Practically breathless with the enormity of the responsibility entrusted to him, Fergus stood up straight, hands clasped over his middle.
"I will not fail you, milord!"
A faint smile crossed Jamie's lips, and he rested a hand briefly on the smooth cap of Fergus's hair.
"I know that, man, and I am grateful," he said. He twisted the ring off his left hand; the cabochon ruby that had belonged to his father. "Here," he said, handing it to Fergus. "Go to the stables, and show this to the old man ye'll see there. Tell him I said you are to take Donas. Take the horse, and ride for Lallybroch. Stop for nothing, except as you must, to sleep, and when ye do sleep, hide yourself well."
Fergus was speechless with alarmed excitement, but Murtagh frowned dubiously at him.
"D'ye think the bairn can manage yon wicked beast?" he said.
"Aye, he can," Jamie said firmly. Overcome, Fergus stuttered, then sank to his knees and kissed Jamie's hand fervently. Springing to his feet, he darted away in the direction of the stables, his slight figure disappearing in the mist.
Jamie licked dry lips, and closed his eyes briefly, then turned to Murtagh with decision.
"And you—mo caraidh—I need ye to gather the men."
Murtagh's sketchy brows shot up, but he merely nodded.
"Aye," he said. "And when I have?"
Jamie glanced at me, then back at his godfather. "They'll be on the moor now, I think, with Young Simon. Just gather them together, in one place. I shall see my wife safe, and then—" He hesitated, then shrugged. "I will find you. Wait my coming."
Murtagh nodded once more, and turned to go. Then he paused, and turned back to face Jamie. The thin mouth twitched briefly, and he said, "I would ask the one thing of ye, lad—let it be the English. Not your ain folk."
Jamie flinched slightly, but after a moment, he nodded. Then, without speaking, he held out his arms to the older man. They embraced quickly, fiercely, and Murtagh, too, was gone, in a swirl of ragged tartan.
I was the last bit of business on the agenda.
"Come on, Sassenach," he said, seizing me by the arm. "We must go."
No one stopped us; there was so much coming and going by the roads that we were scarcely noticed while we were near the moor. Farther away, when we left the main road, there was no one to see.
Jamie was completely silent, concentrating single-mindedly on the job at hand. I said nothing to him, too occupied with my own shock and dread to wish for conversation.
"I shall see my wife safe." I hadn't known what he meant by that, but it became obvious within two hours, when he turned the head of his horse farther south, and the steep green hill called Craigh na Dun came in view.
"No!" I said, when I saw it, and realized where we were headed. "Jamie, no! I won't go!"
He didn't answer me, only spurred his horse and galloped ahead, leaving me no option but to follow.
My feelings were in turmoil; beyond the doom of the coming battle and the horror of Dougal's death, now there was the prospect of the stones. That accursed circle, through which I had come here. Plainly Jamie meant to send me back, back to my own time—if such a thing was possible.
He could mean all he liked, I thought, clenching my jaw as I followed him down the narrow trail through the heather. There was no power on earth that could make me leave him now.
We stood together on the hillside, in the small dooryard of the ruined cottage that stood below the crest of the hill. No one had lived there for years; the local folk said the hill was haunted—a fairy's dun.
Jamie had half-urged, half-dragged me up the slope, paying no attention to my protests. At the cottage he had stopped, though, and sunk to the ground, chest heaving as he gasped for breath.
"It's all right," he said at last. "We have a bit of time now; no one will find us here."
He sat on the ground, his plaid wrapped around him for warmth. It had stopped raining for the moment, but the wind blew cold from the mountains nearby, where snow still capped the peaks and choked the passes. He let his head fall forward onto his knees, exhausted by the flight.
I sat close by him, huddled within my cloak, and felt his breathing gradually slow as the panic subsided. We sat in silence for a long time, afraid to move from what seemed a precarious perch above the chaos below. Chaos I felt I had somehow helped create.
"Jamie," I said, at last. I reached out a hand to touch him, but then drew back and let it fall. "Jamie—I'm sorry."
He continued to look out, into the darkening void of the moor below. For a moment, I thought he hadn't heard me. He closed his eyes. Then he shook his head very slightly.
"No," he said softly. "There is no need."
"But there is." Grief nearly choked me, but I felt as though I must say it; must tell him that I knew what I had done to him.
"I should have gone back. Jamie—if I had gone, then, when you brought me here from Cranesmuir…maybe then—"
"Aye, maybe," he interrupted. He swung toward me abruptly, and I could see his eyes fixed on me. There was longing there, and a grief that matched mine, but no anger, no reproach.
He shook his head again.
"No," he said once more. "I ken what ye mean, mo duinne. But it isna so. Had ye gone then, matters might still have happened as they have. Maybe so, maybe no. Perhaps it would have come sooner. Perhaps differently. Perhaps—just perhaps—not at all. But there are more folk have had a hand in this than we two, and I willna have ye take the guilt of it upon yourself."
His hand touched my hair, smoothing it out of my eyes. A tear rolled down my cheek, and he caught it on his finger.
"Not that," I said. I flung a hand out toward the dark, taking in the armies, and Charles, and the starved man in the wood, and the slaughter to come. "Not that. What I did to you."
He smiled then, with great tenderness, and smoothed his palm across my cheek, warm on my spring-chilled skin.
"Aye? And what have I done to you, Sassenach? Taken ye from your own place, led ye into poverty and outlawry, taken ye through battlefields and risked your life. D'ye hold it against me?"
"You know I don't."
He smiled. "Aye, well; neither do I, my Sassenach." The smile faded from his face as he glanced up at the crest of the hill above us. The stones were invisible, but I could feel the menace of them, close at hand.
"I won't go, Jamie," I repeated stubbornly. "I'm staying with you."
"No." He shook his head. He spoke gently, but his voice was firm, with no possibility of denial. "I must go back, Claire."
"Jamie, you can't!" I clutched his arm urgently. "Jamie, they will have found Dougal by now! Willie Coulter will have told someone."
"Aye, he will." He put a hand over my arm and patted it. He had reached his decision on the ride to the hill; I could see it in his shadowed face, resignation and determination mingled. There was grief there, and sadness, too, but those had been put aside; he had no time for mourning now.
"We could try to get away to France," I said. "Jamie, we must!" But even as I spoke, I knew I could not turn him from the course he had decided on.
"No," he said again, softly. He turned and lifted a hand, gesturing toward the darkening valley below, the shaded hills beyond. "The country is roused, Sassenach. The ports are closed; O'Brien has been trying for the last three months to bring a ship to rescue the Prince, to take him to safety in France—Dougal told me…before." A tremor passed over his face, and a sudden spasm of grief knit his brows. He pushed it aside, though, and went on, explaining in a steady voice.
"It's only the English who are hunting Charles Stuart. It will be the English, and the clans as well, who hunt me. I am a traitor twice over, a rebel and a murderer. Claire…" He paused, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck, then said gently, "Claire, I am a dead man."
The tears were freezing on my cheeks, leaving icy trails that burned my skin.
"No," I said again, but to no effect.
"I'm no precisely inconspicuous, ye ken," he said, trying to make a joke of it as he ran a hand through the rusty locks of his hair. "Red Jamie wouldna get far, I think. But you…" He touched my mouth, tracing the line of my lips. "I can save you, Claire, and I will. That is the most important thing. But then I shall go back—for my men."
"The men from Lallybroch? But how?"
Jamie frowned, absently fingering the hilt of his sword as he thought.
"I think I can get them away. It will be confused on the moor, wi' men and horses moving to and fro, and orders shouted and contradicted; battles are verra messy affairs. And even if it's known by then what I—what I have done," he continued, with a momentary catch in his voice, "there are none who would stop me then, wi' the English in sight and the battle about to begin. Aye, I can do it," he said. His voice had steadied, and his fists clenched at his sides with determination.
"They will follow me without question—God help them, that's what's brought them here! Murtagh will have gathered them for me; I shall take them and lead them from the field. If anyone tries to stop me, I shall say that I claim the right to lead my own men in battle; not even Young Simon will deny me that."
He drew a deep breath, brows knit as he visualized the scene on the battlefield come morning.
"I shall bring them safely away. The field is broad enough, and there are enough men that no one will realize that we havena but moved to a new position. I shall bring them off the moor, and see them set on the road toward Lallybroch."
He fell silent, as though this were as far as he had thought in his plans.
"And then?" I asked, not wanting to know the answer, but unable to stop myself.
"And then I shall turn back to Culloden," he said, letting out his breath. He gave me an unsteady smile. "I'm no afraid to die, Sassenach." His mouth quirked wryly. "Well…not a lot, anyway. But some of the ways of accomplishing the fact…" A brief, involuntary shudder ran through him, but he tried to keep smiling.
"I doubt I should be thought worthy of the services of a true professional, but I expect in such a case, both Monsieur Forez and myself might find it…awkward. I mean, havin' my heart cut out by someone I've shared wine with…"
With a sound of incoherent distress, I flung my arms around him, holding him as tightly as I could.
"It's all right," he whispered into my hair. "It's all right, Sassenach. A musket ball. Maybe a blade. It will be over quickly."
I knew this was a lie; I had seen enough of battle wounds and the deaths of warriors. All that was true was that it was better than waiting for the hangman's noose. The terror that had ridden with me from Sandringham's estate rose now to high tide, choking, drowning me. My ears rang with my own pulsebeat, and my throat closed so tight that I felt I could not breathe.
Then all at once, the fear left me. I could not leave him, and I would not.
"Jamie," I said, into the folds of his plaid. "I'm going back with you."
He started back, staring down at me.
"The hell you are!" he said.
"I am." I felt very calm, with no trace of doubt. "I can make a kilt of my arisaid; there are enough young boys with the army that I can pass for one. You've said yourself it will all be confusion. No one will notice."
"No!" he said. "No, Claire!" His jaw was clenched, and he was glaring at me with a mixture of anger and horror.
"If you're not afraid, I'm not either," I said, firming my own jaw. "It will…be over quickly. You said so." My chin was beginning to quiver, despite my determination. "Jamie—I won't…I can't…I bloody won't live without you, and that's all!"
He opened his mouth, speechless, then closed it, shaking his head. The light over the mountains was failing, painting the clouds with a dull red glow. At last he reached for me, drew me close and held me.
"D'ye think I don't know?" he asked softly. "It's me that has the easy part now. For if ye feel for me as I do for you—then I am asking you to tear out your heart and live without it." His hand stroked my hair, the roughness of his knuckles catching in the blowing strands.
"But ye must do it, mo duinne. My brave lioness. Ye must."
"Why?" I demanded, pulling back to look up at him. "When you took me from the witch trial at Cranesmuir—you said then that you would have died with me, you would have gone to the stake with me, had it come to that!"
He grasped my hands, fixing me with a steady blue gaze.
"Aye, I would," he said. "But I wasna carrying your child."
The wind had frozen me; it was the cold that made me shake, I told myself. The cold that took my breath away.
"You can't tell," I said, at last. "It's much too soon to be sure."
He snorted briefly, and a tiny flicker of amusement lit his eyes.
"And me a farmer, too! Sassenach, ye havena been a day late in your courses, in all the time since ye first took me to your bed. Ye havena bled now in forty-six days."
"You bastard!" I said, outraged. "You counted! In the middle of a bloody war, you counted!"
"Didn't you?"
"No!" I hadn't; I had been much too afraid to acknowledge the possibility of the thing I had hoped and prayed for so long, come now so horribly too late.
"Besides," I went on, trying still to deny the possibility, "that doesn't mean anything. Starvation could cause that; it often does."
He lifted one brow, and cupped a broad hand gently beneath my breast.
"Aye, you're thin enough; but scrawny as ye are, your br**sts are full—and the n**ples of them gone the color of Champagne grapes. You forget," he said, "I've seen ye so before. I have no doubt—and neither have you."
I tried to fight down the waves of nausea—so easily attributable to fright and starvation—but I felt the small heaviness, suddenly burning in my womb. I bit my lip hard, but the sickness washed over me.
Jamie let go of my hands, and stood before me, hands at his sides, stark in silhouette against the fading sky.
"Claire," he said quietly. "Tomorrow I will die. This child…is all that will be left of me—ever. I ask ye, Claire—I beg you—see it safe."
I stood still, vision blurring, and in that moment, I heard my heart break. It was a small, clean sound, like the snapping of a flower's stem.
At last I bent my head to him, the wind grieving in my ears.
"Yes," I whispered. "Yes. I'll go."
It was nearly dark. He came behind me and held me, leaning back against him as he looked over my shoulder, out over the valley. The lights of watchfires had begun to spring up, small glowing dots in the far distance. We were silent for a long time, as the evening deepened. It was very quiet on the hill; I could hear nothing but Jamie's even breathing, each breath a precious sound.
"I will find you," he whispered in my ear. "I promise. If I must endure two hundred years of purgatory, two hundred years without you—then that is my punishment, which I have earned for my crimes. For I have lied, and killed, and stolen; betrayed and broken trust. But there is the one thing that shall lie in the balance. When I shall stand before God, I shall have one thing to say, to weigh against the rest."
His voice dropped, nearly to a whisper, and his arms tightened around me.
"Lord, ye gave me a rare woman, and God! I loved her well."
He was slow, and careful; so was I. Each touch, each moment must be savored, remembered—treasured as a talisman against a future empty of him.
I touched each soft hollow, the hidden places of his body. Felt the grace and the strength of each curving bone, the marvel of his firm-knit muscles, drawn lean and flexible across the span of his shoulders, smooth and solid down the length of his back, hard as seasoned oakwood in the columns of his thighs.
Tasted the salty sweat in the hollow of his throat, smelled the warm muskiness of the hair between his legs, the sweetness of the soft, wide mouth, tasting faintly of dried apple and the bitter tang of juniper berries.
"You are so beautiful, my own," he whispered to me, touching the slipperiness between my legs, the tender skin of my inner thighs.
His head was no more than a dark blur against the white blur of my br**sts. The holes in the roof admitted only the faintest light from the overcast sky; the soft grumble of spring thunder muttered constantly in the hills beyond our fragile walls. He was hard in my hand, so stiff with the wanting that my touch made him groan in a need close to pain.
When he could wait no longer, he took me, a knife to its scabbard, and we moved hard together, pressing, wanting, needing so urgently that moment of ultimate joining, and fearing to reach it, for the knowledge that beyond it lay eternal separation.
He brought me again and again to the peaks of sensation, holding back himself, stopping, gasping and shuddering on the brink. Until at last I touched his face, twined my fingers in his hair, pressed him tight and arched my back and h*ps beneath him, urging, forcing.
"Now," I said to him, softly. "Now. Come with me, come to me, now. Now!"
He yielded to me, and I to him, despair lending edge to passion, so the echo of our cries seemed to die away slowly, ringing in the darkness of the cold stone hut.
We lay pressed together, unmoving, his weight a heavy blessing, a shield and reassurance. A body so solid, so filled with heat and life; how could it be possible that he would cease to exist within hours?
"Listen," he said at last, softly. "Do you hear?"
At first I heard nothing but the rushing of the wind, and the trickle of rain, dripping through the holes of the roof. Then I heard it, the steady, slow thump of his heartbeat, pulsing against me, and mine against his, each matching each, in the rhythm of life. The blood coursed through him, and through our fragile link, through me, and back again.
We lay so, warm beneath the makeshift covering of plaid and cloak, on a bed of our clothing, tangled together. Then at last he slipped free, and turning me away from him, cupped his hand across my belly, his breath warm on the nape of my neck.
"Sleep now a bit, mo duinne," he whispered. "I would sleep once more this way—holding you, holding the babe."
I had thought I could not sleep, but the pull of exhaustion was too much, and I slipped beneath the surface with scarcely a ripple. Near dawn I woke, Jamie's arms still around me, and lay watching the imperceptible bloom of night into day, futilely willing back the friendly shelter of the dark.