The corner of his mouth actually twitched at that.

“God,” he said, in something like wonder. “Ye think I’d forgot any of it?”

“Maybe not,” I said, surrendering. I looked at him through swimming eyes. “But—oh, Jamie, I so wanted you to forget!”

He put out a hand, very delicately, and touched the tip of his index finger to the tip of mine, where I clutched the chair.

“Dinna mind it,” he said softly, and withdrew the finger. “It’s no matter now. Will ye rest a bit, Sassenach? Or eat, maybe?”

“No. I don’t want … no.” In fact, I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to do anything at all. Other than unzip my skin, climb out, and run—and that didn’t seem feasible. I took a few deep breaths, hoping to settle myself and go back to that nice sense of utter exhaustion.

Should I ask him about Donner? But what was there to ask? “Did you happen to kill a man with long, tangled hair?” They’d all looked like that, to some extent. Donner had been—or possibly still was—an Indian, but no one would have noticed that in the dark, in the heat of fighting.

“How—how is Roger?” I asked, for lack of anything better to say. “And Ian? Fergus?”

He looked a little startled, as though he had forgotten their existence.

“Them? The lads are well enough. No one took any hurt in the fight. We had luck.”

He hesitated, then took a careful step toward me, watching my face. I didn’t scream or bolt, and he took another, coming close enough that I could feel the warmth of his body. Not startled this time, and chilly in my damp shift, I relaxed a little, swaying toward him, and saw the tension in his own shoulders let go slightly, seeing it.

He touched my face, very gently. The blood throbbed just below the surface, tender, and I had to brace myself not to flinch away from his touch. He saw it, and drew back his hand a little, so that it hovered just above my skin—I could feel the heat of his palm.

“Will it heal?” he asked, fingertips moving over the split in my left brow, then down the minefield of my cheek to the scrape on my jaw where Harley Boble’s boot had just missed making a solid connection that would have broken my neck.

“Of course it will. You know that; you’ve seen worse on battlefields.” I would have smiled in reassurance, but didn’t want to open the deep split in my lip again, and so made a sort of pouting goldfish mouth, which took him by surprise and made him smile.

“Aye, I know.” He ducked his head a little, shy. “It’s only …” His hand still hovered near my face, an expression of troubled anxiety on his own. “Oh, God, mo nighean donn,” he said softly. “Oh, Christ, your lovely face.”

“Can you not bear to look at it?” I asked, turning my own eyes away and feeling a sharp little pang at the thought, but trying to convince myself that it didn’t matter. It would heal, after all.

His fingers touched my chin, gently but firmly, and drew it up, so that I faced him again. His mouth tightened a little as his gaze moved slowly over my battered face, taking inventory. His eyes were soft and dark in the candlelight, the corners tight with pain.

“No,” he said quietly, “I cannot bear it. The sight of ye tears my heart. And it fills me with such rage I think I must kill someone or burst. But by the God who made ye, Sassenach, I’ll not lie with ye and be unable to look ye in the face.”

“Lie with me?” I said blankly. “What … you mean now?”

His hand dropped from my chin, but he looked steadily at me, not blinking.

“Well … aye. I do.”

Had my jaw not been so swollen, my mouth would have dropped open in pure astonishment.

“Ah … why?”

“Why?” he repeated. He dropped his gaze then, and made the odd shrugging motion that he made when embarrassed or discomposed. “I—well—it seems … necessary.”

I had a thoroughly unsuitable urge to laugh.

“Necessary? Do you think it’s like being thrown by a horse? I ought to get straight back on?”

His head jerked up and he shot me an angry glance.

“No,” he said, between clenched teeth. He swallowed hard and visibly, obviously reining in strong feelings. “Are ye—are ye badly damaged, then?”

I stared at him as best I could, through my swollen lids.

“Is that a joke of some—oh,” I said, it finally dawning on me what he meant. I felt heat rise in my face, and my bruises throbbed.

I took a deep breath, to be sure of being able to speak steadily.

“I have been beaten to a bloody pulp, Jamie, and abused in several nasty ways. But only one … there was only the one who actually … He—he wasn’t … rough.” I swallowed, but the hard knot in my throat didn’t budge perceptibly. Tears made the candlelight blur so that I couldn’t see his face, and I looked away, blinking.

“No!” I said, my voice sounding rather louder than I intended. “I’m not … damaged.”

He said something in Gaelic under his breath, short and explosive, and shoved himself away from the table. His stool fell over with a loud crash, and he kicked it. Then he kicked it again, and again, and stamped on it with such violence that bits of wood flew across the kitchen and struck the pie safe with little pinging sounds.

I sat completely still, too shocked and numb to feel distress. Should I not have told him? I wondered vaguely. But he knew, surely. He had asked, when he found me. “How many?” he had demanded. And then had said, “Kill them all.”

But then … to know something was one thing, and to be told the details another. I did know that, and watched with a dim sense of guilty sorrow as he kicked away the splinters of the stool and flung himself at the window. It was shuttered, but he stood, hands braced on the sill and his back turned to me, shoulders heaving. I couldn’t tell if he was crying.

The wind was rising; there was a squall coming in from the west. The shutters rattled, and the night-smoored fire spouted puffs of soot as the wind came down the chimney. Then the gust passed, and there was no sound but the small sudden crack! of an ember in the hearth.

“I’m sorry,” I said at last, in a small voice.

Jamie swiveled on his heel at once and glared at me. He wasn’t crying, but he had been; his cheeks were wet.

“Don’t you dare be sorry!” he roared. “I willna have it, d’ye hear?” He took a giant step toward the table and crashed his fist down on it, hard enough to make the saltcellar jump and fall over. “Don’t be sorry!”

I had closed my eyes in reflex, but forced myself to open them again.

“All right,” I said. I felt terribly, terribly tired again, and very much like crying myself. “I won’t.”

There was a charged silence. I could hear chestnuts falling in the grove behind the house, dislodged by the wind. One, and then another, and another, a rain of muffled tiny thumps. Then Jamie drew a deep, shuddering breath, and wiped a sleeve across his face.

I put my elbows on the table and leaned my head on my hands; it seemed much too heavy to hold up anymore.

“Necessary,” I said, more or less calmly to the tabletop. “What did you mean, necessary?”

“Does it not occur to you that ye might be with child?” He’d got himself back under control, and said this as calmly as he might have asked whether I planned to serve bacon with the breakfast porridge.

Startled, I looked up at him.

“I’m not.” But my hands had gone by reflex to my belly.

“I’m not,” I repeated more strongly. “I can’t be.” I could, though—just possibly. The chance was a remote one, but it existed. I normally used some form of contraception, just to be certain—but obviously …

“I am not,” I said. “I’d know.”

He merely stared at me, eyebrows raised. I wouldn’t; not so soon. So soon—soon enough that if it were so, and if there were more than one man … there would be doubt. The benefit of the doubt; that’s what he offered me—and himself.

A deep shudder started in the depths of my womb and spread instantly through my body, making goose bumps break out on my skin, despite the warmth of the room.