The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle (119 page)

“Yes.” I sipped my brandy, feeling the warmth come back into my cheeks. “He told me that, too. No, you’re right, Captain Randall is dead. It just gave me a turn, suddenly remembering about Mary Hawkins. Because of Frank.” I glanced down at my left hand, resting on my stomach. There was a small fire burning on the hearth, and the light of it caught the smooth gold band of my first wedding ring. Jamie’s ring, of Scottish silver, circled the fourth finger of my other hand.

“Ah.” Jamie’s touch on my shoulder stilled. His head was bent, but he glanced up to meet my gaze. We had not spoken of Frank since I had rescued Jamie from Wentworth, nor had Jonathan Randall’s death been mentioned between us. At the time it had seemed of little importance, except insofar as it meant that no more danger menaced us from that direction. And since then, I had been reluctant to bring back any memory of Wentworth to Jamie.

“You know he is dead, do ye not,
mo duinne
?” Jamie spoke softly, his fingers resting on my wrist, and I knew he spoke of Frank, not Jonathan.

“Maybe not,” I said, my eyes still fixed on the ring. I raised my hand, so the metal gleamed in the fading afternoon light. “If he’s dead, Jamie—if he won’t exist, because Jonathan is dead—then why do I still have the ring he gave me?”

He stared at the ring, and I saw a small muscle twitch near his mouth. His face was pale, too, I saw. I didn’t know whether it would do him harm to think of Jonathan Randall now, but there seemed little choice.

“You’re sure that Randall had no children before he died?” he asked. “That would be an answer.”

“It would,” I said, “but no, I’m sure not. Frank”—my voice trembled a bit on the name, and Jamie’s grip on my wrist tightened—“Frank made quite a bit of the tragic circumstances of Jonathan Randall’s death. He said that he—Jack Randall—had died at Culloden Field, in the last battle of the Rising, and his son—that would be Frank’s five-times great-grandfather—was born a few months after his father’s death. His widow married again, a few years later. Even if there were an illegitimate child, it wouldn’t be in Frank’s line of descent.”

Jamie’s forehead was creased, and a thin vertical line ran between his brows. “Could it be a mistake, then—that the child was not Randall’s at all? Frank may come only of Mary Hawkins’s line—for we know she still lives.”

I shook my head helplessly.

“I don’t see how. If you’d known Frank—but no, I suppose I’ve never told you. When I first met Jonathan Randall, I thought for the first moment that he
was
Frank—they weren’t the same, of course, but the resemblance was … startling. No, Jack Randall was Frank’s ancestor, all right.”

“I see.” Jamie’s fingers had grown damp; he took them away and wiped them absently on his kilt.

“Then … perhaps the ring means nothing,
mo duinne
,” he suggested gently.

“Perhaps not.” I touched the metal, warm as my own flesh, then dropped my hand helplessly. “Oh, Jamie, I don’t know! I don’t know anything!”

He rubbed his knuckles tiredly on the crease between his eyes. “Neither do I, Sassenach.” He dropped his hand and tried to smile at me.

“There’s the one thing,” he said. “You said that Frank told you Jonathan Randall would die at Culloden?”

“Yes. In fact, I told Jack Randall that myself, to scare him—at Wentworth, when he put me out in the snow, before … before going back to you.” His eyes and mouth clamped shut in sudden spasm, and I swung my feet down, alarmed.

“Jamie! Are you all right?” I tried to put a hand on his head, but he pulled away from my touch, rising and going to the window.

“No. Yes. It’s all right, Sassenach. I’ve been writing letters all the morning, and my head’s fit to burst. Dinna worry yourself.” He waved me away, pressing his forehead against the cold pane of the window, eyes tight closed. He went on speaking, as though to distract himself from the pain.

“Then, if you—and Frank—knew that Jack Randall would die at Culloden, but we know that he shall not … then it can be done, Claire.”

“What can be done?” I hovered anxiously, wanting to help, but not knowing what to do. Clearly he didn’t want to be touched.

“What you know will happen can be changed.” He raised his head from the window and smiled tiredly at me. His face was still white, but the traces of that momentary spasm were gone. “Jack Randall died before he ought, and Mary Hawkins will wed another man. Even if that means that your Frank wilna be born—or perhaps will be born some other way,” he added, to be comforting, “then it also means that we have a chance of succeeding in what we’ve set ourselves to do. Perhaps Jack Randall didna die at Culloden Field, because the battle there will never happen.”

I could see him make the effort to stir himself, to come to me and put his arms around me. I held him about the waist, lightly, not moving. He bent his head, resting his forehead on my hair.

“I know it must grieve ye,
mo duinne
. But may it not ease ye, to know that good may come of it?”

“Yes,” I whispered at last, into the folds of his shirt. I disengaged myself gently from his arms and laid my hand along his cheek. The line between his eyes was deeper, and his eyes slightly unfocused, but he smiled at me.

“Jamie,” I said, “go and lie down. I’ll send a note to the d’Arbanvilles, to say we can’t come tonight.”

“Och, no,” he protested. “I’ll be fine. I know this kind of headache, Sassenach; it’s only from the writing, and an hour’s sleep will cure it. I’ll go up now.” He turned toward the door, then hesitated and turned back, half-smiling.

“And if I should call out in my sleep, Sassenach, just lay your hand upon me, and say to me, ‘Jack Randall’s dead.’ And it will aye be well wi’ me.”

Both food and company at the d’Arbanvilles were good. We came home late, and I fell into a sound sleep the instant my head hit the pillow. I slept dreamlessly, but waked suddenly in the middle of the night, knowing something was wrong.

The night was cold, and the down quilt had slithered off onto the floor, as was its sneaky habit, leaving only the thin woolen blanket over me. I rolled over, half-asleep, reaching for Jamie’s warmth. He was gone.

I sat up in bed, looking for him, and saw him almost at once, sitting on the window seat, head in his hands.

“Jamie! What is it? Have you got headache again?” I groped for the candle, meaning to find my medicine box, but something in the way he sat made me abandon the search and go to him at once.

He was breathing hard, as though he had been running, and cold as it was, his body was drenched with sweat. I touched his shoulder and found it hard and cold as a metal statue.

He jerked back at my touch and sprang to his feet, eyes wide and black in the night-filled room.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” I said. “Are you all right?”

I wondered briefly if he were sleepwalking, for his expression didn’t change; he looked straight through me, and whatever he saw, he didn’t like it.

“Jamie!” I said sharply. “Jamie, wake up!”

He blinked then, and saw me, though his expression stayed fixed in the desperate lines of a hunted beast.

“I’m all right,” he said. “I’m awake.” He spoke as though wanting to convince himself of the fact.

“What is it? Did you have a nightmare?”

“A dream. Aye. It was a dream.”

I stepped forward and put a hand on his arm.

“Tell me. It will go away if you tell me about it.”

He grasped me hard by the forearms, as much to keep me from touching him as for support. The moon was full, and I could see that every muscle of his body was tensed, hard and motionless as stone, but pulsing with furious energy, ready to explode into action.

“No,” he said, still sounding dazed.

“Yes,” I said. “Jamie, talk to me. Tell me. Tell me what you see.”

“I canna … see anything. Nothing. I can’t see.”

I pulled, turning him from the shadows of the room to face the bright moonlight from the window. The light seemed to help, for his breathing slowed, and in halting, painful bits, the words came out.

It was the stones of Wentworth Prison that he dreamed of. And as he spoke, the shape of Jonathan Randall walked the room. And lay naked in my bed, atop the woolen blanket.

There had been the sound of hoarse breathing close behind him, and the feel of sweat-drenched skin, sliding against his own. He gritted his teeth in an agony of frustration. The man behind him sensed the small movement and laughed.

“Oh, we’ve some time yet before they hang you, my boy,” he whispered. “Plenty of time to enjoy it.” Randall moved suddenly, hard and abrupt, and he made a small involuntary sound.

Randall’s hand stroked back the hair from his brow and smoothed it around his ear. The hot breath was close to his ear and he turned his head to escape, but it followed him, breathing words.

“Have you ever seen a man hanged, Fraser?” The words went on, not waiting for him to reply, and a long, slim hand came around his waist, gently stroking the slope of his belly, teasing its way lower with each word.

“Yes, of course you have; you were in France, you’ll have seen deserters hanged now and then. A hanged man looses his bowels, doesn’t he? As the rope tightens fast round his neck.” The hand was gripping him, lightly, firmly, rubbing and stroking. He clenched his good hand tight around the edge of the bed and turned his face hard into the scratchy blanket, but the words pursued him.

“That will happen to you, Fraser. Just a few more hours, and you’ll feel the noose.” The voice laughed, pleased with itself. “You’ll go to your death with your arse burning from my pleasure, and when you lose your bowels, it will be my spunk running down your legs and dripping on the ground below the gallows.”

He made no sound. He could smell himself, crusted with filth from his imprisonment, acrid with the sweat of fear and anger. And the man behind him, the rank stench of the animal breaking through the delicate scent of the lavender toilet water.

“The blanket,” he said. His eyes were closed, face strained in the moonlight. “It was rough under my face, and all I could see were the stones of the wall before me. There was nothing there to fix my mind to … nothing I could see. So I kept my eyes closed and thought of the blanket under my cheek. It was all I could feel besides the pain … and him. I … held to it.”

“Jamie. Let me hold you.” I spoke quietly, trying to calm the frenzy I could feel running through his blood. His grip on my arms was tight enough to numb them. But he wouldn’t let me move closer; he held me away as surely as he clung to me.

Suddenly he freed me, jerking away and turning toward the moon-filled window. He stood tense and quivering as a bowstring just fired, but his voice was calm.

“No. I willna use ye that way, lassie. Ye shallna be part of it.”

I took a step toward him, but he stopped me with a quick motion. He turned his face back to the window, calm now, and blank as the glass he looked through.

“Get ye to bed, lassie. Leave me to myself a bit; I’ll be well enough presently. There’s naught to worry ye now.”

He stretched his arms out, grasping the window frame, blotting out the light with his body. His shoulders swelled with effort, and I could tell that he was pushing against the wood with all his might.

“It was only a dream. Jack Randall is dead.”

I had at length fallen asleep, with Jamie still poised at the window, staring out into the face of the moon. When I woke at dawn, though, he was asleep, curled in the window seat, wrapped in his plaid, with my cloak dragged over his legs for warmth.

He woke to my stirring, and seemed his normal, irritatingly cheerful morning self. But I was not likely to forget the happenings of the night, and went to my medicine box after breakfast.

To my annoyance, I lacked several of the herbs I needed for the sleeping tonic I had in mind. But then I remembered the man Marguerite had told me about. Raymond the herb-seller, in the Rue de Varennes. A wizard, she had said. A place worth seeing. Well, then. Jamie would be at the warehouse all the morning. I had a coach and a footman at my disposal; I would go and see it.

A clean wooden counter ran the length of the shop on both sides, with shelves twice the height of a man extending from floor to ceiling behind it. Some of the shelves were enclosed with folding glass doors, protecting the rarer and more expensive substances, I supposed. Fat gilded cupids sprawled abandonedly above the cupboards, tooting horns, waving their draperies, and generally looking as though they had been imbibing some of the more alcoholic wares of the shop.

“Monsieur Raymond?” I inquired politely of the young woman behind the counter.

“
Maître
Raymond,” she corrected. She wiped a red nose inelegantly on her sleeve and gestured toward the end of the shop, where sinister clouds of a brownish smoke floated out over the transom of a half-door.

Wizard or not, Raymond had the right setting for it. Smoke drifted up from a black slate hearth to coil beneath the low black beams of the roof. Above the fire, a stone table pierced with holes held glass alembics, copper “pelicans”—metal cans with long noses from which sinister substances dripped into cups—and what appeared to be a small but serviceable still. I sniffed cautiously. Among the other strong odors in the shop, a heady alcoholic note was clearly distinguishable from the direction of the fire. A neat lineup of clean bottles along the sideboard reinforced my original suspicions. Whatever his trade in charms and potions, Master Raymond plainly did a roaring business in high-quality cherry brandy.

The distiller himself was crouched over the fire, poking errant bits of charcoal back into the grate. Hearing me come in, he straightened up and turned to greet me with a pleasant smile.

“How do you do?” I said politely to the top of his head. So strong was the impression that I had stepped into an enchanter’s den that I would not have been surprised to hear a croak in reply.

For Master Raymond resembled nothing so, much as a large, genial frog. A touch over four feet tall, barrel-chested and bandy-legged, he had the thick, clammy skin of a swamp dweller, and slightly bulbous, friendly black eyes. Aside from the minor fact that he wasn’t green, all he lacked was warts.