“Rather than something sordid like trade, or land?” Jamie suggested, raising one eyebrow.

“I don’t say trade and land haven’t anything to do with it,” I replied, wondering precisely how I’d managed to become a defender of the American Revolution—an historical period I knew only from Brianna’s school textbooks. “But it goes well beyond that, don’t you think? We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

“Who said that?” he asked, interested.

“Thomas Jefferson will say it—on behalf of the new republic. The Declaration of Independence, it’s called. Will be called.”

“All men,” he repeated. “Does he mean Indians, as well, do ye think?”

“I can’t say,” I said, rather irritated at being forced into this position. “I haven’t met him. If I do, I’ll ask, shall I?”

“Never mind.” He lifted his fingers in brief dismissal. “I’ll ask him myself, and I have the opportunity. Meanwhile, I’ll ask Brianna.” He glanced at me. “Though as to principle, Sassenach—”

He leaned back in his chair, folded his arms over his chest, and closed his eyes.

“As long as but a hundred of us remain alive,” he said precisely, “never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom—for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.”

“The Declaration of Arbroath,” he said, opening his eyes. He gave me a lopsided smile. “Written some four hundred years ago. Speaking o’ principles, aye?”

He stood up then, but still remained standing by the battered table he used as a desk, looking down at Ashe’s letter.

“As for my own principles …” he said, as though to himself, but then looked at me, as though suddenly realizing that I was still there.

“Aye, I think I mean to give Bird the muskets,” he said. “Though I may have cause to regret it, and I find them pointing at me, two or three years hence. But he shall have them, and do with them what seems best, to defend himself and his people.”

“The price of honor, is it?”

He looked down at me, with the ghost of a smile.

“Call it blood money.”

54



FLORA MACDONALD’S

BARBECUE

River Run Plantation

August 6, 1774

WHATEVER DID ONE SAY to an icon? Or an icon’s husband, for that matter?

“Oh, I shall faint, I know I shall.” Rachel Campbell was fluttering her fan hard enough to create a perceptible breeze. “Whatever shall I say to her?”

“‘Good day, Mrs. MacDonald’?” suggested her husband, a faint smile lurking at the corner of his withered mouth.

Rachel hit him sharply with her fan, making him chuckle as he dodged away. For all he was thirty-five years her senior, Farquard Campbell had an easy, teasing way with his wife, quite at odds with his usual dignified demeanor.

“I shall faint,” Rachel declared again, having evidently decided upon this as a definite social strategy.

“Well, ye must please yourself, of course, a nighean, but if ye do, it will have to be Mr. Fraser picking you up from the ground; my ancient limbs are scarcely equal to the task.”

“Oh!” Rachel cast a quick glance at Jamie, who smiled at her, then hid her blushes behind her fan. While plainly fond of her own husband, she made no secret of her admiration for mine.

“Your humble servant, madam,” Jamie gravely assured her, bowing.

She tittered. I shouldn’t like to wrong the woman, but she definitely tittered. I caught Jamie’s eye, and hid a smile behind my own fan.

“And what will you say to her, then, Mr. Fraser?”

Jamie pursed his lips and squinted thoughtfully at the brilliant sun streaming through the elm trees that edged the lawn at River Run.

“Oh, I suppose I might say that I’m glad the weather has kept fine for her. It was raining the last time we met.”

Rachel’s jaw dropped, and so did her fan, bouncing on the lawn. Her husband bent to pick it up for her, groaning audibly, but she had no attention to spare for him.

“You’ve met her?” she cried, eyes wide with excitement. “When? Where? With the prin—with him?”

“Ah, no,” Jamie said, smiling. “On Skye. I’d gone wi’ my father—a matter of sheep, it was. We chanced to meet Hugh MacDonald of Armadale in Portree—Miss Flora’s stepfather, aye?—and he’d brought the lass into the town with him, for a treat.”

“Oh!” Rachel was enchanted. “And was she beautiful and gracious as they say?”

Jamie frowned, considering.

“Well, no,” he said. “But she’d a terrible grippe at the time, and no doubt would have looked much improved without the red nose. Gracious? Well, I wouldna say so, really. She snatched a bridie right out of my hand and ate it.”

“And how old were you both at the time?” I asked, seeing Rachel’s mouth sag in horror.

“Oh, six, maybe,” he said cheerfully. “Or seven. I doubt I should remember, save I kicked her in the shin when she stole my bridie, and she pulled my hair.”

Recovering somewhat from the shock, Rachel was pressing Jamie for further reminiscences, a pressure he was laughingly deflecting with jokes.

Of course, he had come prepared to this occasion; all over the grounds, there were stories being exchanged—humorous, admiring, longing—of the days before Culloden. Odd, that it should have been the defeat of Charles Stuart, and his ignominious flight, that made a heroine of Flora MacDonald and united these Highland exiles in a way that they could never have achieved—let alone sustained—had he actually won.

It struck me suddenly that Charlie was likely still alive, quietly drinking himself to death in Rome. In any real way, though, he was long since dead to these people who had loved or hated him. The amber of time had sealed him forever in that one defining moment of his life—Bliadha Tearlach; “Charlie’s Year,” it meant, and even now, I heard people call it that.

It was Flora’s coming that was causing this flood of sentiment, of course. How strange for her, I thought, with a pang of sympathy—and for the first time, wondered what on earth I might say to her myself.

I had met famous people before—not the least of them the Bonnie Prince himself. But always before, I had met them when they—and I—were in the midst of their normal lives, not yet past the defining events that would make them famous, and thus still just people. Bar Louis—but then, he was a king. There are rules of etiquette for dealing with kings, since after all, no one ever does approach them as normal people. Not even when—

I snapped my own fan open, hot blood bursting through my face and body. I breathed deeply, trying not to fan quite as frantically as Rachel, but wanting to.

I had not once, in all the years since it happened, ever specifically recalled those two or three minutes of physical intimacy with Louis of France. Not deliberately, God knew, and not by accident, either.

Yet suddenly, the memory of it had touched me, as suddenly as a hand coming out of the crowd to seize my arm. Seize my arm, lift my skirts, and penetrate me in a way much more shockingly intrusive than the actual experience had been.

The air around me was suffused with the scent of roses, and I heard the creak of the dress cage as Louis’s weight pressed upon it, and heard his sigh of pleasure. The room was dark, lit by one candle; it flickered at the edge of vision, then was blotted out by the man between my—

“Christ, Claire! Are ye all right?” I hadn’t actually fallen down, thank God. I had reeled back against the wall of Hector Cameron’s mausoleum, and Jamie, seeing me go, had leapt forward to catch hold of me.

“Let go,” I said, breathless, but imperative. “Let go of me!”