A faint scent of ether floated in the dark air of the hallway as I made my way back toward the stairs. I sniffed suspiciously—had Adso tipped over the bottle? No, it wasn’t strong enough for that, I decided, just a few wayward molecules seeping around the cork.

I was simultaneously relieved and regretful that Mr. Christie had refused to let me use the ether. Relieved, because there was no telling how it might have worked—or not. Regretful, because I would have liked very much to add the gift of unconsciousness to my arsenal of skills—a precious gift to bestow on future patients, and one I should very much have liked to give Mr. Christie.

Beyond the fact that the surgery had hurt him badly, it was very much more difficult to operate on a conscious person. The muscles were tensed, adrenaline was flooding through the system, heart rate was vastly speeded up, causing blood to spurt rather than flow… . For the dozenth time since the morning, I envisioned exactly what I had done, asking myself whether I might have done better.

To my surprise, Christie was still doing the exercises; his face was sheened with sweat and his mouth set grimly, but he was still doggedly bending the joints.

“That’s very good,” I said. “Do stop now, though. I don’t want you to start bleeding again.” I picked up the napkin automatically and blotted the sweat from his temples.

“Is there someone else in the house?” he asked, irritably jerking his head away from my ministrations. “I heard you speaking to someone downstairs.”

“Oh,” I said, rather embarrassed. “No, just the cat.” Prompted by this introduction, Adso, who had followed me upstairs, leapt onto the bed and stood kneading the covers with his paws, big green eyes fixed on the plate of ham.

Christie turned a gaze of deep suspicion from the cat to me.

“No, he is not my familiar,” I said tartly, scooping up Adso and dumping him unceremoniously on the floor. “He’s a cat. Talking to him is slightly less ridiculous than talking to myself, that’s all.”

An expression of surprise flitted across Christie’s face—perhaps surprise that I had read his mind, or simple surprise at my idiocy—but the creases of suspicion round his eyes relaxed.

I cut up his food with brisk efficiency, but he insisted upon feeding himself. He ate clumsily with his left hand, eyes on his plate and brows knotted in concentration.

When he had finished, he drank off a cup of whisky as though it were water, set down the empty cup, and looked at me.

“Mistress Fraser,” he said, speaking very precisely, “I am an educated man. I do not think ye are a witch.”

“Oh, you don’t?” I said, rather amused. “So you don’t believe in witches? But there are witches mentioned in the Bible, you know.”

He stifled a belch with his fist and regarded me fishily.

“I did not say I do not believe in witches. I do. I said ye aren’t one. Aye?”

“I’m very much obliged to hear it,” I said, trying not to smile. He was quite drunk; though his speech was even more precise than usual, his accent had begun to slip. Normally, he suppressed the inflections of his native Edinburgh as much as possible, but it was growing broader by the moment.

“A bit more?” I didn’t wait for an answer, but poured a solid tot of whisky into his empty cup. The shutters were open and the room was cool, but sweat still gleamed in the creases of his neck. He was clearly in pain, and wasn’t likely to sleep again without help.

He sipped it this time, watching me over the rim of the cup as I tidied up the supper leavings. In spite of whisky and a full stomach, he was increasingly restive, shifting his legs beneath the quilt and twitching his shoulders. I thought he needed the chamber pot, and was debating whether I ought to offer to help him with it, or simply leave promptly so he could manage by himself. The latter, I thought.

I was mistaken, though. Before I could excuse myself, he set down his cup on the table and sat up straight in bed.

“Mistress Fraser,” he said, fixing me with a beady eye. “I wish to apologize to ye.”

“What for?” I said, startled.

His lips pressed tight.

“For … my behavior this morning.”

“Oh. Well … that’s quite all right. I can see how the idea of being put to sleep must seem … quite peculiar to you.”

“I dinna mean that.” He glanced up sharply, then down again. “I meant … that I … could not keep myself still.”

I saw the deepening flush rise up his cheeks again, and had a sudden pang of surprised sympathy. He was truly embarrassed.

I set down the tray and sat down slowly on the stool beside him, wondering what I could say that might assuage his feelings—and not make matters worse.

“But, Mr. Christie,” I said. “I wouldn’t expect anyone to hold still while having their hand taken apart. It’s—it’s simply not human nature!”

He shot me a quick, fierce glance.

“Not even your husband?”

I blinked, taken aback. Not so much by the words, as by the tone of bitterness. Roger had told me a bit of what Kenny Lindsay had said about Ardsmuir. It had been no secret that Christie had been envious of Jamie’s leadership then—but what had that to do with this?

“What makes you say that?” I asked quietly. I took his injured hand, ostensibly to check the bindings—in fact, merely to give me somewhere to look other than into his eyes.

“It’s true, aye? Your husband’s hand.” His beard jutted pugnaciously at me. “He said ye’d mended it for him. He didna wriggle and squirm when ye did it, now, did he?”

Well, no, he hadn’t. Jamie had prayed, cursed, sweated, cried—and screamed, once or twice. But he hadn’t moved.

Jamie’s hand wasn’t a matter I wanted to discuss with Thomas Christie, though.

“Everyone’s different,” I said, giving him as straight a look as I could. “I wouldn’t expect—”

“Ye wouldna expect any man to do as well as him. Aye, I ken that.” The dull red color was burning in his cheeks again, and he looked down at his bandaged hand. The fingers of his good hand were clenched in a fist.

“That’s not what I meant,” I protested. “Not at all! I’ve stitched wounds and set bones for a good many men—almost all the Highlanders were terribly brave about—” It occurred to me, that fraction of a second too late, that Christie was not a Highlander.

He made a deep growling noise in his throat.

“Highlanders,” he said, “hmp!” in a tone that made it clear he would have liked to spit on the floor, had he not been in the presence of a lady.

“Barbarians?” I said, responding to the tone. He glanced at me, and I saw his mouth twist, as he had his own moment of belated realization. He looked away, and took a deep breath—I smelled the gust of whisky as he let it out.

“Your husband … is … certainly a gentleman. He comes of a noble family, if one tainted by treason.” The “r”s of “treason” rolled like thunder—he really was quite drunk. “But he is also … also …” He frowned, groping for a better word, then gave it up. “One of them. Surely ye ken that, and you an Englishwoman?”

“One of them,” I repeated, mildly amused. “You mean a Highlander, or a barbarian?”

He gave me a look somewhere between triumph and puzzlement.

“The same thing, is it not?”

I rather thought he had a point. While I had met Highlanders of wealth and education, like Colum and Dougal MacKenzie—to say nothing of Jamie’s grandfather, the treasonous Lord Lovat to whom Christie was referring—the fact was that every single one of them had the instincts of a Viking freebooter. And to be perfectly honest, so did Jamie.

“Ah … well, they, um, do tend to be rather …” I began feebly. I rubbed a finger under my nose. “Well, they are raised to be fighting men, I suppose. Or is that what you mean?”

He sighed deeply, and shook his head a little, though I thought it was not in disagreement, but simply in dismay at the contemplation of Highland customs and manners.