“Aye. Well, see, ’twas the night before I gave myself up to the English—”

“You never told me that!”

“Never told ye what?” He sounded confused.

“That you gave yourself up to the English. We thought you’d been captured.”

“I was,” he said briefly. “But by arrangement, for the price on my head.” He flipped a hand, dismissing the matter. “It wasna important.”

“They might have hanged you!” And a good thing, too, said the small, furiously hurt voice inside.

“No, they wouldn’t.” A faint tinge of amusement showed in his voice. “Ye’d told me so, Sass—mmphm. I didna really care, though, if they did.”

I had no idea what he meant by saying I’d told him so, but I certainly didn’t care at the moment.

“Forget that,” I said tersely. “I want to know—”

“About Mary. Aye, I ken.” He rubbed a hand slowly through his hair. “Aye, well. She came to me, the night before I—I went. I was in the cave, ken, near Lallybroch, and she brought me supper. And then she … stayed.”

I bit my tongue, not to interrupt. I could feel him gathering his thoughts, searching for words.

“I tried to send her away,” he said at last. “She … well, what she said to me …” He glanced at me; I saw the movement of his head. “She said she’d seen me with ye, Claire—and that she kent the look of a true love when she saw it, for all she’d not had one herself. And that it wasna in her mind to make me betray that. But she would give me … some small thing. That’s what she said to me,” he said, and his voice had grown husky, “‘some small thing, that maybe ye can use.’”

“It was—I mean, it wasna …” He stopped, and made that odd shrugging motion of his, as though his shirt were tight across his shoulders. He bowed his head for a moment on his knees, hands linked round them.

“She gave me tenderness,” he said finally, so softly that I barely heard him. “I—I hope I gave her the same.”

My throat and chest were too tight to speak, and tears prickled behind my eyes. I remembered, quite suddenly, what he had said to me the night I mended Tom Christie’s hand, about the Sacred Heart—“so wanting—and no one to touch him.” And he had lived in a cave for seven years, alone.

There was no more than a foot of space between us, but it seemed an unbridgeable gulf.

I reached across it and laid my hand on his, the tips of my fingers on his big, weathered knuckles. I took a breath, then two, trying to steady my voice, but it cracked and broke, nonetheless.

“You gave her … tenderness. I know you did.”

He turned to me, suddenly, and my face was pressed into his coat, the cloth of it damp and rough on my skin, my tears blooming in tiny warm patches that vanished at once into the chill of the fabric.

“Oh, Claire,” he whispered into my hair. I reached up, and could feel wetness on his cheeks. “She said—she wished to keep ye alive for me. And she meant it; she didna mean to take anything for herself.”

I cried then, holding nothing back. For empty years, yearning for the touch of a hand. Hollow years, lying beside a man I had betrayed, for whom I had no tenderness. For the terrors and doubts and griefs of the day. Cried for him and me and for Mary MacNab, who knew what loneliness was—and what love was, as well.

“I would have told ye, before,” he whispered, patting my back as though I were a small child. “But it was … it was the once.” He shrugged a little, helpless. “And I couldna think how. How to say it, that ye’d understand.”

I sobbed, gulped air, and finally sat up, wiping my face carelessly on a fold of my skirt.

“I understand,” I said. My voice was thick and clogged, but fairly steady now. “I do.”

And I did. Not only about Mary MacNab and what she had done—but why he’d told me now. There was no need; I would never have known. No need but the need for absolute honesty between us—and that I must know it was there.

I had believed him, about Malva. But now I had not only certainty of mind—but peace of heart.

We sat close together, the folds of my cloak and skirts flowing over his legs, his simple presence a comfort. Somewhere nearby, a very early cricket began to chirp.

“The rain’s past, then,” I said, hearing it. He nodded, with a small sound of assent.

“What shall we do?” I said at last. My voice sounded calm.

“Find out the truth—if I can.”

Neither of us mentioned the possibility that he might not. I shifted, gathering the folds of my cloak.

“Will we go home, then?”

It was too dark to see now, but I felt him nod as he got to his feet, putting down a hand to help me.

“Aye, we will.”



THE HOUSE WAS EMPTY when we returned, though Mrs. Bug had left a covered dish of shepherd’s pie on the table, the floor swept, and the fire neatly smoored. I took off my wet cloak and hung it on the peg, but then stood, unsure quite what to do next, as though I stood in a stranger’s house, in a country where I did not know the custom.

Jamie seemed to feel the same way—though after a moment, he stirred, fetched down the candlestick from the shelf over the hearth, and lit it with a spill from the fire. The wavering glow seemed only to emphasize the odd, echoing quality of the room, and he stood holding it for a minute, at a loss, before finally setting it down with a thump in the middle of the table.

“Are ye hungry, S … Sassenach?” He had begun to speak by habit, but then interrupted himself, looking up to be sure the name was once more allowed. I did my best to smile at him, though I could feel the corners of my mouth tremble.

“No. Are you?”

He shook his head, silent, and dropped his hand from the dish. Looking round for something else to do, he took up the poker and stirred the coals, breaking up the blackened embers and sending a swirl of sparks and soot up the chimney and out onto the hearth. It would ruin the fire, which would need to be rebuilt before bed, but I said nothing—he knew that.

“It feels like a death in the family,” I said at last. “As though something terrible has happened, and this is the shocked bit, before you begin to send round and tell all the neighbors.”

He gave a small, rueful laugh, and put the poker down.

“We’ll not need to. They’ll all ken well enough by daybreak what’s happened.”

Rousing at last from my immobility, I shook out my damp skirts and came to stand beside him by the fire. The heat of it seared at once through the wet cloth; it should have been comforting, but there was an icy weight in my abdomen that wouldn’t melt. I put a hand on his arm, needing the touch of him.

“No one will believe it,” I said. He put a hand over mine, and smiled a little, his eyes closed, but shook his head.

“They’ll all believe it, Claire,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.”

81



BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT

IT ISN’T FREAKING TRUE!”

“No, of course not.” Roger watched his wife warily; she was exhibiting the general symptoms of a large explosive device with an unstable timing mechanism, and he had the distinct feeling that it was dangerous to be in her vicinity.

“That little bitch! I want to just grab her and choke the truth out of her!” Her hand closed convulsively on the neck of the syrup bottle, and he reached to take it from her before she should break it.

“I understand the impulse,” he said, “but on the whole—better not.”

She glared at him, but relinquished the bottle.

“Can’t you do something?” she said.

He’d been asking himself that since he’d heard the news of Malva’s accusation.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I thought I’d go and talk to the Christies, at least. And if I can get Malva alone, I will.” Thinking of his last tête-à-tête with Malva Christie, though, he had an uneasy feeling that she wouldn’t be easily shaken from her story.

Brianna sat down, scowling at her plate of buckwheat cakes, and began slathering them with butter. Her fury was beginning to give way to rational thought; he could see ideas darting behind her eyes.