5
BELOVED WIFE
The kirkyard of St. Kilda lay quiet in the sun. Not entirely flat, it occupied a plateau carved from the side of the hill by some geological freak. The land sloped and curved, so that the gravestones lay hidden in small hollows or jutted suddenly from the crest of a rise. The shifting of the earth had moved many, tilting them drunkenly or toppling them altogether, to lie flattened and broken in the long grass.
“It’s a bit untidy,” Roger said, apologetically. They paused in the kirkyard gate, looking over the small collection of ancient stones, overgrown and shadowed by the row of giant yews, planted long ago as a windbreak against the storms that rolled in from the northern sea. Clouds massed there now, far out over the distant firth, but the sun shone on the hilltop, and the air was still and warm.
“My father used to get together a gang of men from the church once or twice a year, and bring them up to keep the place in order, but I’m afraid it’s rather gone to seed lately.” He swung the lych-gate experimentally, noting the cracked hinge and the latch-fitting, dangling by one nail.
“It’s a lovely, quiet place.” Brianna edged carefully past the splintery gate. “Really old, isn’t it?”
“Aye, it is. dad thought the kirk itself was built on the site of an early church or an even older temple of some kind; that’s why it’s up here in such an inconvenient spot. One of his friends from Oxford was always threatening to come up and excavate the place to see what was under it, but of course he couldn’t get clearance from the Church authorities, even though the place has been deconsecrated for years.”
“It’s kind of a climb.” The flush of exertion was beginning to fade from Brianna’s face as she fanned her cheeks with a guidebook. “Beautiful, though.” She eyed the facade of the kirk with appreciation. Built into a natural opening in the crag, the stones and timbers of the kirk had been fitted by hand, the chinks caulked with peat and mud, so that it seemed to have grown there, a natural part of the cliff face. Ancient carvings decorated door sill and window frame, some showing the symbols of Christianity, some obviously much older.
“Is Jonathan Randall’s stone over there?” She waved toward the kirkyard, visible beyond the gate. “Mother will be so surprised!”
“Aye, I expect so. Haven’t seen it myself.” He hoped the surprise would be a pleasant one; when he had mentioned the stone cautiously to Brianna over the phone the night before, she had been enthusiastic.
“I know about Jonathan Randall,” she was telling Roger. “Daddy always admired him; said he was one of the few interesting people in the family tree. I guess he was a good soldier; Daddy had lots of commendations and things he’d gotten.”
“Really?” Roger looked back, in search of Claire. “Does your mother need help with that plant press?”
Brianna shook her head. “Nah. She just found a plant by the path she couldn’t resist. She’ll be up in a minute.”
It was a silent place. Even the birds were quiet as midday approached, and the dark evergreens that edged the plateau were still, with no breeze to stir their branches. Without the raw scars of recent graves or the flags of plastic flowers as testimony to still-fresh grief, the kirkyard breathed only the peace of the long-dead. Removed from strife and trouble, only the fact of their life remained to give the comfort of a human presence on the lonely heights of an empty land.
The progress of the three visitors was slow; they wandered their way casually through the old kirkyard, Roger and Brianna pausing to read aloud quaint inscriptions from the weathered stones, Claire, on her own, stooping now and then to clip a vine or uproot a small flowering plant.
Roger bent over one stone, and grinning, beckoned Brianna to read the inscription.
“ ‘Approach and read, not with your hats on,’ ” she read. “ ‘For here lies Bailie William Watson/Who was famous for his thinking/And moderation in his drinking.’ ” Brianna rose from examining the stone, her face flushed with laughter. “No dates—I wonder when William Watson lived.”
“Eighteenth century, most likely,” Roger said. “The seventeenth-century stones are mostly too weathered to read, and no one’s been buried here in two hundred years; the church was deconsecrated in 1800.”
A moment later, Brianna let out a muffled whoop. “Here it is!” She stood up and waved to Claire, who was standing on the far side of the kirkyard, peering inquisitively at a length of greenery she held in one hand. “Mama! Come look at this!”
Claire waved back, and made her way to where they stood beside the flat, square stone, stepping carefully across the crowded graves.
“What is it?” she asked. “Find an interesting grave?”
“I think so. Recognize this name?” Roger stepped back, so she could have a clear view.
“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!” Mildly startled, Roger glanced at Claire, and was alarmed to see how pale she was. She stared down at the weathered stone, and the muscles of her throat moved in a convulsive swallow. The plant she had pulled was crushed in her hand, unregarded.
“Dr. Randall—Claire—are you all right?”
The amber eyes were blank, and she appeared not to hear him for a moment. Then she blinked, and looked up. She was still pale, but seemed better now; back in control.
“I’m fine,” she said, voice flat. She stooped, and ran her fingers over the letters of the stone as though reading them in Braille.
“Jonathan Wolverton Randall,” she said softly, “1705–1746. I told you, didn’t I? You bastard, I told you!” Her voice, so flat an instant before, was suddenly vibrant, filled with a restrained fury.
“Mama! Are you all right?” Brianna, obviously upset, pulled at her mother’s arm.
Roger thought it was as though a shade had dropped behind Claire’s eyes; the feeling that had shone there was suddenly hidden, as she snapped back to a realization of the two people staring at her, aghast. She smiled, a brief, mechanical grimace, and nodded.
“Yes. Yes, of course. I’m fine.” Her hand opened, and the stalk of limp greenery dropped to the ground.
“I thought you’d be surprised.” Brianna was looking worriedly at her mother. “Isn’t this Daddy’s ancestor? The soldier who died at Culloden?”
Claire glanced down at the gravestone near her feet.
“Yes, it is,” she said. “And he is dead, isn’t he?”
Roger and Brianna exchanged looks. Feeling responsible, Roger touched Claire on the shoulder.
“It’s rather a hot day,” he said, trying for a note of casual matter-of-factness. “Perhaps we should go into the church for a little shade. There are some very interesting carvings on the font; well worth seeing.”
Claire smiled at him. A real smile this time, a little tired, but eminently sane.
“You go,” she said, including Brianna with a tilt of her head. “I need a little air. I’ll stay out here for a bit.”
“I’ll stay with you.” Brianna was hovering, clearly unwilling to leave her mother on her own, but Claire had recovered both her equanimity and her air of command.
“Nonsense,” she said briskly. “I’m perfectly all right. I’ll go sit in the shade of the trees over there. You go along. I’d rather be by myself for a bit,” she added firmly, seeing Roger opening his mouth to protest.
With no further ado, she turned and walked off, toward the line of dark yew trees that edged the kirkyard to the west. Brianna hesitated, looking after her, but Roger took the girl by the elbow, and drew her toward the church.
“Best leave her alone,” he murmured. “After all, your mother’s a doctor, isn’t she? She’ll know if it’s all right.”
“Yeah … I suppose so.” With a final troubled glance after Claire’s retreating figure, Brianna allowed him to lead her away.
The kirk was no more than an empty wood-floored room, with the abandoned font left in place only because it could not be removed. The shallow basin had been scooped out of the stone ledge that ran along one side of the room. Above the basin, the carved visage of St. Kilda gazed emptily toward the ceiling, eyes piously upturned.
“It was probably one of the pagan gods to start with,” Roger said, tracing the line of the carving with a finger. “You can see where they added the veil and wimple to the original figure—not to mention the eyes.”
“Like poached eggs,” Brianna agreed, rolling her own up in imitation. “What’s this carving over here? It looks a lot like the patterns on those Pictish stones outside Clava.”
They strolled casually around the walls of the kirk, breathing the dusty air, examining the ancient carvings in the stone walls, and reading the small wooden plaques affixed by long-vanished parishioners in memory of ancestors gone still longer. They spoke quietly, both keeping an ear out for any sounds from the kirkyard, but all was quiet, and slowly they began to relax again.
Roger followed Brianna toward the front of the room, watching the curling tendrils that escaped from her braid to coil damply on her neck.
All that remained now at the front of the kirk was a plain wooden ledge above the hole where the altarstone had been removed. Still, Roger felt something of a quiver up his spine as he stood beside Brianna, facing the vanished altar.
The sheer intensity of his feelings seemed to echo in the empty place. He hoped she couldn’t hear them. They had known each other barely a week, after all, and had had scarcely any private conversation. She would be taken aback, surely, or frightened, if she knew what he felt. Or worse yet, she would laugh.
Yet, when he stole a glance at her, her face was calm and serious. It was also looking back at him, with an expression in the dark blue of her eyes that turned him toward her and made him reach for her without conscious thought.
The kiss was brief and gentle, scarcely more than the formality that concludes a wedding, yet as striking in its impact as though they had this minute plighted a troth.
Roger’s hands fell away, but the warmth of her lingered, in hands and lips and body, so that he felt as though he held her still. They stood a moment, bodies grazing, breathing each other’s air, and then she stepped back. He could still feel the touch of her on the palms of his hands. He curled his fingers into fists, seeking to hold the feeling.
The still air of the church shivered suddenly into bits, the echoes of a scream scattering the dust motes. Without conscious thought, Roger was outside, running, stumbling and scrambling over the tumbled stones, heading for the dark line of the yews. He pushed his way between the overgrown branches, not bothering to hold back the scaly twigs for Brianna, hot on his heels.
Pale in the shadows, he saw Claire Randall’s face. Completely drained of color, she looked like a wraith against the dark branches of the yew. She stood for a moment, swaying, then sank to her knees in the grass, as though her legs would no longer support her.
“Mother!” Brianna dropped to her knees beside the crouching figure, chafing one of the limp hands. “Mama, what is it? Are you faint? You should put your head between your knees. Here, why don’t you lie down?”
Claire resisted the helpful proddings of her offspring, and the drooping head came upright on its slender neck once more.
“I don’t want to lie down,” she gasped. “I want.… oh, God. Oh, dear holy God.” Kneeling among the unmowed grass she stretched out a trembling hand to the surface of the stone. It was carved of granite, a simple slab.
“Dr. Randall! Er, Claire?” Roger dropped to one knee on her other side, putting a hand under her other arm to support her. He was truly alarmed at her appearance. A fine sweat had broken out on her temples and she looked as though she might keel over at any moment. “Claire,” he said again, urgently, trying to rouse her from the staring trance she had fallen into. “What is it? Is it a name you know?” Even as he spoke, his own words were ringing in his ears. No one’s been buried here since the eighteenth century, he’d told Brianna. No one’s been buried here in two hundred years.
Claire’s fingers brushed his own away, and touched the stone, caressing, as though touching flesh, gently tracing the letters, the grooves worn shallow, but still clear.
“ ‘JAMES ALEXANDER MALCOLM MACKENZIE FRASER,’ ” she read aloud. “Yes, I know him.” Her hand dropped lower, brushing back the grass that grew thickly about the stone, obscuring the line of smaller letters at its base.
“ ‘Beloved husband of Claire,’ ” she read.
“Yes, I knew him,” she said again, so softly Roger could scarcely hear her. “I’m Claire. He was my husband.” She looked up then, into the face of her daughter, white and shocked above her. “And your father,” she said.
Roger and Brianna stared down at her, and the kirkyard was silent, save for the rustle of the yews above.
“No!” I said, quite crossly. “For the fifth time—no! I don’t want a drink of water. I have not got a touch of the sun. I am not faint. I am not ill. And I haven’t lost my mind, either, though I imagine that’s what you’re thinking.”
Roger and Brianna exchanged glances that made it clear that that was precisely what they were thinking. They had, between them, got me out of the kirkyard and into the car. I had refused to be taken to hospital, so we had gone back to the manse. Roger had administered medicinal whisky for shock, but his eyes darted toward the telephone now as though wondering whether to dial for additional help—like a straitjacket, I supposed.
“Mama.” Brianna spoke soothingly, reaching out to try to smooth the hair back from my face. “You’re upset.”
“Of course I’m upset!” I snapped. I took a long, quivering breath and clamped my lips tight together, until I could trust myself to speak calmly.
“I am certainly upset,” I began, “but I’m not mad.” I stopped, struggling for control. This wasn’t the way I’d intended to do it. I didn’t know quite what I had intended, but not this, blurting out the truth without preparation or time to organize my own thoughts. Seeing that bloody grave had disrupted any plan I might have formed.
“Damn you, Jamie Fraser!” I said, furious. “What are you doing there anyway; it’s miles from Culloden!”
Brianna’s eyes were halfway out on stalks, and Roger’s hand was hovering near the telephone. I stopped abruptly and tried to get a grip on myself.
Be calm, Beauchamp, I instructed myself. Breathe deeply. Once … twice … once more. Better. Now. It’s very simple; all you have to do is tell them the truth. That’s what you came to Scotland for, isn’t it?
I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. I closed my mouth, and my eyes as well, hoping that my nerve would return, if I couldn’t see the two ashen faces in front of me. Just … let … me … tell … the … truth, I prayed, with no idea who I was talking to. Jamie, I thought.
I’d told the truth once before. It hadn’t gone well.
I pressed my eyelids shut more tightly. Once more I could smell the carbolic surroundings of a hospital, and feel the unfamiliar starched pillowcase beneath my cheek. From the corridor outside came Frank’s voice, choked with baffled rage.
“What do you mean, don’t press her? Don’t press her? My wife’s been gone for nearly three years, and come back filthy, abused, and pregnant, for God’s sake, and I’m not to ask questions?”
And the doctor’s voice, murmuring soothingly. I caught the words “delusion,” and “traumatic state,” and “leave it for later, old man—just for a bit” as Frank’s voice, still arguing and interrupting, was gently but firmly eased down the hall. That so-familiar voice, which raised anew the storm of grief and rage and terror inside me.
I had curled my body into a defensive ball, pillow clutched to my chest, and bitten it, as hard as I could, until I felt the cotton casing give way and the silky grit of feathers grinding between my teeth.
I was grinding them now, to the detriment of a new filling. I stopped, and opened my eyes.
“Look,” I said, as reasonably as I could. “I’m sorry, I know how it sounds. But it’s true, and nothing I can do about it.”
This speech did nothing to reassure Brianna, who edged closer to Roger. Roger himself had lost that green-about-the-gills look, though, and was exhibiting signs of cautious interest. Could it be possible that he really did have enough imagination to be able to grasp the truth?
I took hope from his expression, and unclenched my fists.
“It’s the bloody stones,” I said. “You know, the standing stone circle, on the fairies’ hill, to the west?”
“Craigh na Dun,” Roger murmured. “That one?”
“Right.” I exhaled consciously. “You may know the legends about fairy hills—do you? About people who get trapped in rocky hills and wake up two hundred years later?”
Brianna was looking more alarmed by the moment.
“Mother, I really think you ought to go up and lie down,” she said. She half-rose from her seat. “I could go get Fiona …”
Roger put a hand on her arm to stop her.
“No, wait,” he said. He looked at me, with the sort of suppressed curiosity a scientist shows when putting a new slide under the microscope. “Go ahead,” he said to me.
“Thanks,” I said dryly. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to start driveling about fairies; I just thought you’d like to know there’s some basis to the legends. I haven’t any idea what it actually is up there, or how it works, but the fact is …” I took a deep breath, “Well, the fact is, that I walked through a bloody cleft stone in that circle in 1945, and I ended up on the hillside below in 1743.”
I’d said exactly that to Frank. He’d glared at me for a moment, picked up a vase of flowers from my bedside table, and smashed it on the floor.
Roger looked like a scientist whose new microbe has come through a winner. I wondered why, but was too engrossed in the struggle to find words that sounded halfway sane.
“The first person I ran into was an English dragoon in full fig,” I said. “Which rather gave me a hint that something was wrong.”
A sudden smile lighted Roger’s face, though Brianna went on looking horrified. “I should think it might,” he said.
“The difficulty was that I couldn’t get back, you see.” I thought I’d better address my remarks to Roger, who at least seemed disposed to listen, whether he believed me or not.
“The thing is, ladies then didn’t go about the place unescorted, and if they did, they didn’t do it wearing print dresses and oxford loafers,” I explained. “Everyone I met, starting with that dragoon captain, knew there was something wrong about me—but they didn’t know what. How could they? I couldn’t explain then any better than I can now—and lunatic asylums back then were much less pleasant places than they are now. No basket weaving,” I added, with an effort at a joke. It wasn’t noticeably successful; Brianna grimaced and looked more worried than ever.
“That dragoon,” I said, and a brief shudder went over me at the memory of Jonathan Wolverton Randall, Captain of His Majesty’s Eighth Dragoons. “I thought I was hallucinating at first, because the man looked so very like Frank; at first glance, I thought it was he.” I glanced at the table where a copy of one of Frank’s books lay, with its back-cover photograph of a dark and handsome lean-faced man.
“That’s quite a coincidence,” Roger said. His eyes were alert, fixed on mine.
“Well, it was and it wasn’t,” I told him, wrenching my eyes with an effort from the stack of books. “You know he was Frank’s ancestor. All the men in that family have a strong family resemblance—physically, at least,” I added, thinking of the rather striking nonphysical differences.
“What—what was he like?” Brianna seemed to be coming out of her stupor, at least slightly.
“He was a bloody filthy pervert,” I said. Two pairs of eyes snapped open wide and turned to each other with an identical look of consternation.
“You needn’t look like that,” I said. “They had perversion in the eighteenth century; it isn’t anything new, you know. Only it was worse then, maybe, since no one really cared, so long as things were kept quiet and decent on the surface. And Black Jack Randall was a soldier; he captained a garrison in the Highlands, charged with keeping the clans under control—he had considerable scope for his activities, all officially sanctioned.” I took a restorative gulp from the whisky glass I still held.
“He liked to hurt people,” I said. “He liked it a lot.”
“Did he … hurt you?” Roger put the question with some delicacy, after a rather noticeable pause. Bree seemed to be drawing into herself, the skin tightening across her cheekbones.
“Not directly. Or not much, at least.” I shook my head. I could feel a cold spot in the pit of my stomach, which the whisky was doing little to thaw. Jack Randall had hit me there, once. I felt it in memory, like the ache of a long-healed wound.
“He had fairly eclectic tastes. But it was Jamie that he.… wanted.” Under no circumstances would I have used the word “loved.” My throat felt thick, and I swallowed the last drops of whisky. Roger held up the decanter, one brow raised questioningly, and I nodded and held out my glass.
“Jamie. That’s Jamie Fraser? And he was …”
“He was my husband,” I said.
Brianna shook her head like a horse driving off flies.
“But you had a husband,” she said. “You couldn’t … even if … I mean … you couldn’t.”
“I had to,” I said flatly. “I didn’t do it on purpose, after all.”
“Mother, you can’t get married accidentally!” Brianna was losing her kindly-nurse-with-mental-patient attitude. I thought this was probably a good thing, even if the alternative was anger.
“Well, it wasn’t precisely an accident,” I said. “It was the best alternative to being handed over to Jack Randall, though. Jamie married me to protect me—and bloody generous of him, too,” I finished, glaring at Bree over my glass. “He didn’t have to do it, but he did.”
I fought back the memory of our wedding night. He was a virgin; his hands had trembled when he touched me. I had been afraid too—with better reason. And then in the dawn he had held me, naked back against bare chest, his thighs warm and strong behind my own, murmuring into the clouds of my hair, “Dinna be afraid. There’s the two of us now.”
“See,” I turned to Roger again, “I couldn’t get back. I was running away from Captain Randall when the Scots found me. A party of cattle-raiders. Jamie was with them, they were his mother’s people, the MacKenzies of Leoch. They didn’t know what to make of me, but they took me with them as a captive. And I couldn’t get away again.”
I remembered my abortive efforts to escape from Castle Leoch. And then the day when I had told Jamie the truth, and he—not believing, any more than Frank had, but at least willing to act as though he did—had taken me back to the hill and the stones.
“He thought I was a witch, perhaps,” I said, eyes closed, smiling just a bit at the thought. “Now they think you’re mad; then they thought you were a witch. Cultural mores,” I explained, opening my eyes. “Psychology is just what they call it these days instead of magic. Not the hell of a lot of difference.” Roger nodded, seeming a little stunned.
“They tried me for witchcraft,” I said. “In the village of Cranesmuir, just below the castle. Jamie saved me, though, and then I told him. And he took me to the hill, and told me to go back. Back to Frank.” I paused and drew a deep breath, remembering that October afternoon, where control of my destiny, taken from me for so long, had been suddenly thrust back into my hands, and the choice not given, but demanded of me.
“Go back!” he had said. “There’s nothing here for ye! Nothing save danger.”
“Is there really nothing here for me?” I had asked. Too honorable to speak, he had answered nonetheless, and I had made my choice.
“It was too late,” I said, staring down at my hands, lying open on my knees. The day was darkening to rain, but my two wedding rings still gleamed in the fading light, gold and silver. I hadn’t taken Frank’s gold band from my left hand when I married Jamie, but had worn Jamie’s silver ring on the fourth finger of my right hand, for every day of the twenty-odd years since he put it there.
“I loved Frank,” I said quietly, not looking at Bree. “I loved him a lot. But by that time, Jamie was my heart and the breath of my body. I couldn’t leave him. I couldn’t,” I said, raising my head suddenly to Bree in appeal. She stared back at me, stone-faced.
I looked down at my hands again, and went on.
“He took me to his own home—Lallybroch, it was called. A beautiful place.” I shut my eyes again, to get away from the look on Brianna’s face, and deliberately summoned the image of the estate of Broch Tuarach—Lallybroch, to the people who lived there. A beautiful Highland farm, with woods and streams; even a bit of fertile ground—rare for the Highlands. A lovely, peaceful place, sealed within high hills above a mountain pass that kept it remote from the recurrent strife that troubled the Highlands. But even Lallybroch had proved only a temporary sanctuary.
“Jamie was an outlaw,” I said, seeing behind my closed eyelids the scars of flogging that the English had left on his back. A network of thin white lines that webbed the broad shoulders like a branded grid. “There was a price on his head. One of his own tenants betrayed him to the English. They captured him, and took him to Wentworth Prison—to hang him.”
Roger gave a long, low whistle.
“Hell of a place,” he remarked. “Have you seen it? The walls must be ten feet thick!”
I opened my eyes. “They are,” I said wryly. “I’ve been inside them. But even the thickest walls have doors.” I felt a small flicker of the blaze of desperate courage that had taken me inside Wentworth Prison, in pursuit of my heart. If I could do that for you, I told Jamie silently, I can do this as well. But help me, you bloody big Scot—help me!
“I got him out,” I said, taking a deep breath. “What was left of him. Jack Randall commanded the garrison at Wentworth.” Now I didn’t want to remember the images that my words brought back, but they wouldn’t stop. Jamie, naked and bloody, on the floor of Eldridge Manor, where we had found sanctuary.
“I wilna let them take me back again, Sassenach,” he’d said to me, teeth clenched against the pain as I’d set the crushed bones of his hand and cleansed his wounds. “Sassenach.” He had called me that from the first; the Gaelic word for an outlander, a stranger. An Englishman. First in jest, and then in affection.
And I hadn’t let them find him; with the help of his kinsman, a little Fraser clansman called Murtagh, I’d gotten him across the Channel to France, and to refuge in the Abbey of Ste. Anne de Beaupré, where one of his Fraser uncles was abbot. But once there in safety, I had found that saving his life was not the end of the task set me.
What Jack Randall had done to him had sunk into his soul as surely as the flails of the lash had sunk in his back, and had left scars every bit as permanent. I was not sure, even now, what I had done, when I had summoned his demons and fought them single-handed, in the dark of his mind; there is very little difference between medicine and magic, when it comes to some kinds of healing.
I could still feel the cold, hard stone that bruised me, and the strength of the fury that I had drawn from him, the hands that closed round my neck and the burning creature who had hunted me through the dark.
“But I did heal him,” I said softly. “He came back to me.”
Brianna was shaking her head slowly back and forth, bewildered, but with a stubborn set to her head that I knew very well indeed. “Grahams are stupid, Campbells are deceitful, MacKenzies are charming but sly, and Frasers are stubborn,” Jamie had told me once, giving me his view of the general characteristics of the clans. He hadn’t been far wrong, either; Frasers were extremely stubborn, not least him. Nor Bree.
“I don’t believe it,” she said flatly. She sat up straighter, eyeing me closely. “I think maybe you’ve been thinking too much about those men at Culloden,” she said. “After all, you’ve been under a strain lately, and maybe Daddy’s death …”
“Frank wasn’t your father,” I said bluntly.
“He was!” She flashed back with it immediately, so fast that it startled both of us.
Frank had, in time, bowed to the doctors’ insistence that any attempt to “force me to accept reality,” as one of them put it, might be harmful to my pregnancy. There had been a lot of murmuring in corridors—and shouting, now and then—but he had given up asking me for the truth. And I, in frail health and sick at heart, had given up telling it to him.
I wasn’t going to give up, this time.
“I promised Frank,” I said. “Twenty years ago, when you were born. I tried to leave him, and he wouldn’t let me go. He loved you.” I felt my voice soften as I looked at Brianna. “He couldn’t believe the truth, but he knew—of course—that he wasn’t your father. He asked me not to tell you—to let him be your only father—as long as he lived. After that, he said, it was up to me.” I swallowed, licking dry lips.
“I owed him that,” I said. “Because he loved you. But now Frank’s dead—and you have a right to know who you are.”
“If you doubt it,” I said, “go to the National Portrait Gallery. They’ve a picture there of Ellen MacKenzie; Jamie’s mother. She’s wearing these.” I touched the pearl necklace at my throat. A string of baroque freshwater pearls from Scottish rivers, strung with roundels of pierced gold. “Jamie gave them to me on our wedding day.”
I looked at Brianna, sitting tall and stiff, the bones of her face stark in protest. “Take along a hand mirror,” I said. “Take a good look at the portrait and then in the mirror. It’s not an exact likeness, but you’re very like your grandmother.”
Roger stared at Brianna as though he’d never seen her before. He glanced back and forth between us, then, as though making up his mind, suddenly squared his shoulders and rose from the sofa where he had been sitting beside her.
“I’ve something I think you should see,” he said firmly. He crossed quickly to the Reverend’s old rolltop desk and pulled a rubber-banded bundle of yellowed newspaper clippings from one of the pigeonholes.
“When you’ve read them, look at the dates,” he told Brianna, handing them to her. Then, still standing, he turned to me and looked me over, with the long, dispassionate gaze that I recognized as a that of a scholar, schooled in objectivity. He didn’t yet believe, but he had the imagination to doubt.
“Seventeen forty-three,” he said, as though to himself. He shook his head, marveling. “And I thought it was a man you’d met here, in 1945. God, I would never have thought—well, Christ, who would?”
I was surprised. “You knew? About Brianna’s father?”
He nodded at the clippings in Brianna’s hands. She hadn’t yet looked at them, but was staring at Roger, half-bewildered, half-angry. I could see the storm gathering in her eyes, and so, I thought, could Roger. He looked hastily away from her, turning back to me in question.
“Then those men whose names you gave me, the ones who fought at Culloden—you knew them?”
I relaxed, ever so slightly. “Yes, I knew them.” There was a grumble of thunder to the east, and the rain broke in a spatter against the long windows that lined the study from floor to ceiling on one side. Brianna’s head was bent over the clippings, the wings of her hair hiding everything but the tip of her nose, which was bright red. Jamie always went red when he was furious or upset. I was all too familiar with the sight of a Fraser on the verge of explosion.
“And you were in France,” Roger murmured as though to himself, still studying me closely. The shock in his face was fading into surmise, and a kind of excitement. “I don’t suppose you knew …”
“Yes, I did,” I told him. “That’s why we went to Paris. I’d told Jamie about Culloden—the ’45, and what would happen. We went to Paris to try to stop Charles Stuart.”