I shouldn’t have been; I’d seen Mrs. Bug walk for a mile with a full-grown goat across her shoulders—but somehow one never translates the strength required for daily farm life into a capacity for homicidal fury.

“So was I,” Jamie said dryly. “Not that she was strong enough to do it, but that she dared take matters into her own hands. Why did she no tell Arch, if not myself?”

“I suppose it’s what she said—she thought it wasn’t her place to say anything; you’d given her the job of looking after him, and she’d move heaven and earth to do anything you asked. I daresay she thought she was coping well enough, but when he showed up that way, she … just snapped. It does happen; I’ve seen it.”

“So have I,” he muttered. A small frown had formed, deepening the crease between his brows, and I wondered what violent incidents he might be recalling. “But I shouldna have thought …”

Arch Bug came in so quietly that I didn’t hear him; I only realized that he was there when I saw Jamie look up, stiffening. I whirled about, and saw the ax in Arch’s hand. I opened my mouth to speak, but he strode toward Jamie, taking no notice of his surroundings. Clearly, for him, there was no one in the room save Jamie.

He reached the desk and laid the ax upon it, almost gently.

“My life for hers, O, chieftain,” he said quietly in Gaelic. He stepped back then, and knelt, head bowed. He had braided his soft white hair in a narrow plait and bound it up, so that the back of his neck was left bare. It was walnut-brown and deeply seamed from weather, but still thick and muscular above the white band of his collar.

A tiny noise from the door made me turn from the scene, riveting as it was. Mrs. Bug was there, clinging to the jamb for support, and in obvious need of it. Her cap was askew, and sweaty strands of iron-gray hair stuck to a face the color of cream gone bad.

Her eyes flickered to me when I moved, but then shot back to fix again upon her kneeling husband—and on Jamie, who was now standing, looking from Arch to his wife, then back again. He rubbed a finger slowly up and down the bridge of his nose, eyeing Arch.

“Oh, aye,” he said mildly. “I’m to take your head, am I? Here in my own room and have your wife mop up the blood, or shall I do it in the dooryard, and nail ye up by the hair over my lintel as a warning to Richard Brown? Get up, ye auld fraudster.”

Everything in the room was frozen for an instant—long enough for me to notice the tiny black mole in the exact middle of Arch’s neck—and then the old man rose, very slowly.

“It is your right,” he said, in Gaelic. “I am your tacksman, a ceann-cinnidh, I swear by my iron; it is your right.” He stood very straight, but his eyes were hooded, fixed on the desk where his ax lay, the sharpened edge a silver line against the dull gray metal of the head.

Jamie drew breath to reply, but then stopped, eyeing the old man narrowly. Something changed in him, some awareness taking hold.

“A ceann-cinnidh?” he said, and Arch Bug nodded, silent.

The air of the room had thickened in a heartbeat, and the hairs prickled on the back of my own neck.

“A ceann-cinnidh,” Arch had said. O, chieftain. One word, and we stood in Scotland. It was easy to see the difference in attitude between Jamie’s new tenants and his Ardsmuir men—the difference of a loyalty of agreement and one of acknowledgment. This was different still: an older allegiance, which had ruled the Highlands for a thousand years. The oath of blood and iron.

I saw Jamie weigh the present and the past and realize where Arch Bug stood between them. I saw it in his face, exasperation changing to realization—and saw his shoulders drop a little, in acceptance.

“By your word, then, it is my right,” he said softly, also in Gaelic. He drew himself up, picked up the ax, and held it out, handle first. “And by that right, I give you back your woman’s life—and your own.”

Mrs. Bug let out a small sobbing breath. Arch didn’t look round at her, but reached out and took the ax, with a grave inclination of the head. He turned then, and walked out without a further word—though I saw the fingers of his maimed hand brush his wife’s sleeve, very softly, in passing.

Mrs. Bug straightened herself, hastily tucking up the straggling bits of hair with trembling fingers. Jamie didn’t look at her, but sat down again, and took up his quill and a sheet of paper, though I thought he had no intention of writing anything. Not wanting to embarrass her, I affected great interest in the bookshelf, picking up Jamie’s little cherrywood snake as though to examine it more closely.

Cap on straight now, she came into the room, and bobbed a curtsy in front of him.

“Will I fetch ye a bit to eat, sir? There’s bannocks made fresh.” She spoke with great dignity, head upright. He raised his own head from his paper, and smiled at her.

“I should like that,” he said. “Gun robh math agaibh, a nighean.”

She nodded smartly and turned on her heel. At the door, though, she paused, looking back. Jamie raised his brows.

“I was there, ken,” she said, fixing him with a direct look. “When the Sassenachs killed your grandsire, there on Tower Hill. There was a lot of blood.” She pursed her lips, examining him through narrowed, reddened eyes, then relaxed.

“Ye’re a credit to him,” she said, and was gone in a whisk of petticoats and apron strings.

Jamie looked at me in surprise, and I shrugged.

“It wasn’t necessarily a compliment, you know,” I said, and his shoulders began to shake in silent laughter.

“I know,” he said at last, and swiped a knuckle beneath his nose. “D’ye ken, Sassenach—sometimes I mourn the auld bastard?” He shook his head. “Sometime I must ask Mrs. Bug if it’s true what he said, at the last. What they say he said, I mean.”

“What’s that?”

“He gave the headsman his fee, and told him to do a good job—‘For I shall be very angry indeed if ye don’t.’”

“Well, it certainly sounds like something he would say,” I said, smiling a little. “What do you suppose the Bugs were doing in London?”

He shook his head again, and turned his face to me, lifting his chin so the sun from the window glimmered like water along his jaw and cheekbone.

“God knows. D’ye think she’s right, Sassenach? About me being like him?”

“Not to look at,” I said, smiling a little. The late Simon, Lord Lovat, had been short and squat, though powerfully built despite his age. He had also borne a strong resemblance to a malevolent—but very clever—toad.

“No,” Jamie agreed. “Thank God. But otherwise?” The light of humor was still in his eyes, but he was serious; he truly wanted to know.

I studied him thoughtfully. There was no trace of the Old Fox in his bold, clean-cut features—those had come mostly from his mother’s MacKenzie side—nor yet in the broad-shouldered height of him, but somewhere behind those slanted dark blue eyes, I now and then sensed a faint echo of Lord Lovat’s deep-set gaze, glittering with interest and sardonic humor.

“You have something of him,” I admitted. “More than a little, sometimes. You haven’t the overweening ambition, but …” I squinted a bit, considering. “I was going to say that you aren’t as ruthless as him,” I went on slowly, “but you are, really.”

“Am I, then?” He didn’t seem either surprised or put out to hear this.

“You can be,” I said, and felt somewhere in the marrow of my bones the popping sound of Arvin Hodgepile’s neck breaking. It was a warm afternoon, but gooseflesh rippled suddenly up my arms, and then was gone.

“Have I the devious nature, d’ye think?” he asked seriously.

“I don’t know, quite,” I said with some dubiousness. “You’re not a proper twister like he was—but that may be only because you’ve a sense of honor that he lacked. You don’t use people like he did.”

He smiled at that, but with less real humor than he’d shown before.