Across the hall, small shufflings and murmurings, the shifting of weight and the creak of the table. And in the depths of my inner ear, echoing my own pulse, the soft, rapid beat of a baby’s heart.

It could so easily end badly.

“What are ye doing, Sassenach?”

I looked up, startled.

“I’m not doing anything.”

“Ye’re staring fit to see through the wall, and it doesna seem that ye like what ye’re looking at.”

“Oh.” I dropped my gaze, and realized that I had been pleating and repleating the fabric of my skirt between my fingers; there was a large wrinkled patch in the fawn-colored homespun. “Reliving my failures, I suppose.”

He looked at me for a moment, then rose and came behind me, putting his hands on the base of my neck, kneading my shoulders with a strong, warm touch.

“What failures?” he asked.

I closed my eyes and let my head nod forward, trying not to groan with the sensations of pain from knotted muscles and the simultaneous exquisite relief.

“Oh,” I said, and sighed. “Patients I couldn’t save. Mistakes. Disasters. Accidents. Stillbirths.”

That last word hung in the air, and his hands paused in their work for a moment, then resumed more strongly.

“There are times, surely, when there’s nothing ye could do? You or anyone. Some things are beyond the power of anyone to make right, aye?”

“You never believe that, when it’s you,” I said. “Why should I?”

He paused in his kneading, and I looked up over my shoulder at him. He opened his mouth to contradict me, then realized that he couldn’t. He shook his head, sighed, and resumed.

“Aye, well. I suppose it’s true enough,” he said, with extreme wryness.

“That what the Greeks called hubris, do you think?”

He gave a small snort, which might have been amusement.

“I do. And ye ken where that leads.”

“To a lonely rock under a burning sun, with a vulture gnawing on your liver,” I said, and laughed.

So did Jamie.

“Aye, well, a lonely rock under a burning sun is a verra good place to have company, I should think. And I dinna mean the vulture, either.”

His hands gave a final squeeze to my shoulders, but he didn’t take them away. I leaned my head back against him, eyes closed, taking comfort in his company.

In the momentary silence, we could hear small sounds across the hall, from the surgery. A muffled grunt from Marsali as a contraction came on, a soft French question from Fergus.

I felt that we really ought not to be listening—but neither of us could think of anything to say, to cover the sounds of their private conversation.

A murmur from Marsali, a pause, then Fergus said something hesitant.

“Aye, like we did before Félicité,” came Marsali’s voice, muffled, but quite clear.

“Oui, but—”

“Put something against the door, then,” she said, sounding impatient.

We heard footsteps, and the door to the surgery swung open. Fergus stood there, dark hair disheveled, shirt half-buttoned, and his handsome face deeply flushed under the shadow of beard stubble. He saw us, and the most extraordinary look flitted across his face. Pride, embarrassment, and something indefinably … French. He gave Jamie a lopsided smile and a one-shouldered shrug of supreme Gallic insouciance—then firmly shut the door. We heard the grating sounds of a small table being moved, and a small thump as it was shoved against the door.

Jamie and I exchanged looks of bafflement.

Giggles came from behind the closed door, accompanied by a massive creaking and rustling.

“He’s no going to—” Jamie began, and stopped abruptly, looking incredulous. “Is he?”

Evidently so, judging from the faint rhythmic creaks that began to be heard from the surgery.

I felt a slight warmth wash through me, along with a mild sense of shock—and a slightly stronger urge to laugh.

“Well … er … I have heard that … um … it does sometimes seem to bring on labor. If a child was overdue, the maîtresses sage femme in Paris would sometimes tell women to get their husbands drunk and … er-hmm.”

Jamie gave the surgery door a look of disbelief, mingled with grudging respect.

“And him with not even a dram taken. Well, if that’s what he’s up to, the wee bugger’s got balls, I’ll say that for him.”

Ian, coming down the hall in time to hear this exchange, stopped dead. He listened for a moment to the noises proceeding from the surgery, looked from Jamie and me to the surgery door, back, then shook his head and turned around, going back to the kitchen.

Jamie reached out and gently closed the study door.

Without comment, he sat down again, picked up his pen, and began scratching doggedly away. I went over to the small bookshelf, and stood there staring at the collection of battered spines, taking nothing in.

Old wives’ tales were sometimes nothing more than old wives’ tales. Sometimes they weren’t.

I was seldom troubled by personal recollections while dealing with patients; I had neither time nor attention to spare. At the moment, though, I had much too much of both. And a very vivid memory indeed of the night before Bree’s birth.

People often say that women forget what childbirth is like, because if they remembered, no one would ever do it more than once. Personally, I had no trouble at all remembering.

The sense of massive inertia, particularly. That endless time toward the end, when it seems that it never will end, that one is mired in some prehistoric tar pit, every small move a struggle doomed to futility. Every square centimeter of skin stretched as thin as one’s temper.

You don’t forget. You simply get to the point where you don’t care what birth will feel like; anything is better than being pregnant for an instant longer.

I’d reached that point roughly two weeks before my due date. The date came—and passed. A week later, I was in a state of chronic hysteria, if one could be simultaneously hysterical and torpid.

Frank was physically more comfortable than I was, but in terms of nerves, there wasn’t much to choose between us. Both of us were terrified—not merely of the birth, but of what might come after. Frank being Frank, he reacted to terror by becoming very quiet, withdrawing into himself, to a place where he could control what was happening, by refusing to let anything in.

But I was in no mood to respect anyone’s barriers, and broke down in tears of sheer despair, after being informed by a cheerful obstetrician that I was not dilated at all, and “it might be several days—maybe another week.”

Trying to calm me, Frank had resorted to rubbing my feet. Then my back, my neck, my shoulders—anything I would let him touch. And gradually, I had exhausted myself and lain quiet, letting him touch me. And … and we were both terrified, and terribly in need of reassurance, and neither of us had any words with which to give it.

And he made love to me, slowly and gently, and we fell asleep in each other’s arms—and woke up in a state of panic several hours later when my water broke.

“Claire!” I suppose Jamie had called my name more than once; I had been so lost in memory that I had forgotten entirely where I was.

“What?” I swung round, heart pounding. “Has something happened?”

“No, not yet.” He studied me for a moment, brow creased, then got up and came to stand by me.

“Are ye all right, Sassenach?”

“Yes. I—I was just thinking.”

“Aye, I saw that,” he said dryly. He hesitated, then—as a particularly loud moan came through the door—touched my elbow.

“Are ye afraid?” he said softly. “That ye might be wi’ child yourself, I mean?”

“No,” I said, and heard the note of desolation in my voice as clearly as he did. “I know I’m not.” I looked up at him; his face was blurred by a haze of unshed tears. “I’m sad that I’m not—that I never will be again.”

I blinked hard, and saw the same emotions on his face that I felt—relief and regret, mingled in such proportion that it was impossible to say which was foremost. He put his arms round me and I rested my forehead on his chest, thinking what comfort it was to know that I had company on this rock, as well.