The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle: Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, Drums of Autumn, The Fiery Cross, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, An Echo in the Bone

AN EXAMINATION OF CONSCIENCE

Something dark landed on the path in front of us with a soft plop! and I stopped abruptly, clutching his arm.

“Frog,” Jamie said, unperturbed. “D’ye hear them singing?”

“Singing” wasn’t the word that would have struck me about the chorus of croaks and grunts from the reedbeds near the river. On the other hand, Jamie was tone deaf, and made no bones about it.

He extended the toe of his shoe and gently prodded the squat dark shape.

“ ‘Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax,’ ” he quoted. “ ‘Brekekekex, ko-ax!’ ” The shape hopped away and disappeared into the moist plants by the path.

“I always knew you had a gift for tongues,” I said, amused. “Didn’t know you spoke frog, though.”

“Well, I’m no ways fluent,” he said modestly. “Though I’ve a fine accent, and I say it myself.”

I laughed, and he squeezed my hand and let it go. The brief spark of the joke faded, failing to kindle conversation, and we walked on, physically together but miles apart in thought.

I should have been exhausted, but adrenaline was still coursing through my veins. I felt the exultation that comes with the completion of a successful bit of surgery, to say nothing of a little standard alcoholic intoxication. The effect of it all was to make me slightly wobbly on my pins, but with an acute and vivid awareness of everything around me.

There was an ornamental seat under the trees near the dock, and it was to this that Jamie led me, into the shadows. He sank onto the marble bench with a deep sigh, reminding me that I wasn’t the only one for whom it had been an eventful evening.

I looked around with exaggerated attention, then sat down beside him.

“We’re alone and unobserved,” I said. “Do you want to tell me what the hell is going on now?”

“Oh, aye.” He straightened, stretching his back. “I should have said something to ye sooner, only I didna quite expect she would do such a thing.” He reached out and found my hand in the dark.

“It’s not anything wrong, exactly, as I told ye. It’s only that when Ulysses brought me the plaid and dirk and the brooch, he told me that Jocasta meant to make an announcement at the dinner tonight—to tell everyone that she meant to make me heir to … this.”

His gesture took in the house and fields behind us—and everything else: the river mooring, the orchard, the gardens, the stables, the endless acres of resinous pines, the sawmill and the turpentine camp—and the forty slaves who worked them.

I could see the whole thing unfolding as Jocasta had no doubt envisioned it; Jamie sitting at the head of the table, dressed in Hector Cameron’s tartan, wearing his blade and his brooch—that brooch with the Camerons’ unsubtle clan adjuration “Unite!”—surrounded by Hector’s old colleagues and comrades, all eager to welcome their friend’s younger kinsman into his place.

Let her make such an announcement, in that company of loyal Scots, well lubricated with the late Hector’s fine whisky, and they would have acclaimed him on the spot as the master of River Run, anointed him with boar’s fat and crowned him with beeswax candles.

It had been a thoroughly MacKenzie-like plan, I thought; audacious, dramatic—and taking no account of the wishes of the persons involved.

“And if she had,” he said, echoing my thoughts with uncanny precision, “I should have found it verra awkward to decline the honor.”

“Yes, very.”

He sprang suddenly to his feet, too restless to stay still. Without speaking, he held out a hand to me; I rose beside him and we turned back into the orchard path, circling the formal gardens. The lanterns lit for the party had been removed, their candles thriftily snuffed for later use.

“Why did Ulysses tell you?” I wondered aloud.

“Ask yourself, Sassenach,” he said. “Who is master now, at River Run?”

“Oh?” I said, and then, “Oh!”

“Oh, indeed,” he said dryly. “My aunt is blind; who has the keeping of the accounts, the running of the household? She may decide what things should be done—but who is to say whether they are done? Who is always at her hand to tell her aught that happens, whose words are in her ear, whose judgment does she trust above all others?”

“I see.” I stared down at the ground, thinking. “You don’t suppose he’s been fiddling the accounts or anything sordid like that?” I hoped not; I liked Jocasta’s butler very much, and had thought there was both fondness and respect between them; I didn’t like to think of his cold-bloodedly cheating her.

Jamie shook his head.

“He is not. I’ve been over the ledgers and accounts, and everything is in order—verra good order indeed. I’m sure he is an honest man and a faithful servant—but he wouldna be human, to welcome giving up his place to a stranger.”

He snorted briefly.

“My aunt may be blind, but yon black man sees clear enough. He didna say a word to prevent me, or persuade me of anything: only told me what my aunt meant to do, and then left it to me what I should do. Or not.”

“You think he knew that you wouldn’t—” I stopped there, because I wasn’t sure myself that he wouldn’t. Pride, caution, or both might have caused him to want to thwart Jocasta’s plan, but that didn’t mean he meant to reject her offer, either.

He didn’t reply, and a small cold chill ran through me. I shivered, in spite of the warm summer air, and took his arm as we walked, seeking reassurance in the solid feel of his flesh beneath my fingers.

It was late July, and the scent of ripening fruit from the orchard was sweet, so heavy on the air that I could almost taste the clean, crisp tang of new apples. I thought of temptation—and the worm that lay hidden beneath a shining skin.

Temptation not only for him, but for me. For him, the chance to be what he was made for by nature, what fate had denied him. He was born and bred to this: the stewardship of a large estate, the care of the people on it, a place of respect among men of substance, his peers. More importantly, the restoration of clan and family. I am already part of it, he’d said.

He cared nothing for wealth, of itself; I knew that. Neither did I think he wanted power; if he did, knowing what I knew about the future’s shape, he would have chosen to go north, to seek a place among the founders of a nation.

But he had been a laird once. He had told me very little of his time in prison, but one thing he had said rang in my memory. Of the men who shared his confinement, he said—They were mine. And the having of them kept me alive. And I remembered what Ian had said of Simon Fraser: “Care for his men is now his only link with humanity.”

Yes, Jamie needed men. Men to lead, to care for, to defend and to fight with. But not to own.

Past the orchard, still in silence, and down the long walk of herbaceous borders, with the scents of lily and lavender, anemone and roses, so pungent and heady that simply to walk through the hot, heavy air was like throwing oneself headlong onto a bed of fragrant petals.

Oh, River Run was a garden of earthly delight, all right … but I had called a black man friend, and left my daughter in his care.

Thinking of Joe Abernathy, and Brianna, gave me a strange sense of dislocated double vision, of existing in two places at once. I could see their faces in my mind, hear their voices in my inner ear. And yet reality was the man beside me, kilt swinging with his stride, head bent in anxious thought.

And that was my temptation: Jamie. Not the inconsequentials of soft beds or gracious rooms, silk gowns or social deference. Jamie.

If he did not take Jocasta’s offer, he must do something else. And “something else” was most likely William Tryon’s dangerous lure of land and men. Better than Jocasta’s generous offer, in its way; what he built would be his own, the legacy he wanted to leave for Brianna. If he lived to build it.

I was still living on two planes. In this one, I could hear the whisper of his kilt where it brushed my skirt, feel the humid warmth of his body, warmer even than the heated air. I could smell the musky scent of him that made me want to pull him from his thoughts into the border, unbelt him and let the plaid fall from his shoulders, pull down my bodice and press my breasts against him, take him down half-naked and wholly roused among the damp green plants, and force him from his thoughts to mine.

But on the plane of memory, I smelled yew trees and the wind from the sea, and under my fingers was no warm man, but the cold, smooth granite of a tombstone with his name.

I didn’t speak. Neither did he.

We had made a complete circle by now, and come back to the river’s edge, where gray stone steps led down and disappeared under a lapping sheen of water; even so far upstream, the faint echoes of the tide could be felt.

There was a boat moored there; a small rowboat, fit for solitary fishing or a leisurely excursion.

“Will ye come for a row?”

“Yes, why not?” I thought he must feel the same desire I had—to get away from the house and Jocasta, to get enough distance in which to think clearly, without danger of interruption.

I came down, putting my hand on his arm for balance. Before I could step into the boat, though, he turned toward me. Pulling me to him, he kissed me, gently, once, then held me against his body, his chin resting on my head.

“I don’t know,” he said quietly, in answer to my unspoken questions. He stepped into the boat and offered me a hand.

He was silent while we made our way out onto the river. It was a dark, moonless night, but the reflections of starlight from the surface of the river gave enough light to see, once my eyes had adapted to the shifting glimmer of water and tree-shadow.

“Ye dinna mean to say anything?” he asked abruptly, at last.

“It’s not my choice to make,” I said, feeling a tightness in my chest that had nothing to do with stays.

“No?”

“She’s your aunt. It’s your life. It has to be your choice.”

“And you’ll be a spectator, will you?” He grunted as he spoke, digging with the oars as he pulled upstream. “Is it not your life? Or do ye not mean to stay with me, after all?”

“What do you mean, not stay?” I sat up, startled.

“Perhaps it will be too much for you.” His head was bent over the oars; I couldn’t see his face.

“If you mean what happened at the sawmill—”

“No, not that.” He heaved back on the oars, shoulders broadening under his linen, and gave me a crooked smile. “Death and disaster wouldna trouble ye ower-much, Sassenach. But the small things, day by day … I see ye flinch, when the black maid combs your hair, or when the boy takes your shoes away to clean. And the slaves who work in the turpentine camp. That troubles ye, no?”

“Yes. It does. I’m—I can’t own slaves. I’ve told you—”

“Aye, ye have.” He rested on the oars for a moment, brushing a lock of hair out of his face. His eyes met mine squarely.

“And if I chose to do this, Sassenach … could ye stay by me, and watch, and do nothing—for there is nothing that could be done, until my aunt should die. Perhaps not even then.”

“What do you mean?”

“She will not free her slaves—how should she? I could not, while she lived.”

“But once you had inherited the place …” I hesitated. Beyond the ghoulish aspects of discussing Jocasta’s death, there was the more concrete consideration that that event was unlikely to occur for some time; Jocasta was little more than sixty, and aside from her blindness, in vigorous health.

I suddenly saw what he meant; could I bring myself to live, day after day, month after month, year after year, as an owner of slaves? I could not pretend otherwise, could take no refuge in the notion that I was only a guest, an outsider.

I bit my lip, in order not to cry out instant denial.

“Even then,” he said, answering my partial argument. “Did ye not know that a slave owner cannot free his slaves without the written permission of the Assembly?”

“He what?” I stared blankly at him. “Whyever not?”

“The plantation owners go in fear of an armed insurrection of Negroes,” he said. “And d’ye blame them?” he added sardonically.

“Slaves are forbidden to carry weapons, save tools such as tree knives, and there are the bloodshed laws to prevent their use.” He shook his head. “Nay, the last thing the Assembly would allow is a large group of free blacks let loose upon the countryside. Even if a man wishes to manumit one of his slaves, and is given permission to do so, the freed slave is required to leave the colony within a short time—or he may be captured and enslaved by anyone who chooses to take him.”

“You’ve thought about it,” I said slowly.

“Haven’t you?”

I didn’t answer. I trailed my hand in the water, a little wave purling up my wrist. No, I hadn’t thought about the prospect. Not consciously, because I hadn’t wanted to face the choice that was now being laid before me.

“I suppose it would be a great chance,” I said, my voice sounding strained and unnatural to my ears. “You’d be in charge of everything …”

“My aunt is not a fool,” he interrupted, with a slight edge to his voice. “She would make me heir, but not owner in her place. She would use me to do those things she cannot—but I would be no more than her cat’s-paw. True, she would ask my opinion, listen to my advice; but nothing would be done, and she didna wish it so.”

He shook his head.

“Her husband is dead. Whether she was fond of him or no, she is mistress here now, with none to answer to. And she enjoys the taste of power too well to spit it out.”

He was plainly correct in this assessment of Jocasta Cameron’s character, and therein lay the key to her plan. She needed a man; someone to go into those places she could not go, to deal with the Navy, to handle the chores of a large estate that she could not manage because of her blindness.

At the same time, she patently did not want a husband; someone who would usurp her power and dictate to her. Had he not been a slave, Ulysses could have acted for her—but while he could be her eyes and ears, he could not be her hands.

No, Jamie was the perfect choice; a strong, competent man, able to command respect among peers, compel obedience in subordinates. One knowledgeable in the management of land and men. Furthermore, a man bound to her by kinship and obligation, there to do her bidding—but essentially powerless. He would be held in thrall by dependence upon her bounty, and by the rich bribe of River Run itself; a debt that need not be paid until the matter was no longer of any earthly concern to Jocasta Cameron.

There was an increasing lump in my throat as I sought for words. I couldn’t, I thought. I couldn’t manage it. But I couldn’t face the alternative, either; I couldn’t urge him to reject Jocasta’s offer, knowing it would send him to Scotland, to meet an unknown death.

“I can’t say what you should do,” I finally said, my voice barely audible above the regular lap of the oars.

There was an eddy pool, where a large tree had fallen into the water, its branches forming a trap for all the debris that drifted downstream. Jamie made for this, backing the rowboat neatly into quiet water. He let down the oars, and wiped a sleeve across his forehead, breathing heavily from exertion.

The night was quiet around us, with little sound but the lapping of water, and the occasional scrape of submerged tree branches against the hull. At last he reached out and touched my chin.

“Your face is my heart, Sassenach,” he said softly, “and love of you is my soul. But you’re right; ye canna be my conscience.”

In spite of everything, I felt a lightening of spirit, as though some indefinable burden had dropped away.

“Oh, I’m glad,” I said, adding impulsively, “it would be a terrible strain.”

“Oh, aye?” He looked mildly startled. “Ye think me verra wicked, then?”

“You’re the best man I’ve ever met,” I said. “I only meant … it’s such a strain, to try to live for two people. To try to make them fit your ideas of what’s right … you do it for a child, of course, you have to, but even then, it’s dreadfully hard work. I couldn’t do it for you—it would be wrong even to try.”

I’d taken him back more than a little. He sat for some moments, his face half turned away.

“Do ye really think me a good man?” he said at last. There was a queer note in his voice, that I couldn’t quite decipher.

“Yes,” I said, with no hesitation. Then added, half jokingly, “Don’t you?”

After a long pause, he said, quite seriously, “No, I shouldna think so.”

I looked at him, speechless, no doubt with my mouth hanging open.

“I am a violent man, and I ken it well,” he said quietly. He spread his hands out on his knees; big hands, which could wield sword and dagger with ease, or choke the life from a man. “So do you—or ye should.”

“You’ve never done anything you weren’t forced to do!”

“No?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, but even as I spoke, a shadow of doubt clouded my words. Even when done from the most urgent necessity, did such things not leave a mark on the soul?

“Ye wouldna hold me in the same estimation as, say, a man like Stephen Bonnet? He might well say he acted from necessity.”

“If you think you have the slightest thing in common with Stephen Bonnet, you’re dead wrong,” I said firmly.

He shrugged, half impatient, and shifted restlessly on the narrow bench.

“There’s nay much to choose between Bonnet and me, save that I have a sense of honor that he lacks. What else keeps me from turning thief?” he demanded. “From plundering those whom I might? It is in me to do it—my one grandsire built Leoch on the gold of those he robbed in the Highland passes; the other built his fortune on the bodies of women whom he forced for their wealth and titles.”

He stretched himself, powerful shoulders rising dark against the shimmer of the water behind him. Then he suddenly took hold of the oars across his knees and flung them into the bottom of the boat, with a crash that made me jump.

“I am more than five-and-forty!” he said. “A man should be settled at that age, no? He should have a house, and some land to grow his food, and a bit of money put away to see him through his auld age, at the least.”

He took a deep breath; I could see the white bosom of his shirt rise with his swelling chest.

“Well, I dinna have a house. Or land. Or money. Not a croft, not a tattie-plot, not a cow or a sheep or a pig or a goat! I havena got a rooftree or a bedstead, or a pot to piss in!”

He slammed his fist down on the thwart, making the wooden seat vibrate under me.

“I dinna own the clothes I stand up in!”

There was a long silence, broken only by the thin song of crickets.

“You have me,” I said, in a small voice. It didn’t seem a lot.

He made a small sound in his throat that might have been either a laugh or a sob.

“Aye, I have,” he said. His voice was quivering a bit, though whether with passion or amusement, I couldn’t tell. “That’s the hell of it, aye?”

“It is?”

He threw up his hand in a gesture of profound impatience.

“If it was only me, what would it matter? I could live like Myers; go to the woods, hunt and fish for my living, and when I was too old, lie down under a peaceful tree and die, and let the foxes gnaw my bones. Who would care?”

He shrugged his shoulders with irritable violence, as though his shirt was too tight.

“But it’s not only me,” he said. “It’s you, and it’s Ian and it’s Duncan and it’s Fergus and it’s Marsali—God help me, there’s even Laoghaire to think of!”

“Oh, let’s don’t,” I said.

“Do ye not understand?” he said, in near desperation. “I would lay the world at your feet, Claire—and I have nothing to give ye!”

He honestly thought it mattered.

I sat looking at him, searching for words. He was half turned away, shoulders slumped in despair.

Within an hour, I had gone from anguish at the thought of losing him in Scotland, to a strong desire to bed him in the herbaceous borders, and from that to a pronounced urge to hit him on the head with an oar. Now I was back to tenderness.

At last I took one big, callused hand and slid forward so I knelt on the boards between his knees. I laid my head against his chest, and felt his breath stir my hair. I had no words, but I had made my choice.

“ ‘Whither thou goest,’ ” I said, “ ‘I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried.’ ” Be it Scottish hill or southern forest. “You do what you have to; I’ll be there.”

The water ran fast and shallow near the middle of the creek; I could see the boulders black just beneath the glinting surface. Jamie saw them, too, and pulled strongly for the far side, bringing us to rest against a shelving gravel bank, in a pool formed by the roots of a weeping willow. I leaned out and caught a branch of the willow, and wrapped the painter round it.

I had thought we would return to River Run, but evidently this expedition had some point beyond respite. We had continued upriver instead, Jamie pulling strongly against the slow current.

Left alone with my thoughts, I could only listen to the faint hiss of his breath, and wonder what he would do. If he chose to stay … well, it might not be as difficult as he thought. I didn’t underrate Jocasta Cameron, but neither did I underestimate Jamie Fraser. Both Colum and Dougal MacKenzie had tried to bend him to their will—and both had failed.

I had a moment’s qualm at the memory of my last sight of Dougal MacKenzie, mouthing soundless curses as he drowned in his own blood, Jamie’s dirk socketed at the base of his throat. I am a violent man, he’d said, you know it.

But he was still wrong; there was a difference between this man and Stephen Bonnet, I thought, watching the flex of his body on the oars, the grace and power of the sweep of his arms. He had several things beyond the honor that he claimed: kindness, courage … and a conscience.

I realized where we were going, as he backed with one oar, steering across the current toward the mouth of a wide creek, overhung with aspens. I had never approached by water before, but Jocasta had said it was not far.

I should not have been surprised; if he had come out tonight to confront his demons, it was a most appropriate place.

A little way above the creek mouth, the mill loomed dark and silent. There was a dim glow behind its bulk; light from the slave shanties near the woods. We were surrounded by the usual night noises, but the place seemed strangely quiet, in spite of the racket made by trees and frogs and water. Though it was night, the huge building seemed to cast a shadow—though this was plainly no more than my imagination.

“Places that are very busy in the daytime always seem particularly spooky at night,” I said, in an effort to break the mill’s silence.

“Do they?” Jamie sounded abstracted. “I didna much like that one in the daylight.”

I shuddered at the memory.

“Neither did I. I only meant—”

“Byrnes is dead.” He didn’t look at me; his face was turned toward the mill, half-hidden by the willow’s shadow.

I dropped the end of the tie rope.

“The overseer? When?” I said, shocked more by the abruptness than the revelation. “And how?”

“This afternoon. Campbell’s youngest lad brought the news just before sunset.”

“How?” I asked again. I gripped my knees, a double handful of ivory silk twisted in my fingers.

“It was the lockjaw.” His voice was casual, unemphatic. “A verra nasty way to die.”

He was right about that. I had never actually seen anyone die of tetanus myself, but I knew the symptoms well enough: restlessness and difficulty swallowing, developing into a progressive stiffening as the muscles of arms and legs and neck began to spasm. The spasms increased in severity and duration until the patient’s body was hard as wood, arched in an agony that came on and receded, came on again, went off, and at last came on in an endless tetany that could not be relaxed by anything save death.

“He died grinnin’, Ronnie Campbell said. But I shouldna think it was a happy death, forbye.” It was a grim joke, but there was little humor in his voice.

I sat up quite straight, feeling cold all down my spine in spite of the warmth of the night.

“It isn’t a quick death, either,” I said. Suspicion spread cold tentacles through my mind. “It takes days to die of tetanus.”

“It took Davie Byrnes five days, first to last.” If there had been any trace of humor in his voice to start with, it was gone now.

“You saw him,” I said, a small flicker of anger beginning to thaw the internal chill. “You saw him! And you didn’t tell me?”

I had dressed Byrnes’s injury—hideous, but not life-threatening—and had been told that he would be kept somewhere “safe” until the disturbance over the lynching had died down. Heartsick as I was over the matter, I had made no effort to inquire further after the overseer’s whereabouts or welfare; it was my own guilt at this neglect that made me angry, and I knew it—but the knowledge didn’t help.

“Could ye have done anything? I thought ye told me that the lockjaw was one of the things that couldna be helped, even in your time.” He wasn’t looking at me; I could see his profile turned toward the mill, head stamped in darker black against the lighter shadow of pale leaves.

I forced myself to let go of my skirt. I smoothed the crumpled patches over my knee, thinking dimly that Phaedre would have a terrible time ironing it.

“No,” I said, with a little effort. “No, I couldn’t have saved him. But I should have seen him; I might have eased him a little.”

Now he did look at me; I saw his head turn, and felt the shifting of his weight in the boat.

“You might,” he said evenly.

“And you wouldn’t let me—” I stopped, remembering his absences this past week, and his evasive replies when I had asked him where he’d been. I could imagine the scene all too well; the tiny, stifling attic room in Farquard Campbell’s house where I had dressed Byrnes’s injury. The racked figure on the bed, dying by inches under the cold eyes of those the law had made his unwilling allies, knowing that he died despised. The sense of cold came back, raising gooseflesh on my arms.

“No, I wouldna let Campbell send for you,” he said softly. “There’s the law, Sassenach—and there is justice. I ken the difference well enough.”

“There’s such a thing as mercy, too.” And had anyone asked, I would have called Jamie Fraser a merciful man. He had been, once. But the years between now and then had been hard ones—and compassion was a soft emotion, easily eroded by circumstance. I had thought he still had his kindness, though; and felt a queer pain at the thought of its loss. I shouldna think so, no. Had that been no more than honesty?

The boat had drifted halfway round, so that the drooping branch hung now between us. There was a small snort from the darkness behind the leaves.

“Blessed are the merciful,” he said, “for they shall find mercy. Byrnes wasn’t, and he didn’t. And as for me, once God had made his opinion of the man known, I didna think it right to interfere.”

“You think God gave him tetanus?”

“I canna think anyone else would have the imagination for it. Besides,” he went on, logically, “where else would ye look for justice?”

I searched for words, and failed to find any. Giving up, I returned to the only possible point of argument. I felt a little sick.

“You ought to have told me. Even if you didn’t think I could help, it wasn’t your business to decide—”

“I didna want ye to go.” His voice was still quiet, but there was a note of steel in it now.

“I know you didn’t! But it doesn’t matter whether you thought Byrnes deserved to suffer or—”

“Not for him!” The boat rocked suddenly as he moved, and I grasped the sides to keep my balance. He spoke violently.

“I didna care a fig whether Byrnes died easy or hard, but I’m no a monster of cruelty! I didna keep you from him to make him suffer; I kept ye away to protect you.”

I was relieved to hear this, but increasingly angry as the truth of what he’d done dawned on me.

“It wasn’t your business to decide that. If I’m not your conscience, it isn’t up to you to be mine!” I brushed angrily at the screen of willow fronds between us, trying to see him.

Suddenly a hand shot through the leaves and grabbed my wrist.

“It’s up to me to keep ye safe!”

I tried to jerk away, but he had a tight grip on me, and he wasn’t letting go.

“I am not a young girl who needs protection, nor yet an idiot! If there’s some reason for me not to do something, then tell me and I’ll listen. But you can’t decide what I’m to do and where I’m to go without even consulting me—I won’t stand for that, and you bloody well know it!”

The boat lurched, and with a huge rustling of leaves, he popped his head through the willow, glaring.

“I am not trying to say where ye’ll go!”

“You decided where I mustn’t go, and that’s just as bad!” The willow leaves slid back over his shoulders as the boat moved, jarred by his violence, and we revolved slowly, coming out of the tree’s shadow.

He loomed in front of me, massive as the mill, his head and shoulders blotting out a good bit of the scenery behind him. The long, straight nose was an inch from mine, and his eyes had gone narrow. They were a dark enough blue to be black in this light, and looking into them at close range was most unnerving.

I blinked. He didn’t.

He had let go of my wrist when he came through the leaves. Now he took hold of my upper arms. I could feel the heat of his grip through the cloth. His hands were very big and very hard, making me suddenly aware of the fragility of my own bones in contrast. I am a violent man.

He’d shaken me a time or two before, and I hadn’t liked it. In case he had something of the sort in mind just now, I inserted a foot between his legs, and prepared to give him a swift knee where it would do most good.

“I was wrong,” he said.

Tensed for violence, I had actually started to jerk my foot up, when I heard what he had said. Before I could stop, he had clamped his legs tight together, trapping my knee between his thighs.

“I said I was wrong, Sassenach,” he repeated, a touch of impatience in his voice. “D’ye mind?”

“Ah … no,” I said, feeling a trifle sheepish. I wiggled my knee tentatively, but he kept his thighs squeezed tight together.

“You wouldn’t consider letting go of me, would you?” I said politely. My heart was still pounding.

“No, I wouldn’t. Are ye going to listen to me now?”

“I suppose so,” I said, still polite. “It doesn’t look as though I’m very busy at the moment.”

I was close enough to see his mouth twitch. His thighs squeezed tighter for a moment, then relaxed.

“This is a verra foolish quarrel, and you know that as well as I do.”

“No, I don’t.” My anger had faded somewhat, but I wasn’t about to let him dismiss it altogether. “It’s maybe not important to you, but it is to me. It isn’t foolish. And you know it, or you wouldn’t be admitting you’re wrong.”

The twitch was more pronounced this time. He took a deep breath, and dropped his hands from my shoulders.

“Well, then. I should maybe have told ye about Byrnes; I admit it. But if I had, ye would have gone to him, even if I’d said it was the lockjaw—and I kent it was, I’ve seen it before. Even if there was nothing ye could do, you’d still go? No?”

“Yes. Even if—yes, I would have gone.”

In fact, there was nothing I could have done for Byrnes. Myers’s anesthetic wouldn’t have helped a case of tetanus. Nothing short of injectable curare would ease those spasms. I could have given him nothing more than the comfort of my presence, and it was doubtful that he would have appreciated that—or even noticed it. Still, I would have felt bound to offer it.

“I would have had to go,” I said, more gently. “I’m a doctor. Don’t you see?”

“Of course I do,” he said gruffly. “D’ye think I dinna ken ye at all, Sassenach?”

Without waiting for an answer, he went on.

“There was talk about what happened at the mill—there would be, aye? But with the man dying under your hands as he did—well, no one’s said straight out that ye might have killed him on purpose … but it’s easy to see folk thinkin’ it. Not thinkin’ that ye killed him, even—but only that ye might have thought to let him die on purpose, so as to save him from the rope.”

I stared at my hands, spread out on my knees, nearly as pale as the ivory satin under them.

“I did think of it.”

“I ken that fine, aye?” he said dryly. “I saw your face, Sassenach.”

I drew a deep breath, if only to assure myself that the air was no longer thick with the smell of blood. There was nothing but the turpentine scent of the pine forest, clean and astringent in my nostrils. I had a sudden vivid memory of the hospital, of the smell of pine-scented disinfectant that hung in the air, that overlaid but could not banish the underlying smell of sickness.

I took another cleansing breath, and raised my head to look at Jamie.

“And did you wonder if I’d killed him?”

He looked faintly surprised.

“Ye would have done as ye thought best.” He dismissed the minor question of whether I’d killed a man, in favor of the point at issue.

“But it didna seem wise for ye to preside over both deaths, if ye take my meaning.”

I did, and not for the first time I was aware of the subtle networks of which he was a part, in a way I could never be. This place in its way was as strange to him as it was to me; and yet he knew not only what people were saying—anyone could find that out, who cared to haunt tavern and market—but what they were thinking.

What was more irritating was that he knew what I was thinking.

“So ye see,” he said, watching me. “I kent Byrnes was sure to die, and ye couldna help. Yet if ye knew his trouble, ye’d surely go to him. And then he would die, and folk would maybe not say how strange it was, that both men had died under your hand, so to speak—but—”

“But they’d be thinking it,” I finished for him.

The twitch grew into a crooked smile.

“Folk notice you, Sassenach.”

I bit my lip. For good or for ill, they did, and the noticing had come close to killing me more than once.

He rose, and taking hold of a branch for balance, stepped out on the gravel and pulled the plaid up over his shoulder.

“I told Mrs. Byrnes I would fetch away her husband’s things from the mill,” he said. “Ye needna come, if ye dinna wish.”

The mill loomed against the star-spattered sky. It couldn’t have looked more sinister if it had tried. Whither thou goest, I will go.

I thought I knew now what he was doing. He had wanted to see it all, before making up his mind; see it with the knowledge that it might be his. Walking through the gardens and orchards, rowing past the acres of thick pines, visiting the mill—he was surveying the domain he was offered, weighing and evaluating, deciding what complications must be dealt with, and whether he could or would accept the challenge.

After all, I thought sourly, the Devil had insisted on showing Jesus everything He was passing up, taking Him up to the top of the Temple to gaze on the cities of the world. The only difficulty was that if Jamie decided to fling himself off, there wasn’t a legion of angels standing by to stop him dashing his foot—and everything else—against a slab of Scottish granite.

Only me.

“Wait,” I said, clambering out of the boat. “I’m coming, too.”

The lumber was still stacked in the millyard; no one had moved any of it since the last time I had been here. The dark took away all sense of perspective; the stacks of fresh timber were pale rectangles that seemed to float above an invisible ground, first distant, then suddenly looming close enough to brush my skirts. The air smelt of pinesap and sawdust.

I couldn’t see the ground under my own feet, for that matter, obscured as it was both by darkness and by my billowing ivory skirt. Jamie held my arm to keep me from stumbling. He never stumbled, of course. Perhaps living all his life without even the thought of light outside after sunset had given him some sort of radar, I thought; like a bat.

There was a fire burning, somewhere among the slave huts. It was very late; most would be sleeping. In the Indies, there would have been the nightlong sound of drums and keening; the slaves would have made lamentations for a fellow’s death, a festival of mourning to last the week. Here, there was nothing. No sound save the pine trees’ soughing, no flicker of movement save the faint light at the forest’s edge.

“They are afraid,” Jamie said softly, pausing to listen to the silence, as I did.

“Little wonder,” I said, half under my breath. “So am I.”

He made a small huffing sound that might have been amusement.

“So am I,” he muttered, “but not of ghosts.” He took my arm and pushed open the small man-door at the side of the mill before I could ask what he was afraid of.

The silence inside had a body to it. At first I thought it like the eerie quiet of dead battlefields, but then I realized the difference. This silence was alive. And whatever lived in the silence here, it wasn’t lying quiet. I thought I could still smell the blood, thick on the air.

Then I breathed deeply and thought again, cold horror rippling up my spine. I could smell blood. Fresh blood.

I gripped Jamie’s arm, but he had smelled it himself; his arm had gone hard under my hand, muscles tensed in wariness. Without a word, he detached himself from my grip, and vanished.

For a moment, I thought he truly had vanished, and nearly panicked, groping for him, my hand closing on the empty air where he’d stood. Then I realized that he had merely flung the dark plaid over his head, instantly hiding the paleness of face and linen shirt. I heard his step, quick and light on the dirt floor, and then that was gone too.

The air was hot and still, and thick with blood. A rank, sweet smell, with a metal taste on the back of the tongue. Exactly the same as it had been a week ago, conjuring hallucination. Still in the grip of a cold grue, I swung around and strained my eyes toward the far side of the cavernous room, half expecting to see the scene engraved on my memory materialize again out of darkness. The rope stretched tight from the lumber crane, the huge hook swaying with its groaning burden …

A groan rent the air, and I nearly bit my lip in two. My throat swelled with a swallowed scream; only the fear of drawing something to me kept me silent.

Where was Jamie? I longed to call out for him, but didn’t dare. My eyes had grown enough accustomed to the dark to make out the shadow of the saw blade, an amorphous blob ten feet away, but the far side of the room was a wall of blackness. I strained my eyes to see, realizing belatedly that in my pale dress, I was undoubtedly visible to anyone in the room with me.

The groan came again, and I started convulsively. My palms were sweating. It’s not! I told myself fiercely. It isn’t, it can’t be!

I was paralyzed with fear, and it took some moments for me to realize what my ears had told me. The sound hadn’t come from the blackness across the room, where the crane stood with its hook. It had come from somewhere behind me.

I whirled. The door we had come through was still open, a pale rectangle in the pitch-black. Nothing showed, nothing moved between me and the door. I took a quick step toward it and stopped. Every muscle in my legs strained to run like hell—but I couldn’t leave Jamie.

Again the sound, that same sobbing gasp of physical anguish; pain past the point of crying out. With it, a new thought popped into my mind; what if it was Jamie making the sound?

Shocked out of caution, I turned toward the sound and shouted his name, raising echoes from the roof high above.

“Jamie!” I cried again. “Where are you?”

“Here, Sassenach.” Jamie’s muffled voice came from somewhere to my left, calm but somehow urgent. “Come to me, will ye?”

It wasn’t him. Nearly shaking with relief at the sound of his voice, I blundered through the dark, not caring now what had made the sound, as long as it wasn’t Jamie.

My hand struck a wooden wall, groped blindly, and finally found a door, standing open. He was inside the overseer’s quarters.

I stepped through the door, and felt the change at once. The air was even closer, and much hotter, than that in the mill proper. The floor here was of wood, but there was no echo to my step; the air was dead still, suffocating. And the smell of blood was even stronger.

“Where are you?” I called again, low-voiced this time.

“Here,” came the reply, startlingly near at hand. “By the bed. Come and help me; it’s a lass.”

He was in the tiny bedroom. The small room was windowless, and lightless too. I found them by feel, Jamie kneeling on the wooden floor beside a narrow bed, and in the bed, a body.

It was a female, as he’d said; touch told me that at once. Touch told me also that she was exsanguinating. The cheek I brushed was cool and clammy. Everything else I touched was warm and wet; her clothing, the bedclothes, the mattress beneath her. I could feel wetness soaking through my skirt where I knelt on the floor.

I felt for a pulse in the throat and couldn’t find it. The chest moved slightly under my hand, the only sign of life beyond the faint sigh that went with it.

“It’s all right now,” I heard myself saying, and my voice was soothing, all trace of panic gone, though in truth there was more reason for it now. “We’re here, you’re not alone. What’s happened to you, can you tell me?”

All the time my hands were darting over head and throat and chest and stomach, pushing sodden clothes aside, searching blindly, frantically, for a wound to stanch. Nothing, no spurt of artery, no raw gash. And all the time, there was a faint but steady pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, like the sound of tiny feet running.

“Tell …” It was not so much a word as the articulation of a sigh. Then a catch, a sobbing breath indrawn.

“Who has done this to ye, lass?” Jamie’s disembodied voice came low and urgent. “Tell me, who?”

“Tell …”

I touched all the places where the great vessels lie close beneath the skin and found them whole. Seized her by an unresisting arm and lifted, thrust a hand beneath to feel her back. All the heat of her body was there; the bodice was damp with sweat, but not blood-soaked.

“It will be all right,” I said again. “You’re not alone. Jamie, hold her hand.” Hopelessness came down on me; I knew what it must be.

“I already have it,” he said to me, and “Dinna trouble, lass,” to her. “It will be all right, d’ye hear me?” Pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat. The tiny feet were slowing.

“Tell …”

I could not help, but nonetheless slid my hand beneath her skirt again, this time letting my fingers curve between the limp splayed thighs. She was still warm here, very warm. Blood flowed gently over my hand and through my fingers, hot and wet as the air around us, unstoppable as the water that flowed down the mill’s sluice.

“I … die …”

“I think ye are murdered, lass,” Jamie said to her, very gently. “Will ye not say who has killed you?”

Her breath came louder now, a soft rattle in her throat. Pit. Pat. Pit. Pat. The feet were tiptoeing softly now.

“Ser … geant. Tell … him …”

I drew my hand out from between her thighs and took her other hand in mine, heedless of the blood. It scarcely mattered now, after all.

“… tell …” came with sudden intensity, and then silence. A long silence, and then, another long, sighing breath. A silence, even longer. And a breath.

“I will,” said Jamie. His voice was no more than a whisper in the dark. “I will do it. I promise ye.”

Pit.

Pat.

They called it the “death drop,” in the Highlands; the sound of dripping water, heard in a house when one of the inhabitants was about to die. Not water dripping here, but a sure sign, nonetheless.

There was no more sound from the darkness. I couldn’t see Jamie, but felt the slight movement of the bed against my thighs as he leaned forward.

“God will forgive ye,” he whispered to the silence. “Go in peace.”

I could hear the buzzing the moment we stepped into the overseer’s quarters the next morning. In the huge, dusty silence of the mill, everything had been muffled in space and sawdust. But in this small, partitioned area the walls caught every sound and threw it back; our footsteps echoed from wooden floor to wooden ceiling. I felt like a fly sealed inside a snare drum, and suffered a moment’s claustrophobia, trapped as I was in the narrow passage between the two men.

There were only two rooms, separated by a short passage that led from the outdoors into the mill proper. On our right lay the larger room that had served the Byrneses for living and cooking, and on the left, the smaller bedroom, from which the noise was coming. Jamie took a deep breath, clasped his plaid to his face, and pulled open the bedroom door.

It looked like a blanket covering the bed, a blanket of gunmetal blue sparked with green. Then Jamie took a step into the room and the flies rose buzzing from their clotted meal in a swarm of gluttonous protest.

I bit back a cry of abhorrence and ducked, flailing at them. Bloated, slow-moving bodies hit my face and arms and bounced away, circling lazily through the thick air. Farquard Campbell made a Scottish noise of overpowering disgust that sounded like “Heuch!” then lowered his head and pushed past me, eyes slitted and lips pressed tight together, nostrils pinched to whiteness.

The tiny bedroom was hardly bigger than the coffin it had become. There were no windows, only cracks between the boards that let in a dim uncertain light. The atmosphere was hot and humid as a tropical greenhouse, thick with the rotting-sweet smell of death. I could feel the sweat snaking down my sides, ticklish as flies’ feet, and tried to breathe only through my mouth.

She had not been large; her body made only the slightest mound beneath the blanket we had laid over her the night before, for decency’s sake. Her head seemed big by contrast to the shrunken body, like a child’s stick figure with a round ball stuck on toothpick limbs.

Brushing away several flies too glutted to move, Jamie pulled back the blanket. The blanket, like everything else, was blotched and crusted, sodden at the foot. The human body, on average, contains eight pints of blood, but it seems a lot more when you spread it around.

I had seen her face briefly the night before, dead features lent an artificial glow by the light of the pine splinter Jamie held above her. Now she lay pallid and dank as a mushroom, blunt features emerging from a web of fine brown hair. It was impossible to tell her age, save that she was not old. Neither could I tell whether she had been attractive; there was no beauty of bone, but animation might have flushed the round cheeks and lent her deepset eyes a sparkle men might have found pretty. One man had, I thought. Pretty enough, anyway.

The men were murmuring together, bent over the still form. Mr. Campbell turned now to me, wearing a slight frown beneath his formal wig.

“You are reasonably sure, Mrs. Fraser, of the cause of death?”

“Yes.” Trying not to breathe the fetid air, I picked up the edge of the blanket, and turned it back, exposing the corpse’s legs. The feet were faintly blue and beginning to swell.

“I drew her skirt down, but I left everything else as it was,” I explained, pulling it up again.

My stomach muscles tightened automatically as I touched her. I had seen dead bodies before, and this was far from the most gruesome, but the hot climate and closed atmosphere had prevented the body from cooling much; the flesh of her thigh was as warm as mine, but unpleasantly flaccid.

I had left it where we found it, in the bed between her legs. A kitchen skewer, more than a foot long. It was covered in dried blood as well, but clearly visible.

“I … um … found no wound on the body,” I said, putting it as delicately as possible.

“Aye, I see.” Mr. Campbell’s frown seemed to lessen slightly. “Ah, well, at least ’tis likely not a case of deliberate murder, then.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but caught a warning look from Jamie. Not noticing, Mr. Campbell went on.

“The question remains whether the poor woman will have done it herself, or met her death by the agency of another. What think ye, Mistress Fraser?”

Jamie narrowed his eyes at me over Campbell’s shoulder, but the warning was unnecessary; we had discussed the matter last night, and come to our own conclusions—also to the conclusion that our opinions need not be shared with the forces of law and order in Cross Creek; not just yet. I pinched my nose slightly under pretext of the smell, in order to disguise any telltale alteration of my expression. I was a very bad liar.

“I’m sure she did it by herself,” I said firmly. “It takes very little time to bleed to death in this manner, and as Jamie told you, she was still alive when we found her. We were outside the mill, talking, for some time before we came in; no one would have been able to leave without our seeing them.”

On the other hand, a person might quite easily have hidden in the other room, and crept out quietly in the dark while we were occupied in comforting the dying woman. If this possibility did not occur to Mr. Campbell, I saw no reason to draw it to his attention.

Jamie had rearranged his features into an expression of gravity suitable to the occasion by the time Mr. Campbell turned back to him. The older man shook his head in regret.

“Ah, poor unfortunate lass! I suppose we can but be relieved that no one else has shared her sin.”

“What about the man who fathered the child she was trying to get rid of?” I said, with a certain amount of acidity. Mr. Campbell looked startled, but pulled himself quickly back together.

“Um … quite so,” he said, and coughed. “Though we do not know whether she were married—”

“So ye do not know the woman yourself, sir?” Jamie butted in before I could make any further injudicious remarks.

Campbell shook his head.

“She is not the servant of Mr. Buchanan or the MacNeills, I am sure. Nor Judge Alderdyce. Those are the only plantations near enough from which she might have walked. Though it does occur to me to wonder why she should have come to this particular place to perform such a desperate act …”

It had occurred to Jamie and me, too. To prevent Mr. Campbell’s taking the next step in this line of inquiry, Jamie intervened again.

“She said verra little, but she did mention a ‘Sergeant.’ ‘Tell the Sergeant’ were her words. Do ye perhaps have a thought whom she might mean by that, sir?”

“I think there is an army sergeant in charge of the guard on the royal warehouse. Yes, I am sure of it.” Mr. Campbell brightened slightly. “Ah! Nay doubt the woman was attached in some way to the military establishment. Depend upon it, that is the explanation. Though I still wonder why she—”

“Mr. Campbell, do pardon me—I’m afraid I’m feeling a bit faint,” I interrupted, laying a hand on his sleeve. This was no lie; I hadn’t slept or eaten. I felt light-headed from the heat and the smell, and I knew I must look pale.

“Will ye see my wife outside, sir?” Jamie said. He gestured toward the bed and its pathetic burden. “I’ll bring the poor lass along as I may.”

“Pray do not trouble yourself, Mr. Fraser,” Campbell protested, already turning to usher me out. “My servant can fetch out the body.”

“It is my aunt’s mill, sir, and thus my concern.” Jamie spoke politely, but firmly. “I shall attend to it.”

Phaedre was waiting outside, by the wagon.

“I told you that place got haints,” she said, surveying me with an air of grim satisfaction. “You white as ary sheet, ma’am.” She handed me a flask of spiced wine, wrinkling her nose delicately in my direction.

“You smellin’ worse than what you was last night, and you look like you come from a pig-killin’ then. Sit you down in the shade here and drink that up; fix you up peart.” She glanced over my shoulder. I looked back as well, and saw that Campbell had reached the shade of the sycamores by the creek bank, and was deep in conversation with his servant.

“Found her,” Phaedre said at once, dropping her voice. Her eyes cut sideways, toward the small cluster of slave huts, barely visible from this side of the mill.

“You’re sure? You didn’t have much time.” I took a mouthful of wine and held it, glad of the sharp bouquet that rose up the back of my throat, cleansing my palate of the taste of death.

Phaedre nodded, her glance moving to the men under the trees.

“Didn’t need much. Walked down by them houses, saw one door hangin’ open, little bits of trash scattered round like somebody done left in a hurry. I find a picanin’ and ask him who livin’ there, he tell me Pollyanne live there, but she gone now, he don’t know where. Ask him when she leave, he say she there for supper last night, this morning she gone, nobody see her.” Her eyes met mine, dark with questions. “Now you know, what you mean to do?”

A bloody good question, and one for which I had no answer at all. I swallowed the wine, and along with it, a rising sense of panic.

“All the slaves here must know she’s gone; how long before anyone else finds out? Whose business will it be to know such things, now that Byrnes is dead?”

Phaedre raised one shoulder in a graceful shrug.

“Anybody come askin’ find out right quick. But whose business it be to ask—” She nodded toward the mill. We had left the small door to the living quarters open; Jamie was coming out, a blanket-wrapped burden cradled in his arms.

“Reckon it’s his,” she said.

I am already part of it. He had known, even before the interrupted dinner party. With no formal announcement, with neither invitation nor acceptance of the role, he fit the place, the part, like a piece slipping into a jigsaw puzzle. Already he was the master of River Run—if he wanted to be.

Campbell’s servant had come to help with the body; Jamie sank to one knee by the edge of the mill flume, surrendering his burden gently to the earth. I gave Phaedre back the flask, with a nod of thanks.

“Will you fetch the things from the wagon?”

Without a word, Phaedre went to get the things I had brought—a blanket, a bucket, clean rags, and a jar of herbs—while I went to join Jamie.

He was kneeling by the creek, washing his hands, a little way upstream from where the body lay. It was foolish to wash in preparation for what I was about to do, but habit was strong; I knelt beside him and dipped my hands as well, letting the cold fresh rush of water carry away the touch of clammy flesh.

“I was right,” I said to him, low-voiced. “It was a woman called Pollyanne; she’s run away in the night.”

He grimaced, rubbing his palms briskly together, and glanced over his shoulder. Campbell was standing over the corpse now, a slight frown of distaste still on his face.

Jamie scowled in concentration, gaze returning to his hands. “Well, that’ll put a cocked hat on it, aye?” He bent and splashed his face, then shook his head violently, flinging drops like a wet dog. Then he gave me a nod, and stood up, wiping his face with the end of his stained plaid.

“See to the lassie, aye, Sassenach?” He stalked purposefully toward Mr. Campbell, plaid swinging.

There was no use saving any of her clothes; I cut them off. Undressed, she looked to be in her twenties. Undernourished; ribs countable, arms and legs slender and pale as stripped branches. For all that, she was still surprisingly heavy, and the remnants of rigor mortis made her hard to handle. Phaedre and I were both sweating heavily before we finished, and strands of hair were escaping from the knot at my neck and pasting themselves to my flushed cheeks.

At least the heavy labor kept conversation to a minimum, leaving me in peace with my thoughts. Not that my thoughts were particularly peaceful.

A woman seeking to “slip a bairn,” as Jamie put it, would do it in her own room, her own bed, if she were doing it alone. The only reason for the stranger to have come to a remote place such as this was to meet the person who would do the office for her—a person who could not come to her.

We must look for a slave in the mill quarters, I had told him, one maybe with the reputation of a midwife, someone women would talk about among themselves, would recommend in whispers.

The fact that I had apparently been proved right gave me no satisfaction. The abortionist had fled, fearing that the woman would have told us who had done the deed. If she had stayed put and said nothing, Farquard Campbell might have taken my word for it that the woman must have done it herself—he could hardly prove otherwise. If anyone else found that the slave Pollyanne had run, though—and of course they would find out!—and she were caught and questioned, the whole matter would no doubt come out at once. And then what?

I shuddered, despite the heat. Did the law of bloodshed apply in this case? It certainly ought, I thought, grimly sluicing yet another bucket of water over the splayed white limbs, if quantity counted for anything.

Damn the woman, I thought, using irritation to cover a useless pity. I could do nothing for her now save try to tidy up the mess she had left—in every sense of the word. And perhaps try to save the other player in this tragedy; the hapless woman who had done murder unmeaning, in the guise of help, and who stood now to pay for that mistake with her own life.

Jamie had gotten the wine flask, I saw; he was passing it back and forth with Farquard Campbell, the two talking intently, occasionally turning to gesture at the mill or back toward the river or the town.

“You got anything I can comb her out with, ma’am?”

Phaedre’s question pulled my attention back to the job at hand. She was squatting by the body, fingering the tangled hair critically.

“Wouldn’t like to put her in the ground lookin’ like this, poor child,” she said, shaking her head.

I thought Phaedre was likely not much older than the dead woman—and in any case, it scarcely mattered that the corpse should go to its grave well-groomed. Still, I groped in my pocket and came up with a small ivory comb, with which Phaedre set to work, humming under her breath.

Mr. Campbell was taking his leave. I heard the creak of his team’s harness, and their small stamping of anticipation as the groom settled himself. Mr. Campbell saw me and bowed deeply, hat held low. I sketched him a curtsy in return, and watched with relief as he drove away.

Phaedre, too, had stopped her work and was gazing after the departing carriage.

She said something under her breath, and spat in the dust. It was done without apparent malice; a charm against evil that I’d seen before. She looked up at me.

“Mister Jamie best find that Pollyanne afore sunset. Be wild animals in the piney wood, and Mister Ulysses say that woman worth two hundred pound when Miss Jocasta buy her. She don’t know the woods, that Pollyanne; she be come straight from Africa, no more’n a year agone.”

Without further comment, she bent her head over her task, fingers moving dark and quick as a spider among the fine silk of our corpse’s hair.

I bent to my work as well, realizing with something of a shock that the web of circumstance that enmeshed Jamie had touched me, too. I did not stand outside, as I had thought, and could not if I wanted to.

Phaedre had helped me to find Pollyanne not because she trusted or liked me—but because I was the master’s wife. Pollyanne must be found and hidden. And Jamie, she thought, would of course find Pollyanne and hide her—she was his property; or Jocasta’s, which in Phaedre’s eyes would amount to the same thing.

At last, the stranger lay clean, on the worn linen sheet I had brought for a shroud. Phaedre had combed her hair and braided it; I took up the big stone jar of herbs. I had brought them as much from habit as from reason, but now was glad of them; not so much for aid against the progress of decomposition, but as the sole—and necessary—touch of ceremony.

It was difficult to reconcile this clumsy, reeking lump of clay with the small, cold hand that had grasped mine; with the anguished whisper that had breathed “Tell …” in the smothering dark. And yet there was the memory of her, of the last of her living blood spilling hot in my hand, more vivid in my mind than this sight of her empty flesh, naked in the hands of strangers.

There was no minister nearer than Halifax; she would be buried without rites—and yet, what need had she of rites? Funeral rituals are for the comfort of the bereaved. It was unlikely that she had left anyone behind to grieve, I thought; for if she had had anyone so close to her—family, husband, or even lover—I thought she would not now be dead.

I had not known her, would not miss her—but I grieved her; her and her child. And so for myself, rather than for her, I knelt by her body and scattered herbs: fragrant and bitter, leaves of rue and hyssop flowers, rosemary, thyme and lavender. A bouquet from the living to the dead—small token of remembrance.

Phaedre watched in silence, kneeling. Then she reached out and with gentle fingers, laid the shroud across the girl’s dead face. Jamie had come to watch. Without a word, he stooped and picked her up, and bore her to the wagon.

He didn’t speak until I had climbed up and settled myself on the seat beside him. He snapped the reins on the horses’ backs, and clicked his tongue.

“Let us go and find the Sergeant,” he said.

There were, of course, a few things to be attended to first. We returned to River Run to leave Phaedre, and Jamie disappeared to find Duncan and change his stained clothing, while I went to check on my patient and to acquaint Jocasta with the morning’s events.

I needn’t have troubled on either account; Farquard Campbell was sitting in the morning room sipping tea with Jocasta. John Myers, his loins swathed in a Cameron plaid, was lounging at full length upon the green velvet chaise, cheerfully munching scones. Judging from the unaccustomed cleanliness of the bare legs and feet extending from the tartan, someone had taken advantage of his temporary state of unconsciousness the night before to administer a bath.

“My dear.” Jocasta’s head turned at my step, and she smiled, though I saw the twin lines of concern etched between her brows. “Sit you down, child, and take some nourishment; ye will have had no rest last night—and a dreadful morning, it seems.”

I might ordinarily have found it either amusing or insulting to be called “child;” under the circumstances, it was oddly comforting. I sank gratefully into an armchair, and let Ulysses pour me a cup of tea, wondering meanwhile just how much Farquard had told Jocasta—and how much he knew.

“How are you this morning?” I asked my patient. He appeared to be in amazingly good condition, considering his alcoholic intake of the night before. His color was good, and so was his appetite, judging from the quantity of crumbs on the plate by his side.

He nodded cordially at me, jaws champing, and swallowed with some effort.

“Astounding fine, ma’am, I thank ye kindly. A mite sore round the privates”—he tenderly patted the area in question—“but a sweeter job of stitchin’ I’ve not been privileged to see. Mr. Ulysses was kind enough to fetch me a lookin’ glass,” he explained. He shook his head in some awe. “Never seen my own behind before; as much hair as I got back there, ye’d think my daddy’d been a bear!”

He laughed heartily at this, and Farquard Campbell buried a smile in his teacup. Ulysses turned away with the tray, but I saw the corner of his mouth twitch.

Jocasta laughed out loud, blind eyes crinkling in amusement.

“They do say it’s a wise bairn that kens its father, John Quincy. But I kent your mother weel, and I’ll say I think it unlikely.”

Myers shook his head, but his eyes twinkled over the thick growth of beard.

“Well, my mama did admire a hairy man. Said it was a rare comfort on a cold winter’s night.” He peered down the open neck of his shirt, viewing the underbrush on display with some satisfaction. “Might be so, at that. The Indian lassies seem to like it—though it’s maybe only the novelty, come to think on it. Their own men scarcely got fuzz on their balls, let alone their backsides.”

Mr. Campbell inhaled a fragment of scone, and coughed heavily into his napkin. I smiled to myself and took a deep swallow of tea. It was a strong and fragrant Indian blend, and despite the oppressive heat of the morning, more than welcome. A light dew of sweat broke out on my face as I drank, but the warmth settled comfortingly into my uneasy stomach, the perfume of the tea driving the stench of blood and excreta from my nose, even as the cheerful conversation banished the morbid scenes of the morning from my mind.

I eyed the hearth rug wistfully. I felt as though I could lie down there peacefully and sleep for a week. No rest for the weary, though.

Jamie came in, freshly shaved and combed, dressed in sober coat and clean linen. He nodded to Farquard Campbell with no apparent surprise; he must have heard his voice from the hallway.

“Auntie.” He bent and kissed Jocasta’s cheek in greeting, then smiled at Myers.

“How is it, a charaid? Or shall I say, how are they?”

“Right as rain,” Myers assured him. He cupped a hand consideringly between his legs. “Think I might wait a day or two before I climb back on a horse, though.”

“I would,” Jamie assured him. He turned back to Jocasta. “Have ye maybe seen Duncan this morning, Auntie?”

“Oh, aye. He’s gone a small errand for me, he and the laddie.” She smiled and reached for him; I saw her fingers wrap tight around his wrist. “Such a dear man, Mr. Innes. So helpful. And such a quick, canny man; a real pleasure to talk to. Do ye not find him so, Nephew?”

Jamie glanced at her curiously, then his gaze flicked to Farquard Campbell. The older man avoided his eye, sipping at his tea as he affected to study the large painting that hung above the mantel.

“Indeed,” Jamie said dryly. “A useful man, is Duncan. And Young Ian’s gone with him?”

“To fetch a bittie package for me,” his aunt said placidly. “Did ye need Duncan directly?”

“No,” Jamie said slowly, staring down at her. “It can wait.”

Her fingers slipped free of his sleeve, and she reached for her teacup. The delicate handle was angled precisely toward her, ready for her hand.

“That’s good,” she said. “Ye’ll have a bite of breakfast, then? And Farquard—another scone?”

“Ah, no, Cha ghabh mi ’n còrr, tapa leibh. I’ve business in the town, and best I be about it.” Campbell set down his cup and got to his feet, bowing to me and to Jocasta in turn. “Your servant, ladies. Mr. Fraser,” he added, with a lift of one brow, and bowing, he followed Ulysses out.

Jamie sat down, his own brows raised, and reached for a piece of toast.

“Your errand, Aunt—Duncan’s gone to find the slave woman?”

“He has.” Jocasta turned her blind eyes toward him, frowning. “You’ll not mind, Jamie? I ken Duncan’s your man, but it seemed an urgent matter; and I couldna be sure when you’d come.”

“What did Campbell tell ye?” I could tell what Jamie was thinking; it seemed out of character for the upright and rigid Mr. Campbell, justice of the district, who would not stir a hand to prevent a gruesome lynching, to conspire for the protection of a female slave, and an abortionist to boot. And yet—perhaps he meant it as compensation for what he had not been able to prevent before.

The handsome shoulders moved in the slightest of shrugs, and a muscle dipped near the corner of her mouth.

“I’ve kent Farquard Campbell these twenty years, a mhic mo pheathar. I hear what he doesna say better than what he does.”

Myers had been following this exchange with interest.

“Couldn’t say as my own ears are that good,” he observed mildly. “All I heard him say was how some poor woman kilt herself by accident, up to the mill, tryin’ to rid herself of a burden. He said he didn’t know her, himself.” He smiled blandly at me.

“And that alone tells me the lass is a stranger,” Jocasta observed. “Farquard knows the folk on the river and in the town as well as I ken my own folk. She is no one’s daughter, no one’s servant.”

She set down her cup and leaned back in her chair with a sigh.

“It will be all right,” she said. “Eat up your food, lad; ye must be starving.”

Jamie stared at her for a moment, the piece of toast uneaten in his hand. He leaned forward and dropped it back on the plate.

“I canna say I’ve much appetite just now, Auntie. Dead lassies curdle my wame a bit.” He stood up, brushing down the skirts of his coat.

“She’s maybe no one’s daughter or servant—but she’s lyin’ in the yard just now, drawing flies. I’d have a name for her before I bury her.” He turned on his heel and stalked out.

I drained the last of my tea and set the cup back with a faint chime of bone china.

“Sorry,” I said apologetically. “I don’t believe I’m hungry, either.”

Jocasta neither moved nor changed expression. As I left the room I saw Myers lean over from his chaise and neatly snag the last of the scones.

It was nearly noon before we reached the Crown’s warehouse at the end of Hay Street. It stood on the north side of the river, with its own pier for loading, a little way above the town itself. There seemed little necessity for a guard at the moment; nothing moved in the vicinity of the building save a few sulphur butterflies who, unaffected by the smothering heat, were diligently laboring among the flowering bushes that grew thick along the shore.

“What do they keep here?” I asked Jamie, looking curiously up at the massive structure. The huge double doors were shut and bolted, the single red-coated sentry motionless as a tin soldier in front of them. A smaller building beside the warehouse sported an English flag, drooping limply in the heat; presumably this was the lair of the sergeant we were seeking.

Jamie shrugged and brushed a questing fly away from his eyebrow. We had been attracting more and more of them as the heat of the day increased, despite the movement of the wagon. I sniffed discreetly, but could smell only a faint hint of thyme.

“Whatever the Crown thinks valuable. Furs from the backcountry, naval stores—pitch and turpentine. But the guard is because of the liquor.”

While every inn brewed its own beer, and every household had its receipts for applejack and cherry-wine, the more potent spirits were the province of the Crown: brandy, whisky, and rum were imported to the colony in small quantities under heavy guard, and sold at great cost under the Crown’s seal.

“I should say they haven’t got much in stock right now,” I said, nodding at the single guard.

“No, the shipments of liquor come upstream from Wilmington once a month. Campbell says they choose a different day each time, so as to run less risk of robbery.”

He spoke abstractedly, a small frown lingering between his eyebrows.

“Did Campbell believe us, do you think? About her doing it herself?” Without really meaning to, I cast a half glance into the wagon behind me.

Jamie made a derisory Scottish noise in the back of his throat.

“Of course not, Sassenach; the man’s no a fool. But he’s a good friend to my aunt; he’ll not make trouble if he doesn’t have to. Let’s hope the woman had no one who’ll make a fuss.”

“Rather a cold-blooded hope,” I said quietly. “I thought you felt differently, in your aunt’s drawing room. You’re probably right, though; if she’d had someone, she wouldn’t be dead now.”

He heard the bitterness in my voice, and looked down at me.

“I dinna mean to be callous, Sassenach,” he said gently. “But the poor lassie is dead. I canna do more for her than see her decently into the ground; it’s the living I must take heed for, aye?”

I heaved a sigh and squeezed his arm briefly. My feelings were a good deal too complex to try to explain; I had known the girl no more than minutes before her death, and could in no way have prevented it—but she had died under my hands, and I felt the physician’s futile rage in such circumstances; the feeling that somehow I had failed, had been outwitted by the Dark Angel. And beyond rage and pity, was an echo of unspoken guilt; the girl was near Brianna’s age—Brianna, who in like circumstances would also have no one.

“I know. It’s only … I suppose I feel responsible for her, in a way.”

“So do I,” he said. “Never fear, Sassenach; we’ll see she’s done rightly by.” He reined the horses in under a chestnut tree, and swung down, offering me a hand.

There were no barracks; Campbell had told Jamie that the warehouse guard’s ten men were quartered in various houses in the town. Upon inquiry of the clerk laboring in the office, we were directed across the street to the sign of the Golden Goose, wherein the Sergeant might presently be found at his luncheon.

I saw the Sergeant in question at once as I entered the tavern; he was sitting at a table by the window, his white leather stock undone and his tunic unbuttoned, looking thoroughly relaxed over a mug of ale and the remains of a Cornish pasty. Jamie came in behind me, his shadow momentarily blocking the light from the open door, and the Sergeant looked up.

Dim as it was in the taproom, I could see the man’s face go blank with shock. Jamie came to an abrupt halt behind me. He said something in Gaelic under his breath that I recognized as a vicious obscenity, but then he was moving forward past me, with no sign of hesitation in his manner.

“Sergeant Murchison,” he said, in tones of mild surprise, as one might greet a casual acquaintance. “I hadna thought to lay eyes on you again—not in this world, at least.”

The Sergeant’s expression strongly suggested that the feeling had been mutual. Also that any meeting this side of heaven was too soon. Blood flooded his beefy, pockmarked cheeks with red, and he shoved back his bench with a screech of wood on the sanded floor.

“You!” he said.

Jamie took off his hat and inclined his head politely.

“Your servant, sir,” he said. I could see his face now, outwardly pleasant, but with a wariness that creased the corners of his eyes. He showed it a good deal less, but the Sergeant wasn’t the only one to be taken aback.

Murchison was regaining his self-possession; the look of shock was replaced by a faint sneer.

“Fraser. Oh, beg pardon, Mr. Fraser, it will be now, won’t it?”

“It will.” Jamie kept his voice neutral, despite the insulting tone of this. Whatever past conflict lay between them, the last thing he wanted now was trouble. Not with what lay in the wagon outside. I wiped my sweaty palms surreptitiously on my skirt.

The Sergeant had begun to do up his tunic buttons, slowly, not taking his eyes off Jamie.

“I had heard there was a man called Fraser, come to leech off Mistress Cameron at River Run,” he said, with an unpleasant twist of thick lips. “That’ll be you, will it?”

The wariness in Jamie’s eyes froze into a blue as cold as glacier ice, though his lips stayed curved in a pleasant smile.

“Mistress Cameron will be my kinswoman. It is on her behalf that I have come now.”

The Sergeant tilted back his head and scratched voluptuously at his throat. There was a deep, hard-edged red crease across the expanse of fat pale flesh, as though someone had tried unsuccessfully to garrote the man.

“Your kinswoman. Well, easy to say so, ain’t it? The lady’s blind as a bat, I hear. No husband, no sons; fair prey for any sharpster comes a-calling, claiming family.” The sergeant lowered his head and smirked at me, his self-possession fully restored.

“And this’ll be your doxy, will it?” It was gratuitous malice, a shot at random; the man had scarcely glanced at me.

“This will be my wife, Mistress Fraser.”

I could see the two stiff fingers of Jamie’s right hand twitch once against the skirt of his coat, the only outward sign of his feelings. He tilted his head back an inch and raised his brows, considering the Sergeant with an air of dispassionate interest.

“And which one are you, sir? I beg pardon for my imperfect recollection, but I confess that I cannot tell you from your brother.”

The Sergeant stopped as though he had been shot, frozen in the act of fastening his stock.

“Damn you!” he said, choking on the words. His face had gone an unhealthy shade of plum, and I thought that he ought really to mind his blood pressure. I didn’t say so, though.

At this point, the Sergeant seemed to notice that everyone in the taproom was staring at him with great interest. He glared ferociously around him, snatched up his hat, and stamped toward the door, pushing past me as he went, so that I staggered back a pace.

Jamie grabbed my arm to steady me, then ducked beneath the lintel himself. I followed, in time to see him call after the Sergeant.

“Murchison! A word with you!”

The soldier whirled on his heel, hands fisted against the skirts of his scarlet coat. He was a good-sized man, thick through torso and shoulder, and the uniform became him. His eyes glittered with menace, but he had gained possession of himself again.

“A word, is it?” he said. “And what might you have to say to me, Mister Fraser?”

“A word in your professional capacity, Sergeant,” Jamie said coolly. He nodded toward the wagon, which we had left beneath a nearby tree. “We’ve brought ye a corpse.”

For the second time, the Sergeant’s face went blank. He glanced at the wagon; flies and gnats had begun to gather in small clouds, circling lazily over the open bed.

“Indeed.” He was a professional; while the hostility of his manner was undiminished, the hot blood faded from his face, and the clenched fists relaxed.

“A corpse? Whose?”

“I have no idea, sir. It was my hope that you might be able to tell us. Will ye look?” He nodded toward the wagon, and after a moment’s hesitation, the Sergeant nodded briefly back, and strode toward the wagon.

I hurried after Jamie, and was in time to see the Sergeant’s face as he drew back the corner of the makeshift shroud. He had no skill at all in hiding his feelings—perhaps in his profession it wasn’t necessary. Shock flickered over his face like summer lightning.

Jamie, could see the Sergeant’s face as well as I.

“Ye’ll know her, then?” he said.

“I—she—that is … yes, I know her.” The Sergeant’s mouth snapped shut abruptly, as though he was afraid to let any more words out. He continued to stare at the girl’s dead face, his own tightening, freezing out all feeling.

A few men had followed us out of the tavern. While they stayed at a discreet distance, two or three were craning their necks with curiosity. It wasn’t going to be long before the whole district knew what had happened at the mill. I hoped Duncan and Ian were well on their way.

“What has happened to her?” the Sergeant asked, staring down at the fixed white face. His own was nearly as pale.

Jamie was watching him intently, and making no pretense otherwise.

“You’ll know her, then?” he said again.

“She is—she was—a laundress. Lissa—Lissa Garver is her name.” The Sergeant spoke mechanically, still looking down into the wagon as though unable to tear his eyes away. His face was expressionless but his lips were white, and his hands were clenched into fists at his sides. “What happened?”

“Has she people in the town? A husband, maybe?”

It was a reasonable question, but Murchison’s head jerked up as though Jamie had stabbed him with it.

“None of your concern, is it?” he said. He stared at Jamie, a thin rim of white visible around the iris of his eye. He bared his teeth in what might have been politeness, but wasn’t. “Tell me what happened to her.”

Jamie’s eyes met the Sergeant’s without blinking.

“She meant to slip a bairn, and it went wrong,” he said quietly. “If she has a husband, he must be told. If not—if she has no people—I will see her decently buried.”

Murchison turned his head to look down into the wagon once more.

“She has someone,” he said shortly. “You need not trouble yourself.” He turned away, and rubbed a hand over his face, scrubbing violently as though to wipe away all feeling. “Go to my office,” he said, voice half muffled. “You must make a statement—see the clerk. Go!”

The office was empty, the clerk no doubt gone in search of his own luncheon. I sat down to wait, but Jamie prowled restlessly around the small room, eyes flitting from the regimental banners on the wall to the drawered cabinet in the corner behind the desk.

“Damn the luck,” he said, half to himself. “It would have to be Murchison.”

“I take it you know the Sergeant well?”

He glanced at me with a wry quirk of the lips.

“Well enough. He was in the garrison at Ardsmuir prison.”

“I see.” No love lost between them, then. It was close in the little office; I blotted a trickle of sweat that ran down between my breasts. “What do you suppose he’s doing here?”

“That much I ken; he was sent in charge of the prisoners when they were transported to be sold. I imagine the Crown saw no good reason to bring him back to England, when there was need of soldiers here—that would have been during the war wi’ the French, aye?”

“What was that business about his brother?”

He snorted, a brief, humorless sound.

“There were two o’ them—twins. Wee Billy and Wee Bobby, we called them. Alike as peas, and not only in looks.”

He paused, marshaling memories. He didn’t often speak of his time in Ardsmuir, and I could see the shadows of it pass across his face.

“Ye’ll maybe know the sort of man is decent enough on his own, but get him wi’ others like him, and they might as well be wolves?”

“Bit hard on the wolves,” I said, smiling. “Think of Rollo. But yes, I know what you mean.”

“Pigs, then. But beasts, when they’re together. There’s no lack of such men in any army; it’s why armies work—men will do terrible things in a mob, that they wouldna dream of on their own.”

“And the Murchisons were never on their own?” I asked slowly.

He gave me a slight nod of acknowledgment.

“Aye, that’s it. There were the two of them, always. And what one might scruple at, the other would not. And of course, when it came to trouble—why, there was no saying which was to blame, was there?”

He was still prowling, restless as a caged panther. He paused by the window, looking out.

“I—the prisoners—we might complain of ill-treatment, but the officers couldna discipline both for the sins of one, and a man seldom knew which Murchison it was that had him on the ground wi’ a boot in the ribs, or which it was that hung him from a hook by his fetters and left him so until he’d soil himself for the amusement of the garrison.”

His eyes were fixed on something outside, his expression unguarded. He’d spoken of beasts; I could see that the memories had roused one. His eyes caught the light from the window, gem-blue and unblinking.

“Are both of them here?” I asked, as much to break that unnerving stare as because I wanted to know.

It worked; he turned abruptly from the window.

“No,” he said, shortly. “This is Billy. Wee Bobby died at Ardsmuir.” His two stiff fingers twitched against the fabric of his kilt.

It had occurred to me briefly to wonder why he had worn his kilt this morning, instead of changing to breeks; the crimson tartan might be quite literally a red flag to a bull, flaunted thus before an English soldier. Now I knew.

They’d taken it from him once before, thinking to take with it pride and manhood. They had failed in that attempt, and he meant to underscore that failure, whether it was sense to do so or not. Sense had little to do with the sort of stubborn pride that could survive years of such insult—and while he had more than his share of both, I could see that pride was well in the ascendancy at present.

“From the Sergeant’s reactions, I suppose we may assume it wasn’t natural causes?” I asked.

“No,” he said. He sighed and shrugged his shoulders slightly, easing them inside the tight coat.

“They marched us out to the stone quarry each morning, and back again at twilight, wi’ two or three guards to each wagon. One day, Wee Bobby Murchison was the sergeant in charge. He came out wi’ us in the morning—but he didna come back with us at night.” He glanced once more at the window. “There was a verra deep pool at the bottom of the quarry.”

His matter-of-fact tone was nearly as chilling as the content of this bald account. I felt a small shiver pass up my spine, in spite of the stifling heat.

“Did you—” I began, but he put a finger to his lips, jerking his head toward the door. A moment later, I heard the footsteps that his keener ears had picked up.

It was the Sergeant, not his clerk. He had been perspiring heavily; streaks of sweat ran down his face beneath his wig, and his whole countenance was the unhealthy color of fresh beef liver.

He glanced at the vacant desk, and made a small, vicious noise in his throat. I felt a qualm on behalf of the absent clerk. The Sergeant shoved aside the clutter on the desk with a sweep of his arm that sent paper cascading onto the floor.

He snatched a pewter inkwell and a sheet of foolscap from the rubble, and banged them down on the desk.

“Write it down,” he ordered. “Where you found her, what happened.” He thrust a spattered goose-quill at Jamie. “Sign it, date it.”

Jamie stared at him, eyes narrowed, but made no move to take the quill. I felt a sudden sinking in my belly.

Jamie was left-handed but had been taught forcibly to write with his right hand, and then had that right hand crippled. Writing, for him, was a slow, laborious business that left the pages blotted, sweat-stained, and crumpled, and the writer himself in no better case. There was no power on earth that would make him humiliate himself in that fashion before the Sergeant.

“Write. It. Down.” The Sergeant bit off the words between his teeth.

Jamie’s eyes narrowed further, but before he could speak, I reached out and snatched the pen from the Sergeant’s grasp.

“I was there; let me do it.”

Jamie’s hand closed on mine before I could dip the quill in the inkwell. He plucked the pen from my fingers and dropped it in the center of the desk.

“Your clerk can wait upon me later, at my aunt’s house,” he said briefly to Murchison. “Come with me, Claire.”

Not waiting for an answer from the Sergeant, he grasped my elbow and all but pulled me to my feet. We were outside before I knew what had happened. The wagon still stood under the tree, but now it was empty.

“Well, she’s safe for the moment, Mac Dubh, but what in hell shall we do with the woman?” Duncan scratched at the stubble on his chin; he and Ian had spent three days in the forest, searching, before finding the slave Pollyanne.

“She’ll no be easy to move,” Ian put in, snaring a piece of bacon off the breakfast table. He broke it in half, and handed one piece to Rollo. “The poor lady near died of terror when Rollo sniffed her out, and we had God’s own time gettin’ her on her feet. We couldna get her on a horse at all; I had to walk with my arm around her, to keep her from fallin’ down.”

“We must get her clear away, somehow.” Jocasta frowned, blank eyes half hooded in thought. “Yon Murchison was at the mill again yesterday morning, making a nuisance of himself, and last night, Farquard Campbell sent to tell me that the man has declared it was murder, and he’s called for men to search the district for the slave who did it. Farquard’s sae hot under his collar, I thought his head would burst into flame.”

“Do ye think she could have done it?” Chewing, Ian looked from Jamie to me. “By accident, I mean?”

In spite of the hot morning, I shuddered, feeling in memory the unyielding stiffness of the metal skewer in my hand.

“You have three possibilities: accident, murder, or suicide,” I said. “There are lots easier ways of committing suicide, believe me. And no motive for murder, that we know of.”

“Be that as it may,” Jamie said, neatly fielding the conversation, “if Murchison takes the slave woman, he’ll have her hanged or flogged to death within a day. He’s no need of trial. No, we must take her clear out of the district. I’ve arranged it with our friend Myers.”

“You’ve arranged what with Myers?” Jocasta asked sharply, her voice cutting through the babble of exclamations and questions that greeted this announcement.

Jamie finished buttering the piece of toast that he held, and handed it to Duncan before speaking.

“We shall take the woman into the mountains,” he said. “Myers says she’ll be welcome among the Indians; he kens a good place for her, he says. And she’ll be safe there from Wee Billy Murchison.”

“We?” I asked politely. “And who’s we?”

He grinned at me in reply.

“Myers and myself, Sassenach. I need to go to the backcountry to have a look before the cold weather comes, and this will be a good chance. Myers is the best guide I could have.”

He carefully refrained from noting that it might be as well for him to be temporarily out of Sergeant Murchison’s sphere of influence, but the implication was not lost on me.

“Ye’ll take me, will ye not, Uncle?” Ian brushed the matted hair out of his face, looking eager. “Ye’ll need help wi’ that woman, believe me—she’s the size of a molasses barrel.”

Jamie smiled at his nephew.

“Aye, Ian. I expect we can use another man along.”

“Ahem,” I said, giving him an evil stare.

“To keep an eye on your auntie, if nothing else,” Jamie continued, giving the stare back to me. “We leave in three days, Sassenach—if Myers can sit a horse by then.”

Three days didn’t allow much time, but with the assistance of Myers and Phaedre, my preparations were completed with hours to spare. I had a small traveling box of medicines and tools, and the saddlebags were packed with food, blankets, and cooking implements. The only small matter remaining was that of attire.

I recrossed the ends of the long silk strip across my chest, tied the ends in a jaunty knot between my breasts, and examined the results in the looking glass.

Not bad. I extended my arms and jiggled my torso from side to side, testing. Yes, that would do. Though perhaps if I took one more turn around my chest before crossing the ends …

“What, exactly, are ye doing, Sassenach? And what in the name of God are ye wearing?” Jamie, arms crossed, was leaning against the door, watching me with both brows raised.

“I am improvising a brassiere,” I said with dignity. “I don’t mean to ride sidesaddle through the mountains wearing a dress, and if I’m not wearing stays, I don’t mean my breasts to be joggling all the way, either. Most uncomfortable, joggling.”

“I daresay.” He edged into the room and circled me at a cautious distance, eyeing my nether limbs with interest. “And what are those?”

“Like them?” I put my hands on my hips, modeling the drawstring leather trousers that Phaedre had constructed for me—laughing hysterically as she did so—from soft buckskin provided by one of Myers’s friends in Cross Creek.

“No,” he said bluntly. “Ye canna be going about in—in—” He waved at them, speechless.

“Trousers,” I said. “And of course I can. I wore trousers all the time, back in Boston. They’re very practical.”

He looked at me in silence for a moment. Then, very slowly, he walked around me. At last, his voice came from behind me.

“Ye wore them outside?” he said, in tones of incredulity. “Where folk could see ye?”

“I did,” I said crossly. “So did most other women. Why not?”

“Why not?” he said, scandalized. “I can see the whole shape of your buttocks, for God’s sake, and the cleft between!”

“I can see yours, too,” I pointed out, turning around to face him. “I’ve been looking at your backside in breeks every day for months, but only occasionally does the sight move me to make indecent advances on your person.”

His mouth twitched, undecided whether to laugh or not. Taking advantage of the indecision, I took a step forward and put my arms around his waist, firmly cupping his backside.

“Actually, it’s your kilt that makes me want to fling you to the floor and commit ravishment,” I told him. “But you don’t look at all bad in your breeks.”

He did laugh then, and bending, kissed me thoroughly, his hands carefully exploring the outlines of my rear, snugly confined in buckskin. He squeezed gently, making me squirm against him.

“Take them off,” he said, pausing for air.

“But I—”

“Take them off,” he repeated firmly. He stepped back and tugged loose the lacing of his flies. “Ye can put them back on again after, Sassenach, but if there’s flinging and ravishing to be done, it’ll be me that does it, aye?”