The Fiery Cross (24 page)

“Ye’re a handsome lad, Thrush,” she said, holding tight to his hand. “I’ve felt your face. And you’ve the name of MacKenzie, which is a good one, to be sure. But there are MacKenzies aplenty in the Highlands, aren’t there? Men of honor, and men without it. Jamie Roy calls ye kinsman—but perhaps that’s because ye’re handfast to his daughter. I dinna think
I
ken your family.”

Shock was giving way to a nervous impulse to laugh. Ken his family? Not likely; and how should he explain that he was the grandson—six times over—of her own brother, Dougal? That he was, in fact, not only Jamie’s nephew, but her own as well, if a bit further down the family tree than one might expect?

“Nor does anyone I’ve spoken to this week at the Gathering,” she added, head tilted to one side like a hawk watching prey.

So that was it. She’d been asking about him among her company—and had failed to turn up anyone who knew anything of his antecedents, for obvious reasons. A suspicious circumstance, to be sure.

He wondered whether she supposed he was a confidence trickster who had taken Jamie in, or whether perhaps he was meant to be involved in some scheme
with
Jamie? No, hardly that; Bree had told him that Jocasta had originally wanted to leave her property to Jamie—who had refused, wary of close involvement with the old leg-trap. His opinion of Jamie’s intelligence was reaffirmed.

Before he could think of some dignified retort, she patted his hand, still smiling.

“So, I thought to leave it all to the wee lad. That will be a tidy way of managing, won’t it? Brianna will have the use of the money, of course, until wee Jeremiah should come of age—unless anything should happen to the child, that is.”

Her voice held a definite note of warning, though her mouth continued to smile, her blank eyes still fixed wide on his face.

“What? What in the name of God d’ye mean by that?” He pushed his stool back, but she held tight to his hand. She was very strong, despite her age.

“Gerald Forbes will be executor of my will, and there are three trustees to manage the property,” she explained. “If Jeremiah should come to any mischief, though, then everything will go to my nephew Hamish.” Her face was quite serious now. “You’d not see a penny.”

He twisted his fingers in hers and squeezed, hard enough that he felt her bony knuckles press together. Let her read what she liked in that, then! She gasped, but he didn’t let go.

“Are ye saying to me that ye think I would harm that child?” His voice sounded hoarse to his own ears.

She had gone pale, but kept her dignity, teeth clenched and chin upraised.

“Have I said so?”

“Ye’ve said a great deal—and what ye’ve not said speaks louder than what ye have. How dare you imply such things to me?” He released her hand, all but flinging it back in her lap.

She rubbed her reddened fingers slowly with her other hand, lips pursed in thought. The canvas sides of the tent breathed in the wind with a crackling sound.

“Well, then,” she said at last. “I’ll offer ye my apology, Mr. MacKenzie, if I’ve wronged ye in any way. I thought it would be as well, though, for ye to know what was in my mind.”

“As well? As well for whom?” He was on his feet, and turned toward the flap. With great difficulty, he kept himself from seizing the china plates of cakes and biscuits and smashing them on the ground as a parting gesture.

“For Jeremiah,” she said levelly, behind him. “And Brianna. Perhaps, lad, even for you.”

He swung round, staring at her.

“Me? What d’ye mean by that?”

She gave the ghost of a shrug.

“If ye canna love the lad for himself, I thought ye might treat him well for the sake of his prospects.”

He stared at her, words jamming in his throat. His face felt hot, and the blood throbbed dully in his ears.

“Oh, I ken how it is,” she assured him. “It’s only to be understood that a man might not feel just so kindly toward a bairn his wife’s borne to another. But if—”

He stepped forward then and gripped her hard by the shoulder, startling her. She jerked, blinking, and the candle flames flashed from the cairngorm brooch.

“Madam,” he said, speaking very softly into her face. “I do not want your money. My wife does not want it. And
my son
will not have it. Cram it up your hole, aye?”

He let her go, turned, and strode out of the tent, brushing past Ulysses, who looked after him in puzzlement.

P
EOPLE MOVED THROUGH the gathering shadows of late afternoon, visiting from one fireside to another, as they had each day, but there was a different feeling on the mountain today.

In part it was the sweet sadness of leavetaking; the parting of friends, the severing of newfound loves, the knowledge that some faces would be seen tonight for the last time on earth. In part it was anticipation; the longing for home, the pleasures and dangers of the journey to come. In part, sheer weariness; cranky children, men harried by responsibility, women exhausted by the labor of cooking over open fires, maintaining a family’s clothes and health and appetites from the sustenance of saddlebags and mule packs.

I could sympathize with all three attitudes myself. Beyond the sheer excitement of meeting new people and hearing new talk, I had had the pleasure—for pleasure it definitely was, despite its grimmer aspects—of new patients, seeing novel ailments and curing what could be cured, grappling with the need to find a way to treat what could not.

But the longing for home was strong: my spacious hearth, with its huge cauldron and its roasting jack, the light-filled peace of my surgery, with the fragrant bunches of nettle and dried lavender overhead, dusty gold in the afternoon sun. My feather bed, soft and clean, linen sheets smelling of rosemary and yarrow.

I closed my eyes for a moment, summoning up a wistful vision of this haven of delight, then opened them to reality: a crusted griddle, black with the remnants of scorched oatcake; soggy shoes and frozen feet; damp clothes that chafed with grit and sand; hampers whose abundance had dwindled to a single loaf of bread—well-nibbled by mice—ten apples, and a heel of cheese; three screeching babies; one frazzled young mother with sore breasts and cracked nipples; one expectant bride with a case of incipient nerves; one white-faced serving-maid with menstrual cramps; four slightly inebriated Scotsmen—and one Frenchman in similar condition—who wandered in and out of camp like bears and were not going to be any help whatever in packing up this evening . . . and a deep, clenching ache in my lower belly that gave me the unwelcome news that my own monthly—which had grown thankfully much less frequent than monthly of late—had decided to keep Lizzie’s company.

I gritted my teeth, plucked a cold, damp clout off a clump of brush, and made my way duck-footed down the trail toward the women’s privy trench, thighs pressed together.

The first thing to greet me on my return was the hot stink of scorching metal. I said something very expressive in French—a useful bit of phraseology acquired at L’Hôpital des Anges, where strong language was often the best medical tool available.

Marsali’s mouth fell open. Germain looked at me in admiration and repeated the expression, correctly and with a beautiful Parisian accent.

“Sorry,” I said, looking to Marsali in apology. “Someone’s let the teakettle boil dry.”

“Nay matter, Mother Claire,” she said with a sigh, juggling little Joanie, who’d started to scream again. “It’s no worse than the things his father teaches him a-purpose. Is there a dry cloth?”

I was already hunting urgently for a dry cloth or a pot-lifter with which to grasp the wire handle, but nothing came to hand save soggy diapers and damp stockings. Kettles were hard to come by, though, and I wasn’t sacrificing this one. I wrapped my hand in a fold of my skirt, seized the handle, and jerked the kettle away from the flames. The heat shot through the damp cloth like a bolt of lightning, and I dropped it.

“Merde!”
said Germain, in happy echo.

“Yes, quite,” I said, sucking a blistered thumb. The kettle hissed and smoked in the wet leaves, and I kicked at it, rolling it off onto a patch of mud.

“Merde, merde, merde, merde,”
sang Germain, with a fair approximation of the tune of “Rose, Rose”—a manifestation of precocious musical feeling that went lamentably unappreciated in the circumstances.

“Do hush, child,” I said.

He didn’t. Jemmy began to screech in unison with Joan, Lizzie—who had had a relapse owing to the reluctant departure of Private Ogilvie—began to moan under her bush, and it started in to hail, small white pellets of ice dancing on the ground and pinging sharply off my scalp. I pulled the soggy mobcap off a branch and clapped it on my head, feeling like an extremely put-upon toad beneath a particularly homely mushroom. All it wanted was warts, I thought.

The hail was short-lived. As the rush and clattering lessened, though, the crunching noise of muddy boots came up the path. Jamie, with Father Kenneth Donahue in tow, crusted hail on their hair and shoulders.

“I’ve brought the good Father for tea,” he said, beaming round the clearing.

“No, you haven’t,” I said, rather ominously. And if he thought I’d forgotten about Stephen Bonnet, he was wrong about that, too.

Turning at the sound of my voice, he jerked in an exaggeration of startled shock at sight of me in my mobcap.

“Is that you, Sassenach?” he asked in mock alarm, pretending to lean forward and peek under the drooping frill of my cap. Owing to the presence of the priest, I refrained from kneeing Jamie in some sensitive spot, and contented myself instead with an attempt to turn him into stone with my eyes, à la Medusa.

He appeared not to notice, distracted by Germain, who was now dancing in little circles while singing theme and variations on my initial French expression, to the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” Father Donahue was going bright pink with the effort of pretending that he didn’t understand any French.

“Tais toi, crétin,”
Jamie said, reaching into his sporran. He said it amiably enough, but with the tone of one whose expectation of being obeyed is so absolute as not to admit question. Germain stopped abruptly, mouth open, and Jamie promptly thumbed a sweetie into it. Germain shut his mouth and began concentrating on the matter at hand, songs forgotten.

I reached for the kettle, using a handful of my hem again as pot holder. Jamie bent, picked up a sturdy twig, and hooked the handle of the kettle neatly from my hand with it.

“Voilà!”
he said, presenting it.

“Merci,”
I said, with a distinct lack of gratitude. Nonetheless, I accepted the stick and set off toward the nearest rivulet, smoking kettle borne before me like a lance.

Reaching a rock-studded pool, I dropped the kettle with a clang, ripped off the mobcap, flung it into a clump of sedge, and stamped on it, leaving a large, muddy footprint on the linen.

“I didna mean to say it wasna flattering, Sassenach,” said an amused voice behind me.

I raised a cold brow in his direction.

“You didn’t mean to say it
was
flattering, did you?”

“No. It makes ye look like a poisonous toadstool. Much better without,” he assured me.

He pulled me toward him and bent to kiss me.

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate the thought,” I said, and the tone of my voice stopped him, a fraction of an inch from my mouth. “But one inch farther and I think I might just bite a small piece out of your lip.”

Moving like a man who has just realized that the stone he has casually picked up is in actuality a wasp’s nest, he straightened up and very, very slowly took his hands off my waist.

“Oh,” he said, and tilted his head to one side, lips pursed as he surveyed me.

“Ye do look a bit frazzled, at that, Sassenach.”

No doubt this was true, but it made me feel like bursting into tears to hear it. Evidently the urge showed, because he took me—very gently—by the hand, and led me to a large rock.

“Sit,” he said. “Close your eyes,
a nighean donn
. Rest yourself a moment.”

I sat, eyes closed and shoulders slumped. Sloshing noises and a muted clang announced that he was cleaning and filling the kettle.

He set the filled kettle at my feet with a soft clunk, then eased himself down on the leaves beside it, where he sat quietly. I could hear the faint sigh of his breath, and the occasional sniff and rustle as he wiped a dripping nose on his sleeve.

“I’m sorry,” I said at last, opening my eyes.

He turned, half-smiling, to look up at me.

“For what, Sassenach? It’s not as though ye’ve refused my bed—or at least I hope it’s not come to that yet.”

The thought of making love just at the moment was absolutely at the bottom of my list, but I returned the half-smile.

“No,” I said ruefully. “After two weeks of sleeping on the ground, I wouldn’t refuse
anyone’s
bed.” His eyebrows went up at that, and I laughed, taken off-guard.

“No,” I said again. “I’m just . . . frazzled.” Something griped low in my belly, and proceeded to twist. I grimaced, and pressed my hands over the pain.