The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle (175 page)

He reached back for my hands and brought them together under his chin.

“You dinna need to understand me, Sassenach,” he said quietly. “So long as ye love me.” His head tilted forward and he gently kissed my clasped hands.

“And feed me,” he added, releasing them.

“Oh, womanly sympathy, love
and
food?” I said, laughing. “Don’t want a lot, do you?”

There were cold bannocks in the saddlebags, cheese, and a bit of cold bacon as well. The tensions and absurdities of the last two hours had been more draining than I realized, and I hungrily joined in the meal.

The sounds of the men surrounding us had now died down, and there was neither sound nor any flicker of an unguarded fire to indicate that we were not a thousand miles from any human soul. Only the wind rattled busily among the leaves, sending the odd twig bouncing down through the branches.

Jamie leaned back against a tree, face dim in the starlight, but body instinct with mischief.

“I gave your champion my word that I’d no molest ye wi’ my loathsome advances. I suppose that means unless ye invite me to share your bed, I shall have to go and sleep wi’ Murtagh or Kincaid. And Murtagh snores.”

“So do you,” I said.

I looked at him for a moment, then shrugged, letting half my ruined gown slide off my shoulder. “Well, you’ve made a good start at ravishing me.” I dropped the other shoulder, and the torn cloth fell free to my waist. “You may as well come and finish the job properly.”

The warmth of his arms was like heated silk, sliding over my cold skin.

“Aye, well,” he murmured into my hair, “war’s war, no?”

“I’m very bad at dates,” I said to the star-thick sky sometime later. “Has Miguel de Cervantes been born yet?”

Jamie was lying—perforce—on his stomach next to me, head and shoulders protruding from the tent’s shelter. One eye slowly opened, and swiveled toward the eastern horizon. Finding no trace of dawn, it traveled slowly back and rested on my face, with an expression of jaundiced resignation.

“You’ve a sudden urge to discuss Spanish novels?” he said, a little hoarsely.

“Not particularly,” I said. “I just wondered whether perhaps you were familiar with the term ‘quixotic.’ ”

He heaved himself onto his elbows, scrubbed at his scalp with both hands to wake himself fully, then turned toward me, blinking but alert.

“Cervantes was born almost two hundred years ago, Sassenach, and, me having had the benefit of a thorough education, aye, I’m familiar with the gentleman. Ye wouldna be implying anything personal by that last remark, would ye?”

“Does your back hurt?”

He hunched his shoulders experimentally. “Not much. A wee bit bruised, I expect.”

“Jamie,
why
, for God’s sake?” I burst out.

He rested his chin on his folded forearms, the sidelong turn of his head emphasizing the slant of his eyes. The one I could see narrowed still further with his smile.

“Well, Murtagh enjoyed it. He’s owed me a hiding since I was nine and put pieces of honeycomb in his boots while he had them off to cool his feet. He couldna catch me at the time, but I learned a good many interesting new words whilst he was chasing me barefoot. He—”

I put a stop to this by punching him as hard as I could on the point of the shoulder. Surprised, he let the arm collapse under him with a sharp “Oof!” and rolled onto his side, back toward me.

I brought my knees up behind him and wrapped an arm around his waist. His back blotted out the stars, wide and smoothly muscled, still gleaming faintly with the moisture of exertion. I kissed him between the shoulder blades, then drew back and blew gently, for the pleasure of feeling his skin shiver under my fingertips and the tiny fine hairs stand up in goose bumps down the furrow of his spine.

“Why?” I said again. I rested my face against his warm, damp back. Shadowed by the darkness, the scars were invisible, but I could feel them, faint tough lines hard under my cheek.

He was quiet for a moment, his ribs rising and falling under my arm with each deep, slow breath.

“Aye, well,” he said, then fell silent again, thinking.

“I dinna ken exactly, Sassenach,” he said finally. “Could be I thought I owed it to you. Or maybe to myself.”

I laid a light palm across the width of one shoulder blade, broad and flat, the edges of the bone clear-drawn beneath the skin.

“Not to me.”

“Aye? Is it the act of a gentleman to unclothe his wife in the presence of thirty men?” His tone was suddenly bitter, and my hands stilled, pressing against him. “Is it the act of a gallant man to use violence against a captive enemy, and a child to boot? To consider doing worse?”

“Would it have been better to spare me—or him—and lose half your men in two days’ time? You had to know. You couldn’t—you
can’t
afford to let notions of gentlemanly conduct sway you.”

“No,” he said softly, “I can’t. And so I must ride wi’ a man—with the son of my King—whom duty and honor call me to follow—and seek meanwhiles to pervert his cause that I am sworn to uphold. I am forsworn for the lives of those I love—I betray the name of honor that those I honor may survive.”

“Honor has killed one bloody hell of a lot of men,” I said to the dark groove of his bruised back. “Honor without sense is … foolishness. A gallant foolishness, but foolishness nonetheless.”

“Aye, it is. And it will change—you’ve told me. But if I shall be among the first who sacrifice honor for expedience … shall I feel nay shame in the doing of it?” He rolled suddenly to face me, eyes troubled in the starlight.

“I willna turn back—I cannot, now—but Sassenach, sometimes I do sorrow for that bit of myself I have left behind.”

“It’s my fault,” I said softly. I touched his face, the thick brows, wide mouth, and the sprouting stubble along the clean, long jaw. “Mine. If I hadn’t come … and told you what would happen …” I felt a true sorrow for his corruption, and shared a sense of loss for the naive, gallant lad he had been. And yet … what choice had either of us truly had, being who we were? I had had to tell him, and he had had to act on it. An Old Testament line drifted through my mind: “When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long.”

As though he had picked up this biblical strain of thought, he smiled faintly.

“Aye, well,” he said. “I dinna recall Adam’s asking God to take back Eve—and look what she did to
him
.” He leaned forward and kissed my forehead as I laughed, then drew the blanket up over my bare shoulders. “Go to sleep, my wee rib. I shall be needin’ a helpmeet in the morning.”

An odd metallic noise woke me. I poked my head out of the blanket and blinked in the direction of the noise, to find my nose a foot from Jamie’s plaid-covered knee.

“Awake, are ye?” Something silvery and chinking suddenly descended in front of my face, and a heavy weight settled around my neck.

“What on earth is this?” I asked, sitting up in astonishment and peering downward. I seemed to be wearing a necklace composed of a large number of three-inch metal objects, each with a divided shank and a hooped top, strung together on a leather bootlace. Some of the objects were rusted at the tops, others brand-new. All showed scratches along the length of the shanks, as though they had been wrenched by force out of some larger object.

“Trophies of war, Sassenach,” said Jamie.

I looked up at him, and uttered a small shriek at the sight.

“Oh,” he said, putting a hand to his face. “I forgot. I hadna time to wash it off.”

“You scared me to death,” I said, hand pressed to my palpitating heart. “What
is
it?”

“Charcoal,” he said, voice muffled in the cloth he was rubbing over his face. He let it down and grinned at me. The rubbing had removed some of the blackening from nose, chin and forehead, which glowed pinkish-bronze through the remaining smears, but his eyes were still ringed black as a raccoon’s, and charcoal lines bracketed his mouth. It was barely dawn, and in the dim light of the tent, his darkened face and hair tended to fade into the drab background of the canvas wall behind him, giving the distinctly unsettling impression that I was speaking to a headless body.

“It was your idea,” he said.

“
My
idea? You look like the end man in a minstrel show,” I replied. “What the hell have you been doing?”

His teeth gleamed a brilliant white amid the sooty creases of his face.

“Commando raid,” he said, with immense satisfaction. “Commando? Is that the right word?”

“Oh, God,” I said. “You’ve been in the English camp? Christ! Not alone, I hope?”

“I couldna leave my men out of the fun, could I? I left three of them to guard you, and the rest of us had a verra profitable night.” He gestured at my necklace with pride.

“Cotter pins from the cannon carriages. We couldna take the cannon, or damage them without noise, but they’ll no be goin’ far, wi’ no wheels to them. And the hell of a lot of good sixteen gallopers will do General Cope, stranded out on the moor.”

I examined my necklace critically.

“That’s well and good, but can’t they contrive new cotter pins? It looks like you could make something like this from heavy wire.”

He nodded, his air of smugness abating not a whit.

“Oh, aye. They could. But nay bit o’ good it will do them, wi’ no new wheels to put them to.” He lifted the tent flap, and gestured down toward the foot of the hill, where I could now see Murtagh, black as a wizened demon, supervising the activities of several similarly decorated subdemons, who were gaily feeding the last of thirty-two large wooden wheels into a roaring fire. The iron rims of the wheels lay in a stack to one side; Fergus, Kincaid, and one of the other young men had improvised a game with one of them, rolling it to and fro with sticks. Ross sat on a log nearby, sipping at a horn cup and idly twirling another round his burly forearm.

I laughed at the sight.

“Jamie, you
are
clever!”

“I may be clever,” he replied, “but
you’re
half-naked, and we’re leaving now. Have ye something to put on? We left the sentinels tied up in an abandoned sheep-pen, but the rest of them will be up by now, and none so far behind us. We’d best be off.”

As though to emphasize his words, the tent suddenly shook above me, as someone jerked free the lines on one side. I uttered an alarmed squeak and dived for the saddlebags as Jamie left to superintend the details of departure.

It was midafternoon before we reached the village of Tranent. Perched on the hills above the seaside, the usually tranquil hamlet was reeling under the impact of the Highland army. The main bulk of the army was visible on the hills beyond, overlooking the small plain that stretched toward the shore. But with the usual disorganized comings and goings, there were as many men in Tranent as out of it, with detachments coming and going in more or less military formation, messengers galloping to and fro—some on ponies, some by shanks’ mare—and the wives, children, and camp followers, who overflowed the cottages and sat outside, leaning on stone walls and nursing babies in the intermittent sun, calling to passing messengers for word of the most recent action.

We halted at the edge of this seethe of activity, and Jamie sent Murtagh to discover the whereabouts of Lord George Murray, the army’s commander in chief, while he made a hasty toilet in one of the cottages.

My own appearance left a good bit to be desired; while not deliberately covered with charcoal, my face undoubtedly sported a few streaks of grime left as tokens of several nights spent sleeping out-of-doors. The goodwife kindly lent me a towel and a comb, and I was seated at her table, doing battle with my ungovernable locks, when the door opened and Lord George himself burst in without ceremony.

His usually impeccable dress was disheveled, with several buttons of his waistcoat undone, his stock slipped loose, and one garter come untied. His wig had been thrust unceremoniously into his pocket, and his own thinning brown curls stood on end, as though he had been tugging at them in frustration.

“Thank God!” he said. “A sane face, at last!” Then he leaned forward, squinting as he peered at Jamie. Most of the charcoal dust had been rinsed from the blazing hair, but gray rivulets ran down his face and dripped on his shirtfront, and his ears, which had been overlooked in the hastiness of his ablutions, were still coal-black.

“What—” began a startled Lord George, but he broke off, shook his head rapidly once or twice as though to dismiss some figment of his imagination, and resumed his conversation as though he had noticed nothing out of the ordinary.

“How does it go, sir?” said Jamie respectfully, also affecting not to notice the ribboned tail of the periwig which hung out of Lord George’s pocket, wagging like the tail of a small dog as His Lordship gestured violently.

“How does it go?” he echoed. “Why, I’ll tell you, sir! It goes to the east, and then it goes to the west, and then half of it comes downhill to have luncheon, while the other half marches off to devil-knows-where!
That’s
how it goes!”

“ ‘It,’ ”
he said, momentarily relieved by his outburst, “being His Highness’s loyal Highland army.” Somewhat calmer, he began to tell us of the events transpiring since the army’s first arrival in Tranent the day before.

Arriving with the army, Lord George had left the bulk of the men in the village and rushed with a small detachment to take possession of the ridge above the plain. Prince Charles, coming along somewhat later, had been displeased with this action and said so—loudly and publicly. His Highness had then taken half the army and marched off westward, the Duke of Perth—nominally the other commander in chief—tamely in tow, presumably to assess the possibilities of attacking through Preston.

With the army divided, and His Lordship occupied in conferring with villagemen who knew the hell of a lot more about the surrounding terrain than did either His Highness
or
His Lordship, O’Sullivan, one of the Prince’s Irish confidants, had taken it upon himself to order a contingent of Lochiel’s Cameron clansmen to the Tranent churchyard.