“If she didn’t do it, breugaire, who did?” someone bellowed. “Liar” it meant.

The man Jamie had slashed across the face with his dirk was in the forefront of the crowd; the open wound gaped, still oozing, and his face was a mask of dried blood.

“If ’twasn’t her, ’twas him!” he shouted, pointing at Jamie. “Fear-siûrsachd!” Lecher.

There was an ugly rumble of agreement at that, and I saw Jamie shift his weight and set his hand to his sword, ready to draw if they charged him.

“Be still!” Hiram’s voice was rather shrill, but penetrating. “Be still, I tell ye!” He pushed Brown aside and came up the steps, very deliberately. At the top, he gave me a look of revulsion, but then turned to the crowd.

“Justice!” one of Brown’s men yelled, before he could speak. “We want justice!”

“Aye, we do!” Hiram shouted back. “And justice we shall have, for the puir raped lass and her bairn unborn!”

A satisfied growl greeted this, and icy terror ran down my legs, so that I feared my knees would give way.

“Justice! Justice!” Various people were taking up the chant, but Hiram stopped them, raising both hands as though he were bloody Moses parting the Red Sea.

“Justice is mine, sayeth the Lord,” Jamie remarked, in a voice just loud enough to be generally heard. Hiram, who had evidently been about to say the same thing, gave him a furious look, but couldn’t very well contradict him.

“And justice you’ll have, Mister Fraser!” Brown said very loudly. He lifted his face, narrow-eyed and malicious with triumph. “I wish to take her for trial. Anyone accused is entitled to that, nay? If she is innocent—if you are innocent—how can you refuse?”

“Certainly a point,” Hiram observed, very dry. “If your wife be clean o’ the crime, she’s naught to fear. How say ye, sir?”

“I say that should I surrender her to the hands of this man, she willna live to stand a trial,” Jamie replied hotly. “He holds me to blame for the death of his brother—and some of ye here will ken well enough the truth o’ that affair!” he added, lifting his chin to the crowd.

Here and there, heads nodded—but they were few. No more than a dozen of his Ardsmuir men had been on the expedition that rescued me; in the wake of gossip following it, many of the new tenants would have known only that I had been abducted, assaulted in some scandalous fashion, and that men had died on my account. The mind of the times being what it was, I was well aware that an obscure sense of blame attached to the victim of any sexual crime—unless the woman died, in which case she became at once a spotless angel.

“He will slaughter her out of hand, for the sake of revenge upon me,” Jamie said, raising his voice. He changed abruptly to Gaelic, pointing at Brown. “Look at yon man, and see the truth of the matter writ upon his face! He has no more to do with justice than with honor, and he would not recognize honor by the smell of its arse!”

That made a few of them laugh, in sheer surprise. Brown, disconcerted, looked round to see what they were laughing at, which made more of them laugh.

The mood of the assembly was still against us, but they were not yet with Brown—who was, after all, a stranger. Hiram’s narrow brow creased in consideration.

“What would ye offer by way of guarantee for the woman’s safety?” Hiram asked Brown.

“A dozen hogsheads of beer and three dozen prime hides,” Brown replied promptly. “Four dozen!” His eagerness gleamed in his eyes, and it was all he could do to keep his voice from shaking with the lust to take me. I had a sudden, unpleasant conviction that while my death was his ultimate goal, he didn’t intend that it should be a quick one, unless circumstances demanded it.

“It would be worth far more than that to ye, breugaire, to have your revenge upon me with her death,” Jamie said evenly.

Hiram glanced from one to the other, unsure what to do. I looked out into the crowd, keeping my face impassive. In truth, it was not difficult to do; I felt completely numb.

There were a few friendly faces, glancing anxiously to Jamie, to see what to do. Kenny and his brothers, Murdo and Evan, stood in a tight group, hands on their dirks and faces set. I didn’t know whether Richard Brown had chosen his timing, or merely been lucky. Ian was gone, hunting with his Cherokee friends. Arch was plainly gone, as well, or he would be visible—Arch and his ax would be uncommonly handy just now, I thought.

Fergus and Marsali were gone—they, too, would have helped to stem the tide. But the most important absence was Roger’s. He alone had been keeping the Presbyterians more or less under control since the day of Malva’s accusation, or at least keeping a lid on the simmering pot of gossip and animosity. He might have cowed them now—had he been here.

The conversation had devolved from high drama to a three-way wrangle among Jamie, Brown, and Hiram, the former two adamant in their positions, and poor Hiram, quite unsuited to the task, trying to adjudicate. Insofar as I had feelings to spare, I felt rather sorry for him.

“Take him!” a voice called suddenly. Allan Christie pushed his way to the front of the crowd, and pointed at Jamie. His voice trembled and broke with emotion. “It’s him debauched my sister, him that kilt her! If ye’ll put someone to the trial, take him!”

There was a subterranean rumble of agreement at that, and I saw John MacNeill and young Hugh Abernathy draw close together, glancing uneasily from Jamie to the three Lindsay brothers, and back again.

“Nay, it’s her!” a woman’s voice called in contradiction, high and shrill. One of the fishers’ wives; she stabbed a finger at me, face pinched with malevolence. “A man might kill a lass he’d got wi’ child—but no man would do sich wickedness as to steal a babe unborn frae the womb! No but a witch would do that—and she found wi’ the puir wee corpse in her hands!”

A higher susurrus of condemnation greeted that. The men might possibly give me the benefit of doubt—no woman would.

“By the name of the Almighty!” Hiram was losing his grip on the situation, and becoming panicky. The situation was perilously close to degenerating into riot; anyone could feel the currents of hysteria and violence in the air. He cast his eyes up to heaven, looking for inspiration—and found some.

“Take them both!” he said suddenly. He looked at Brown, then Jamie. “Take them both,” he repeated, testing the notion and finding it good. “Ye’ll go along, to see that nay harm comes to your wife,” he said reasonably to Jamie. “And if it should be proved that she is innocent …” His voice died away on that, as it dawned on him that what he was saying was that if I were proven innocent, Jamie must be guilty, and what a good idea it would be to have him on the spot to be hanged instead.

“She is innocent; so am I.” Jamie spoke without heat, doggedly repeating it. He had no real hope of convincing anyone; the only doubt among the crowd was whether he or I was the guilty party—or whether we had plotted together to destroy Malva Christie.

He turned suddenly to face the crowd, and cried out to them in Gaelic.

“If you will deliver us into the stranger’s hand, then our blood be upon your heads, and you will answer for our lives upon the Day of Judgment!”

A sudden hush fell on the crowd at that. Men glanced uncertainly at their neighbors, measured Brown and his cohort with doubtful eyes.

They were known to the community, but strangers—Sassenachs—in the Scottish sense. So was I, and a witch, to boot. Lecher, rapist, and Papist murderer he might be—but Jamie at least was not a stranger.

The man I had shot was grinning at me evilly over Brown’s shoulder; evidently, I had no more than grazed him, worse luck. I gave him stare for stare, sweat gathering between my breasts, moisture slick and hot beneath the veil of my hair.

A murmur was rising among the crowd; argument and disputation, and I could see the Ardsmuir men begin to make their way slowly toward the porch, pushing through the mob. Kenny Lindsay’s eyes were fixed on Jamie’s face, and I felt Jamie take a deep breath beside me.