“It occurred to me that Friend Gilbert might just possibly have a few things that might be useful,” she said modestly. “All the Frenchmen I know are dreadful cranks about their health and have enormous collections of tonics and pastilles and clysters. So I went and asked.”

Jamie had me half sitting, with his arm braced behind my back and the bottle at my lips, before I could add my own thanks.

“Wait, will you?” I said crossly, putting my hand over the bottle’s open mouth. “I haven’t any idea how strong this stuff is. You won’t do me any good by killing me with opium.”

It cost me something to say so; my instinct was to drain the bottle forthwith, if it would stop the beastly pain. That nitwit Spartan who allowed the fox to gnaw his vitals had nothing on me. But, come right down to it, I didn’t want to die, either of gunshot, fever, or medical misadventure. And so Dottie borrowed a spoon from Mrs. Macken, who watched in grisly fascination from the door while I took two spoonfuls, lay down, and waited an interminable quarter of an hour to judge the effects.

“The marquis sent all sorts of delicacies and things to aid your recovery,” Dottie said encouragingly, turning to the basket and starting to lift things out by way of distraction. “Partridge in jelly, mushroom pâté, some terrible-smelling cheese, and—”

My sudden desire to vomit ceased just as suddenly, and I half-sat up, causing Jamie to emit a cry of alarm and grab me by the shoulders. Just as well that he did; I would have fallen onto the floor. I wasn’t attending, though, my attention fixed on Dottie’s basket.

“Roquefort,” I said urgently. “Is it Roquefort cheese? Sort of gray, with green and blue veins?”

“Why, I don’t know,” she said, startled by my vehemence. She gingerly plucked a cloth-wrapped parcel out of the basket and held it delicately in front of me. The odor wafting from it was enough, and I relaxed—very slowly—back down.

“Good,” I breathed. “Denzell—when you’ve finished . . . pack the wound with cheese.”

Used to me as he was, this still made Denny’s jaw drop. He glanced from me to the cheese, plainly thinking that fever must have set in with unusual speed and severity.

“Penicillin,” I said, swallowing and waving a hand at the cheese. My mouth felt sticky from the laudanum. “The mold that makes that sort of cheese is a species of Penicillium. Use the stuff from the veins.”

Denny shut his mouth and nodded, determined.

“I will. But we must begin soon, Claire. The light is going.”

The light was going, and the sense of urgency in the room was palpable. But Mrs. Macken brought more candles, and Denny assured me that it was a simple operation; he would do quite as well by candlelight.

More laudanum. I was beginning to feel it—a not unpleasant dizzy sensation—and I made Jamie lay me down again. The pain was definitely less.

“Give me a bit more,” I said, and my voice didn’t seem to belong to me.

I took as deep a breath as I could and eased myself into a good position, looking with distaste at the leather gag that lay beside me. Someone—perhaps Dr. Leckie—had slit my shift up the side earlier in the proceedings. I spread the edges of the opening wide and stretched out my hand to Jamie.

The shadows grew between the smoke-stained rafters. The kitchen fire was banked, but still live, and the glow of it began to show red on the hearth. Looking up at the flickering rafters in my drugged state reminded me too much of the time I had nearly died of bacterial poisoning, and I shut my eyes.

Jamie was holding my left hand, curled on my breast, his other hand gently stroking my hair, smoothing damp wisps of it off my face.

“Better now, a nighean?” he whispered, and I nodded—or thought I did. Mrs. Macken murmured some question to Dottie, received an answer, and went out. The pain was still there but distant now, a small, flickering fire that I could shut out by closing my eyes. The thud of my heartbeat was more immediate, and I was beginning to experience . . . not hallucinations, quite. Disconnected images, though—the faces of strangers that faded in and out behind my eyes. Some were looking at me, others seemed oblivious; they smiled and sneered and grimaced but had nothing, really, to do with me.

“Again, Sassenach,” Jamie whispered, lifting my head and putting the spoon to my lips, sticky with sherry and the bitter taste of opium. “One more.” I swallowed and lay back. If I died, would I see my mother again? I wondered, and experienced an urgent longing for her, shocking in its intensity.

I was trying to summon her face before me, bring her out of the floating horde of strangers, when I suddenly lost my grip on my own thoughts and began to float off into a sphere of dark, dark blue.

“Don’t leave me, Claire,” Jamie whispered, very close to my ear. “This time, I’ll beg. Dinna go from me. Please.” I could feel the warmth of his face, see the glow of his breath on my cheek, though my eyes were closed.

“I won’t,” I said—or thought I said—and went. My last clear thought was that I’d forgotten to tell him not to marry a fool.

THE SKY OUTSIDE was lavender, and Claire’s skin was washed with gold. Six candles burned around the room, the flames tall and still in the heavy air.

Jamie stood by her head, a hand on her shoulder as though he could comfort her. In fact, it was the sense of her, still alive under his hand, that was keeping him on his feet.

Denny made a small sound of satisfaction behind his highwayman’s mask, and Jamie saw the muscle of his bared forearm tense as he slowly drew the instrument out of Claire’s body. Blood gushed from the wound, and Jamie tensed like a cat, ready to spring forward with a pledget, but no spurt followed and the blood died to a trickle, with a final small blurt of blood as the jaws of the instrument emerged, something dark clamped between them.

Denny dropped the ball into the palm of his hand and peered at it, then made an irritable noise; his glasses were fogged with the sweat of his efforts. Jamie snatched them off the Quaker’s nose and rubbed them hastily on his shirttail, replacing them before Hunter could blink twice.

“I thank thee,” Denny said mildly, returning his attention to the musket ball. He turned it delicately and let out an audible breath.

“Whole,” he said. “Thank God.”

“Deo gratias,” Jamie echoed fervently, and reached out a hand. “Let me see it, will ye?”

Hunter’s brows rose, but he dropped the thing in Jamie’s hand. It was startlingly warm, warm from her body. Warmer even than the air or Jamie’s own sweating flesh, and the feel of it made him fold his fist over it. He stole a look at Claire’s chest: rising, falling, though with alarming slowness. Almost as slowly, he opened his hand.

“What is thee looking for, Jamie?” Denny asked, pausing to re-sterilize his beaked probe.

“Marks. A slit, a cross—any mark of tampering.” He rolled the ball carefully between his fingers, then relaxed, a small spurt of gratitude making him murmur, “Deo gratias,” again.

“Tampering?” There were vertical lines between Denny’s brows, deepening as he looked up. “To make the ball fragment, thee means?”

“That—or worse. Sometimes a man will rub something into the marks—poison, say, or . . . or shit. Just in case the wound itself isna fatal, aye?”

Hunter looked shocked, his appalled expression clear even behind the shielding handkerchief.

“If ye mean to kill a man, ye mean him harm,” Jamie said dryly.

“Yes, but . . .” Hunter looked down, laying his tool carefully on the towel as though it were made of porcelain, not metal. His breath fluttered the handkerchief tied over his mouth. “But it is one thing, surely, to kill in battle, to shoot at an enemy when it is a matter of one’s own life . . . and to form the cold-blooded intent that your enemy should die a horrible and lingering death . . .”

Claire made a ghastly moaning noise and twitched under his hands as Denny gently squeezed the flesh on either side of the wound. Jamie gripped her by the elbows, to keep her from turning. Denny picked up the jawed thing again.

“You wouldn’t do it yourself,” Hunter said with certainty. His eyes were intent on his delicate probing, a pledget held to catch the blood that dribbled slowly from the wound. Jamie felt the loss of each drop as though it left his own veins, and felt cold; how much could she lose and still live?

“No. It would be a cowardly thing.” But he spoke automatically, scarcely attending. She had gone limp; he saw her fingers uncurl, droop, and looked at her face, her throat, searching for a visible pulse. He felt one, in his thumb where it pressed the bone of her arm, but couldn’t tell whether it was her heart that beat there or his own.

He was acutely conscious of Denny’s breath, audible behind his mask. It stopped for an instant, and Jamie glanced up from his scrutiny of Claire’s face to see the Quaker’s look of intentness as he drew the thing free once more—this time clutching a tiny clump of something unrecognizable. Denny opened the jaws of his forceps and dropped the clump on the towel, then used the tool to poke at it, trying to spread it, and Jamie saw the prickle of tiny dark threads as the blood soaked away into a bright red stain on the towel. Cloth.

“What does thee think?” Denny asked him, frowning at the thing. “Is it a bit of her shift, or the—the bodice—or material from her stays? For from the hole in her stays, I should think . . .”

Jamie rootled hastily in his sporran, pulled out the little silk bag in which he kept the spectacles he used for reading, and clapped these on his nose.

“Ye’ve at least two separate bits there,” he announced, after an anxious perusal. “Canvas from the stays, and a lighter bit of cloth. See?” He took up a probe and delicately teased the fragments apart. “I think that one bit’s her shift.”

Denny glanced at the disconsolate pile of bloodstained garments on the floor, and Jamie, at once divining his intent, reached in, stirred about, and pulled out the remnants of her dress.

“It’s a clean hole,” Denny said, looking at the fabric Jamie spread out on the table. “Maybe . . .” He picked up the forceps and turned back, not finishing.

More probing, deeper, and Jamie gritted his teeth not to cry out in protest. “The liver is so vascular,” she’d said, talking Denny through what he must do. “The risk of hemorrhage . . .”

“I know,” Denny murmured, not looking up. The sweat had plastered the handkerchief to his face, molding itself to nose and lips, so his speech was visible. “I’m being . . . careful.”

“Ken that,” Jamie said, but so softly he didn’t know whether Hunter heard him. Please. Please let her live. Blessed Mother, save her . . . saveher, saveher, saveher . . . The words all ran together in an instant and he lost the sense of them, but not the sense of desperate entreaty.

The red stain on the toweling under her had grown to alarming proportions by the time Hunter set down his tool again and sighed, shoulders slumping.

“I think—I hope—I have it all.”

“Good. I—what will ye do next?”

He saw Denny smile a little behind the sodden cloth, olive-brown eyes soft and steady over it.

“Cauterize it, bind the wound, and pray, Jamie.”

84 NIGHTFALL

IT WAS PAST DARK when Lord John Grey, accompanied by a respectful escort and a slightly damaged Indian, limped into Clinton’s camp.

Things were much as might be expected after a battle: strong currents of mingled agitation and exhaustion, the latter prevailing. No carousing amid the tents, no music. Men around the fires and camp kitchens, though, eating, getting themselves sorted, talking it over in low tones. No sense of celebration—more a sense of irritation, of disgruntled surprise. The scent of roast mutton came strongly through the smells of dust, mules, and sweating humanity, and Grey’s mouth watered so much that he had to swallow before replying to Captain André’s solicitous inquiry as to his immediate desires.

“I need to see my brother,” he replied. “I’ll attend upon General Clinton and my lord Cornwallis later. When I’ve washed and changed,” he added, shucking the horrible black coat for what he sincerely hoped was the last time.

André nodded understandingly, taking the vile garment from him.

“Of course, Lord John. And . . . um . . . ?” He nodded delicately in the direction of Ian Murray, who was attracting glances, if not stares, from pass-ersby.

“Ah. He’d best come, too.”

He followed André through the orderly aisles of tents, hearing the clinking of mess kits and feeling the comfort of the army’s stolid routine settle into place around him. Murray paced at his heel, silent. He’d no idea what the man was thinking and was too weary to care.

He did feel Murray’s step falter, though, and automatically looked over his shoulder. Murray had turned, all his attention focused on a nearby fire, this an open wood fire, around which sat several Indians. Grey wondered dimly whether these might be friends of Murray’s . . . and corrected this impression in the next second, as Murray took three giant strides, grabbed one of the Indians with a forearm round his throat, and punched him in the side with such force as to drive the other’s wind out in an audible whoop.

Murray then threw the Indian on the ground, dropped on him with both knees—Grey winced at the impact—and gripped the man by the throat. The other Indians lurched out of the way, laughing and making high-pitched yips of encouragement or derision, Grey couldn’t tell which.

He stood there blinking, swaying slightly, and unable either to intervene or to look away. Murray had declined to let one of the field surgeons remove the arrowhead from his shoulder, and fresh blood spattered from the wound as he punched his opponent viciously—and repeatedly—in the face.

The Indian—he had a shaved scalp and dangling earrings of shell; Grey noticed these when Murray ripped one out of the ear and stuffed it into his opponent’s mouth—was making a stout attempt at resistance and retaliation, in spite of his being taken at such a disadvantage.

“Do you suppose they are acquainted?” Captain André asked Grey. He had turned back, hearing the outcries, and was now standing beside Grey, watching the affray with interest.

“I think they must be,” Grey replied absently. He glanced briefly at the other Indians, none of whom seemed to have any interest in assisting their fellow, though a few of them appeared to be making wagers on the result. They’d plainly been drinking, but seemed no more intoxicated than the average soldier at this time of day.

The combatants were now squirming on the ground, evidently striving for possession of a large knife worn by the man Murray had attacked. The fight was attracting attention from other quarters; a number of men had hurried over from nearby fires and were clustered behind Grey and André, making speculations and hasty bets, offering shouted advice.

Grey was conscious, through his fatigue, of a certain concern for Murray—and not only on Murray’s own account. On the off chance that he might at some point in future actually speak with Jamie Fraser again, he didn’t want the first subject raised to be the demise of Fraser’s nephew while more or less in Grey’s custody. He couldn’t think what the hell to do about it, though, and thus continued to stand there, watching.

Like most fights, it didn’t last very long. Murray gained possession of the knife, by the brutal but effective expedient of bending one of his opponent’s fingers backward ’til it broke and grabbing the hilt as the man let go.

As Murray pressed the blade against the other man’s throat, it belatedly occurred to Grey that he might really intend to kill him. The men around him certainly thought so; there was a universal gasp as Murray drew the blade across his enemy’s throat.

The momentary silence engendered by this was enough for most of the assembled to hear Murray say, with a noticeable effort, “I give you back your life!” He rose off the Indian’s body, swaying and staring as though blind drunk himself, and hurled the knife into the darkness—causing considerable consternation and not a little cursing among those in whose direction he’d hurled it.

In the excitement, most of the crowd likely didn’t hear the Indian’s reply, but Grey and André did. He sat up, very slowly, hands shaking as they pressed a fold of his shirt to the shallow cut across his throat, and said, in an almost conversational tone, “You will regret that, Mohawk.”

Murray was breathing like a winded horse, his ribs visible with each gasp. Most of the paint had gone from his face; there were long smears of red and black down his glistening chest, and only a horizontal streak of some dark color remained across his cheekbones—that and a smudge of white on the point of his shoulder, above the arrow wound. He nodded to himself, once, then twice. And, without haste, stepped back into the circle of firelight, picked up a tomahawk that was lying on the ground, and, swinging it high with both hands, brought it down on the Indian’s skull.

The sound froze Grey to the marrow and silenced every man present. Murray stood still for a moment, breathing heavily, then walked away. As he passed Grey, he turned his head and said, in a perfectly conversational tone of voice, “He’s right. I would have,” before disappearing into the night.

There was a sudden, belated stir among the spectators, and André glanced at Grey, but he shook his head. The army took no official notice of what went on among the Indian scouts, save there was an incident involving regulars. And they didn’t get more irregular than the gentleman who had just left them.

André cleared his throat.

“Was he your . . . er . . . prisoner, my lord?”

“Ah . . . no. A, erm . . . relation by marriage.”

“Oh, I see.”

IT WAS FULL dark before the battle ended. William gathered as much from the orderly who’d brought him supper, and he could hear the sounds of a camp slowly reassembling itself as companies of soldiers came in, were dismissed, and scattered to drop their equipment and find food. Nothing like the usual sense of relaxation that lay on a camp after sunset. Everything was agitated and restless—and so was William.

His head ached horribly and someone had stitched his scalp; the stitches were tender and itching. Uncle Hal hadn’t come back, and he’d had no news whatever beyond the orderly’s sketchy report, which indicated only that there had been no clear victory over the Americans but that all three parts of Clinton’s army had withdrawn in good order, though with considerable casualties.

He wasn’t sure he wanted any further news, to be honest. There was going to be a moment of reckoning with Sir Henry about that ignored order—though he supposed Sir Henry might just possibly be too preoccupied to realize . . .

Then he heard the sound of footsteps and sat up. His fretting disappeared on the instant when the tent flap lifted and he saw his father—Lord John, he corrected himself, but as an absent afterthought. His father seemed surprisingly small, almost fragile, and as Lord John limped slowly into the lantern light, William saw the stained bandage round his head, the makeshift sling, and when William cast his eyes down, he saw, too, the state of his father’s bare feet.

“Are you—” he began, shocked, but Lord John interrupted him.

“I’m fine,” he said, and tried for a smile, though his face was white and creased with fatigue. “Everything’s all right, Willie. As long as you’re alive, everything’s all right.”

He saw his father sway, put out a hand as though to steady himself, and, finding nothing to take hold of, withdraw it and force his body upright. Lord John’s voice was hoarse, and his exposed eye bloodshot and exhausted but . . . tender. William swallowed.

“If you and I have things to say to each other, Willie—and of course we do—let it wait until tomorrow. Please. I’m not . . .” He made a vague, wavering gesture that ended nowhere.

The lump in William’s throat was sudden and painful. He nodded, hands clenched tight on the bedding. His father nodded, too, drew a deep breath, and turned toward the tent flap—where, William saw, Uncle Hal was hovering, eyes fixed on his brother and brows drawn with worry.

William’s heart seized, in a lump more painful than the one in his throat.

“Papa!” His father stopped abruptly, turning to look over his shoulder.

“I’m glad you’re not dead,” William blurted.

A smile blossomed slowly on his father’s battered face.

“Me, too,” he said.

IAN MADE HIS way out of the British camp, looking neither to right nor to left. The night was throbbing slowly round him. It was like being trapped inside a huge heart, he thought, feeling the thick walls squeeze him breathless, then draw away to leave him floating and weightless.

Lord John had offered to have an army surgeon tend his wound, but he couldn’t bear to stay. He needed to go, to find Rachel, find Uncle Jamie. Had refused the offer of a horse, as well, unsure that he could stay on it. He’d do better walking, he’d told his lordship.

And he was walking all right, though obliged to admit that he didn’t feel just that well in himself. His arms were still trembling from the shock of the killing blow. It had come up from his bowels and was still echoing through his bones, couldn’t seem to find a way out of his body. Well, it would settle soon enough—this wasn’t the first time, though he hadn’t killed anyone in a long while, and a longer while since he’d done it with that much violence.

He tried to think who the last one had been, but couldn’t. He could hear and see and feel things, but while his senses worked, they weren’t joined up aright with the things he sensed. Troops were still marching past him into the camp. The battle must have ceased now with the darkness; the soldiers were coming home. He could hear the din they made, marching, their tin cups and canteens jangling against their cartridge boxes—but he heard it clanging long after they’d passed, and he couldn’t always tell the light of distant campfires from the glow of fireflies near his feet.

The Scottish overseer. At Saratoga. The man’s face was suddenly there in his memory, and just as suddenly his body remembered the feel of the blow. The violent punch of his knife, hard up under the man’s back ribs, straight into the kidney. The huge, strange flexing he’d felt in his own body as the man’s life surged up and then rushed out.

He wondered for a dazed moment whether butchers felt it—that echo—when they slaughtered a beast. You did, sometimes, when you cut a deer’s throat, but usually not if it was just wringing a chicken’s neck or crushing a weasel’s skull.

“Or maybe ye just get used to it,” he said.

“Maybe ye’d best try not to get used to it. Canna be good for your soul, a bhalaich, bein’ used to that sort of thing.”

“No,” he agreed. “But ye mean when it’s with your hands, aye? It’s no the same wi’ a gun or an arrow, now, is it?”

“Och, no. I did wonder sometimes, does it make a difference to the man ye kill, as well as yourself?”

Ian’s feet blundered into a knee-high growth of thick weed and he realized that he’d stumbled off the road. It was just past the dark of the moon, and the stars still faint overhead.

“Different,” he murmured, steering back into the roadway. “How d’ye mean, different? He’d be dead, either way.”

“Aye, that’s so. I’m thinkin’ it’s maybe worse to feel it’s personal, though. Bein’ shot in battle’s more like bein’ struck by lightning, ken? But ye canna help it bein’ personal when ye do a man to death wi’ your hands.”

“Mmphm.” Ian walked a bit farther in silence, the thoughts in his head circling like leeches swimming in a glass, going this way and that.

“Aye, well,” he said at last—and realized suddenly that he’d spoken aloud for the first time. “It was personal.”

The trembling in his bones had eased with the walking. The huge throbbing of the night had shrunk and come to rest in the arrow wound, the ache of it pulsing to the beat of his own heart.

It made him think of Rachel’s white dove, though, flying serene above the hurt, and his mind steadied. He could see Rachel’s face now, and he could hear crickets chirping. The cannon fire in his ears had stopped and the night grew slowly peaceful. And if his da had more to say on the subject of killing, he chose to keep his silence as they walked toward home together.

JOHN GREY EASED his battered feet into the pan, teeth gritted against the expected sensation, but to his surprise found that it caused him little pain, in spite of the torn skin and ruptured blisters.

“What—that’s not hot water, is it?” he asked, leaning forward to look.

“Sweet oil,” his brother said, his worn face relaxing a little. “And it had better be warm, not hot, or my orderly will be crucified at dawn.”

“I’m sure the man trembles in his boots. Thank you, by the way,” he added, gingerly dabbling. He was sitting on Hal’s cot, his brother perched on the campaign chest, pouring something out of a canteen into one of the scarred pewter cups that had accompanied him for decades.

“You’re welcome,” Hal said, handing him the cup. “What the devil happened to your eye? And is your arm broken? I’ve called for a surgeon, but it may be some time.” He waved a hand, encompassing the camp, the recent battle, and the stream of the returning wounded and sun-stricken.

“I don’t need one. At first I thought my arm was broken, but I’m fairly sure it’s just badly bruised. As for the eye . . . Jamie Fraser.”

“Really?” Hal looked surprised and bent forward to peer at Grey’s eye, now unwrapped from the bandages and—so far as Grey himself could tell—much improved. The constant watering had stopped, the swelling had gone down quite a bit, and he could, with caution, move it. From the look on Hal’s face, though, the redness and bruising had perhaps not quite disappeared.

“Well, first Jamie, and then his wife.” He touched the eye lightly. “He punched me, and then she did something excruciating to fix it and put honey in it.”

“Having been subject to the lady’s notions of medical treatment, I am not even faintly surprised to hear that.” Hal lifted his cup in brief salute; Grey did the same and they drank. It was cider, and a dim recollection of applejack and Colonel Watson Smith floated through Grey’s mind. Both seemed remote, as though they’d happened years ago rather than days.

“Mrs. Fraser doctored you?” Grey grinned at his brother. “What did she do to you?”

“Well . . . saved my life, to be perfectly frank.” It was hard to tell in the lantern light, but Grey thought his brother was blushing slightly.

“Oh. In that case, I’m doubly obliged to her.” He raised the cup again ceremoniously, then drained it. The cider went down gratefully after a hot day with no food. “How the hell did you fall into her clutches?” he asked curiously, extending the cup for more.

“I was looking for you,” Hal said pointedly. “If you’d been where you were supposed to be . . .”

“You think I’m supposed to be sitting somewhere waiting for you to turn up without warning and involve me in—do you know you nearly got me hanged? Besides, I was busy being kidnapped by James Fraser at the time.”

Hal raised one eyebrow and poured more cider. “Yes, you did say he’d punched you. What for?”

Grey rubbed two fingers between his brows. He hadn’t really noticed the headache before, only because he’d had it all day. Hal was definitely making it worse, though.

“I couldn’t begin to explain it, Hal,” he said tiredly. “Can you find me a bed? I think I’m going to die, and if by some unfortunate chance I don’t, I’ll have to speak to Willie tomorrow about . . . well, never mind.” He drank the last of the cider and set down the cup, preparing reluctantly to lift his feet from the soothing oil.

“I know about William,” Hal said.

Grey stopped abruptly, looking dubiously at his brother, who shrugged.

“I saw Fraser,” he said simply. “In Philadelphia. And when I said something to William this afternoon, he confirmed it.”

“Did he?” Grey murmured. He was surprised but somewhat heartened by that. If Willie had calmed down sufficiently as to talk to Hal about the matter, Grey’s own conversation with his son might be a trifle less fraught than he’d feared.

“How long have you known?” Hal asked curiously.

“For certain? Since Willie was two or three.” He suddenly gave an enormous yawn, then sat blinking stupidly. “Oh—meant to ask. How did the battle go?”

Hal looked at him with something between affront and amusement. “You were bloody in it, weren’t you?”

“My part of it didn’t go that well. But my perspective was somewhat limited by circumstance. That, and having only one working eye,” he added, gently prodding the bad one. A good night’s sleep . . . Longing for bed made him sway, narrowly catching himself before simply falling into Hal’s cot.

“Hard to tell.” Hal fished a crumpled towel out of a basket of laundry lurking disreputably in a corner and, kneeling down, lifted Grey’s feet out of the oil and blotted them gently. “Hell of a mess. Terrible ground, chopped up by creeks, either farmland or half covered in trees . . . Sir Henry got away with the baggage train and refugees all safe. But as for Washington . . .” He shrugged. “So far as I can tell from what I saw and heard, his troops acquitted themselves well. Remarkably well,” he added thoughtfully. He rose to his feet. “Lie down, John. I’ll find a bed somewhere else.”

Grey was much too tired to argue. He simply fell over and rolled onto his back, not bothering to undress. The bad eye felt gritty, and he wondered dimly whether to ask Hal to find some honey but decided that could wait ’til morning.

Hal took the lantern from its hook and turned toward the tent flap, but paused for an instant, turning back.

“Do you think Mrs. Fraser—by the way, tomorrow I want to know how on earth she came to marry you—do you think she knows about William and James Fraser?”

“Anyone with eyes who’d seen the two of them would know,” Grey murmured, eyes half closed. “She never mentioned it, though.”

Hal grunted. “Apparently everyone knew—save William. Little wonder he’s . . .”

“That’s one word for it.”

“I hadn’t found one yet.”

“Does it matter?” Grey’s eyes closed all the way. Through the drifting mists of sleep, he heard Hal’s quiet voice, by the tent flap.

“I’ve had word of Ben. They say he’s dead.”

85 LONG ROAD HOME

JAMIE SAT BY THE tiny window in his shirt and breeches, watching his wife’s hair dry.

It was hot as a forge in the tiny spare room Mrs. Macken had given them, and his sweat lay on him in a heavy dew that broke under its own weight and ran down his sides with any movement, but he was careful not to block any faint breath of air that might seep into the room; the air reeked of Roquefort cheese and blood.

He’d soaked her hair with water from the ewer Mrs. Macken had brought and wetted her shift; it clung to her body, the round of her buttock showing pink through the fabric as it dried. It showed the thick wad of the dressing, too, and the bloody stain that spread slow upon the cloth.

Slow. His lips formed the word and he thought it passionately but didn’t speak aloud. Slow! Stopping altogether would be much better, but he’d settle for slow just now.

Eight pints. That’s how much blood she said a human body had. It must vary some, though; clearly a man his size had more than a woman of hers. Single hairs were beginning to rise from the soaking mass, curling as they dried, delicate as an ant’s feelers.

He wished he might give her some of his blood; he had plenty. She’d said it was possible, but not in this time. Something to do with things in the blood that mightn’t match.

Her hair was a dozen colors, brown, molasses, cream and butter, sugar, sable . . . gleams of gold and silver where the dying light touched it. A broad streak of pure white at her temple, nearly the shade of her skin. She lay on her side facing him, one hand curled against her bosom, the other loose, upturned, so the inside of her wrist showed pure white, too, the blue veins heartbreaking.

She’d said she thought of cutting her wrists when she believed him dead. He didn’t think he’d do it that way, if she died. He’d seen it: Toby Quinn with his wrist cut to the bone and all his blood run out across the floor, the room stinking of butchery and the word “teind” written on the wall above him in blood, his confession. A tithe to hell, it meant, and he shuddered in spite of the heat and crossed himself.

She’d said it was maybe the blood that had made Young Ian’s bairns all die—the blood not matching betwixt him and his Mohawk wife—and that maybe it would be different with Rachel. He said a quick Ave, that it might be so, and crossed himself again.

The hair that lay upon her shoulders was coiling now, sinuous, slow as rising bread. Ought he rouse her to drink again? She needed the water, to help make more blood, to cool her with sweat. But while she slept, the pain was less. A few moments longer, then.

Not now. Please, not now.

She shifted, moaning, and he saw that she was different; restless now. The stain on her bandage had changed color, darkened from scarlet to rust as it dried. He laid a hand softly on her arm and felt the heat.

The bleeding had stopped. The fever had begun.

NOW THE TREES were talking to him. He wished they’d stop. The only thing Ian Murray wanted just now was silence. He was alone for the moment, but his ears buzzed and his head still throbbed with noise.

That always happened for a bit after a fight. You were listening so hard, to start with, for the sounds of the enemy, the direction of the wind, the voice of a saint behind you . . . you began to hear the voices of the forest, like you did hunting. And then you heard the shots and shouting, and when there were moments when that stopped, you heard the blood pounding round your body and beating in your ears, and, all in all, it took some time for the racket to die down afterward.

He had brief flashes of things that had happened during the day—milling soldiers; the thud of the arrow that struck him; the face of the Abenaki he’d killed by the fire; the look of George Washington on his big white horse, racing up the road, waving his hat—but these came and went in a fog of confusion, appearing as though revealed to him by a stroke of lightning, then disappearing into a buzzing mist.

A wind went whispering through the branches over him, and he felt it on his skin as though he’d been brushed with sandpaper. What might Rachel say, when he told her what he’d done?

He could still hear the sound when the tomahawk caved in the Abenaki’s skull. He could still feel it, too, in the bones of his arms, in the bursting pain of his wound.

Dimly, he realized that his feet were no longer keeping to the road; he was stumbling over clumps of grass, stubbing his moccasin-clad toes on rocks. He looked back to find his path—he saw it, plain, a wavering line of black . . . Why was it wavering?

He didn’t want silence, after all. He wanted Rachel’s voice, no matter what she might say to him.

It came to him dimly that he couldn’t go any farther. He was aware of a faint sense of surprise but was not afraid.

He didn’t remember falling but found himself on the ground, his hot cheek pressed against the cool prickle of pine needles. Laboriously, he got to his knees and scraped away the thick layer of fallen needles. Then he was lying with his body on damp earth, the blanket of needles half pulled over him; he could do no more and said a brief prayer to the tree, that it might protect him through the night.

And as he fell headlong into darkness, he did hear Rachel’s voice, in memory.

“Thy life’s journey lies along its own path, Ian,” she said, “and I cannot share thy journey—but I can walk beside thee. And I will.”

His last thought was that he hoped she’d still mean it when he told her what he’d done.

86 IN WHICH ROSY-FINGERED DAWN SHOWS UP MOB-HANDED

GREY WOKE TO THE drums of reveille, not startled by the accustomed rattle but with no clear idea where he was. In camp. Well, that much was obvious. He swung his legs out of the cot and sat up slowly, taking stock. His left arm hurt a lot, one of his eyes was stuck shut, and his mouth was so dry he could barely swallow. He’d slept in his clothes, smelled rank, and needed badly to piss.

He groped under the cot, found a utensil, and used it, noting in a rather dreamy way that his urine smelled of apples. That brought back the taste of cider and, with it, full recollection of the day and night before. Honey and flies. Artillery. Jamie, blood down his face. Rifle butt and the crack of bone. William . . . Hal . . .

Almost full recollection. He sat down and remained quite still for a moment, trying to decide whether Hal had really told him that his eldest son, Benjamin, was dead. Surely not. It must have been a shred of nightmare, lingering in his mind. And yet he had the dreadful feeling of doomed certainty that comes down like a curtain on the mind, smothering disbelief.

He stood up, staggering a little, determined to go and find his brother. He hadn’t yet found his shoes, though, when the flap was thrown back and Hal came in, followed by an orderly with a basin, a steaming pitcher, and shaving implements.

“Sit down,” Hal said, in a completely ordinary voice. “You’ll have to wear one of my uniforms, and you’re not doing it smelling like that. What the devil happened to your hair?”

Grey had forgotten his hair and flattened a palm on top of his head, surprised at the bristly stubble there.

“Oh. A ruse de guerre.” He sat down slowly, eyes on his brother. The bad eye had come open, though it was unpleasantly crusty, and so far as Grey could see, Hal looked much as he usually did. Tired, of course, worn, and a little haunted, but everyone looked like that the day after a battle. Surely if it were true, he’d look different. Worse, somehow.

He would have asked, but Hal didn’t linger, going off and leaving John in the hands of the orderly. Before the ablutions were complete, a young Scottish surgeon with freckles appeared, yawning as though he hadn’t slept all night, and blinked blearily at Grey’s arm. He prodded this in a professional manner, pronounced the bone cracked but not broken, and put it in a sling.

The sling had to be removed almost at once, in order for him to dress—another orderly arrived with a uniform and a tray of breakfast—and by the time he was made tidy and had been forcibly fed, he was wild with impatience.

He would have to wait for Hal to reappear, though; no point going out to scour the camp for him. And he really must talk to his brother before seeking out William. A small dish of honey had been provided with his toast, and he was dipping a dubious finger into it, wondering whether he ought to try dabbing it into his eye, when at last the flap opened again and his brother was with him.

“Did you actually tell me that Ben is dead?” he blurted at once. Hal’s face contracted a bit, but his jaw was set.

“No,” Hal said evenly. “I told you that I’d had news of Ben, and they said he was dead. I don’t believe it.” He gave John a stare defying him to contradict this belief.

“Oh. Good,” Grey said mildly. “Then I don’t believe it, either. Who told you, though?”

“That’s why I don’t believe it,” Hal replied, turning to lift the tent flap and peer out—evidently to be sure of not being overheard, and the thought made Grey’s belly flutter a little. “It was Ezekiel Richardson who brought me the news, and I wouldn’t trust that fellow if he told me I had a hole in the seat of my breeches, let alone something like that.”

The flutter in Grey’s belly became a full-blown beating of wings.

“Your instincts haven’t led you amiss there,” he said. “Sit down and have a piece of toast. I have a few things to tell you.”

WILLIAM WOKE with a shattering headache and the conviction that he had forgotten something important. Clutching his head, he discovered a bandage wound round it, chafing his ear. He pulled it off impatiently; there was blood on it, but not much and all dried. He recalled vague bits of things from the night before—pain, nausea, his head swimming, Uncle Hal . . . and then an image of his father, white-faced and fragile . . . “If you and I have things to say to each other . . .” Christ, had he dreamed that?

He said something bad in German, and a young voice repeated it, rather doubtfully.

“What’s that mean, sir?” asked Zeb, who had popped up beside his cot with a covered tray.

“You don’t need to know, and don’t repeat it,” William said, sitting up. “What happened to my head?”

Zeb’s brow creased.

“You don’t remember, sir?”

“If I did, would I be asking you?”

Zeb’s brow creased in concentration, but the logic of this question escaped him, and he merely shrugged, set down the tray, and answered the first one.

“Colonel Grey said you was hit on the head by deserters.”

“Desert—oh.” He stopped to consider that. British deserters? No . . . there was a reason why German profanity had sprung to his mind. He had a fleeting memory of Hessians, and . . . and what?

“Colenso’s got over the shits,” Zeb offered helpfully.

“Good to know the day’s starting out well for somebody. Oh, Jesus.” Pain crackled inside his skull, and he pressed a hand to his head. “Have you got anything to drink on that tray, Zeb?”

“Yes, sir!” Zeb uncovered the tray, triumphantly revealing a dish of coddled eggs with toast, a slice of ham, and a beaker of something that looked suspiciously murky but smelled strongly of alcohol.

“What’s in this?”

“Dunno, sir, but Colonel Grey says it’s a hair-of-the-dog-what-bit-you sort of thing.”

“Oh.” So it hadn’t been a dream. He shoved that thought aside for the moment and regarded the beaker with a cautious interest. He’d had the first of his father’s restoratives when he was fourteen and had mistaken the punch being prepared for Lord John’s dinner party as the same sort that ladies had at garden parties. He’d had a few more in the years since and found them invariably effective, if rather startling to drink.

“Right, then,” he said, and, taking a deep breath, picked up the beaker and drained it, swallowing heroically without pausing for breath.

“Cor!” said Zeb, admiring. “The cook said he could send some sausages, was you up to eating ’em.”

William merely shook his head—being momentarily incapable of speech—and picked up a piece of toast, which he held for a moment, not quite ready to consider actually inserting it into his mouth. His head still hurt, but the restorative had jarred loose a few more bits from the detritus in his brain.

“. . . Advice? You’re too old to be given it and too young to take it. . . .”

“. . . Er spricht Deutsch. Er gehört! . . .” He speaks German. He heard.

“I heard,” he said slowly. “What did I hear?”

Zeb appeared to think this another rhetorical question and, instead of trying to answer it, asked one of his own.

“What happened to Goth, sir?” His thin face was solemn, as though he expected to receive bad news.

“Goth,” William repeated blankly. “Has something happened to Goth?”

“Well, he’s gone, sir,” Zeb said, apparently trying to be tactful. “That is—when the regulars took you and the Indian away from the Rebels, you wasn’t on him.”

“When the . . . what Indian?—what the devil happened yesterday, Zeb?”

“How would I know?” Zeb said, affronted. “Wasn’t there, was I?”

“No, of course—bloody hell. Is my uncle—the Duke of Pardloe—in camp? I need to talk to him.”

Zeb looked dubious.

“Well, I can go and look for him, I s’pose.”

“Do, please. Now.” William waved him off, then sat still for a moment, trying to stick the jagged fragments of his memory back together. Rebels? Goth . . . He did recall something about Goth, but what was it? Had he run into Rebels, who took the horse? But what was this about Indians and deserters, and why did he keep hearing echoes of German speech in the back of his brain?

And who, come to think of it, was the Colonel Grey that Zeb had referred to? He’d assumed it was Uncle Hal—but his father’s rank was lieutenant colonel, and he’d also be addressed as “Colonel” in common use. He glanced at the tray and the empty beaker. Uncle Hal certainly knew about the hair of the dog, but . . .

“As long as you’re alive, everything’s all right.”

He put the untouched toast down, a sudden lump in his throat. Again. He’d had the lump last night, when he saw Papa. When he’d said to his father—yes, God damn it, his father!—“I’m glad you’re not dead.”

He maybe wasn’t quite ready to talk to Papa—or Papa to him—and he didn’t quite agree that everything was all right, but . . .

A shaft of brilliant sunlight lanced into his face as the tent flap was shoved aside, and he sat bolt upright, swinging his legs out of bed to be ready to meet—

But it wasn’t either his uncle or his father who appeared out of the eye-watering blur of sunlight. It was Banastre Tarleton, in uniform but wigless and unbuttoned, looking indecently cheerful for someone whose face seemed to have been beaten badly not too long ago.

“Alive, are you, Ellesmere?” Ban spotted the dish and, scooping up a coddled egg in his fingers, gulped it. He licked his buttery fingers, making pleased noises.

“Christ, I’m hungry. Been up since dawn. Killing on an empty stomach leaves you rare sharp-set, I’ll say that. Can I have the rest?”

“Be my guest. Who’ve you been killing for breakfast? Rebels?”

Tarleton looked surprised, arrested with a mouthful of toast. He chewed this imperfectly and bolted the bite before answering with a shower of crumbs.

“No, Washington’s troops withdrew to the south, so far as I know. Hessian deserters. The same lot that crowned you and left you for dead, or so I assume. They had your horse; recognized him.” He reached for another egg, and William thrust a spoon into his hand.

“For God’s sake, eat like a Christian. Do you have my horse?”

“I do. He’s lame in the right fore, but I don’t think it’s bad. Mmm . . . have you got your own cook?”

“No, he’s my uncle’s. Tell me about the deserters. They knocked me on the head, and my memory’s a bit spotty.” More than a bit, but chunks of it were beginning to come back pretty fast now.

Between bites, Tarleton gave him the story. A company of mercenaries under von Knyphausen had made up their minds to desert during the battle, but not all the men were of the same mind. Those in favor of desertion had drawn away a bit and were quietly discussing whether it was necessary to kill the dissenters, when William had shown up unexpectedly in their midst.

“That knocked them a bit skew-ways, as you might surmise.” Tarleton, having finished the eggs and most of the toast, picked up the beaker and looked disappointed at finding it empty.

“There’s probably water in that canteen,” William said, motioning toward the battered tin-and-leather object hanging from the tent pole. “So that’s it. . . . They looked a bit nervous, but when I asked one of them in German whether there was a farrier nearby—that was it! Goth threw a shoe, that’s why he—but then I heard someone whispering, sounding frantic, and he was saying, ‘He heard! He knows!’ Must’ve meant he thought I’d overheard them plotting and knew what they were up to.”

He breathed out in relief at having this much of the previous day restored to him.

Tarleton nodded. “Imagine so. They did kill some of the dissenters—gather a barney broke out after they bashed you on the head and threw you into the ravine—but not all of them.”

A few of the mercenaries had escaped and headed for von Knyphausen, who, upon hearing the news, had sent a dispatch to Clinton asking for assistance in dealing with the miscreants.

William nodded at this. It was always better to have matters like desertion or treason dealt with by troops outside the affected companies. And knowing Ban Tarleton, he would have leapt at the chance to track down the deserters and—

“Were you told to kill them?” he asked, striving for casualness.

Tarleton gave him an eggy grin and wiped a few lingering crumbs off his chin.

“Not specifically. Got the impression that as long as I brought a few back to tell the tale, no one much cared how many. And there was a hint of pour encourager les autres in my orders.”

Politely suppressing his shock at the revelation that Tarleton could read, let alone read Voltaire, William nodded.

“I see. My orderly said something rather curious: mentioned that I’d been found by Rebels—with an Indian. D’you know anything about that?”

Tarleton looked surprised, but shook his head.

“Not a thing. Oh—” He’d sat down on the stool and now rocked back a little, hands clasped about one knee, looking pleased with himself. “I do know something, though. Recall you asked me about Harkness?”

“Harkness . . . oh, yes!” William’s exclamation had less to do with mention of Captain Harkness and more to do with the important thing he’d forgotten, which had just come back to him: Jane and her sister.

He had an immediate impulse to get up and go find her, make sure they were all right. The fugitive Loyalists and camp followers would have been well clear of the actual battle, of course—but the violence and agitation that attended fighting didn’t simply stop when the fighting did. And it wasn’t only deserters and scavengers who looted, raped, and hunted among the hapless sheep.

He spared a flickering thought for Anne Endicott and her family—but they did at least have a man to protect them, however ill-equipped. Jane and Fanny . . . but surely Zeb would have known, if anything—

“What?” He looked blankly at Tarleton. “What did you say?”

“That knock on the head affected your hearing, too, did it?” Ban took a swig from the canteen. “I said I made inquiries. Harkness never joined his regiment. For all anyone knows, he’s still in Philadelphia.”

William’s mouth felt dry. He reached for the canteen and took a swallow; the water was warm and tin-tasting, but wet.

“Absent without leave, do you mean?”

“Very much without leave,” Tarleton assured him. “Last anyone recalls seeing him, he was promising to go back to some brothel and give some whore a proper seeing-to. Maybe she saw to him, instead!” He laughed heartily at the thought.

William stood up abruptly, then—for something to do—reached to replace the canteen on its nail. The tent flap was down, but a stray beam of dust-filled sunlight still fell through the gap, catching the glitter of metal. His officer’s gorget hung from the nail, its silver gleaming in the sun.

“PERCIVAL WAINWRIGHT?” John hadn’t seen Hal so disconcerted since the events concerning their father’s death—which had also involved Percy, come to think of it.

“In the—very fashionable—flesh. He’s apparently an adviser to the Marquis de La Fayette.”

“Who’s that?”

“A flash young frog with a lot of money,” Grey said with a one-shouldered shrug. “Rebel general. Said to be very close to Washington.”

“Close,” Hal repeated, with a sharp look at Grey. “Close to Wainwright, too, you think?”

“Probably not that way,” he replied calmly, though his heart beat a little faster. “I gather you’re not altogether surprised that he isn’t dead. Percy, I mean.” He was vaguely affronted; he’d gone to a lot of trouble to make it appear that Percy had died in prison while awaiting trial for sodomy.

Hal merely snorted. “Men like that never die so conveniently. Why the bloody hell is he telling you this, do you think?”

Grey suppressed the vivid memory of bergamot, red wine, and petitgrain.

“I don’t know. But I do know he’s deeply involved with French interests, and—”

“Wainwright’s never been involved with any interests other than his own,” Hal interrupted brusquely. He gave John a sharp look. “You’d do well to remember that.”

“I doubt I shall ever see the fellow again,” John replied, overlooking the implication that his brother considered him gullible—or worse. He was entirely aware that while Hal was treating Richardson’s news of Ben with scorn, and was very likely right to do so, neither of them could completely ignore the possibility that the man had been telling the truth.

Hal verified this assumption by smacking his fist down on the campaign chest, making the pewter cups jump and fall over. He stood abruptly.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered. “Stay here!”

“Where are you going?”

Hal paused at the tent flap for an instant. His face was still haggard, but John recognized the battle light in his eyes.

“To arrest Richardson.”

“You can’t arrest him yourself, for God’s sake!” Grey was on his feet, too, reaching for Hal’s sleeve.

“Which regiment does he belong to?”

“The Fifth, but he’s detached. I told you he was an intelligencer, did I not?” The word “intelligencer” dripped with contempt.

“All right—I’ll speak to Sir Henry first.”

John had got a grip on Hal’s arm and tightened his hold at this. “I should have thought you’d had enough of scandal by now,” he said, trying for calmness. “Take a breath and imagine what will likely happen if you do that. Assuming that Sir Henry would take the time to consider your request. Today, for God’s sake?” He could hear the army moving outside; there was no danger of pursuit from Washington’s troops, but Clinton was not going to hang about. His division, with its baggage and refugees under its wing, would be on the road within the hour.

Hal’s arm was hard as marble under John’s hand and stayed that way. But he did stop, breathing with a slow, deep regularity. At last he turned his head and looked into his brother’s eyes. A beam of sunlight threw every line in his face into stark relief.

“Name one thing you think I wouldn’t do,” he said quietly, “in order not to have to tell Minnie that Ben is dead.”

Grey drew one long, deep breath of his own and nodded, letting go.

“Point taken. Whatever you mean to do, I’ll help. But first I have to find William. What Percy said—”

“Ah.” Hal blinked and his face relaxed a fraction. “Yes, of course. Meet you here in half an hour.”

WILLIAM HAD BARELY finished dressing before the message he’d been halfway expecting arrived from Sir Henry, delivered by Lieutenant Foster, whom he knew slightly. Foster grimaced sympathetically when handing it over.

William observed Sir Henry Clinton’s personal seal: not a good sign. On the other hand, if he was to be arrested for being absent without leave the previous day, Harry Foster would have brought an armed escort and taken him off without a by-your-leave. That was mildly heartening, and he broke the seal without hesitation.

In the event, it was a terse note advising him that he was relieved of duty until further notice—but that was all. He exhaled, only then realizing that he’d been holding his breath.

But of course Sir Henry wouldn’t imprison him—how and where, with the army on the move? Short of putting him in irons and transporting him by wagon . . . Realistically, Clinton couldn’t even confine him to quarters; the quarters in question were beginning to shake overhead as his uncle’s orderly set to dismantling the tent.

All right, then. He stuffed the note into his pocket, stuffed his feet into his boots, seized up his hat, and went out, feeling not that bad, all things considered. He had a headache, but it was bearable, and he’d managed to eat what breakfast Tarleton had left.

When things settled down and Sir Henry got round to taking official notice of his disobedience of orders, William could fish up Captain André and have him explain about going to find Tarleton, and all would be well. Meanwhile, he’d go down to the camp followers’ area and find Jane.

There was a strong bitter smell of fresh cabbage floating over the sprawl of makeshift shelters and human detritus, and a scatter of farm wagons drawn up along the road, with women crowding round them. The army cooks fed the refugees, but rations were sparse—and had doubtless been disrupted by the battle.

He walked along the road, keeping an eye out for Jane or Fanny, but didn’t spot either one. His eye attuned for a young girl, though, he did see Peggy Endicott, trudging down the road with a bucket in either hand.

“Miss Peggy! May I offer my assistance, ma’am?” He smiled down at her and was warmed to see her own face—somewhat anxious before—bloom into delight under her cap.

“Captain!” she cried, nearly dropping her buckets in her excitement. “Oh, I’m so happy to see you! We were all so worried for you, you know, in the battle, and we all said a prayer for your safety, but Papa told us you would surely prevail over the wicked Rebels and God would see you safe.”

“Your lovely prayers were to great effect,” he assured her gravely, taking the buckets. One was full of water and the other of turnips, their green tops wilting over the rim. “Are your mama and papa well, then, and your sisters?”

They walked along together, Peggy dancing on her toes and chattering like an affable small parrot. William kept an eye peeled for Jane or Fanny among the laundresses; it was safer near those redoubtable ladies than in some other parts of the camp. There were no kettles boiling this morning, of course, but the scent of lye soap floated on the humid air like scum on a cauldron full of dirty clothes.

There was no sign of Jane and Fanny by the time he’d reached the Endicotts’ wagon—still on all four wheels, he was glad to see. He was greeted warmly by all the Endicotts, though the girls and Mrs. Endicott made a great fuss of the lump on his head when he took his hat off to help with the loading of their wagon.

“Nothing, ma’am, the merest bruise,” he assured Mrs. Endicott for the ninth time, when she urged him to sit down in the shade and drink some water with the tiniest bit of brandy in it, for they still had some, thank goodness. . . .

Anne, who had maneuvered herself close to him, passing him items to be loaded, leaned in with a tea chest and let her hand brush his—deliberately, he was sure.

“Will you stay in New York, do you think?” she asked, stooping to pick up a portmanteau. “Or perhaps—you must excuse my prying, but people will talk—go back to England? Miss Jernigan said that you might.”

“Miss . . . oh, of course.” He recalled Mary Jernigan, a very flirtatious blond piece with whom he’d danced at a ball in Philadelphia. He glanced over the throng of Loyalist refugees. “Is she here?”

“Yes,” Anne replied, a little tersely. “Dr. Jernigan has a brother in New York; they will stay with him for a time.” She collected herself—he could see that she was regretting having recalled his attention to Mary Jernigan—and smiled at him, deeply enough as to invoke the dimple in her left cheek. “You needn’t take refuge with reluctant relatives, though, need you? Miss Jernigan said that you have a great vast estate awaiting you in England.”

“Mmm,” he said noncommittally. His father had warned him early on about marriage-minded young women with an eye to his fortune, and he’d met quite a few of them. Still, he liked Anne Endicott and her family and was inclined to think they had a real regard for him, as well, despite his position and the pragmatical considerations that must now afflict Anne and her sisters, with their father’s affairs so precarious.

“I don’t know,” he said, taking the portmanteau from her. “I truly have no idea what’s to become of me. Who does, in wartime?” He smiled, a little ruefully, and she seemed to feel his sense of uncertainty, for she impulsively laid a hand on his sleeve.

“Well, be assured that you have friends, at least, who care what becomes of you,” she said softly.

“Thank you,” he said, and turned his face toward the cart, lest she see how much that touched him.

In turning, though, his eye caught a purposeful movement, someone threading toward him through the crowd, and Anne Endicott’s soft dark eyes disappeared abruptly from his mind.

“Sir!” It was his groom Colenso Baragwanath, gasping from the effort of running. “Sir, have you—”

“There you are, Baragwanath! What the devil are you doing here, and where have you left Madras? Good news, though: Goth’s come back. Colonel Tarleton has him and—what, for God’s sake?” For Colenso was squirming as though he had a snake in his breeches, his square Cornish face contorted with information.

“Jane and Fanny’re gone, sir!”

“Gone? Gone where?”

“Dunno, sir. But they’ve gone. I came back to get my jacket and the shelter was still up, but their things were gone and I couldn’t find ’em and when I asked the folk who camps near us, they said as the girls had rolled up their bundles and sneaked off!”

William didn’t waste time inquiring how one could possibly sneak out of an open camp of several thousand people, let alone why that should be necessary.

“Which way did they go?”

“That way, sir!” Colenso pointed down the road.

William rubbed a hand over his face and stopped abruptly when he inadvertently touched the bruised swelling on his left temple.

“Ouch. Well, bloody hell—oh, I beg your pardon, Miss Endicott.” For at this point he became aware of Anne Endicott at his elbow, eyes round with curiosity.

“Who are Jane and Fanny?” she asked.

“Ahh . . . two young ladies who are traveling under my protection,” he said, knowing exactly what effect that information was likely to have, but there wasn’t much help for it. “Very young ladies,” he added, in the vain hope of improving things. “Daughters of a . . . um, distant cousin.”

“Oh,” she said, looking distinctly unconvinced. “But they’ve run off? Whyever should they do such a thing?”

“Damned if I—er, beg pardon, ma’am. I don’t know, but I must go and find out. Will you make my excuses to your parents and sisters?”

“I—of course.” She made a small, abortive gesture toward him, putting out her hand and then withdrawing it. She looked both startled and slightly affronted. He regretted it, but there wasn’t time to do anything about it.

“Your servant, ma’am,” he said, and, bowing, left her.

IN THE END, it was half a day, rather than half an hour, before John saw Hal again. He found his brother, quite by chance, standing by the road that led northward, watching the marching columns go past. Most of the camp had already left; only the cook wagons and laundry kettles were trundling past now, the disorderly sprawl of camp followers spreading out behind them like the plague of lice over the land of Egypt.

“William’s gone,” he said to Hal without preamble.

Hal nodded, face somber. “So is Richardson.”

“Bloody hell.”

Hal’s groom was standing by, holding two horses. Hal jerked his head at a dark-bay mare and took the reins of his own horse, a light-bay gelding with a blaze and one white stocking.

“Where do you think we’re going?” John inquired, seeing his brother turn the gelding’s head south.

“Philadelphia,” Hal replied, tight-lipped. “Where else?”

Grey could himself think of any number of alternatives, but recognized a rhetorical question when he heard one and contented himself with asking, “Have you got a clean handkerchief?”

Hal gave him a blank look, then rummaged in his sleeve, pulling out a crumpled but unused linen square.

“Apparently. Why?”

“I expect we’re going to need a flag of truce at some point. The Continental army lying presently between us and Philadelphia, I mean.”

“Oh, that.” Hal stuffed the handkerchief back up his sleeve and said no more until they had negotiated their way past the last trailing remnants of the horde of refugees and found themselves more or less alone on the road leading south.

“No one could be sure, in the confusion,” he said, as though he’d last spoken ten seconds before. “But it looks very much as though Captain Richardson has deserted.”

“What?!”

“Not a bad moment to choose, really,” Hal said reflectively. “No one would have noticed he was gone for days, had I not come looking for him. He was in camp last night, though, and unless he’s disguised himself as a teamster or a laundress, he’s not here any longer.”

“The contingency seems remote,” Grey said. “William was here this morning—both your orderly and his young grooms saw him, and so did a Colonel Tarleton of the British Legion, who breakfasted with him.”

“Who? Oh, him.” Hal waved off Tarleton as a distraction. “Clinton values him, but I never trust a man with lips like a girl’s.”

“Regardless, he seems to have had nothing to do with William’s disappearance. The groom Baragwanath thinks that William went off to see about a couple of . . . young women among the camp followers.”

Hal glanced at him, one brow raised.

“What sort of young women?”

“Probably the sort you’re thinking,” John replied, a little tersely.

“At that hour of the morning, after being bashed on the head the night before? And young women, plural? The boy’s got stamina, I’ll say that for him.”

Grey could have said a number of other things about William at this point, but didn’t. “So you think Richardson’s deserted.” That would explain Hal’s focus on Philadelphia; if Percy was right and Richardson was in fact an American agent, where else might he go at this point?

“It seems the most likely possibility. Also . . .” Hal hesitated for a moment, but then his mouth firmed. “If I believed that Benjamin was dead, what might I be expected to do?”

“Go and make inquiries into his death,” Grey replied, suppressing the queasy feeling the notion induced. “Claim his body, at the least.”

Hal nodded. “Ben was—or is—being held at a place in New Jersey called Middletown Encampment. I’ve not been there, but it’s in the middle of Washington’s strongest territory, in the Watchung Mountains. Nest of Rebels.”

“And you’d be unlikely to undertake that sort of journey with a large armed guard,” John observed. “You’d go alone, or perhaps with an orderly, an ensign or two. Or me.”

Hal nodded. They rode for a bit, each alone with his thoughts.

“So you’re not going to the Watchung Mountains,” Grey said at last. His brother sighed deeply and set his jaw.

“Not immediately. If I can catch up with Richardson, I may find out what’s really happened—or not happened—to Ben. After that . . .”

“Do you have a plan for proceeding once we reach Philadelphia?” Grey inquired. “Given that it’s in the hands of the Rebels?”

Hal’s lips compressed. “I will have, by the time we get there.”

“I daresay. I have one now, though.”

Hal looked at him, thumbing a hank of damp hair behind his ear. His hair was carelessly tied back; he’d not bothered to have it plaited or clubbed this morning, a sure sign of his agitation. “Does it involve anything patently insane? Your better plans always do.”

“Not at all. We’re certain to encounter the Continentals, as I said. Assuming we aren’t shot on sight, we produce your flag of truce”—he nodded at his brother’s sleeve, from which the edge of the handkerchief was drooping—“and demand to be taken to General Fraser.”

Hal gave him a startled look.

“James Fraser?”

“The same.” Grey’s knotted stomach clenched a little tighter at the thought. At both the thought of speaking to Jamie again—and the thought of telling him that William was missing. “He fought with Benedict Arnold at Saratoga, and his wife is friendly with the man.”

“God help General Arnold, in that case,” Hal murmured.

“And who else has a better reason for helping us in this matter than does Jamie Fraser?”

“Who indeed?” They rode for some time in silence, Hal apparently lost in thought. It wasn’t until they paused to find a creek and water the horses that he spoke again, water streaming down his face where he’d splashed it.

“So you’ve not only somehow married Fraser’s wife, but you’ve accidentally been raising his illegitimate son for the last fifteen years?”

“Apparently so,” Grey said, in a tone that he hoped indicated complete unwillingness to talk about it. For once, Hal took the hint.

“I see,” he said, and, with no further questions, wiped his face with the flag of truce and mounted up.

87 MOONRISE

IT HADN’T BEEN a peaceful day. Apparently Jamie had somehow retained sufficient presence of mind last night to write a brief note—though he didn’t recall doing so—to La Fayette, explaining what had happened and confiding care of his troops to the marquis. This he had sent with Lieutenant Bixby, with instructions to notify the captains and militia commanders of his companies. After which, he’d forgotten everything but Claire.

Everything had not forgotten him, though. The sun was barely up before a stream of officers appeared at Mrs. Macken’s door, in search of General Fraser. Mrs. Macken took every arrival as being the possible bearer of bad news concerning her still-missing husband, and the reek of burnt porridge rose through the house, seeping into the walls like the smell of fear.

Some came with questions, some with news or gossip—General Lee was relieved of duty, was under arrest, had gone to Philadelphia, had turned his coat and joined Clinton, had hanged himself, had challenged Washington to a duel. A messenger arrived from General Washington with a personal note of sympathy and good wishes; another came from La Fayette with an enormous hamper of food and a half-dozen bottles of claret.

Jamie couldn’t eat, but gave the food to Mrs. Macken. He retained a couple of bottles of the wine, though, which he’d opened and kept by him through the day, taking occasional gulps to sustain him as he sponged and watched and prayed.

Judah Bixby came and went like a helpful ghost, appearing and disappearing, but always seeming to be there if something was needed.

“The militia companies . . .” Jamie began, but then couldn’t think what he’d meant to ask concerning them. “Are they . . . ?”

“Most of them have gone home,” Bixby told him, unloading a basket full of beer bottles. “Their enlistment ends on the thirtieth—that’s tomorrow, sir,” he added gently, “but they mostly set off first thing this morning.”

Jamie let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding and felt a small measure of peace.

“I reckon it’ll be months before anyone knows was it a victory or not,” Bixby remarked. He drew the cork from one bottle, then another, and handed one to Jamie. “But it surely wasn’t defeat. Shall we drink to it, sir?”

Jamie was worn out with worry and praying, but managed a smile for Judah and a quick word of thanks to God for the boy.

Once Judah had left, a somewhat longer prayer on behalf of his nephew. Ian hadn’t returned, and none of Jamie’s visitors had had any word of him. Rachel had come back late the night before, white-faced and silent, and had gone out again at daybreak. Dottie had offered to go with her, but Rachel had refused; the two of them were needed to deal with the wounded still being brought in and those sheltering in the houses and barns of Freehold.

Ian, Jamie thought in anguish, addressing his brother-in-law. For God’s sake, have an eye to our lad, because I canna do it. I’m sorry.

Claire’s fever had risen fast during the night, then seemed to fall a little with the coming of the light; she was conscious now and then and capable of a few words, but for the most part she lay in a uneasy doze, her breath coming in shallow pants punctuated by sudden deep, tearing gasps that woke her—she dreamed that she was being suffocated, she said. He would give her as much water as she would take and douse her hair again, and she would drop back into fever dreams, muttering and moaning.

He began to feel as though he were living in a fever dream himself: trapped in endless repetitions of prayer and water, these broken by visitations from some vanished, alien world.

Perhaps this was purgatory, he thought, and gave a wan smile at memory of himself, waking on Culloden Moor so many years ago, his eyelids sealed with blood, thinking himself dead and grateful for it, even if his immediate prospect was a spell in purgatory—that being a vague, unknown circumstance, probably unpleasant but not one he feared.

He feared the one that might be imminent.

He had come to the conclusion that he couldn’t kill himself, even if she died. Even could he bring himself to commit a sin of that magnitude, there were people who needed him, and to abandon them would be a greater sin even than the willful destruction of God’s gift of life. But to live without her—he watched her breathe, obsessively, counting ten breaths before he would believe she hadn’t stopped—that would certainly be his purgatory.

He didn’t think he’d taken his eyes off her, and maybe he hadn’t, but he came out of his reverie to see that her own eyes were open, a soft smudged black in the white of her face. The light had faded to the final cusp of twilight and all color had washed from the room, leaving them in a luminous dusty haze that wasn’t daylight any longer but not yet night. He saw that her hair was nearly dry, curling in masses over the pillow.

“I’ve . . . decided . . . not to die,” she said, in a voice little more than a whisper.

“Oh. Good.” He was afraid to touch her, for fear of hurting her, but couldn’t bear not to. He laid a hand as lightly as he could over hers, finding it cool in spite of the heat trapped in the small attic.

“I could, you know.” She closed one eye and looked accusingly at him with the other. “I want to; this is . . . bloody horrible.”

“I know,” he whispered, and brought her hand to his lips. Her bones were frail, and she hadn’t the strength to squeeze his hand; her fingers lay limp in his.

She closed her eyes and breathed audibly for a little.

“Do you know why?” she said suddenly, opening her eyes.

“No.” He’d thought of making some jesting remark about her needing to write down her receipt for making ether, but her tone was dead serious, and he didn’t.

“Because,” she said, and stopped with a small grimace that squeezed his heart. “Because,” she said through clenched teeth, “I know what it felt . . . like when I . . . thought you were dead, and—” A small gasp for breath, and her eyes locked on his. “And I wouldn’t do that to you.” Her bosom fell and her eyes closed.

It was a long moment before he could speak.

“Thank ye, Sassenach,” he whispered, and held her small, cold hand between his own and watched her breathe until the moon rose.

I COULD SEE the moon through the tiny window; we were in the attic of the house. It was the first breath of the new moon, but the whole of it was visible, a perfect ball of violet and indigo cupped in a sickle of light, luminous among the stars. “The new moon with the old,” country folk called it in England. On the Ridge, people called it “holding water.”

The fever had left me. It had also left me drained, light-headed, and weak as a newborn mouse. My side was swollen from hip to oxter, hot and tender to the touch, but I was sure this was only surgical trauma. There wasn’t any significant infection, only a little inflammation near the surface of the incision.

I felt rather like the new moon: the shadow of pain and death was still clearly visible to me—but only because the light was there to throw it into perspective. On the other hand, there were still small practicalities and indignities to be dealt with. I had to pee, and I couldn’t sit up by myself, let alone squat over a chamber pot.

I had no idea what time it was, though with the moon like that, it couldn’t be the middle of the night. The house was still, though—Lieutenant Macken had returned safely in late afternoon, bringing with him several other men, but they had been too exhausted for celebration; I could hear faint snoring from the floor below. I couldn’t disturb everyone by calling out for Loretta Macken’s assistance. With a sigh, I leaned gingerly over the side of the bed and cleared my throat.

“Sassenach? Are ye all right?” A segment of the darkness on the floor moved suddenly and resolved itself into a Jamie-shaped shadow.

“Yes. Are you?”

That got me the breath of a laugh.

“I’ll do, Sassenach,” he said softly, and I heard the rustle of his movement as he got his feet under him. “I’m glad ye feel well enough to ask. D’ye need water?”

“Er . . . rather the opposite, really,” I said.

“Oh? Oh.” He stooped, a pale blur in his shirt, to reach under the bed. “D’ye need help?”

“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have waked you up,” I said, a little testily. “I didn’t think I could wait for Mrs. Macken or Dottie, though.” He snorted a little and got me under the arms, lifting me into a sitting position.

“Now, then,” he murmured. “It’s no like ye’ve not done this—and a good many worse things—for me.”

While this was true, it didn’t make matters easier.

“You can let go now,” I said.

“Perhaps leave the room?” “Perhaps not,” he said, still mildly, but with a tone indicating that his mind was made up on the subject. “If I let go, ye’ll fall on your face, and ye ken that perfectly well, so stop talkin’ and be about your business now, aye?”

It took some time—anything that put pressure on my abdomen, including the act of urinating, hurt remarkably—but the business was accomplished and I was eased back down onto the pillow, gasping. Jamie bent and picked up the chamber pot, clearly intending to hurl the contents out the window in customary Edinburgh fashion.

“No, wait!” I said. “Keep that ’til morning.”

He paused.

“What for?” he asked cautiously. Clearly he suspected I might still be unhinged from fever and be contemplating some grossly irrational use of the pot’s contents, but he didn’t like to say so, in case I had something logical, if bizarre, in mind. I would have laughed, but it hurt too much.

“I need to check, once there’s light, to be sure there’s no blood,” I said. “My right kidney’s very sore; I want to be sure there’s no damage.”

“Ah.” He set the utensil down carefully and, to my surprise, opened the door and glided out, moving soft-footed as a hunting fox. I heard one squeak as he stepped on a stair tread, but nothing more until a glow betokened his return with a candlestick.

“Have a look, then,” he said, picking up the pot again and bringing it to me. “I kent ye’d just fret about it did ye have to wait for daybreak.”

He sounded resigned, but this small thoughtfulness brought me close to tears. He heard the catch in my breathing and leaned close, alarmed, bringing the light up to my face.

“Are ye all right, Sassenach? Is it bad, then?”

“No,” I said, and wiped my eyes hastily on a corner of the sheet. “No—it—it’s fine. I just—oh, Jamie, I love you!” I did give way to tears, then, snuffling and blubbering like an idiot. “I’m sorry,” I said, trying to get hold of myself. “I’m all right, there’s nothing wrong, it’s just—”

“Aye, I ken fine what it’s just,” he said, and, setting the candle and pot on the floor, lay down on the bed beside me, balancing precariously on the edge.

“Ye’re hurt, a nighean,” he said softly, smoothing my hair off my wet cheeks. “And fevered and starved and worn to a shadow. There’s no much of ye left, is there, poor wee thing?”

I shook my head and clung to him. “There’s not much of you left, either,” I managed to say, mumbling wetly into the front of his shirt.

He made a small amused noise and rubbed my back, very gently. “Enough, Sassenach,” he said. “I’m enough. For now.”

I sighed and fumbled under the pillow for a hankie to blow my nose.

“Better?” he asked, sitting up.

“Yes. Don’t go, though.” I put a hand on his leg, hard and warm under my hand. “Can you lie with me a minute? I’m awfully cold.” I was, though I realized from the damp and salt on his skin that the room was quite hot. But loss of so much blood had left me chilled and gasping; I couldn’t get through a sentence without stopping to breathe, and my arms were permanently goose-pimpled.

“Aye. Dinna move; I’ll go round.” He came round the bed and edged carefully in behind me. It was a narrow bed, barely wide enough to hold us closely pressed together.

I exhaled gingerly and relaxed against him in slow motion, reveling in the feel of his warmth and the solid comfort of his body.

“Elephants,” I said, drawing the shallowest possible breath compatible with speaking. “When a female elephant is dying, sometimes a male will try to mate with her.”

There was a marked silence behind me, and then a big hand came round and rested assessingly on my forehead.

“Either ye’re fevered again, Sassenach,” he said in my ear, “or ye have verra perverse fancies. Ye dinna really want me to—”

“No,” I said hastily. “Not right this minute, no. And I’m not dying, either. The thought just came to me.”

He made an amused Scottish noise and, lifting the hair off my neck, kissed my nape.

“Since ye’re no dying,” he said, “maybe that will do for the moment?”

I took his hand and placed it on my breast. Slowly I grew warmer, and my chilly feet, pressed against his shins, relaxed. The window now was filled with stars, hazy with the moistness of the summer night, and I suddenly missed the cool, clear, black-velvet nights of the mountains, the stars blazing huge, close enough to touch from the highest ridge.

“Jamie?” I whispered. “Can we go home? Please?”

“Aye,” he said softly. He held my hand and the silence filled the room like moonlight, both of us wondering where home might be.

88 A WHIFF OF ROQUEFORT

I HADN’T SEEN ANY of the previous day’s flock of visitors, though Jamie had told me about them. This day, though, brought one for me. Mrs. Macken brought him up the stairs, in spite of her advanced state of pregnancy, and showed him into my tiny room with great respect.

He wasn’t in uniform and was—for him—quite subfusc, in a coat and breeches of the dull gray that was referred to (with accuracy) as “sad-colored,” though he had taken the trouble to wear a dove-gray waistcoat with it that flattered his coloring.

“How are you, my dear?” he asked, taking off his hat. Not waiting for an answer, he came down on one knee by the bed, took my hand, and kissed it lightly. His blond hair had been washed, I saw—I smelled his bergamot soap—and trimmed to a uniform length. As that length was roughly an inch, the overall effect reminded me irresistibly of a fuzzy duckling. I laughed, then gasped and pressed a hand to my side.

“Dinna make her laugh!” Jamie said, glowering at John. His tone was cold, but I saw him take in John’s aspect, and the corner of his own mouth twitched.

“I know,” John said ruefully to me, passing a hand over his head and ignoring Jamie completely. “Isn’t it dreadful? I ought really to wear a wig for the sake of public decency, but I couldn’t bear it in the heat.”

“Don’t know that I blame you,” I told him, and ran a hand through the damp mass of my own hair, drying on my shoulders. “Though I haven’t yet got to the point of wanting to shave my head,” I added pointedly, not quite turning my head toward Jamie.

“Don’t. It wouldn’t suit you at all,” John assured me.

“How is your eye?” I asked, gingerly trying to raise myself on the pillow. “Let me have a look at it.”

“Stay there,” he said, and, leaning over me, opened both eyes wide. “I think it’s quite good. It’s still a bit tender to the touch and gets the odd twinge when I move it too far up or to the right, but—do you smell French cheese?” He sounded slightly startled.

“Mmm.” I was gently prodding the flesh around the orbit, which showed only a slight residual swelling. The sclera was still quite bloodshot, but the bruising was much better. I thumbed down the lower lid to inspect the conjunctiva: a nice slippery pink, no sign of infection. “Does it water?”

“Only in strong sunlight, and not very much,” he assured me, straightening up. He smiled at me. “Thank you, my dear.”

Jamie didn’t say anything, but the way he breathed had a distinctly edgy feel about it. I ignored him. If he chose to make a fuss, I couldn’t bloody stop him.

“What are ye doing here?” he asked abruptly. John looked up at him, one brow raised, as though surprised to see him looming on the other side of my bed. John rose slowly to his feet, holding Jamie’s eyes with his own.

“What do you think I’m doing?” he asked quietly. There was no hint of challenge in the question, and I could see Jamie suddenly check his own hostility, frowning slightly as he looked John over, considering.

One side of John’s mouth turned up a little.

“Do you think I’ve come to fight you for the favors of this lady? Or to seduce her from your side?”

Jamie didn’t laugh, but the line between his brows smoothed out.

“I don’t,” he said dryly. “And as ye dinna seem to be much damaged, I doubt ye’ve come to be doctored.”

John gave an amiable bob of the head, indicating that this line of reasoning was correct.

“And I doubt, as well,” Jamie continued, an edge creeping into his voice, “that ye’ve come to continue our previous discussion.”

John inhaled slowly, and exhaled even slower, regarding Jamie with a level gaze. “Is it your opinion that anything remains to be said, regarding any part of that discussion?”

There was a marked silence. I glanced from one to the other, Jamie’s eyes narrowed and John’s eyes wide, both with fixed blue stares. All it lacked was growling and the slow lashing of tails.

“Are you armed, John?” I inquired pleasantly.

He glanced at me, startled. “No.”

“Good,” I said, grunting slightly as I struggled to sit up. “Then you obviously aren’t going to kill him”—I nodded at Jamie, standing over me with fists half curled—“and if he didn’t break your neck the first time, he isn’t going to do it now. Are you?” I inquired, arching a brow at Jamie.

He looked down his nose at me, but I saw the slight relaxation of his mouth. And his hands. “Probably not.”

“Well, then.” I brushed the hair back from my face. “No point in hitting each other. And harsh language would detract from the pleasant nature of this visit, wouldn’t it?”

Neither of them chose to answer this.

“That was not actually a rhetorical question,” I said. “But let that go.” I turned to John, folding my hands in my lap. “Flattered as I am by the attention, I don’t think you came solely to inquire after my well-being. So if you’ll pardon my vulgar curiosity . . . why are you here?”

He finally relaxed and, at my nod, took the stool, linking his fingers round his knee.

“I’ve come to ask your help,” he said directly to Jamie. “But also”—it was slight, but I noticed the hesitation—“to make you an offer. Not as quid pro quo,” he added. “The offer is not contingent on your assistance.”

Jamie made a Scottish noise indicating deep skepticism but willingness to listen.

John nodded and took a breath before continuing. “You once mentioned to me, my dear, that—”

“Dinna be calling her that.”

“Mrs. Fraser,” John amended, and, with a polite bow to me, turned his attention to Jamie, “once mentioned that she—and you, I would imagine—had some acquaintance with General Arnold.”

Jamie and I exchanged puzzled looks. He shrugged and folded his arms.

“Aye, we do.”

“Good. What I—and my brother”—I felt, rather than saw, Jamie’s start at mention of Hal—“would ask of you is a note of introduction to Arnold, with your personal request that the general allow us official entrance into the city—and whatever aid he might find it convenient to give us—for the purpose of making a search for my son.”

John let out the rest of his breath and sat, head down, not moving. Nobody moved.

At last, Jamie let out a long sigh and sat down on the room’s other stool.

“Tell me,” he said, resigned. “What’s the wee bastard done now?”

THE STORY FINISHED, John inhaled, made to rub his bad eye, and luckily stopped in time.

“I’ll put a bit more honey in that before you leave,” I told him. “It will ease the grittiness.” This non sequitur helped to bridge the awkward gap in the conversation left by Jamie’s being struck momentarily speechless.

“Jesus,” he said, and rubbed a hand hard over his face. He was still wearing the bloodstained shirt and breeches in which he’d fought; he hadn’t shaved in three days, had barely slept or eaten, and looked like something you wouldn’t want to meet in broad daylight, let alone a dark alley. He took a deep breath and shook his head like a dog shedding water.

“So ye think the two of them have gone to Philadelphia—William and this Richardson?”

“Probably not together—or at least not to begin with,” John said. “William’s groom said he left to find a couple of . . . er . . . girls who had gone from the camp. But we strongly suspect that this was a ploy by Richardson, to decoy William out of camp and intercept him on the road.”

Jamie made an irascible noise.

“I should like to think the lad’s no such a fat-heided gomerel as to go off wi’ this Richardson. Not after the man sent him into the Great Dismal last year and nearly killed him.”

“He told you that?”

“Oh. He didna tell ye that?” Jamie’s voice might possibly have held a shade of scorn, had one been listening closely.

“I’m damned sure he didn’t tell you anything,” John replied, with an edge. “He hadn’t seen you for years before he met you at Chestnut Street, I’d bet money he hasn’t seen you since, and I’m reasonably sure I would have noticed had he mentioned Richardson in the hallway there.”

“No,” Jamie said briefly. “He told my nephew, Ian Murray. Or at least,” he amended, “Ian got it from what he said, raving wi’ fever when Ian got him out of the swamp. Richardson sent him wi’ a message for some men in Dismal Town—men he said were Loyalists. But half the men in Dismal Town are named Washington.”

John’s appearance of pugnacity had vanished. He looked pale, and the fading bruises stood out like leprosy against his skin. He took a deep breath, glanced round the room, and, seeing a half-empty bottle of claret on the table, picked it up and drank a quarter of it without stopping.

He set it down, stifled a belch, rose with a brief nod and a “wait a moment,” and went out, leaving Jamie and me staring at each other in bafflement.

This was not significantly assuaged by the reappearance of John, followed by the Duke of Pardloe. Jamie said something remarkably creative in Gàidhlig, and I gave him a look of startled appreciation.

“And a good day to you, too, General Fraser,” Hal said, with a correct bow. Like John, he was dressed in civvies, though with a rather loud mulberry striped waistcoat, and I did wonder where he’d got it from.

“I have resigned my commission,” Jamie said coldly. “ ‘Mr. Fraser’ will do. May I ask to what we owe the honor of your presence, Your Grace?”

Hal’s lips pressed tight together, but, with a glance at his brother, he obliged with a brief précis of his personal concern with Captain Richardson.

“And I do, of course, wish to retrieve my nephew, William—should he in fact be with Richardson. My brother informs me that you have doubts as to the probability of this being the case?”

“I do,” Jamie said shortly. “My son is not a fool, nor a weakling.” I caught the faint emphasis on “my son,” and so did both Greys, who stiffened slightly. “He wouldna go off on some feeble pretext, nor would he allow someone of whom he was suspicious to take him captive.”

“You have a bloody lot of faith in a boy you haven’t seen since he was six,” Hal observed conversationally.

Jamie smiled, with considerable rue.

“I had the making of him until he was six,” he said, and turned his gaze on John. “I ken what he’s made of. And I ken who shaped him after that. Tell me I’m wrong, my lord.”

There was a marked silence, broken only by Lieutenant Macken’s voice below, calling plaintively to his wife about the location of his clean stockings.

“Well, then,” Hal said with a sigh. “Where do you think William’s gone, if he’s not with Richardson?”

“He’s gone after the girls he spoke of,” Jamie said, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. “He told his groom so, did he not? D’ye ken who these lassies are?”

The Greys exchanged looks of muted chagrin, and I coughed, very carefully, holding a pillow to my stomach.

“If that’s the case,” I said, “then presumably he’ll come back, once he’s either found them or given up looking for them. Wouldn’t he? Would he go AWOL over them—er . . . absent without leave, I mean?”

“He wouldn’t have to risk that,” Hal said. “He’s been relieved of duty.”

“What?” John exclaimed, rounding on his brother. “What the devil for?”

Hal sighed, exasperated. “Leaving camp when he was ordered to stay there in the middle of a battle, what else? Getting into a fight with another officer, ending up at the bottom of a ravine with a dent in his skull through being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and in general being a bloody nuisance.”

“You’re right, he is your son,” I said to Jamie, amused. He snorted, but didn’t look altogether displeased.

“Speaking of nephews,” Jamie said to Hal, “ye seem remarkably well informed, Your Grace. Might ye know anything of an Indian scout named Ian Murray?”

Hal looked blank, but John’s head turned quickly in Jamie’s direction.

“Yes,” he said. “I do. He was taken prisoner late on the day of battle and walked with me into camp, whereupon he killed another scout with a tomahawk and walked out again.”

“Blood will tell,” I murmured, though privately both shocked and worried. “Er . . . was he injured?”

“Aye, he was,” Jamie answered brusquely. “He’d been shot wi’ an arrow, in the shoulder. I couldna pull it, but I broke the shaft for him.”

“And . . . no one’s seen him since the night of the battle?” I asked, striving to keep my voice steady. The men exchanged glances, but none of them would meet my eyes.

“I, um, did give him a canteen of water mixed with brandy,” John said, a little diffidently. “He wouldn’t take a horse.”

“Rachel will find him,” Jamie said, as firmly as he could. “And I’ve asked Ian Mòr to watch out for the lad. He’ll be all right.”

“I trust your faith in your blood will be justified, sir,” Hal said with a sigh, evidently meaning it. “But as we can do nothing about Murray, and the question of William’s whereabouts is apparently moot for the moment . . . I hesitate to intrude my concerns regarding my blood, but I have stringent reasons for finding Captain Richardson, quite apart from anything he may have done or not done with William. And to that end . . .”

“Aye,” Jamie said, and the tension in his shoulders relaxed. “Aye, of course, Your Grace. Sassenach, will ye have the goodness not to die whilst I go and ask Mrs. Macken for paper and ink?”

“We have some,” John said, reaching into the leather pouch he’d been carrying under his arm. “Allow me.” And proceeded to lay out paper, an inkhorn, a small bundle of quills, and a stub of red sealing wax.

Everyone watched as Jamie mixed the ink, trimmed a quill, and began. Knowing how laborious writing was for him and how much he’d hate being watched, I pushed myself up a little more, stifling a groan, and turned to Hal.

“John mentioned that you wanted to make us an offer,” I said. “Of course we’re happy to help, regardless. But out of curiosity—”

“Oh.” Hal blinked but changed gears rapidly, fixing his gaze on me. “Yes. The offer I had in mind has nothing to do with Mr. Fraser’s kind accommodation,” he said. “John suggested it, as a matter of convenience for all concerned.” He turned to his brother, who smiled at me.

“My house on Chestnut Street,” John said. “Plainly I shan’t be living there for the foreseeable future. And I understand that you had taken refuge with the printer’s family in Philadelphia. Given your present fragile state of health”—he nodded delicately at the small heap of bloody dressings in the corner—“clearly it would be more comfortable for you to resume residence at my house. You—”

A deep Scottish noise interrupted him, and he looked up at Jamie, startled.

“The last time I was compelled to accept assistance from your brother, my lord,” Jamie said precisely, staring at John, “I was your prisoner and incapable of caring for my own family. Now I am no man’s prisoner, nor ever will be again. I shall make provision for my wife.”

In dead silence, with all eyes fixed on him, he bent his head to the paper and slowly signed his name.

89 ONE DAY, COCK OF THE WALK—NEXT DAY, A FEATHER DUSTER

HE’D GONE BY INSTINCT to fetch Madras, but paused to think on the way. If he found the girls, he couldn’t bring them both back with him on the horse. He changed direction and plunged into the teamsters’ park, emerging a brief time later with an ammunition cart, now sans ammunition, pulled by a large, rugged gray mule with half of one ear missing.

The mule was disinclined to move fast, but still made better time than two girls on foot might. How long a head start did they have? Maybe an hour, from what Zebedee had said, maybe longer.

“Heya!” he shouted, and snapped the whip over the mule’s rump. The animal was surly, but not a fool, and lurched into a faster pace—though William suspected that this effort might be as much to outrun the swarming flies as in response to his own urging.

Once solidly in motion, though, the mule seemed able to keep it up without noticeable effort, and they trotted down the road at a tooth-rattling pace, easily passing farm carts, foragers, and a couple of scouting parties. Surely he would catch the girls up in no time.

He didn’t. He drove nearly ten miles, by his estimation, before concluding that there was no way the girls could possibly have outrun him, and he turned back, searching carefully along the few farm roads that led off into fields. To and fro he went, inquiring of everyone he saw, growing hotter and more irritated by the moment.

Midway through the afternoon, the army caught up with him, marching columns overtaking the mule, which had slowed to a walk by now. Reluctantly, he turned about and continued with the army to camp. Perhaps Colenso had been wrong; maybe the girls hadn’t left at all. In which case, he’d find them once the camp settled for the night.

He did not. He did find Zeb, though, and Colenso with him. Both were adamant that the girls were indeed gone—and William found no trace of them, though he made stubborn inquiries among the laundresses and cooks.

At last, he trudged through the camp in search of either Papa or Uncle Hal. Not that he expected either man to have any notion regarding the girls—but he somehow felt that he could not abandon his search without at least soliciting their help in putting out word of the girls. Two half-grown girls couldn’t possibly outstrip an army, and—

He stopped dead in the middle of camp, letting men on their way to supper flow around him.

“Bloody hell,” he said, too hot and tired even to make it an exclamation. “Colenso, you left-handed little bugger.” And barely containing his exasperation—with himself as much as with his groom—he set off grimly to find Colenso Baragwanath.

Because Colenso was a left-handed little bugger. William had noticed that immediately, as he suffered from the same affliction himself. Unlike Colenso, though, William could tell the difference between his right hand and his left—and had a sense of direction. Colenso . . . didn’t, and William wanted to kick himself for not remembering that.

“You bloody idiot,” he muttered, wiping a sleeve across his sweating, dusty face. “Why didn’t you think of that?”

Because it made little sense—once he paused to think about it—for the girls to have run off ahead of the army. Even if they were afraid of someone in the army, and even if they meant to reach New York, they would have been better served to have gone the other way, at least temporarily. Let the army march on well ahead, and then make their way wherever they meant to go.

He glanced at the sun, just barely still above the horizon, and heaved a deep, exasperated breath. Whatever else she might be, Jane wasn’t a fool. First he’d find some supper, and then Colenso—but he’d give good odds that the morrow would find him on the road back toward Middletown.

HE FOUND THEM, just before noon. They saw him coming, but he’d seen them first: the two of them walking down the side of the road, each with a bundle in either hand. They glanced over their shoulders at the sound of his wheels, saw nothing alarming, turned back—and then Jane whirled round again, her face aghast as she realized who she’d just seen.

She dropped one of her bundles, clutched her younger sister by the wrist, and jerked her off the road. The road led through farmland here, with open fields on either side—but there was a sizable chestnut grove a few hundred yards ahead, and, despite William’s shout, the girls ran for this as though the devil himself were after them.

Muttering under his breath, he pulled up, dropped the reins, and leapt out. Long-legged as he was, he failed to catch them before they reached the edge of the wood.

“Stop, for God’s sake!” he bellowed. “I’m not going to hurt you!”

Fanny, hearing this, seemed disposed to stop, but Jane yanked her urgently on and they vanished among the rustling leaves.

William snorted and slowed down. Jane could make up her own mind—if she had one, which he was strongly inclined to doubt at the moment—but she hadn’t any business to be dragging her little sister off through land that had been a battlefield only two days ago.

Broken trails and big crushed patches marred the fields, from soldiers running or artillery being dragged through it. He could smell death when he drew a deep breath; it made him uneasy. The stink of uncollected corpses swelling in the sun, bursting open, weltering with flies and maggots . . . On the one hand, he hoped the girls wouldn’t stumble over such a sight. On the other, if they did, they’d likely come haring back out into his arms, screaming.

And corpses might not be the only things hiding in the folds and furrows of the countryside. His hand went automatically to his waist, groping for the hilt of his knife—which, of course, wasn’t there.

“Fucking buggering shit-fucking hell!”

As though this had been a signal, a sudden racket broke out in the trees. Not a corpse; he could hear male voices, cursing, cajoling, and high-pitched shrieks. He snatched up a fallen branch and charged into the grove, shouting at the top of his lungs. He could hear them; they could certainly hear him, and the tone of the shouting changed. The girls were still shrieking, but less frantically, and the men—yes, more than one . . . two, three? Not more—were arguing, agitated, fearful. Not English . . . not speaking English . . .

“Mistkerle!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs. Bloody stinking Hessians! “Feiglinge!” Shit-eating cowards!

A great thrashing of leaves and snapping branches, and, peering through the trees, he saw that the lot of them—judging by the noise, the girls were still with them—were heading for the road.

He stopped yelling and instantly altered his own course, charging back toward the road, crashing heedless through brush and low-hanging branches, half-ripe chestnuts thumping off his head and shoulders. There! He saw a man push out of the trees, stumbling onto the road, and lunge back, grabbing. A louder shriek and Fanny came stumbling out in turn, the man gripping her by the neck.

William veered toward them and burst out running, shouting incoherent curses, brandishing his makeshift club. He must nonetheless have looked frightening in his uniform, for the man holding Fanny let go of her at once, turned, and ran like a rabbit, dust spurting from his feet. Fanny staggered and fell to her knees, but there was no blood, she was all right. . . .

“Jane!” He shouted. “Jane! Where are you?”

“Here! He—” Her voice was cut off suddenly, but he could see where she was, no more than ten feet from him, and dived for the wildly waving branches.

There were two men with her, one with a hand over her mouth, the other struggling to detach the bayonet from a brown Bess musket. William kicked the gun out of his hands, then lunged at the man, and in moments was on the ground, grappling with a burly man who might not know what to do with a bayonet but certainly was acquainted with battle of a more primitive sort.

They rolled to and fro, panting and gouging, twigs breaking with a sound like gunshots, cracking beneath their bodies. He heard dimly a screech from the other man—perhaps Jane had bitten him; good girl!—but had no attention to spare for anything but the man who was trying earnestly to throttle him. He had a grip on the man’s wrists, and, with a faint memory of Ban Tarleton, jerked the man closer and butted him in the face.

It worked again; there was a horrible crunch, hot blood spattered his face, and the man’s grip relaxed. William squirmed away, his head swimming, only to find himself facing the other man, who had evidently succeeded in freeing the bayonet, for he had a foot of sharpened steel in his hand.

“Here! Here!” Jane popped out of a bush right beside William, startling him, and shoved something into his hand. It was, thank God, a knife. Nothing to rival the bayonet, but a weapon.

Jane was still by him; he grasped her arm and began to walk backward, knife held low and threatening in his other hand. The Hessian—Christ, was it one of the sons of bitches who’d hit him in the head? He couldn’t tell; there were spots floating in front of his eyes, and the men had thrown away their telltale green coats. Did all sons of bitches wear green coats? he wondered muzzily.

Then they were on the road, and things became confused. He thought he’d stuck one of the men, and the girls were screaming again, and once he found himself in the roadway, choking on dust, but came up again before one of the bastards could kick him in the face . . . and then there was a shout and the pounding of hooves, and he let go of the man whose arm he was gripping and whirled round to see Rachel Hunter on a mule, coming fast down the road, swinging her bonnet from its strings and shouting, “Uncle Hiram! Cousin Seth! Hurry! Come on! Come on! Help me!”

His mule jerked its head up from the grass and, seeing Rachel’s mount, brayed in greeting. This seemed to be the last straw for the deserters, who stood gaping for one stunned moment, then turned and galloped down the road after their vanished fellow.

William stood swaying for a moment, gasping for breath, then dropped his knife and sat down abruptly.

“What,” he said, in a voice that sounded petulant even to his own ears, “are you doing here?”

Rachel ignored him. She swung down from her mule, landing with a small thump, and led it to William’s mule, tethering it to the cart. Only then did she walk over to where William sat, slowly brushing dirt from his knees and counting his limbs.

“You wouldn’t happen to have seen a couple of girls, would you?” he asked, tilting his head back to look up at Rachel.

“Yes. They ran into the trees,” she said, nodding toward the chestnut grove. “As for what I am doing here, I have been up and down this road three times, looking for thy cousin, Ian Murray.” She gave him a hard look as she said this, as though daring him to contradict her assertion regarding his kinship with Murray. Under other circumstances, he might have taken offense, but at the moment he hadn’t the energy. “I assume that if thee had seen him, dead or alive, thee would tell me?”

“Yes,” he said. There was a swollen knot between his eyes, where he had butted the deserter, and he rubbed this gingerly.

She drew a deep breath, sighed loudly, and wiped her sweating face on her apron, before replacing her bonnet. She looked him over, shaking her head.

“Thee is a rooster, William,” Rachel said mournfully. “I saw this in thee before, but now I know it for certain.”

“A rooster,” he repeated coldly, brushing dirt from his sleeve. “Indeed. A vain, crowing, gaudy sort of fellow—that’s what you think me?”

Her brows went up. They were not the level brows of classic beauty; they quirked up at the ends, even when her face was at rest, giving her a look of interested intelligence. When she was not at rest, they slanted with a sharp, wicked sort of look. They did this for an instant now, but then relaxed. A little.

“No,” she said. “Has thee ever kept chickens, William?”

“Not for some years,” he said, examining the hole torn in the elbow of his coat, the hole ripped in the shirt beneath, and the bloody scrape upon his bare elbow. Bloody hell, one of the buggers had come close to taking his arm off with that bayonet. “What with one thing and another, my recent acquaintance with chickens has been limited largely to breakfast. Why?”

“Why, a rooster is a creature of amazing courage,” Rachel said, rather reproachful. “He will throw himself into the face of an enemy, even knowing he will die in the attack, and thus buy his hens time to escape.”

William’s head jerked up.

“My hens?” he said, outrage bringing the blood to his face. “My hens?” He glanced in the direction Jane and Fanny had taken, then glared back at Rachel. “Do you not realize that they are whores?”

She rolled her eyes at him in exasperation. She bloody rolled her eyes at him!

“I expect I have been living with an army for somewhat longer than thee has thyself,” she said, making a decided effort to look down her nose at him. “I am familiar with women who lack both property and protection and are thus reduced to the dreadful expedient of selling their bodies, yes.”

“‘Dreadful expedient’?” he repeated. “You realize that I—”

She stamped a foot and glared at him.

“Will thee stop repeating everything I say?” she demanded. “I was attempting to pay thee a compliment—while, as thy friend, lamenting the end thy roosterishness will surely bring thee to. Whether thy companions are whores or not—and whether thee pays for their company—is irrelevant to the matter.”

“Irre—” William began in indignation, but choked the word off before he could be further accused of repetition. “I don’t bloody pay them!”

“Irrelevant,” she repeated, doing it herself, by God! “Thee has behaved in exactly the same way on my own behalf, after all.”

“You—” He stopped abruptly. “I have?”

She exhaled strongly, eyeing him in a manner suggesting that she would have kicked him in the shins or stamped on his toes if not reminded of her Quaker principles.

“Twice,” she said, elaborately polite. “The occasions were so negligible, I suppose—or I was—that thee has forgotten?”

“Remind me,” he said dryly, and, ripping a chunk from the torn lining of his coat, used it to wipe the mud—and blood, he saw—from his face.

She snorted briefly, but obliged. “Does thee not recall the odious creature who attacked us in that dreadful place on the road in New York?”

“Oh, that.” His belly clenched in recollection. “I didn’t exactly do it on your account. Nor did I have much choice in the matter. He bloody tried to cave my head in with an ax.”

“Hmph. I think thee has some fatal attraction for ax-wielding maniacs,” she said, frowning at him. “That Mr. Bug actually did hit thee in the head with an ax. But when thee killed him later, it was to protect Ian and me from a similar fate, was it not?”

“Oh, indeed,” he said, a little crossly. “How do you know it wasn’t just revenge for his attacking me?”

“Thee may be a rooster, but thee is not a vengeful rooster,” she said reprovingly. She pulled a kerchief from her pocket and blotted her face, which was growing shiny with perspiration again. “Should we not look for thy . . . companions?”

“We should,” he said, with a degree of resignation, and turned toward the grove. “I think they’ll run if I go in after them, though.”

Rachel made an impatient noise and, pushing past him, stomped into the woods, rustling through the brush like a hungry bear. The thought made him grin, but a sudden yelp wiped the smile off his face. He started after her, but she was already backing out, yanking Jane by one arm, meanwhile trying to avoid the wild swipes Jane was making with her free hand, fingers clawed and slashing toward Rachel’s face.

“Stop that!” William said sharply, and, stepping forward, grabbed Jane by the shoulder and jerked her out of Rachel’s grasp. She turned blindly on him, but he had longer arms than Rachel and could easily hold her at bay.

“Will you quit that?” he said crossly. “No one’s going to hurt you. Not now.”

She did stop, though she looked back and forth between him and Rachel like a cornered animal, panting and the whites of her eyes showing.

“He’s right,” Rachel said, edging cautiously toward her. “Thee is quite safe now. What is thy name, Friend?”

“She’s called Jane,” William said, gradually loosing his hold, ready to grab her again if she bolted. “I don’t know her surname.”

She didn’t bolt, but didn’t speak, either. Her dress was torn at the neck, and she put a hand to the torn edge automatically, trying to fit it back in place.

“Have you seen my bundle?” she said, in an almost ordinary voice. “I have a housewife in it. I need a needle.”

“I’ll look for it,” Rachel said soothingly. “Did thee drop it in the wood?”

“Thir!” Fanny spoke quite sharply behind William, and he became aware that she’d been there for a few moments; she’d said it once or twice before.

“What?” he said impatiently, half-turning toward her while trying to keep both Jane and Rachel in view.

“There’th an Indian in there,” she said, and pointed toward the woods.

“Ian!”

Rachel ran across the road, fleet as a snipe, and vanished into the trees. William followed hastily, hand on his knife. There was likely more than one Indian in these woods, and if it wasn’t Murray . . .

But he could tell from Rachel’s exclamation of mingled horror and relief from the depths of the wood that it was.

Murray was crumpled into a heap in the deep shadow at the base of a big pine tree, needles half-scuffled over him; evidently he’d tried to disguise himself but had passed out before managing the job.

“He’s breathing,” Rachel said, and he heard the catch in her voice.

“Good,” William said briefly, and, squatting beside her, put a hand on Murray’s shoulder to turn him over. The apparently insensible body gave a shriek, contorted violently, and ended on his knees, swaying and glaring wildly round, clutching the shoulder William had seized. Only then did William see the dried blood streaked down the arm and the fresh dribbles running down from the broken shaft of an arrow embedded in the swollen flesh.

“Ian,” Rachel said. “Ian, it’s me. It’s all right now. I have thee.” Her voice was steady, but her hand trembled as she touched him.

Murray gulped air, and his bleared gaze seemed to clear, traveling from Fanny and Jane, who had come into the grove after William, pausing briefly with a frown at William’s face, then settling and easing as he saw Rachel. He closed his eyes and let out a long breath.

“Taing do Dhia,” he said, and sank back on his haunches.

“Water,” Rachel said urgently, shaking the empty canteen that lay on the ground beside Ian. “Has thee got any water, William?”

“I have,” said Jane, stirring out of her trance and groping for the canteen round her neck. “Will he be all right, do you think?”

Rachel didn’t answer but helped Murray to drink, her face pale with anxiety. Murray’s own face bore the remnants of war paint, William saw with interest, and a brief ripple raised the hairs on his scalp, wondering whether Murray had killed any of the British soldiers. At least the bugger wasn’t sporting any scalps on his belt, British or otherwise.

Rachel was conversing now in low tones with Murray, glancing now and then at William, a certain speculation in her gaze.

William was mildly surprised to find that he knew exactly what she was thinking. Though perhaps it wasn’t so surprising; he’d been wondering much the same thing: could Murray ride the mule? Plainly he couldn’t walk far. And if he couldn’t . . . could Rachel persuade William to take Murray and her into the city in the wagon?

He felt his stomach clench at the thought of going back to Philadelphia.

His own gaze flicked toward Jane—only to discover that she wasn’t there. Neither was Fanny.

He was halfway to his feet when he heard Rachel’s mule bray in protest, and he made it to the road in seconds, to find Jane engaged in a futile struggle to push Fanny up into the saddle. The younger girl was trying valiantly, clutching at the mule’s bristly mane and attempting to get a leg up, but the mule was objecting strenuously to this sort of interference, tossing his head and backing away from Jane, leaving Fanny’s legs kicking desperately in the air.

William reached her in three paces and clasped her about the waist.

“Let go, sweetheart,” he said calmly. “I’ve got you.” Fanny was surprisingly solid, given her fragile appearance. She smelled sweet, too, though her neck was grubby and her clothes grimed with mud and road dust.

He put her down and turned a firm eye on Jane, who was looking defiant. He’d been acquainted with her long enough now, though, to see that the uplifted chin and tight jaw were covering fear, and, in consequence, spoke more gently than he might have.

“Where were you planning to go?” he asked, in a tone of mild interest.

“I—well, New York,” she answered, but uncertainly, and her eyes were darting to and fro, as though expecting some threat to manifest itself from the peaceful countryside.

“Without me? I’m hurt, madam, that you should have conceived a sudden dislike of my company. What have I done to offend you, pray?”

She pressed her lips tight together, but he could see that his jesting tone had settled her a little; she was still red in the face from exertion, but not breathing in that jerky way.

“I think we must part, Lord Ellesmere,” she said, with a touchingly absurd attempt at formality. “I—we—shall make our own way now.”

He folded his arms, leaned back against the wagon, and looked down his nose at her.

“How?” he inquired. “You haven’t any money, you don’t have a mount, and you wouldn’t get five miles on foot without running into someone else like those German fellows.”

“I—have a little money.” She smoothed a hand over her skirt, and he saw that there was indeed a bulge where her pocket lay. Despite his intent to remain calm, there was still a spring of anger in him, and it burst forth at this.

“Where did you get it?” he demanded, straightening up and grabbing her by the wrist. “Did I not forbid you to whore?”

She yanked her hand smartly free and took two quick steps back.

“You haven’t any right to forbid me to do any damned thing I want!” she snapped, color burning high in her cheeks. “And it’s none of your business, but I didn’t make this money on my back!”

“What, then? Pimping your sister?”

She slapped him, hard. He shouldn’t have said it and knew it, but the knowledge—and his stinging cheek—only made him angrier.

“I should bloody leave you here, you—”

“Good! That’s just what I want you to do! You—you—”

Before either of them could decide upon an epithet, Rachel and Ian emerged from the wood, the tall Scot leaning heavily on her. William gave Jane a final glare and went to help, taking Murray’s weight on one side. The man stiffened, resisting for a moment, but then yielded; he had to.

“What happened?” William asked, nodding at the broken arrow shaft. “A private quarrel or just bad aim?”

That made Murray’s mouth twitch, reluctantly.

“Fortunes of war,” he said hoarsely, and sat down at the open tailboard of the wagon. He was breathing like a winded ox, but had possession of himself. He gave William a brief glance.

“What are ye doing here, a fang Sassunaich?”

“None of your business, but a good job I was,” William replied, just as briefly. He turned to Rachel, having made up his mind on the moment.

“Take the wagon and see the girls somewhere safe.”

“That—” Rachel began, but then looked round, startled, as Jane and Fanny ran past her, crossed the road, and dived into the wood. “Where are they going?”

“Oh, bloody hell,” William said, already striding across the road. “Wait here.”

THEY COULDN’T outrun him, and they had nothing in the way of woodcraft that would enable them to lie hidden. He caught Fanny—again the slower of the two—by the back of her pinafore as she was scrambling over a log. To his astonishment, she squirmed round in his grasp and launched herself at him, scratching at his face and screaming, “Wun, Janie, wun!”

“Will you bloody stop that?” he said crossly, holding her at arm’s length. “Ow!” For she had sunk her teeth into his wrist, and he dropped her.

She eeled over the log and bounded away like a rabbit, still screaming her head off. He started to follow her, and then thought better. On the one hand, he had a strong impulse to abandon them, but on the other . . . He remembered Mac telling him about plovers one day as they sat near Watendlath Tarn, eating bread and cheese, watching the birds.

“Bugger off, Mac,” he said under his breath, and shoved thought of both Helwater and the groom ruthlessly away. But remembered, whether he wanted to or not.

“They run about and call out as though wounded, see?” Mac’s arm had been round him, keeping him from going too close to the fluttering bird. “But it’s to draw ye away from their nest, lest ye crush the eggs or damage the young. Look canny, though, and ye’ll see them.”

William stood quite still, calming his own breath and looking round, slow and careful, barely moving his head. And there indeed was the plover’s nest: alas for Jane, she had worn her pink calico today, and her rosy buttocks rounded smoothly up out of the grass ten feet away, quite like a pair of eggs in a nest, at that.

He walked quietly, without haste. Nobly resisting the strong urge to smack her beguilingly curved behind, he instead laid a hand flat on her back.

“Tag,” he said. “You’re it.”

She wriggled out from under his hand and shot up onto her feet.

“What?” she said. “What the bloody hell do you mean?” She was wild-eyed and nervy, but cross, as well.

“You’ve never played tag?” he asked, feeling foolish even as he said it.

“Oh,” she said, and let out her breath a little. “It’s a game. I see. Yes, but not for a long time.”

He supposed one didn’t play tag in a brothel.

“Look,” she said tersely, “we want to go. I—I appreciate what you’ve done for me—for us. But—”

“Sit down,” he said, and compelled her to do so, leading her to the log over which her sister had escaped and pressing on her shoulder until she reluctantly sat. He then sat down beside her and took her hand in his. It was very small, cold and damp from the grass where she’d hidden.

“Look,” he said, firmly but not—he hoped—unkindly, “I’m not letting you run off. That’s flat. If you want to go to New York with the army, I’ll take you; I’ve already said so. If you want to return to Philadelphia—”

“No!” Her terror at the thought was clear now. She pulled desperately at her hand, but he wouldn’t let go.

“Is it because of Captain Harkness? Because—”

She gave a cry that might have come from the throat of a wild bird caught in a trap, and he tightened his grip on her wrist. It was fine-boned and slender, but she was surprisingly strong.

“I know you stole the gorget back” he said. “It’s all right. No one’s going to find out. And Harkness won’t touch you again; I promise you that.”

She made a small bubbling noise that might have been a laugh or a sob.

“Colonel Tarleton—you know, the green dragoon that made advances to you?—he told me that Harkness was absent without leave, hasn’t come back to his regiment. Do you know anything about that?”

“No,” she said. “Let me go. Please!”

Before he could answer this, a small, clear voice piped up from the trees a few yards away.

“You’d best tew him, Janie.”

“Fanny!” Jane swung round toward her sister, momentarily forgetting that she was pinioned. “Don’t!”

Fanny stepped out of the shadows, wary but curiously composed.

“If you don’t, I wiw,” she said, her big brown eyes fixed on William’s face. “He won’t thtop.” She came a little closer, cautious but not afraid. “If I tew you,” she said, “do you pwomise not to take us back?”

“Back where?”

“To Phiwadelphia,” she said. “Or the army.”

He sighed, exasperated, but short of torturing the answer out of one of the girls, clearly no progress would be made unless he agreed. And he was beginning to have a cold feeling under the ribs about just what the answer might be.

“I promise,” he said, but Fanny hung back, distrustful.

“Sweaw,” she said, folding her arms.

“Sw—oh. Bloody hell. All right, then—I swear on my honor.”

Jane made a small, dreary noise that was still a laugh. That stung.

“Do you think I haven’t got any?” he demanded, turning on her.

“How would I know?” she countered, sticking out her chin. It wobbled, but she stuck it out. “What does honor look like?”

“For your sake, you’d better hope it looks a lot like me,” he told her, but then turned to Fanny. “What do you want me to swear on?”

“Your mudder’s head,” she said promptly.

“My mother’s dead.”

“Your favver, den.”

He drew a long, deep breath. Which one?

“I swear on my father’s head,” he said evenly.

And so they told him.

“I KNEW HE’D come back,” Jane said. She was sitting on the log, hands clasped between her thighs and eyes on her feet. “They always do. The bad ones.” She spoke with a sort of dull resignation, but her lips tightened at the memory. “They can’t stand to think you’ve got away without . . . without. I thought it would be me, though.”

Fanny was sitting beside her sister, as close as she could get, and now she put her arms around Jane and hugged her, her face in Jane’s calico shoulder.

“I’m sowwy,” she whispered.

“I know, lovie,” Jane said, and patted Fanny’s leg. A fierce look came into her face, though. “It’s not your fault, and don’t ever—ever—think so.”

William’s throat felt thick with disgust at the thought. That beautiful, flower-faced little girl, taken by—

“Her maidenhead’s worth ten pound,” Jane reminded him. “Mrs. Abbott was saving her, waiting for a rich man with a taste for new-hatched chicks. Captain Harkness offered her twenty.” She looked directly at William for the first time. “I wasn’t having that,” she said simply. “So I asked Mrs. Abbott to send us up together; I said I could help keep Fanny from making a fuss. I knew what he was like, see,” she said, and pressed her lips involuntarily together for an instant. “He wasn’t the sort to plow you like a bull and have it done. He’d play with you, making you undress a bit at a time and—and do things—while he told you all about what he meant to do.”

And so it had been easy to come behind him while he was watching Fanny, with the knife she’d taken from the kitchen hidden in the folds of her petticoats.

“I meant to stab him in the back,” she said, looking down again. “I saw a man stabbed that way once. But he saw on Fanny’s face what I—it wasn’t her fault, she couldn’t help it showing,” she added quickly. “But he turned round quick and there wasn’t any choice.”

She’d plunged the knife into Harkness’s throat and wrenched it free, intending to stab again. But that hadn’t been necessary. “There was blood everywhere.” She’d gone pale in the telling, her hands wrapped in her apron.

“I frew up,” Fanny added matter-of-factly. “It was a mess.”

“I expect it was,” William said dryly. He was trying not to envision the scene—the candlelight, the spraying blood, the panicked girls—with remarkably little success. “How did you get away?”

Jane shrugged. “It was my room, and he’d bolted the door. And nobody was surprised when Fanny started screaming,” she added, with a trace of bitterness.

There was a basin and pitcher of water, the usual rags for mess; they’d washed themselves hastily, changed clothes, and climbed out the window.

“We found a ride on a farmer’s wagon, and . . . you know the rest.” She closed her eyes for a moment, as though reliving “the rest,” and then opened them and looked up at him, her gaze dark as shadowed water.

“Now what?” she asked.

WILLIAM HAD BEEN asking himself that question for the last several moments of Jane’s story. Having met Harkness himself, he had considerable sympathy for Jane’s action, but—

“You planned it,” he said, giving her a sharp look. Her head was bent, her unbound hair hiding her face. “You took the knife, you had clothes to change into, you knew how to get down from the window and get away.”

“Tho?” said Fanny, in a remarkably cold voice for a girl of her age.

“So why kill him?” he asked, transferring his attention to Fanny, but keeping a wary eye on Jane. “You were going to leave anyway. Why not just escape before he came?”

Jane raised her head and turned it, looking him directly in the eye.

“I wanted to kill him,” she said, in a perfectly reasonable voice that chilled him despite the warmth of the day.

“I . . . see.”

He saw more than the vision of Jane, with her delicate white wrists, plunging a knife into Captain Harkness’s thick red throat while her little sister screamed. He saw Rachel’s face, pale among the leaves, six feet away. From her expression, it was apparent that she had heard everything.

He cleared his throat.

“Is, um, Mr. Murray all right?” he asked politely. Jane and Fanny whirled, wide-eyed.

“He fainted,” Rachel replied. She was eyeing the younger girls in much the same way that they were looking at her, with a gaze of fascinated horror. “His shoulder is badly inflamed. I came to see if thee had any brandy.”

He fumbled in his pocket and withdrew a small silver flask with the Grey family arms engraved upon it.

“Whisky do for you?” he asked, handing it over. Rachel looked surprised; whisky wasn’t a popular drink, but Lord John had always had a taste for it and William had taken to it himself—though now, knowing the truth about his disgraceful taint of Scottish blood, he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to drink the stuff again.

“It will, I thank thee.” She stood holding it for a moment, clearly wanting to go to Murray but also hesitant to leave. He felt rather grateful to her for that hesitancy; he would as soon not be alone with Jane and Fanny—or, rather, he didn’t want to be alone with the decision as to what the devil to do about them.

Rachel appeared to correctly interpret this feeling, for with a brief “I’ll bring it right back,” she disappeared in the direction of the road.

No one spoke. After that one direct look, Jane had bent her head again and sat quietly, though one hand restlessly smoothed the fabric of her skirt across one round thigh, over and over.

Fanny ran a hand over the crown of Jane’s head in a protective gesture, while staring at William with a complete lack of expression. He found it unnerving.

What was he to do with them? Of course they couldn’t go back to Philadelphia. And he dismissed as unworthy the impulse simply to abandon them to their own devices. But—

“Why not go to New York with the army?” he asked, his voice seeming unnaturally loud, harsh to his own ears. “What made you run yesterday?”

“Oh.” Jane looked up slowly, her eyes a little unfocused, as though she had been dreaming. “I saw him again. The green dragoon. He’d wanted me to go with him the night before, and I wouldn’t. But I saw him again yesterday morning and thought he was looking for me.” She swallowed. “I told you—I know the ones who don’t give up.”

“Very perceptive of you,” he said, eyeing her with some respect. “He doesn’t. You misliked him on sight, then?” Because he didn’t think for an instant that his having forbidden her to ply her trade would have stopped her, had she wanted to.

“It wasn’t that,” she said, and flicked Banastre Tarleton away with the sort of abrupt gesture one uses to shoo insects. “But he’d come to the brothel before, last year. He didn’t go with me then, he chose another girl—but I knew if he spent much time with me, he’d likely remember why I seemed familiar to him. He said I did,” she added, “when he came up to me in the bread line.”

“I see.” He paused. “So you did want to go to New York—but not with the army. Is that right?”

Jane shrugged, angry. “Does it matter?”

“Why the devil shouldn’t it matter?”

“When has it ever mattered what a whore wants?” She sprang up and stamped across the clearing, leaving him staring after her in astonishment.

“What’s wrong with her?” he demanded, turning to Fanny. The younger girl eyed him dubiously, lips pressed together, but then gave a little shrug.

“She thinks you might give her to a conthable or a magith-trate,” she said, struggling a bit with “magistrate.” “Or maybe to the army. It was a tholdier she killed.”

William rubbed a hand over his face. In fact, the thought of delivering Jane to justice had flitted through his mind, in the wake of the shock of learning of her crime. The thought hadn’t outlasted its birth, though.

“I wouldn’t do that,” he said to Fanny, striving to sound reasonable. She looked at him skeptically, under level dark brows.

“Why wouldn’ you?”

“Excellent question,” he said dryly. “And I haven’t got an answer. But I suppose I don’t need one.”

He lifted a brow at her, and she gave a small snort of a laugh. Jane was edging along the far side of the clearing, glancing back toward Fanny every few seconds; her intent was clear—but she wouldn’t go without her sister. He was sure of that much.

“Since you’re here with me,” he observed, “and not over there with your sister . . . you don’t want to run, and you know she won’t go without you. Ergo, I conclude that you don’t think I’d give her up to justice.”

She shook her head, slow and solemn as an owl.

“Jane says I don’ know anyting about men yed, but I do.”

He sighed.

“God help me, Frances, you do.”

THERE WAS NO further conversation until Rachel returned a few minutes later.

“I can’t lift him,” she said directly to William, ignoring the girls for the moment. “Will thee help me?”

He rose at once, relieved by the prospect of physical action, but glanced over his shoulder at Jane, still hovering by the far side of the clearing like a hummingbird.

“We’ll be heah,” Fanny said quietly. He gave her a nod, and went.

He found Murray lying by the side of the road, near the wagon. The man wasn’t unconscious, but the influence of the fever upon him was clear; his gaze was bleared and his speech slurring.

“I c’n walk.”

“Like hell you can,” William said briefly. “Hold on to my arm.”

He got the man sitting upright and had a look for himself at the wounded shoulder. The wound itself wasn’t that bad; it was apparent no bones were broken and it hadn’t bled a lot. On the other hand, the flesh was red and swollen and starting to suppurate. He leaned close and took an unobtrusive sniff—not unobtrusive enough: Rachel noticed.

“There’s no gangrene,” she said. “I think there will not—I think things will be well, so long as we can get him to a doctor soon. What does thee mean to do about thy girls?” she added abruptly.

He didn’t bother telling her again that they weren’t his. Evidently they were, at least in terms of immediate responsibilities.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, rising to his feet. He glanced into the woods, but the clearing was far enough in that there was no flicker of garment or movement visible.

“They can’t go to Philadelphia, and I can’t take them back to the army. The best I can think of just now is to find them some place of refuge in one of the little villages hereabouts and cache them there until I can make some provision to get them to . . . to someplace safer.” Wherever the hell that might be. Canada? he wondered wildly.

Rachel shook her head decidedly.

“Thee has no notion how people talk in small places—or how quickly news and rumor spread.” She glanced down at Murray, who was still sitting upright but swaying, his eyes half closed.

“They have no other profession,” she said. “And it would be quickly apparent to anyone what that profession is. They require not only refuge but refuge with people who will not cast them out once that becomes known.”

She was brown with the sun—her blue calico bonnet had fallen off in the struggle with Jane and hung back over her shoulders—but her face paled when she looked at Murray. She clenched her fists, closed her eyes for an instant, then opened them, straightening to her full height, and looked William in the eye.

“There is a small settlement of Friends, perhaps two hours’ travel from here. No more than three or four farms. I know of it from one of the women who came to Valley Forge with her husband. The girls could be kept safe there, for a while, at least.”

“No!” Murray said. “Ye canna be . . .” He paused, eyes going out of focus, and braced himself on his sound arm, still swaying. He swallowed thickly. “No,” he repeated. “Not . . . safe.”

“It isn’t,” William agreed. “Three young women on the road, alone? And without even a pistol to defend yourselves?”

“If I had a pistol I would not use it,” Rachel pointed out with some asperity. “Nor a cannon, come to that.”

Murray laughed—or at least made a noise that might pass for amusement.

“Aye,” he managed, and stopped to breathe before getting the next words out. “You take them,” he said to William. “I’ll . . . do here, fine.”

“Thee bloody won’t,” Rachel said fiercely. She grabbed William’s arm and pulled him closer to Murray. “Look at him! Tell him, since he professes not to believe me.”

William looked, reluctantly, glancing at Murray’s face, pale as suet and slick with an unhealthy sweat. Flies clustered thick on Murray’s shoulder; he lacked the strength to brush them away.

“Merde,” William muttered under his breath. Then louder, though still with reluctance, “She’s right. You need a doctor, if you’re to have a chance of keeping your arm.”

That thought evidently hadn’t struck Murray; death, yes—amputation, no. He turned his head and frowned at the wound.

“Bloody hell,” William said, and turned to Rachel.

“All right,” he said. “Tell me where this settlement is. I’ll take them.”

She grimaced, fists balling up at her sides. “Even Friends may not take well to the sudden appearance of a stranger who asks them to give indefinite sanctuary to a murderess. I am not a stranger and can plead the girl’s case better than thee can.” She drew a breath that swelled her bosom noticeably and looked at Murray, then turned her head to give William a piercing look.

“If I do this, thee must see him safe.”

“I must?”

“Rachel!” Murray said hoarsely, but she ignored him.

“Yes. We’ll have to take the wagon, the girls and I.”

William drew a breath of his own, but he could see that she was right. He could also see just what the decision to save Jane was costing her.

“All right,” he said tersely. He reached up and took the gorget from his neck and handed it to her. “Give Jane this. She may need it, if they find themselves on their own.” Oddly, the removal of the gorget seemed a weight off his mind, as well. Even the possibility of being arrested if anyone in Philadelphia recognized him didn’t trouble him overmuch.

He was about to remove his incriminating coat and waistcoat—he’d have to hide those somewhere—when Rachel stepped close to him and laid a hand on his arm.

“This man is my heart and my soul,” she said simply, looking up into his face. “And he is thy own blood, whatever thee may presently feel about the fact. I trust thee to see him safe, for all our sakes.”

William gave her a long look, thought of several possible replies, and made none of them, but gave a curt nod.

“Where should I take him?” he asked. “To my—to Lady J—I mean, to Mrs. F—I mean, God damn it,” he amended, feeling the blood rise in his cheeks, “to his aunt?”

Rachel looked at him, startled.

“Thee doesn’t know? Of course thee doesn’t, how could thee?” She waved off her own denseness, impatient. “His aunt was shot in the course of the battle, outside Tennent Church, where she was tending the wounded.”

William’s annoyance was doused at once, as though ice water had been poured on his head, flooding his veins.

“Is she dead?”

“By the grace of our Lord, no,” she said, and he felt the tightness in his chest relax a little. “Or at least she wasn’t yesterday,” she amended with a frown. “Though very badly hurt.” The tightness returned.

“She is in the Macken house in the village of Freehold—about six miles in that direction.” She nodded down the road. “My brother is likely there, as well, or nearby; there are still wounded from the battle there. He can deal with I-Ian’s wound.” For the first time, her voice lost its steadiness as her eyes went to her betrothed.

Murray’s eyes were sunken and glazed with fever, but he had sufficient command of himself to reach out his good hand to her. The movement put weight on the bad arm and he grimaced, but Rachel was kneeling beside him in an instant, arms around him.

William coughed and turned discreetly away to leave them a moment’s privacy in which to make their farewells. Whatever his own feelings, they deserved that. He’d seen many wounds go bad, and reckoned Murray’s chances as no better than even. On the other hand, the man was apparently both a bloody Scot and a Mohawk, and both races were notoriously hard to kill.

He had walked away from the road, and his eye now caught the flutter of pink fabric behind a bush.

“Jane!” he called. “Is that you?”

“Yes,” she said. She stepped out into the open, folded her arms, and pointed her chin at him. “What do you mean to do? With me, I mean.”

“Miss Hunter is going to take you and Fanny to a safe place,” he said, as gently as he could. In spite of her brave façade, she reminded him of a fawn, dappled light coming through the trees mottling her face and gown, making her seem shy and insubstantial, as though she might fade into the forest in the next breath. “I’ll send word to you there when I’ve made some . . . suitable arrangement.”

“Her?” Jane shot a surprised glance toward the road. “Why? Why can’t you take us? Doesn’t she want to stay with her—the Indian?”

“Miss Hunter will have time to explain everything to you on the way.” He hesitated, unsure what else to say to her. From the road, he heard the distant murmur of voices, Rachel and Ian Murray. He couldn’t make out the words, but it didn’t matter; what they were saying to each other was plain. He felt a small, sharp pain under his third waistcoat button and coughed, trying to dislodge it.

“Thank you, thir,” said a soft voice behind him, and he turned to find Fanny at his elbow. She took his hand, turned it palm upward, and planted a small, warm kiss in the center.

“I—you’re most welcome, Miss Fanny,” he said, smiling at her in spite of everything. She nodded to him, very dignified, and walked out to the road, leaving him with Jane.

For a moment, they stood staring at each other.

“I offered you a lot more than a kiss,” she said quietly. “You didn’t want it. I haven’t got anything else to give you in thanks.”

“Jane,” he said. “It’s not—I didn’t—” And then stopped, desperately sorry but helpless to think of anything he could possibly say in reply. “Safe travels, Jane,” he said at last, his throat tight. “Goodbye.”

90 IT’S A WISE CHILD WHO KNOWS HIS FATHER

IT WAS APPARENT that, while sound, Rachel’s mule wasn’t up to the weight of two men the size of William and Ian Murray. No matter; they couldn’t go any faster than a walk in any case; Murray could ride, and William would walk alongside to make sure the bastard didn’t fall off.

Murray managed to get up into the saddle, in spite of having only one functional hand; Rachel had roughly bandaged his wounded arm and put it into a sling torn from her underpetticoat. William didn’t offer him assistance, feeling reasonably sure that such an offer would be neither welcomed nor accepted.

Watching the laborious process, though, William was interested to note that while the fabric of the sling was much-laundered and faded, it had been embroidered with small blue and yellow sunbursts along one edge. Did Quaker women commonly wear attractive undergarments beneath their sober gowns?

As they set off at a cautious walk, the sound of the wagon was still audible, though fading into the rush of trees.

“Are ye armed?” Murray asked suddenly.

“Slightly.” He still had the knife Jane had pushed into his hand, now wrapped in a handkerchief and tucked in his pocket, as he had no sheath for it. He fingered the wooden handle, wondering whether it was the same knife that she . . . Well, of course it was.

“I’m not. Will ye find me a club?”

“You don’t trust me to see you safe?” William asked sarcastically.

Murray’s shoulders were slumped and his head thrust forward, nodding a little with the mule’s gait, but he turned and gave William a look that was heavy-eyed with fever, but still surprisingly alert.

“Oh, I trust ye fine. It’s men like the ones ye just fought I dinna trust.”

This was a fair point; the roads were far from safe, and the knowledge gave William a severe pang of conscience on behalf of the women he’d just dispatched, unarmed and unprotected, to drive miles over those very roads with a valuable mule and cart. I should have gone with them, insisted we all go together . . .

“My mam always says there’s no one more stubborn than my uncle Jamie,” Murray observed mildly, “but a Quaker lass wi’ her mind made up could give Uncle Jamie a run for his money, I’ll tell ye. I couldna have stopped her—and neither could you.”

William wasn’t in a mood to discuss any of the persons mentioned, nor yet engage in philosophical discussions of relative stubbornness. He put a hand on the bridle and pulled the mule to a halt.

“Stay here. I see something that might do.” He’d already seen that there was little in the way of fallen branches near the road; there never was, when an army’s foragers had recently passed through. But he saw an orchard of some kind, a little way from the road, with a farmhouse beyond.

As he made his way toward the orchard, he could see that artillery had been hauled through it; there were deep furrows in the ground, and many of the trees had broken limbs, hanging like jackstraws.

There was a dead man in the orchard. American militia, by his hunting shirt and homespun breeches, lying curled among the gnarled roots of a big apple tree.

“Should have culled that one,” William said aloud, keeping his voice steady. Old apple trees never yielded much; you took them out after fifteen, twenty years and replanted. He turned away from the body, but not fast enough to avoid seeing the greedy flies rise up in a buzzing cloud from what was left of the face. He walked three paces away and threw up.

No doubt it was the cloying smell of rotting apples that rose above the ghost of black powder; the whole orchard hummed with the noise of wasps gorging themselves on the juices. He unwrapped the handkerchief from Jane’s knife and thrust the knife through his belt without looking to see if there were bloodstains on it. He wiped his mouth, then, after a moment’s hesitation, went and laid the handkerchief over the Rebel’s face. Someone had stripped the body; he had neither weapons nor shoes.

“THIS DO YOU?” He laid a three-foot length of applewood across the saddlebow. He’d broken it at both ends, so it made a serviceable club, about the thickness of his own forearm.

Murray seemed to wake from a doze; he drew himself slowly upright, took hold of the club, and nodded.

“Aye, that’ll do,” he said softly. His voice sounded thick, and William looked at him sharply.

“You’d best drink some more,” he said, handing up the canteen again. It was getting low; probably no more than a quarter full. Murray took it, though moving sluggishly, drank, and gave it back with a sigh.

They walked without conversation for a half hour or so, leaving William time at last to sort through the events of the morning. It was well past noon now; the sun was pressing on his shoulders like a heated flatiron. How far did Rachel say it was it to Freehold? Six miles?

“D’ye want me to tell ye, or no?” Murray said suddenly.

“Tell me what?”

There was a brief sound that might have been either amusement or pain.

“Whether ye’re much like him.”

Possible responses to this came so fast that they collapsed upon themselves like a house of cards. He took the one on top.

“Why do you suppose I should wonder?” William managed, with a coldness that would have frozen most men. Of course, Murray was blazing with such a fever, it would take a Quebec blizzard to freeze him.

“I would, if it was me,” Murray said mildly.

That defused William’s incipient explosion momentarily.

“Perhaps you think so,” he said, not trying to hide his annoyance. “You may know him, but you know nothing whatever about me.”

This time, the sound was undeniably amusement: laughter, of a hoarse, creaking sort.

“I helped fish ye out of a privy ten years ago,” Murray said. “That was when I first kent it, aye?”

Shock struck William almost dumb, but not quite.

“What—that . . . that place in the mountains—Fraser’s Ridge . . . ?!” He’d succeeded, for the most part, in forgetting the incident of the snake in the privy, and with it, most of a miserable journey through the mountains of North Carolina.

Murray took William’s choler for confusion, though, and chose to elucidate.

“The way ye came out o’ the muck, your eyes bleezin’ blue and your face set for murder—that was Uncle Jamie to the life, when he’s roused.” Murray’s head bobbed forward alarmingly. He caught himself and straightened up with a muffled groan.

“If you’re going to fall off,” William said, with elaborate courtesy, “do it on the other side, will you?”

“Mmphm.”

They paced another hundred yards before Murray came to life again, resuming the conversation—if it could be called that—as though there had been no pause.

“So when I found ye in the swamp, I kent who ye were. I dinna recall ye thankin’ me for saving your life that time, by the way.”

“You can thank me for not strapping you into a travois with a dead panther and dragging you for miles through the dirt now,” William snapped.

Murray laughed, gasping a little.

“Ye’d likely do it, if ye had a dead panther.” The effort of laughing seemed to deprive him of balance, and he swayed alarmingly.

“Fall off and I’ll do it anyway,” William said, grabbing him by the thigh to steady him. “Dead panther or not.” Christ, the man’s skin was so hot he could feel it through the buckskin leggings.

Despite his fog, Murray noticed his reaction.

“You lived through the fever,” he said, and took a deep breath. “I will, too; dinna fash.”

“If by that expression you mean that I ought not to be concerned that you’ll die,” William said coldly, “I’m not.”

“I’m no worrit, either,” Murray assured him. The man wobbled slightly, reins held loose in one hand, and William wondered if he could be sunstruck. “Ye promised Rachel, aye?”

“Yes,” William said, adding almost involuntarily, “I owe her and her brother my life, as much as I do you.”

“Mmphm,” Murray said agreeably, and fell silent. He seemed to be going a nasty grayish color under the sun-browned skin. This time he stayed silent for a good five minutes before coming suddenly to life again.

“And ye dinna think I ken much about ye, after listening to ye rave wi’ fever for days?”

“I do not,” William said. “No more than I think I’ll know a great deal about you by the time I get you to Freehold.”

“Maybe more than ye think. Stop, aye? I’m going to puke.”

“Whoa!” The mule obligingly halted, though it clearly didn’t like either the sound or the smell of what was going on behind its head, and kept sidling round in circles, trying to escape it.

William waited ’til it was over, then handed up his canteen without comment. Murray drained it and handed it back. His hand was shaking, and William began to be worried.

“We’ll stop as soon as I find water,” he said. “Get you into the shade.” Neither of them had a hat; he’d left his in the copse, rolled up with his uniform coat under a bush.

Murray didn’t reply to this; he was not precisely raving, but seemed to be pursuing a separate conversation in his head.

“I maybe dinna ken ye that well, but Rachel does.”

That was undeniably true and gave William an oddly mixed sense of shame, pride, and anger. Rachel and her brother did know him well; they’d saved his life and nursed him back to health, had traveled with him for weeks and shared both food and danger.

“She says ye’re a good man.”

William’s heart squeezed a little.

“I’m obliged for her good opinion,” he said. The water hadn’t helped that much; Murray was definitely swaying in the saddle, his eyes half closed.

“If you die,” William said loudly, “I’ll marry her.”

That worked; Murray’s eyelids lifted at once. He smiled, very slightly.

“Ken that,” he said. “Ken I’m no going to die? And, besides, ye owe me a life, Englishman.”

“I don’t. I saved your bloody life, too; I saved the both of you from that maniac—Bug, was he?—with the ax in Philadelphia. We’re quits.”

Some interminable time later, Murray roused himself again.

“I doubt it,” he said.

91 KEEPING SCORE

JAMIE SAW THE GREYS out of the house and came back with an air of grim satisfaction. I would have laughed if it hadn’t hurt to do it, but settled for smiling at him.

“Your son, your nephew, your wife,” I said. “Fraser, three; Grey, nil.”

He gave me a startled look, but then his face truly relaxed for the first time in days. “You’re feeling better, then,” he said, and, coming across the room, bent and kissed me. “Talk daft to me some more, aye?” He sat down heavily on the stool and sighed, but with relief.

“Mind,” he said, “I havena the slightest idea how I’m going to keep ye, with no money, no commission, and no profession. But keep ye I will.”

“No profession, forsooth,” I said comfortably. “Name one thing you can’t do.”

“Sing.”

“Oh. Well, besides that.”

He spread his hands on his knees, looking critically at the scars on his maimed right hand.

“I doubt I could make a living as a juggler or a pickpocket, either. Let alone a scribe.”

“You haven’t got to write,” I said. “You have a printing press—Bonnie, by name.”

“Well, aye,” he admitted, a certain light coming into his eyes. “I do. But she’s in Wilmington at the moment.” His press had been shipped from Edinburgh in the care of Richard Bell, who was—presumably—keeping her in trust until her real owner should come to repossess her.

“We’ll go and get her. And then—” But I stopped, afraid to jinx the future by planning too far. It was an uncertain time for everyone, and no telling what the morrow might bring.

“But first,” I amended, reaching out to squeeze his hand, “you should rest. You look as though you’re about to die.”

“Dinna talk that sort of daft,” he said, and laughed and yawned simultaneously, nearly breaking his jaw.

“Lie down,” I said firmly. “Sleep—at least until Lieutenant Bixby shows up again with more cheese.” The American army had withdrawn to Englishtown, some seven miles away, only an hour’s ride. The British army had decamped entirely, but as many of the militia units’ enlistments had expired soon afterward, the roads were still very busy with men going home, mostly afoot.

He did lie down on his pallet, with surprisingly little protest—a good indication of just how exhausted he really was—and was asleep in seconds.

I was very tired myself, still very weak and easily exhausted, even by something like the Greys’ visit, and I lay back and dozed, stirring to wakefulness every so often when some sound roused me, but Jamie slept deeply, and it eased my heart to hear his soft, regular snore.

I woke some time later, hearing a distant knocking below. As I raised my head blearily off the pillow, I heard a voice shouting, “Hallo, the house!” and snapped into instant alertness. I knew that voice.

I glanced quickly down, but Jamie was dead asleep, curled up like a hedgehog. With excruciating slowness, I managed to swing my legs off the bed and—moving like a geriatric tortoise and clinging to the bed frame—took the two steps that brought me to the window, where I clung to the sill.

There was a handsome bay mule in the dooryard, with a half-naked body laid over the saddle. I gasped—and immediately doubled in pain, but didn’t let go the sill. I bit my lip hard, not to call out. The body was wearing buckskins, and his long brown hair sported a couple of bedraggled turkey feathers.

“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” I breathed, through gritted teeth. “Please, God, don’t let him be—” But the prayer was answered before I’d finished speaking it; the door below opened, and in the next moment William and Lieutenant Macken walked out and lifted Ian off the mule, put his arms about their shoulders, and carried him into the house.

I turned, instinctively reaching for my medical bag—and nearly fell. I saved myself by a grab at the bed frame but let out an involuntary groan that brought Jamie up into a crouch, staring wildly about.

“It’s . . . all right,” I said, willing my belly muscles into immobility. “I’m fine. It’s—Ian. He’s come back.”

Jamie sprang to his feet, shook his head to clear it, and at once went to the window. I saw him stiffen and, clutching my side, followed him. William had come out of the house and was preparing to mount the mule. He was dressed in shirt and breeches, very grubby, and the sun licked his dark chestnut hair with streaks of red. Mrs. Macken said something from the door, and he turned to answer her. I don’t think I made a noise, but something made him look up suddenly and he froze. I felt Jamie freeze, too, as their eyes met.

William’s face didn’t change, and after a long moment he turned to the mule again, mounted, and rode away. After another long moment, Jamie let out his breath.

“Let me put ye back to bed, Sassenach,” he said calmly. “I’ll have to go and find Denny to put Ian right.”

92 I WILL NOT HAVE THEE BE ALONE

SOMEONE HAD GIVEN HIM laudanum before setting to work on his shoulder. Strange stuff, that. He’d had it before, he thought, a long time ago, though he hadn’t known the name at the time. Now Ian lay on his back, blinking slowly as the drug ebbed from his mind, trying to decide where he was and what was real. He was pretty sure most of what he was looking at right now wasn’t.

Pain. That was real and something to use as an anchor. It hadn’t entirely gone away—he’d been aware of it, but remotely, as a disagreeable muddy green strand like a stream of dirty water meandering through his dreams. Now that he was awake, though, it was becoming more disagreeable by the minute. His eyes didn’t want to focus yet, but he forced them to roll about in search of something familiar.

He found it at once.

Girl. Lass. Ifrinn, what was her—“Rachel,” he croaked, and she rose instantly from what she was doing and came to him, her face worried but alight.

“Rachel?” he said again, uncertain, and she took hold of his good hand, pressing it to her bosom.

“Thee is awake, I see,” she said softly, her eyes searching his face. “But still much fevered, from the heat of thy skin. How does thee feel?”

“Better for seein’ ye, lass.” He tried to lick his dry lips. “Is there maybe water?”

She made a small sound of distress that he’d had to ask, and hurried to bring a cup to his lips. It was perhaps the best thing he’d ever tasted, made better by her holding his head in her hand as he drank—he was very dizzy. He didn’t want to stop, but she took the cup away.

“More presently,” she promised. “Thee must not drink too much, too fast, or thee will vomit. And between the dirt and the blood, thee has made enough mess already,” she said, smiling.

“Mmphm,” he said, lying back. He was mostly clean, he discovered. Someone had washed away the last of the deer fat and paint, and a good deal of sweat and blood with it. His shoulder was bound up with a poultice of some kind; it smelled tangy and familiar, but his hazy mind was a long way yet from allowing him to think of the name of the herb.

“Did Auntie Claire bind my arm?” he asked. Rachel glanced at him, her brows furrowing.

“Thy aunt is ill,” she said carefully. “Thee remembers I told thee that she was wounded—shot—in the battle?”

“No,” he said, feeling blank and confused. He had no recollection of the last couple of days or of battle. “No. What—is she all right, then?”

“Denny removed the ball, and thy uncle Jamie is with her. Both of them say very firmly that she will be well.” Her mouth twitched a bit, halfway between a smile and worry. He did his best to smile back.

“Then she’ll be fine,” he said. “Uncle Jamie’s a verra stubborn man. Can I have more water?”

This time he drank more slowly and got more down before she took it away. There was a regular clanging noise somewhere; for a time he had taken it for some phantom of hearing left over from the dreams, but now it ceased for a moment, punctuated by a loud curse.

“What—where are we?” he asked, beginning to be able to look at things again. His wavering sight convinced him that he was indeed in a tiny cow byre; it was new hay he’d been smelling, and the warm scent of fresh cow dung. He was lying on a blanket spread over a mound of hay, but the cow was absent for the moment.

“A place called Freehold. The battle was fought nearby; Washington and the army have withdrawn to Englishtown, but a good many wounded soldiers have been given refuge by the inhabitants here. We currently enjoy the hospitality of the local smith, a gentleman named Heughan.”

“Oh.” The forge. That was the source of the clanging and cursing. He closed his eyes; that helped with the dizziness, but he could see shadows of his dreams on the inside of his eyelids and opened them again. Rachel was still there; that was good.

“Who won the battle?” he asked.

She shrugged, impatient. “So far as anyone has said anything sensible about it, no one. The Americans are cock-a-hoop at not having been defeated, to be sure—but the British army surely wasn’t, either. All I care about is thee. And thee will be fine,” she said, and laid her hand gently on his forehead. “I say so. And I am as stubborn as any Scot thee cares to name—including thyself.”

“I need to tell ye something, lass.” He hadn’t meant to say that, but the words felt familiar in his mouth, as though he’d said them before.

“Something different?” She had been turning away but paused now, looking wary.

“Different? Did I tell ye things while I was . . .” He tried to wave a hand in illustration, but even his good arm was heavy as lead.

Rachel caught her upper lip between her teeth, regarding him.

“Who is Geillis?” she asked abruptly. “And what in the name of—of goodness did she do to thee?”

He blinked, startled and yet relieved to hear the name. Yes, that was what he’d been dreaming—oh, Jesus. The relief departed at once.

“What did I say?” he asked warily.

“If thee doesn’t recall it, I don’t wish to bring it back to thee.” She knelt down by him, skirts rustling.

“I remember what happened—I just want to ken what I said about it.”

“What happened,” she repeated slowly, watching his face. “In thy dreams, thee means? Or—” She broke off, and he saw her throat move as she swallowed.

“Likely both, lass,” he said softly, and managed to reach for her hand. “I spoke of Geillis Abernathy, though?”

“Thee only said ‘Geillis,’” she said, and covered his hand with both of hers, holding fast. “Thee was afraid. And thee called out in pain—but of course thee was in pain, so . . . but then . . . it—whatever thee saw, it—”

Color rose slowly up her neck and washed her face, and with a slight relapse into the dream, he saw her for an instant as an orchid with a dusky throat into which he could plunge his—He cut that vision off and found that he was breathing fast.

“It seemed that thee experienced something other than pain,” she said, frowning.

“Aye, I did,” he said, and swallowed. “Can I have a bit more water?”

She gave it to him, but with a fixed look indicating that she didn’t mean to be distracted from his story by his physical needs.

He sighed and lay back again. “It was a long time agone, a nighean, and nothing to fash about now. I was taken—kidnapped—for a brief time, when I was maybe fourteen or so. I stayed wi’ a woman named Geillis Abernathy, on Jamaica, until my uncle found me. It wasna very pleasant, but I wasna damaged, either.”

Rachel raised an elegant brow. He loved to watch her do that, but sometimes more than others.

“There were other lads there,” he said, “and they were not so lucky.” For a long time afterward, he’d been afraid to close his eyes at night, because he saw their faces. But they’d faded away, little by little—and now he felt a spasm of guilt because he’d let them go into darkness.

“Ian,” Rachel said softly, and her hand stroked his cheek. He felt the rasp of his beard stubble as she touched him, and a pleasant gooseflesh ran down his jaw and shoulder. “Thee needn’t speak of it. I would not bring it back to thee.”

“It’s all right,” he said, and swallowed a little easier. “I’ll tell ye—but later. It’s an old story, and one ye dinna need to hear just now. But—” He stopped short and she raised the other brow.

“But what I do have to tell ye, lass . . .” And he told her. Much of the previous two days’ events was still a blur, but he recalled vividly the two Abenaki who had hunted him. And what he’d finally done, in the British camp.

She was silent for so long that he began to wonder whether he’d really waked and had this conversation or was still dreaming.

“Rachel?” he said, shifting uneasily on his bed of prickly hay. The door of the byre was open and there was light enough, but he couldn’t read her face at all. Her gaze rested on his own face, though, hazel-eyed and distant, as though she were looking through him. He was afraid she was.

He could hear Heughan the smith outside, walking to and fro and making clanking sounds, pausing to apostrophize some uncooperative implement in coarse terms. He could hear his own heart beating, too, an uncomfortable, jerky thump.

Finally a shiver went over Rachel, as though she shook herself awake, and she put a hand on his forehead, smoothing back his hair as she looked into his eyes, her own now soft and fathomless. Her thumb came down and traced the tattooed line across his cheekbones, very slowly.

“I think we can’t wait any longer to be married, Ian,” she said softly. “I will not have thee face such things alone. These are bad times, and we must be together.”

He closed his eyes and all the air went out of him. When he drew breath again, it tasted of peace.

“When?” he whispered.

“As soon as thee can walk without help,” she said, and kissed him, lightly as a falling leaf.

93 THE HOUSE ON CHESTNUT STREET

THE HOUSE WAS occupied; there was smoke drifting from the west chimney. The door was locked, though, and bolted to boot.

“I wonder what happened to the old door?” John said to Hal, trying the knob again, just in case. “It used to be green.”

“If you knock on this one, you might conceivably get someone to come out and tell you,” Hal suggested. They weren’t in uniform, but Hal was noticeably on edge, and had been since their call on General Arnold.

The general had been understandably reserved, but civil, and after reading Fraser’s letter over three or four times, had agreed to give them passes to remain in the city and to make such inquiries as they saw fit.

“With the understanding,” Arnold had said, a flash of his reputed arrogance showing through the façade of governorship, “that if I hear of anything untoward, I’ll have you both arrested and ridden out of the city on a rail.”

“On a what?” Hal had said incredulously, he having not encountered this peculiarly American method of making guests feel unwelcome.

“A rail,” Arnold had repeated, smiling genially. “Long piece of wood? Used for fences, I believe?”

Hal had turned to John, one eyebrow raised, as though inviting him to translate the speech of some Hottentot randomly encountered. John sighed internally, but did so.

“An undesirable person is mounted on the object in question,” he said, “straddling it. Whereupon a party of men lift either end and set off through the streets with it, decanting the rider outside the city. I believe tar and feathers are sometimes applied as a preliminary gesture, though the physical effects of the rail are generally presumed to be sufficient.”

“Flatten your ball sac like a horse stepped on it,” Arnold said, still smiling. “Won’t do your arse any good, either.”

“I should imagine not,” Hal said politely. His color was somewhat higher than usual, but he gave no other indication of offense, which Grey thought a reasonable indication—not that he needed one—of the importance of their mission to Hal.

The sound of the bolt grating free interrupted his recollection. The door swung open, revealing his housekeeper and cook, Mrs. Figg, fowling piece in hand.

“Lord John!” she exclaimed, dropping the gun with a clatter.

“Well, yes,” he said, stepping in and picking it up. He smiled, feeling affection well up in his bosom at sight of her—substantial, tidy, and beribboned as always. “It’s very good to see you again, Mrs. Figg. Allow me to make you acquainted with my brother, the—”

“We’ve met,” Hal said, a wry edge to his voice. “How do you do, madam?”

“Better than Your Grace, by the looks of you,” Mrs. Figg replied, narrowing her eyes at him. “Still breathing, though, I see.” She sounded as though this was not entirely a desirable state of affairs, but Hal smiled broadly at her.

“Did you manage to bury the silver in time?” he asked.

“Certainly,” she replied with dignity, and, turning to John, asked, “You come to get it, my lord? I can have it dug up right smart.”

“Perhaps not just yet,” John said. He looked round, noting the missing banister railing on the upper landing, the smudged and pockmarked wall by the staircase, and—“What’s happened to the chandelier?”

Mrs. Figg sighed and shook her head darkly.

“That’d be Master William,” she said. “How is he, my lord?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know, Mrs. Figg. I was in some hopes that he might have been here—but I gather not?”

She looked disturbed at this.

“No, sir. We’ve not seen him since—well, since the day you went away yourself.” She looked hard at him, taking in everything from the cropped hair to the fading bruises and the undistinguished suit, shook her head and sighed, but then straightened her broad shoulders, determined to be cheerful. “And glad we are to see you, sir! And Your Grace,” she added as a definite afterthought. “Go sit yourselves down and I’ll have you up a nice cup of tea in two minutes.”

“You have tea?” Hal said, brightening.

“We buried the tea chest first thing,” she informed him. “But I just brought in a brick for Miss Dottie, so—”

“Dottie’s here?”

“To be sure,” said Mrs. Figg, pleased to be the bearer of good news. “I’ll just step out to the kitchen and fetch her.”

This proved to be unnecessary, as the sound of the back door opening betokened Dottie’s entrance, carrying an apronful of lumpy objects. These proved to be vegetable marrows from the kitchen garden, which cascaded over the floor in a bouncing flood of green and yellow as she let go the apron in order to leap at her father and embrace him.

“Papa!”

For an instant, Hal’s face changed entirely, soft with love, and Grey was surprised and disconcerted to feel tears come to his own eyes. He turned away, blinking, and wandered over to the sideboard, meaning to give them a private moment.

The silver tea service was gone, of course, but his Meissen porcelain plates were in their accustomed spots on the plate rail. He touched the cool gilt-ribboned border of one, feeling oddly disembodied. And his place shall know him no more.

But Dottie was talking now to both of them; Grey turned round to her, smiling.

“I’m so glad you’re both safe and both here!” Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes sparkling—and Grey’s heart misgave him at the knowledge that this state of happiness would be quenched within the next minute, as soon as Hal told her the reason for their presence. Before any such doom could fall, though, Dottie had seized the reins of the conversation and driven it off in another direction entirely.

“Since you are here—Uncle John, could we possibly use your house? For the wedding, I mean. Please, please?”

“The wedding?” Hal disengaged himself gently and cleared his throat. “Your wedding?”

“Of course I mean my wedding, Papa. Don’t be silly.” She beamed at her uncle, placing a coquettish hand on his sleeve. “May we, Uncle John? We cannot be married in a meetinghouse, but we must have witnesses for a proper marriage of Friends, and, really, I’m sure Papa wouldn’t want to see me married in the public room of a tavern. Would you?” she appealed, turning to Hal, whose expression had reverted to its earlier guardedness.

“Well, certainly you may, my dear,” John said, glancing round his parlor. “Assuming that I retain possession of this place long enough for the marriage to take place. When is the ceremony to be, and how many witnesses will we need to accommodate?”

She hesitated, tapping a fingernail against her teeth.

“I’m not really sure. There will be some of the conscientious Friends who, like Denny, have been put out of meeting for joining the Continental army. And some friends—friends in the lowercase, meaning no disrespect—if any are left in Philadelphia. And . . . family?” She hesitated again, looking at her father sideways, from under her lashes. John suppressed a smile.

Hal closed his eyes and sighed deeply.

“Yes, I’ll come to your wedding,” he said, opening them with resignation. “And so will Henry, if I have to drag him by the scruff of the neck. I suppose Mrs. Woodcock must be invited, too,” he added, with a marked lack of enthusiasm. “But of course Adam . . . and—and Ben—”

John thought for a moment that he must tell her now, but his brother’s lips closed, firmed with determination. He didn’t look at John, but John caught the “Not now, for God’s sake. Let her be happy for a bit longer,” as clearly as if it had been spoken aloud.

“No, that’s too bad,” Dottie said with regret, and met her father’s eyes directly. “I’m sorry about Mama. I did write to her, though.”

“Did you, sweetheart?” Hal said, sounding almost normal. “That was thoughtful.” He tilted his head at her, though, eyes narrowing a bit. “What else?”

“Oh.” Her color, which had returned to normal, rose again, and she began absently pleating her apron with one hand. “Well. Did you know that Rachel—Denzell’s sister—is affianced to Ian Murray? That’s Mr. James—no, no, we don’t use ‘Mister,’ sorry—he’s the nephew of James Fraser. You know—”

“I do know,” Hal said, in a tone cutting off further amendation. “Who he is, I mean. What are you saying, Dottie? Without embroidery, if you please.”

She sniffed at him but didn’t appear to be discomposed in the least.

“Well, then. Rachel and Ian wish to be married as soon as they can, and so do Denny and I. As all the witnesses will be present, why not have both marriages at the same time?”

This time, Hal did look at John. Who returned the look, somewhat taken aback.

“Ah . . . well. I suppose that would mean additional guests? Including the aforementioned Mr. Fraser? I’m sure you will excuse my using his title, my dear; I’m accustomed to such social excesses.”

“Well, yes. Rachel says that Mrs. Fraser is enough recovered that they will return to Philadelphia tomorrow or next day. And then of course there’s Fergus and his wife, Marsali, and perhaps the children, and I don’t know if there are other friends who—I don’t think Ian has any Mohawk relations nearby, but—”

“One, two, three, four, five . . .” John turned and began counting the small gilt chairs that stood rigidly to attention beneath the wainscoting. “I think we shall be somewhat cramped, Dottie, but if—”

Mrs. Figg cleared her throat. The sound was sufficiently impressive that everyone else stopped talking and looked at her.

“Beg pardon, gentlemen,” she said, and a faint flush was visible on her round face. “I don’t mean to be forward or presuming . . . but so happens that I mentioned to the Reverend Figg about Miss Dottie and Friend Denzell needing a place to be married in.”

She cleared her throat, the blush growing deeper beneath her dark skin, so that she bore a surprising resemblance to a just-fired cannonball, Grey thought, charmed by the notion.

“And . . . well, the long and the short of it, ma’am and gentlemen, is that the reverend and his congregation would be pleased was you to consider being married in the new church building, you having been so kind as to contribute to it. ’Tain’t anyways fancy, mind, but—”

“Mrs. Figg, you are a marvel.” Grey clasped her hands in his, an attention that flustered her to the point of speechlessness. Seeing this, he let go, though this allowed Dottie to swoop in and kiss the housekeeper, exclaiming in gratitude. That was all right, but when Hal took Mrs. Figg by the hand and kissed it, the poor lady was reduced nearly to the point of suffocation and, snatching back her hand, retreated in haste, muttering disjointedly about tea and narrowly avoiding tripping on a marrow.

“Is it all right to be married in a church?” Hal asked Dottie, once Mrs. Figg had retired to a safe distance. “It’s not like Jews, is it? We needn’t be circumcised in order to attend? Because if so, I think your guest list may be substantially reduced.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s not . . .” Dottie began rather vaguely, but her attention was distracted by something seen through the front window. “Goodness, is that . . . ?”

Not bothering to complete her thought, she flew to the unbolted door and yanked it open, revealing a startled William on the stoop.

“Dottie!” he said. “What—” And then caught sight of John and Hal. William’s face underwent a lightning shift that made a frisson run straight down John’s back to his tailbone. He’d seen that exact expression on Jamie Fraser’s face a hundred times, at least—but had never before seen it on William’s.

It was the look of a man who doesn’t like his immediate prospects one bit—but who feels himself entirely capable of dealing with them. William stepped inside, repelling by force of will Dottie’s abortive attempt to embrace him. He removed his hat and bowed to Dottie, then, punctiliously, to John and Hal.

“Your servant, ma’am. Sirs.”

Hal snorted, looking his nephew over from head to toe. William was dressed much as John and Hal were, in ordinary clothes—though clothes of good cut and quality, John observed; clearly his own.

“And where the devil have you been for the last three days, may I ask?”

“No, you mayn’t,” William replied briefly. “Why are you here?”

“Looking for you, for one thing,” John replied equably, before Hal could stick his oar in again. He’d put the fowling piece on the mantel, easily within Hal’s reach, but was reasonably sure it wasn’t loaded. “And for Captain Richardson, for another. Have you seen him recently?”

William’s expression of surprise made John heave an internal sigh of relief. “No, I haven’t.” William glanced shrewdly from one man to the other. “Is that what you were doing at Arnold’s headquarters? Looking for Richardson?”

“Yes,” John answered, surprised. “How did you—oh. You were watching the place.” He smiled. “I did wonder how you happened to appear here so fortuitously. You followed us from General Arnold’s.”

William nodded and, stretching out a long arm, drew out one of the chairs from the wall. “I did. Sit down. Things need to be said.”

“That sounds rather ominous,” Dottie murmured. “Perhaps I’d best fetch the brandy.”

“Please do, Dottie,” John said. “Tell Mrs. Figg we want the ’57, if you would. If it isn’t buried, I mean.”

“I think everything of an alcoholic nature is in the well, actually. I’ll fetch it.”

Mrs. Figg herself arrived at this point with a rattling tea tray, apologizing for the lowly earthenware pot in which the beverage was brewing, and within a few moments, everyone was provided with a steaming cup and a small glass of the ’57.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Hal said, accepting a glass from Dottie, then adding pointedly, “You needn’t stay.”

“I’d rather you did, Dottie,” William said quietly, but with an overt stare at Hal. “There are things you ought to know, I think.”

With no more than a brief glance at her father, Dottie, who had been picking up the scattered squash, sat down on the ottoman, opposite her cousin.

“Tell me, then,” she said simply.

“Nothing out of the way,” he assured her, with an assumption of casualness. “I’ve recently discovered that I am the natural son of one James Fraser, who—”

“Oh,” she said, and looked at him with renewed interest. “I did think General Fraser reminded me of someone! Of course, that’s it! Goodness, Willie, you do look like him!”

William looked flabbergasted, but quickly pulled himself together.

“He’s a general?” he asked Hal.

“He was,” Hal said. “He’s resigned his commission.”

William made a small, humorless noise. “Has he? Well, so have I.”

After a long silent moment, John placed his cup carefully on its saucer with a small clink.

“Why?” he asked mildly, at the same moment that Hal, frowning, said, “Can you do such a thing while technically a prisoner of war?”

“I don’t know,” William said tersely, and evidently in answer to both questions. “But I’ve done it. Now, as to Captain Richardson . . .” and he recounted his astonishing encounter with Denys Randall-Isaacs on the road.

“Or, rather, Denys Randall, as he now calls himself. Evidently his stepfather’s a Jew, and he wishes to avoid the association.”

“Sensible,” Hal said briefly. “I don’t know him. What else do you know about him, William? What’s his connection with Richardson?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” William said, and, draining his cup, reached for the pot and poured another. “There is one, obviously, and prior to this, I would have assumed that Randall perhaps worked with, or for, Richardson.”

“Perhaps he still does,” John suggested, a slight edge in his voice. He’d been a spy himself for some years and was disinclined to take things said by known intelligencers at face value.

That seemed to take William aback for a moment, but he nodded reluctantly.

“All right,” he conceded. “But tell me—why the devil are you two interested in Richardson?”

They told him.

At the conclusion, Hal was perched anxiously on the ottoman beside Dottie, an arm round her shaking shoulders. She was weeping silently, and he was dabbing at her face with his handkerchief, this now a grubby rag following its service as a flag of truce.

“I don’t believe it,” he was repeating doggedly, for the sixth or seventh time. “Do you hear me, darling, I do not believe it, and I won’t have you believe it, either.”

“N-no,” she said obediently. “No . . . I won’t. Oh, Ben!”

In some hopes of distracting her, John turned back to William.

“And what business brought you to Philadelphia, may I ask? You can’t have come in search of Captain Richardson, because when you left camp, you didn’t know he’d disappeared.”

“I came on a personal matter,” William said, in a tone suggesting that the matter was still personal and was going to remain that way. “But also . . .” He pressed his lips together for a moment, and again John had that odd sense of dislocation, seeing Jamie Fraser. “I was going to leave this here for you, in case you came back to the city. Or ask Mrs. Figg to send it to New York, if . . .” His voice trailed away, as he pulled a letter from the breast of his dark-blue coat.

“But I needn’t now,” he concluded firmly, and put it away again. “It’s only saying what I’ve already told you.” A slight flush touched his cheekbones, though, and he avoided John’s eye, turning instead to Hal.

“I’ll go and find out about Ben,” he said simply. “I’m not a soldier any longer; there’s no danger of my being taken up as a spy. And I can travel much more easily than you can.”

“Oh, William!” Dottie took the handkerchief from her father and blew her nose with a small, ladylike honk. She looked at him with brimming eyes. “Will you, really? Oh, thank you!”

That was not, of course, the end of it. But it was no revelation to Grey that William possessed a stubbornness so obviously derived from his natural father that no one but Hal would even have thought of arguing with him. And even Hal didn’t argue long.

In due course, William rose to go.

“Give Mrs. Figg my love, please,” he said to John, and, with a small bow to Dottie, “Goodbye, cousin.”

John followed him to the door to let him out, but at the threshold put a hand on his sleeve.

“Willie,” he said softly. “Give me the letter.”

For the first time, William looked a little less than certain. He put his hand to his breast, but left it there, hesitant.

“I won’t read it—unless you don’t come back. But if you don’t . . . I want it. To keep.”

William drew breath, nodded, and, reaching into his coat, removed a sealed cover and handed it over. Grey saw that it had been sealed with a thick daub of candle wax and that William hadn’t used his signet, preferring instead to stamp it with his thumbprint, firm in the hot wax.

“Thank you,” he said through the lump in his throat. “Godspeed. Son.”

94 THE SENSE OF THE MEETING

THE METHODIST CHURCH was a modest wooden building with plain glass windows, and, while it did have an altar, might otherwise easily have passed as a Quaker meetinghouse, bar three framed cross-stitched samplers bearing Bible verses that hung on one wall. I heard Rachel let out her breath as she stopped just inside, looking around.

“No flowers?” Mrs. Figg had said the day before, scandalized. “I understand plain, but God made flowers!”

“A Friends’ meetinghouse would not have flowers,” Rachel had said, smiling. “We think them somewhat pagan, and a distraction to worship. But we are thy guests, and surely a guest must not tell his host how to keep his own house.”

Mrs. Figg blinked at the word “pagan,” but then made a low humming noise and settled back into benignity.

“Well and good, then,” she said. “His lordship has three good rosebushes, and there’s sunflowers in every yard in town. Lot of honeysuckle, too,” she added thoughtfully. There was; everyone planted honeysuckle by the privy.

As a nod to the Quakers’ sensibilities, though, there was only one vase of flowers—a very plain glass vase—between the two wooden benches that had been set at the front of the room, and the faint perfume of honeysuckle and pink cabbage roses mingled with the turpentine smell of hot pine boards and the pungent scents of fairly clean but very hot people.

Rachel and I stepped outside again, joining the rest of what I supposed might be called the wedding party, in the shade under a big lime tree. People were still arriving in ones and twos, and I caught a good many curious looks directed at us—though these were not aimed at the two brides.

“You are being married in . . . that?” Hal said, eyeing Dottie’s Sunday-best gown of soft gray muslin with a white fichu and a bow at the back of the waist. Dottie raised one smooth blond brow at him.

“Ha,” she said. “Mummy told me what she wore when you married her in a tavern in Amsterdam. And what your first wedding was like. Diamonds and white lace and St. James’s Church didn’t help all that much, did they?”

“Dorothea,” Denzell said mildly. “Don’t savage thy father. He has enough to bear.”

Hal, who had flushed at Dottie’s remarks, went somewhat redder at Denny’s and breathed in a menacing rasp, but didn’t say anything further. Hal and John were both wearing full dress uniform and far outshone the two brides in splendor. I thought it rather a pity that Hal wouldn’t get to walk Dottie down the aisle, but he had merely inhaled deeply when the form of the marriage was outlined to him and said—after being elbowed sharply in the ribs by his brother—that he was honored to witness the event.

Jamie, by contrast, did not wear uniform, but his appearance in full Highland dress made Mrs. Figg’s eyes bulge—and not only hers.

“Sweet Shepherd of Judea,” she muttered to me. “Is that man wearing a woolen petticoat? And what sort of pattern is that cloth? Enough to burn the eyes out your head.”

“They call it a Fèileadh beag,” I told her. “In the native language. In English, it’s usually called a kilt. And the pattern is his family tartan.”

She eyed him for a long moment, the color rising slowly in her cheeks. She turned to me with her mouth open to ask a question, then thought better and shut it firmly.

“No,” I said, laughing. “He isn’t.”

She snorted. “Either way, he’s like to die of the heat,” she predicted, “and so are those two gamecocks.” She nodded at John and Hal, glorious and sweating in crimson and gold lace. Henry had also come in uniform, wearing his more modest lieutenant’s apparel. He squired Mercy Woodcock on his arm and gave his father a stare daring him to say anything.

“Poor Hal,” I murmured to Jamie. “His children are rather a trial to him.”

“Aye, whose aren’t?” he replied. “All right, Sassenach? Ye look pale. Had ye not best go in and sit down?”

“No, I’m quite all right,” I assured him. “I just am pale, after a month indoors. It’s good to be in the fresh air.” I had a stick, as well as Jamie, to lean on but was feeling quite well, bar a slight stitch in my side, and was enjoying the sensations of mobility, if not the sensation of wearing stays and petticoats in hot weather again. It was going to be even hotter, sitting packed together once the meeting began; the Reverend Mr. Figg’s congregation was there, of course, it being their church, and the benches were filled with bodies.

The church had no bell, but a few blocks away the bell of St. Peter’s began to toll the hour. It was time, and Jamie, I, and the Grey brothers made our way inside and found our places. The air hummed with murmured conversation and curiosity—the more so at the British uniforms and Jamie’s plaid, though both he and the Greys had left their swords at home, in deference to the Friends’ meeting.

Both curiosity and conversation rose to a much higher pitch when Ian walked in. He wore a new shirt, white calico printed with blue and purple tulips, his buckskins and breechclout, moccasins—and an armlet made of blue and white wampum shells, which I was reasonably sure that his Mohawk wife, Works With Her Hands, had made for him.

“And here, of course, is the best man,” I heard John whisper to Hal. Rollo stalked in at Ian’s heel, disregarding the further stir he caused. Ian sat down quietly on one of the two benches that had been set at the front of the church, facing the congregation, and Rollo sat at his feet, scratched himself idly, then collapsed and lay panting gently, surveying the crowd with a yellow stare of lazy estimation, as though judging them for eventual edibility.

Denzell came in, looking a little pale, but walked up and sat down on the bench beside Ian. He smiled at the congregation, most of whom murmured and smiled back. Denny wore his best suit—he owned two—a decent navy broadcloth with pewter buttons, and while he was both shorter and less ornamental than Ian, did not by any means disappear beside his outlandish brother-in-law-to-be.

“You’re no going to be sick, lass?” Jamie said to Rachel. She and Dottie had come in, but hovered near the wall. Rachel’s hands were clenched in the fabric of her skirt. She was white as a sheet, but her eyes glowed. They were fastened on Ian, who was looking at no one but her, his own heart in his eyes.

“No,” she whispered. “Come with me, Dottie.” She held out a hand, and the two girls walked together to the other bench and sat down. Dottie’s color was high, and so was her head. Rachel folded her hands in her lap and resumed looking at Ian. I felt Jamie sigh a little and relax. On Jamie’s far side, Jenny craned to see round him, then smiled with gratification.

She’d made Rachel’s dress herself, for after the exigencies of recent months, Rachel owned nothing that wasn’t near rags. And while Jenny was generally in favor of modesty in dress, she knew her way around a bustline. The dress was a pale-green chintz with a small pattern of dark-green curling vines, and fitted like a glove. With her dark-brown hair shining loose on her shoulders and hazel eyes huge in her face, Rachel looked like some denizen of the forest—perhaps a tree nymph.

I was about to share this fancy with Jamie when the Reverend Mr. Figg walked up to the front of the church, turned, and smiled at the congregation.

“Blessings to you all this day, brothers and sisters!” he said, and was answered by a genial rumble of “Blessings to you, brother!” and discreet “Amens.”

“Well, now.” He glanced from Ian and Denny to the girls, then back to the congregation. “We’re gathered here for a wedding today. But the ladies and gentlemen being married belong to the Society of Friends, so it will be a Quaker wedding—and that’s maybe a little different from ones you’ve seen before, so I take the liberty of telling you how it goes.”

A little hum of interest and speculation, which he quieted with one hand. Mr. Figg was small and dapper in black suit and high white stock, but had immense presence, and every ear was tuned attentively to his explanations.

“We have the honor to host this meeting—for that’s what the Friends call their worship. And for them, a wedding is just a normal part of meeting. There’s no priest or minister involved; the lady and the gentleman just . . . marry each other, when they feel like it’s the right time.”

That caused a ripple of surprise, perhaps a little disapproval, and I could see the color rise in Dottie’s cheeks. Mr. Figg turned to smile at the girls, then back to his congregation.

“I think perhaps one of our Quaker friends might tell us a little bit about their notion of meeting, as I’m sure they know more about it than I do.” He turned expectantly toward Denzell Hunter—but it was Rachel who rose to her feet. Mr. Figg didn’t see her and started with surprise when she spoke behind him, making everyone laugh.

“Good morning,” she said, soft-spoken but clear, when the laughter had died down. “I thank you all for your presence here. For Christ said, ‘Wherever two or more of you are gathered in my name, there am I.’ And that is all the essence of a meeting of Friends: that Christ may make His presence known among us—and within us.” She spread her hands a little. “So we gather, and we listen—both to one another and to the light within us. When a person is moved of the spirit to speak, he or she does speak.”

“Or sing, if thee likes,” Dottie put in, dimpling at John.

“Or sing,” Rachel agreed, smiling. “But we do not fear silence, for often God speaks loudest in the quiet of our hearts.” And with that, she sat down again, composed.

A moment of shuffling and blinking among the crowd was succeeded in fact by an expectant silence—this broken by Denny, who rose deliberately and said, “I am moved to tell you how grateful I am for your gracious use of us. For I was put out of meeting, and my sister with me, for my stated intent to join the Continental army. And for the same reason, we are not welcome as members of Philadelphia meeting.” He glanced at Rachel, light glinting from his spectacles.

“This is a grievous thing to a Friend,” he said quietly. “For our meeting is where our lives and souls abide, and when Friends marry, the whole of their meeting must approve and witness the marriage, for the community itself will support the marriage. I have deprived my sister of this approval and support, and I beg she will forgive me.”

Rachel gave an unladylike snort. “Thee followed thy conscience, and if I hadn’t thought thee right, I would have said so.”

“It was my responsibility to take care of thee!”

“Thee has taken care of me!” Rachel said. “Do I look malnourished? Am I naked?”

A ripple of amusement ran through the congregation, but neither of the Hunters was noticing.

“I took thee from thy home and from the meeting that cared for thee and obliged thee to follow me into violence, into an army full of violent men.”

“That would be me, I expect,” Ian interrupted, clearing his throat. He looked at Mr. Figg, who seemed somewhat stunned, then at the rapt assemblage on the benches. “I’m no a Friend myself, ye ken. I’m a Highlander and a Mohawk, and they dinna come much more violent than that. By rights, I shouldna wed Rachel, and her brother shouldna let me.”

“I should like to see him stop me!” said Rachel, sitting bolt upright with her fists curled on her knees. “Or thee, either, Ian Murray!”

Dottie appeared to be finding the conversation amusing; I could see her struggling not to laugh—and, glancing sideways along the bench in front of me, I could see precisely the same expression on her father’s face.

“Well, it’s on my account that ye couldna be wed in a proper Quaker meeting,” Ian protested.

“No more than on mine,” Denny said, grimacing.

“Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa,” Jamie murmured in my ear. “D’ye think I should say it’s all my fault, for leaving Ian wi’ the Indians and bein’ a bad example to him?”

“Only if the spirit moves you,” I said, not taking my eyes off the show. “Personally, I’d advise you and the spirit to stay out of it.”

Mrs. Figg was not disposed to stay out of it. She cleared her throat loudly.

“Now, pardon me for interrupting, but from what I understand, you Friends think a woman’s equal to a man, is that right?”

“It is,” Rachel and Dottie said firmly together, and everyone laughed.

Mrs. Figg flushed like a ripe black plum, but kept her composure. “Well, then,” she said. “If these ladies want to marry with you gentlemen, why do you think you got any business trying to talk them out of it? Have you maybe got your own reservations about the matter?”

A distinctly feminine murmur of approval came from the congregation, and Denny, who was still standing, seemed to be struggling for his own composure.

“Does he have a cock?” came a French-accented whisper from behind me and an unhinged giggle from Marsali in response. “You can’t get married without a cock.”

This reminiscence of Fergus and Marsali’s unorthodox wedding on a Caribbean beach made me stuff my lace handkerchief into my mouth. Jamie shook with suppressed laughter.

“I do have reservations,” Denzell said, taking a deep breath. “Though not,” he added hastily, with a glance at Dottie, “regarding my desire to wed Dorothea or the honor of my intentions toward her. My reservations—and perhaps Friend Ian’s, though I must not speak for him—lie entirely the other way. That is, I—we, perhaps—feel that we must lay bare our failings and limitations as . . . as husbands—” And for the first time, he, too, blushed. “That Dorothea and Rachel may . . . may come to a proper—er . . .”

“That they know what they may be getting into?” Mrs. Figg finished for him. “Well, that’s a fine sentiment, Dr. Hunter—”

“Friend,” he murmured.

“Friend Hunter,” she said, with a minimal roll of the eyes. “But I tell you two things. One, your young lady probably knows more about you than you do.” More laughter. “And two—speaking as a woman with some experience—I can tell you that nobody knows what being married’s going to be like until you find yourself in the midst of it.” She sat down with an air of finality, to a hum of approbation.

There was a certain amount of glancing to and fro and a sense of movement on the left side of the church, where several men sat together. I had seen them come in, with women who were plainly their wives; the women had separated, though, and gone to sit on the right side of the church, which made me think that they might be Quakers, though there was nothing in their dress that differentiated them from the other workmen and merchants in the congregation. I could see them come to some sort of silent consensus now, and one of them rose.

“I am William Sprockett,” he said formally, and cleared his throat. “We have come to speak in support of Friend Hunter. For we also are Friends who have followed the dictates of our conscience to involvement with rebellion and other matters that a Friend would normally seek to avoid. And in consequence . . . have been read out of meeting.”

He paused, brow furrowed, evidently not sure how to go on. A small woman in yellow rose on the other side and spoke clearly.

“What my husband seeks to say, friends, is that a man who would not do as his inner light tells him to is no man. And that while a man of conscience can be mighty inconvenient at times, it don’t make him a bad husband.” She smiled at Mr. Sprockett and sat down.

“Yes,” said Mr. Sprockett gratefully. “As my wife is kind enough to say, going to fight don’t unfit us for marriage. So we’ve all come”—he swept a broad hand around him, indicating his companions and the wives across the aisle—“to approve and witness thy marriage, Friend Hunter.”

“And we will support thy marriage, Dorothea,” Mrs. Sprockett put in, with a bob of her head. “And thine, Rachel.”

Denny Hunter had remained standing while all this colloquy was going on.

“I . . . thank you, Friends,” he said, and sat down abruptly, followed more slowly by the Sprocketts.

A hush fell upon the room, and for a little while there was no sound but the remote noise of the streets outside. Here and there a cough, the clearing of a throat, but, overall, silence. Jamie laid a hand on mine, and my fingers turned to intertwine with his. I could feel his pulse in my own fingertips, the solid bones of knuckle and phalanges. His right hand, battered and marked with the scars of sacrifice and labor. Marked also with the signs of my love, the crude repairs done in pain and desperation.

Blood of my blood, bone of my bone . . .

I wondered whether people who are unhappily married think of their own nuptials when they witness a wedding; I thought that those who are happy always do. Jenny’s head was bowed, her face calm and inward but peaceful; did she think now of Ian and her wedding day? She did; her head turned a little to one side, she laid a hand lightly on the bench and smiled at the ghost who sat by her side.

Hal and John sat on the bench in front of us, a little to the side, so I could catch glimpses of their faces, so much alike and yet so different. Both of them had been married twice.

It was a slight shock, in fact, to recall that John’s second marriage had been to me, for he felt entirely separate from me now, our brief partnership seeming so removed in time as almost to be unreal. And then . . . there was Frank.

Frank. John. Jamie. Sincerity of intention wasn’t always enough, I thought, looking at the young people on the benches at the front of the church, none of them now looking at one another but staring at their folded hands, the floor, or sitting with closed eyes. Perhaps realizing that, as Mrs. Figg had said, a marriage is made not in ritual or in words but in the living of it.

A movement pulled me out of my thoughts; Denny had risen to his feet and held out a hand to Dottie, who rose as though mesmerized and, reaching out, clasped both his hands in hers, hanging on for dear life.

“Does thee feel the sense of the meeting clear, Dorothea?” he asked softly, and at her nod, spoke:

“In the presence of the Lord, and before these our Friends, I take thee, Dorothea, to be my wife, promising, with divine assistance, to be unto thee a loving and faithful husband so long as we both shall live.”

Her voice was low but clearly audible as, face shining, she replied:

“In the presence of the Lord, and before these our Friends, I take thee, Denzell, to be my husband, promising, with divine assistance, to be unto thee a loving and faithful wife so long as we both shall live.”

I heard Hal catch his breath, in what sounded like a sob, and then the church burst into applause. Denny looked startled at this but then broke into a brilliant smile and led Dottie, beaming on his arm, out through the congregation to the back of the church, where they sat close together on the last bench.

People murmured and sighed, smiling, and the church gradually quieted—but not to its former sense of contemplation. There was now a vibrant sense of expectation, tinged perhaps with a little anxiety, as attention focused on Ian and Rachel—no longer looking at each other but down at the floor.

Ian took a breath audible to the back benches, raised his head, and, taking the knife from his belt, laid it on the bench beside him.

“Aye, well . . . Rachel kens I was once married, to a woman of the Wolf clan of the Kahnyen’kehaka. And the Mohawk way of marriage is maybe none so different from the way Friends do it. We sat beside each other before the people, and our parents—they’d adopted me, ken—spoke for us, sayin’ what they kent of us and that we were of good character. So far as they knew,” he added apologetically, and there was a breath of laughter.

“The lass I was to wed had a basket on her lap, filled wi’ fruit and vegetables and other bits o’ food, and she said to me that she promised to feed me from her fields and care for me. And I—” He swallowed and, reaching out, laid a hand on his knife. “I had a knife, and a bow, and the skins of some otters I’d taken. And I promised to hunt for her and keep her warm wi’ my furs. And the people all agreed that we should be married, and so . . . we were.”

He stopped, biting his lip, then cleared his throat and went on.

“But the Mohawk dinna take each other for as long as they live—but only for as long as the woman wishes. My wife chose to part wi’ me—not because I hurt or mistreated her, but for . . . for other reasons.” He cleared his throat again, and his hand went to the wampum armlet round his biceps.

“My wife was called Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa, which means ‘Works With Her Hands,’ and she made this for me, as a love token.” Long brown fingers fumbled with the strings, and the strip of woven shells came loose, slithering into his hand. “Now I lay it down, as witness that I come here a free man, that my life and my heart are once more mine to give. And I hope I may be allowed now to give them forever.”

The blue and white shells made a soft clicking noise as he laid them on the bench. He let his fingers rest on them for a moment, then took his hand away.

I could hear Hal’s breathing, steady now but with a faint rasp. And Jamie’s, thick in his throat.

I could feel all sorts of things moving like wraiths in the thick, still air of the church. Sentiment, sympathy, doubt, apprehension . . . Rollo growled very softly in his throat and fell silent, yellow-eyed and watchful at his master’s feet.

We waited. Jamie’s hand twitched in mine, and I looked up at him. He was looking at Ian, intent, his lips pressed tight, and I knew he was wondering whether to stand up and speak on Ian’s behalf, to assure the congregation—and Rachel—of Ian’s character and virtue. He caught my glance, though, shook his head very slightly, and nodded toward the front. It was Rachel’s part to speak, if she would.

Rachel sat still as stone, face bleached as bone and her eyes on Ian, burning. But she said nothing.

Neither did she move, but something moved in her; I could see the knowledge of it cross her face, and somehow her body changed, straightening and settling. She was listening.

We all listened with her. And the silence kindled slowly into light.

There was a faint throb in the air then, not quite a sound, and people began to look up, called from the silence. A blur appeared between the benches at the front, and a hummingbird materialized, drawn through the open window, a tiny blur of green and scarlet hovering beside the coral trumpets of the native honeysuckle.

A sigh came from the heart of the church, and the sense of the meeting was made clear.

Ian rose, and Rachel came to meet him.

A CODA IN THREE-TWO TIME

DENZELL AND DOROTHEA

IT WAS THE BEST party that Dorothea Jacqueline Benedicta Grey had ever attended. She had danced with earls and viscounts in the most beautiful ballrooms in London, eaten everything from gilded peacock to trout stuffed with shrimp and riding on an artful sea of aspic with a Triton carved of ice brandishing his spear over all. And she’d done these things in gowns so splendid that men blinked when she hove into view.

Her new husband didn’t blink. He stared at her so intently through his steel-rimmed spectacles that she thought she could feel his gaze on her skin, from across the room and right through her dove-gray dress, and she thought she might burst with happiness, exploding in bits all over the taproom of the White Camel tavern. Not that anyone would notice if she did; there were so many people crammed into the room, drinking, talking, drinking, singing, and drinking, that a spare gallbladder or kidney underfoot would pass without notice.

Just possibly, she thought, one or two whole people might pass without notice, too—right out of this lovely party.

She reached Denzell with some difficulty, there being a great many well-wishers between them, but as she approached him, he stretched out a hand and seized hers, and an instant later they were outside in the night air, laughing like loons and kissing each other in the shadows of the Anabaptist Meeting House that stood next door to the tavern.

“Will thee come home now, Dorothea?” Denny said, pausing for a momentary breath. “Is thee . . . ready?”

She didn’t let go of him but moved closer, dislodging his glasses and enjoying the scent of his shaving soap and the starch in his linen—and the scent of him underneath.

“Are we truly married now?” she whispered. “I am thy wife?”

“We are. Thee is,” he said, his voice slightly husky. “And I am thy husband.”

She thought he’d meant to speak solemnly, but such an uncontainable smile of joy spread across his face at the speaking that she laughed out loud.

“We didn’t say ‘one flesh’ in our vows,” she said, stepping back but keeping hold of his hand. “But does thee think that principle obtains? Generally speaking?”

He settled his glasses more firmly on his nose and looked at her with intense concentration and shining eyes. And, with one finger of his free hand, touched her breast.

“I’m counting on it, Dorothea.”

SHE’D BEEN IN his rooms before. But first as a guest, and then as an assistant, coming up to pack a basket with bandages and ointments before accompanying him to some professional call. It was quite different now.

He’d opened all the windows earlier and left them so, careless of flying insects and the butcher’s shop down the street. The second floor of the building would have been suffocating after the day’s heat—but with the gentle night breeze coming through, the air was like warm milk, soft and liquid on the skin, and the meaty smells of the butcher’s shop were now overborne by the night perfume of the gardens at Bingham House, two streets over.

All trace of his profession had been cleared away, and the light of the candle he lit shone serenely on a plainly furnished but comfortable room. Two small wing chairs sat beside the hearth, a single book on the table between them. And, through the open door, a bed fresh-made with a smooth counterpane and plump white pillows beckoned enticingly.

The blood still thrummed through her body like wine, though she’d had very little to drink. Still, she felt unaccountably shy and stood for a moment just inside the door, as though waiting to be invited in. Denny lit two more candles and, turning, saw her standing there.

“Come,” he said softly, stretching out a hand to her, and she did. They kissed lingeringly, hands roaming slowly, clothes beginning to loosen. Her hand drifted casually down and touched him through his breeches. He drew breath and would have said something, but wasn’t quick enough.

“One flesh,” she reminded him, smiling, and cupped her hand. “I want to see thy half of it.”

“THEE HAS SEEN such things before,” Denny said. “I know thee has. Thee has brothers, for one thing. And—and in the course of . . . of treating wounded men . . .” He was lying naked on the bed, and so was she, fondling the object in question, which seemed to be enjoying the attention immensely. His fingers were sliding through her hair, playing with her earlobes.

“I hope thee doesn’t think I ever did this to any of my brothers,” she said, sniffing him with pleasure. “And those of wounded men aren’t generally in a condition to be appreciated at all.”

Denny cleared his throat and stretched himself a little, not quite squirming.

“I think thee should allow me to appreciate thy own flesh for a bit,” he said. “If thee expects me to be able to make thee a wife tonight.”

“Oh.” She looked down at his cock and then at herself, surprised. “What do—does thee—mean? Why wouldn’t thee be able to?”

“Ah.” He looked pleased and eager—he was so young without his glasses—and bounced off the bed, going into the outer room, his bottom pale and tidy in the candlelight. To Dottie’s astonishment, he came back with the book she’d noticed on the table and handed it to her. It was bristling with bookmarks, and as she took it, it fell open in her hands, displaying several drawings of a naked man in cross section, his private parts in various stages of operation.

She looked up at Denny in disbelief.

“I thought—I know thee is a virgin; I didn’t want thee to be frightened, or unprepared.” He was blushing like a rose, and instead of collapsing in howls of laughter, which she badly wanted to do, she shut the book gently and took his face between her hands.

“Is thee a virgin, too, Denny?” she said softly. His blush grew fierce, but he kept her gaze.

“Yes. But—I do know how. I’m a physician.”

That was too much, and she did laugh, but in small, half-stifled blurts of giggling, which infected him, and in seconds they were in each other’s arms on the bed, shaking silently, with occasional snorts and repetitions of “I’m a physician,” which sent them into fresh paroxysms.

At last she found herself on her back, breathing heavily, Denny lying on top of her, and a slick of perspiration oiling them. She lifted a hand and touched his chest, and gooseflesh rippled over him, the dark hairs of his body curly and bristling. She was trembling, but not with either fear or laughter.

“Is thee ready?” he whispered.

“One flesh,” she whispered back. And they were.

THE CANDLES had burned down nearly to their sockets, and the naked shadows on the wall moved slowly.

“Dorothea!”

“Thee should probably be quiet,” she advised him, briefly removing her mouth in order to talk. “I’ve never done this before. Thee wouldn’t want to distract me, now, would thee?” Before he could summon a single word, she had resumed her alarming actions. He groaned—he couldn’t help it—and laid his hands gently, helplessly, on her head.

“It’s called fellatio, did thee know that?” she inquired, pausing momentarily for breath.

“I did. How . . . I mean . . . Oh. Oh, God.”

“What did you say?” Her face was beautiful, so flushed that the color showed even by candlelight, her lips deep rose and wet . . .

“I said—oh, God.”

A smile lit her shadowed face with happiness, and her already firm grip on him tightened. His shadow jerked.

“Oh, good,” she said, and with a small, triumphant crow of laughter, bent to slay him with her sharp white teeth.

IAN AND RACHEL

IAN LIFTED THE GREEN gown off in a whuff of fabric, and Rachel shook her head hard, shedding hairpins in all directions with little pinging sounds. She smiled at him, her dark hair coming damply down in chunks, and he laughed and plucked out a few more of the little wire hoops.

“I thought I should die,” she said, running her fingers through her loosened hair, which Jenny had put up before the party at the White Camel tavern. “Between the pins sticking into my head and the tightness of my stays. Unlace me, will thee—husband?” She turned her back to him but looked over her shoulder, eyes dancing.

He hadn’t thought it possible to be more moved in his feelings or more excited in body—but that one word did both. He wrapped one arm around her middle, making her squeak, pulled the knot of her laces loose, and gently bit the back of her neck, making her squeak much louder. She struggled, and he laughed, holding her tighter as he loosened the laces. She was slim as a willow sapling and twice as springy; she squirmed against him, and the small struggle heated his blood still further. If he had had no self-control, he would have had her pinned to the bed in seconds, stays and shift and stockings be damned.

But he did and let her go, easing the stay straps off her shoulders and the stays themselves over her head. She shook herself again, smoothing down the damp shift over her body, then stood tall, preening for him. Her nipples stood out hard against the limp fabric.

“I won thy wager for thee,” she said, passing a hand over the delicate blue satin ribbon threaded through the neck of her shift and fluttering the hem, adorned with embroidered flowers in blue and yellow and rose.

“How did ye hear about that?” He reached for her, pulled her close, and clasped both hands on her arse, bare under the shift. “Christ, ye’ve got a sweet round wee bum.”

“Blasphemy, on our wedding night?” But she was pleased, he could tell.

“It’s not blasphemy, it’s a prayer of thanksgiving. And who told ye about the wager?” Fergus had bet him a bottle of stout that a Quaker bride would have plain linen undergarments. He hadn’t known, himself, but had had hopes that Rachel wouldn’t feel that pleasing her husband was the same thing as making a vain show for the world.

“Germain, of course.” She put her own arms around him and clasped him in similar manner, smiling up. “Thine is neither wee nor round, but no less sweet, I think. Does thee need help with thy fastenings?”

He could tell she wanted to, so he let her kneel and unbutton the flies of his breeches. The sight of the top of her dark, disheveled head, bowed earnestly to the task, made him put his hand gently on it, feeling her warmth, wanting the touch of her skin.

His breeches fell and she stood up to kiss him, her hand caressing his standing cock as though by afterthought.

“Thy skin is so soft there,” she said against his mouth. “Like velvet!”

Her touch wasn’t tentative but very light, and he reached down and wrapped his fingers round hers, showing her the way of it, how to grasp it firmly and work it a bit.

“I like it when thee moans, Ian,” she whispered, pressing closer and working it more than a bit.

“I’m not moaning.”

“Yes, thee is.”

“I’m only breathin’ a bit. Here . . . I like that . . . but . . . here.” Swallowing, he picked her up—she made a little whoop—and carried her the two steps to the bed. He dropped her onto the mattress—she made a louder whoop—and landed beside her, scooping her into his arms. There was a certain amount of writhing, giggling, and inarticulate noises, and she got him out of his calico shirt, while he had her shift pulled up at the bottom and down at the top but still puddled round her waist.

“I win,” she said, wiggling the wadded shift down over her hips and kicking it off.

“Ye think that, do ye?” He bent his head and took her nipple in his mouth. She made a very gratifying noise and clutched his head. He butted her gently under the chin, then lowered his head and sucked harder, flicking his tongue like an adder’s.

“I like it when ye moan, Rachel,” he said, pausing for breath and grinning down at her. “D’ye want me to make ye scream?”

“Yes,” she said, breathless, one hand on her wet nipple. “Please.”

“In a bit.” He’d paused to breathe, lifting himself above her to let a bit of air in between them—it was a small room, and hot—and she reached up to feel his chest. She rubbed a thumb lightly over his nipple, and the sensation shot straight down to his cock.

“Let me,” she said softly, and lifted herself, a hand round his neck, and suckled him, very gently.

“More,” he said hoarsely, bracing himself against her weight. “Harder. Teeth.”

“Teeth?” she blurted, letting go.

“Teeth,” he said breathlessly, rolling onto his back and pulling her on top. She drew breath and lowered her head, hair spilling across his chest.

“Ow!”

“Thee said teeth.” She sat up anxiously. “Oh, Ian, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt thee.”

“I—ye didn’t . . . well, ye did, but . . . I mean—do it again, aye?”

She looked at him, dubious, and it occurred to him that when Uncle Jamie told him to go slow and gentle with his virgin, it might not have been all to do with sparing the virgin.

“Here, mo nighean donn,” he said, drawing her down beside him. His heart was hammering and he was sweating. He brushed the hair back from her temple and nuzzled her ear. “Slow for a bit, aye? Then I’ll show ye what I mean by teeth.”

IAN SMELLED OF wine and whisky and musky male skin—he burned astonishingly under her hands and smelled now something like a distant skunk, but in a much better way. She pressed her face into the curve of his shoulder, breathing him in with pleasure. She had his cock in her hand, gripping firmly . . . but curiosity made her loose her hold and grope lower, fingers probing through the thickness of his pubic hair. He breathed out very suddenly when she cupped his scrotum, and she smiled against his shoulder.

“Does thee mind, Ian?” she whispered, rolling the lovely egg-like shapes of his balls in her palm. She’d seen male scrota many times, baggy and wrinkled, and while she wasn’t disgusted, had never thought them more than mildly interesting. This was wonderful, drawn up tight, the skin so soft and so hot. Daring, she scooted down a little and felt farther back between his legs.

He had an arm about her shoulders and it tightened, but he didn’t tell her to stop, instead spreading his legs a little, allowing her to explore him. She’d wiped men’s arses hundreds of time, and the fleeting thought occurred to her that not all of them took great care . . . but his hair was curly and very clean, and her hips moved against him involuntarily as her fingertip slid tentatively between his buttocks. He twitched, tensing involuntarily, and she stopped, feeling him shiver. Then she realized that he was laughing, shaking silently.

“Am I tickling thee?” she asked, raising up on one elbow. The light of the single candle flickered over his face, hollowing his cheeks and making his eyes shine as he smiled up at her.

“Aye, that’s one word for it.” He ran a hand half roughly up her back and gripped her by the nape. He shook his head slowly, looking at her. His hair had come loose from its binding and spread out dark behind his head. “Here I am, tryin’ to go slow, tryin’ to be gentle . . . and next thing I ken, ye’re squeezin’ my balls and stickin’ your fingers up my arse!”

“Is that wrong?” she asked, feeling a slight qualm. “I didn’t mean to be . . . er, too . . . bold?”

He pulled her down and hugged her close.

“Ye canna be too bold wi’ me, lass,” he whispered in her ear, and ran his own hand down her back—and down farther. She gasped.

“Shh,” he whispered, and went on—slowly. “I thought—ye’d maybe be scairt at first. But ye’re no scairt a bit, are ye?”

“I am. I’m t-terrified.” She felt the laughter bubble up through her chest, but there was some truth in it, too—and he heard that. His hand stopped moving and he drew back enough to look at her, squinting a little.

“Aye?”

“Well . . . not terrified, exactly. But—” She swallowed, suddenly embarrassed. “I just—this is so nice. But I know when you—when we—well, it does hurt, the first time. I—I’m somewhat afraid that . . . well, I don’t want to stop what we’re doing, but I . . . I’d like to get that part over with, so I needn’t worry about it.”

“Over with,” he repeated. His mouth twitched a bit, but his hand was gentle on the small of her back. “Well, then.” He eased his other hand down and cupped her, very delicately, between the legs.

She was swollen there, and slippery—had been growing more so ever since he’d lifted her gown off over her head. His fingers moved, one and then two, playing, stroking . . . and . . . and . . .

It took her entirely by surprise, a feeling she knew but bigger, bigger, and then she gave way to it entirely, washed through with ecstasy.

She settled slowly into limpness, throbbing. Everywhere. Ian kissed her lightly.

“Well, that didna take verra long, did it?” he murmured. “Put your hands on my arms, mo chridhe, and hold on.” He moved over her, agile as a big cat, and eased his cock between her legs, sliding slow but firm. Very firm. She flinched, clenching involuntarily, but the way was slick and her flesh swollen in welcome and no amount of resistance would keep him out.

She realized that her fingers were digging into his arms, but didn’t let go.

“Am I hurting ye?” he said softly. He’d stopped moving, his full length inside her, stretching her in a most unnerving way. Something had torn, she thought; it burned a little.

“Yes,” she said, breathless. “I don’t . . . mind.”

He lowered himself very slowly and kissed her face, her nose, her eyelids, lightly. And all the time the awareness of it—him—inside her. He pulled back a little and moved. She made a small, breathless noise, not quite protest, a little pain, not quite encouragement . . .

But he took it as that and moved more strongly.

“Dinna be worrit, lass,” he said, a little breathless, too. “I won’t take long, either. Not this time.”

ROLLO WAS snoring in the corner, lying on his back for coolness, legs folded like a bug’s.

She tasted faintly sweet, of her own musk and a trace of blandness with an animal tang that he recognized as his own seed.

He buried his face in her, breathing deep, and the slight salt taste of blood made him think of trout, fresh-caught and barely cooked, the flesh hot and tender, pink and slick in his mouth. She jerked in surprise and arched up into him, and he tightened his hold on her, making a low hmmm of reassurance.

It was like fishing, he thought dreamily, hands under her hips. Feeling with your mind for the sleek dark shape just under the surface, letting the fly come down just so . . . She drew her breath in, hard. And then engagement, the sudden sense of startlement, and then a fierce awareness as the line sprang taut, you and the fish so focused on each other that there was nothing else in the world . . .

“Oh, God,” he whispered, and ceased to think, only feeling the small movements of her body, her hands on his head, the smell and taste of her, and her feelings washed through him with her murmured words.

“I love thee, Ian. . . .”

And there was nothing else in the world but her.

JAMIE AND CLAIRE

THE LIGHT OF a low yellow half-moon shone through gaps in the trees, glimmering on the dark rushing waters of the Delaware. So late at night, the air was cool by the river, very welcome to faces and bodies heated by dancing, feasting, drinking, and generally being in close proximity to a hundred or so other hot bodies for the last six or seven hours.

The bridal couples had escaped fairly early: Denzell and Dottie very inconspicuously, Ian and Rachel to the raucous shouts and indelicate suggestions of a roomful of festive wedding guests. Once they’d left, the party had settled down to serious merrymaking, the drinking now unhampered by the interruption of wedding toasts.

We’d taken our leave of the Grey brothers—Hal, as father of one of the brides, was hosting the party—sometime after midnight. Hal had been sitting in a chair near a window, very drunk and wheezing slightly from the smoke, but sufficiently composed as to stand and bow over my hand.

“You want to go home,” I advised him, hearing the faint squeak of his breathing over the winding-down noises of the party. “Ask John if he’s got any more ganja, and if he does, smoke it. It will do you good.” And not only in a physical way, I thought.

“I thank you for your kind advice, madam,” he said dryly, and, too late, I recalled our conversation the last time he had been exposed to ganja: his worry over his son Benjamin. If he thought of it, too, though, he said nothing, and merely kissed my hand and nodded to Jamie in farewell.

John had stood by his brother’s side most of the evening and stood behind him now as we took our leave. His eyes met mine briefly, and he smiled but didn’t step forward to take my hand—not with Jamie at my shoulder. I wondered now briefly if I should ever see either of the Greys again.

We hadn’t gone back to the printshop but had wandered down by the river, enjoying the coolness of the night air and chatting about the young couples and the excitements of the day.

“I imagine their nights are bein’ a bit more exciting still,” Jamie remarked. “Reckon the lassies will be sore come morning, poor wee things.”

“Oh, it may not be just the girls,” I said, and he sniffed with amusement.

“Aye, well, ye may be right about that. I seem to recall wakin’ the next morning after our wedding and wondering for a moment whether I’d been in a fight. Then I saw you in the bed wi’ me and knew I had.”

“Didn’t slow you down any,” I remarked, dodging a pale stone in my path. “I seem to recall being rather rudely awakened next morning.”

“Rude? I was verra gentle with ye. More than ye were with me,” he added, a distinct grin in his voice. “I told Ian so.”

“You told Ian what?”

“Well, he wanted advice, and so I—”

“Advice? Ian?” To my certain knowledge, the boy had begun his sexual career at the age of fourteen, with a prostitute of similar age in an Edinburgh brothel, and hadn’t looked back. Besides his Mohawk wife, there were at least half a dozen other liaisons that I knew of, and I was sure I didn’t know them all.

“Aye. He wanted to know how to deal kindly wi’ Rachel, her bein’ virgin. Something new to him,” he added wryly.

I laughed.

“Well, they’ll be having an interesting night of it, then—all of them.” I told him about Dottie’s request in camp, Rachel’s advent, and our ad hoc session of premarital counseling.

“Ye told them what?” He snorted with amusement. “Ye make me say, ‘Oh, God,’ all the time, Sassenach, and it’s mostly not to do wi’ bed at all.”

“I can’t help it if you’re naturally disposed to that expression,” I said. “You do say it in bed with no little frequency. You even said it on our wedding night. Repeatedly. I remember.”

“Well, little wonder, Sassenach, wi’ all the things ye did to me on our wedding night.”

“What I did to you?” I said, indignant. “What on earth did I do to you?”

“Ye bit me,” he said instantly.

“Oh, I did not! Where?”

“Here and there,” he said evasively, and I elbowed him. “Oh, all right—ye bit me on the lip when I kissed ye.”

“I don’t recall doing that at all,” I said, eyeing him. His features were invisible, but the moonglow off the water as he walked cast his bold, straightnosed profile in silhouette. “I remember you kissing me for quite a long time while you were trying to unbutton my gown, but I’m sure I didn’t bite you then.”

“No,” he said thoughtfully, and ran a hand lightly down my back. “It was later. After I went out to fetch ye some food, and Rupert and Murtagh and the rest all chaffed me. I know, because it was when I drank some o’ the wine I’d fetched back, I noticed it burned the cut in my lip. And I bedded ye again before I got round to the wine, so it must ha’ been that time.”

“Ha,” I said. “By that time, you wouldn’t have noticed if I’d bitten your head off like a praying mantis. You’d got it properly up your nose and thought you knew everything.”

He put an arm round my shoulders, pulled me close, and whispered in my ear, “I’d got it properly up you, a nighean. And ye weren’t noticing all that much yourself, besides what was goin’ on between your legs.”

“Rather hard to ignore that sort of carry-on,” I said primly.

He gave the breath of a laugh and, stopping under a tree, gathered me in and kissed me. He had a lovely soft mouth.

“Well, I willna deny ye taught me my business, Sassenach,” he murmured. “And ye made a good job of it.”

“You caught on reasonably quickly,” I said. “Natural talent, I suppose.”

“If it was a matter of special training, Sassenach, the human race would ha’ died out long since.” He kissed me again, taking more time over it.

“D’ye think Denny kens what he’s about?” he asked, letting go. “He’s a virtuous wee man, aye?”

“Oh, I’m sure he knows everything he needs to,” I protested. “He’s a physician, after all.”

Jamie gave a cynical laugh.

“Aye. While he may see the odd whore now and then, it’s likely in the way of his profession, not hers. Besides . . .” He moved close and, putting his hands through the pocket slits in my skirt, took a firm and interesting grip on my bottom. “Do they teach ye in medical college how to spread your wife’s wee hams and lick her from tailbone to navel?”

“I didn’t teach you that one!”

“Indeed ye didn’t. And you’re a physician, no?”

“That—I’m sure that doesn’t make any sense. Are you drunk, Jamie?” “Dinna ken,” he said, laughing. “But I’m sure you are, Sassenach. Let’s go home,” he whispered, leaning close and drawing his tongue up the side of my neck. “I want ye to make me say, ‘Oh, God,’ for ye.”

“That . . . could be arranged.” I’d cooled down during our walk, but the last five minutes had lit me like a candle, and if I’d wanted to go home and take off my stays before, I was now wondering whether I could wait that long.

“Good,” he said, pulling his hands out of my skirt. “And then I’ll see what I can make you say, mo nighean donn.”

“See if you can make me say, ‘Don’t stop.’”