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I fumed, at a loss as to what to do. Since the offender wasn’t available, I snapped at Murtagh instead.
“Don’t you know it’s near freezing out there, and snow coming on? Why didn’t you stop him? And what do you mean he isn’t wearing anything?”
The diminutive clansman was tranquil. “Aye, I know it. Reckon he does, too, not bein’ blind. As for stoppin’ him, I tried.” He nodded at the robe on the bed.
“When he said he was goin’ out, I said he wasna fit for it, and you’d have my head, did I let him go. I snatched up his gown and set my back against the door, and told him he wasna leavin’, unless he was prepared to go through me.”
Murtagh paused, then said irrelevantly, “Ellen MacKenzie had the sweetest smile I ever saw; would warm a man to the backbone just to see it.”
“So you let her fat-headed son go out and freeze to death,” I said impatiently. “What’s his mother’s smile to do with it?”
Murtagh rubbed his nose meditatively. “Weel, when I said I wouldna let him pass, young Jamie just looked at me for a moment. Then he gave me a smile looked just like his ma’s, and stepped out of the window in naught but his skin. By the time I got to the window, he was gone.”
I rolled my eyes heavenward.
“Reckoned I should let ye know where he’d gone,” Murtagh continued, “so ye’d no be worrit for him.”
“So I’d no be worrit for him!” I muttered under my breath as I strode toward the stables. “He’d better be ‘worrit,’ when I catch up to him!”
There was only the one main road heading inland. I rode along it at a good pace, keeping an eye on the fields as I passed. This part of France was a rich farming area, and luckily most of the forest had been cleared; wolves and bears would not be as much a danger as they might be further inland.
As it happened, I found him barely a mile beyond the gates of the monastery, sitting on one of the ancient Roman mile-markers that dotted the roads.
He was barefoot, but otherwise clad in a short jerkin and thin breeches, the property of one of the stable lads, to judge from the stains on them.
I reined up and stared at him for a moment, leaning on the pommel. “Your nose is blue,” I remarked conversationally. I glanced downward. “And so are your feet.”
He gri
“So are my balls. Want to warm them for me?” Cold or not, he was plainly in good spirits. I slid off the horse and stood in front of him, shaking my head.
“It’s no use at all, is it?” I asked.
“What isn’t?” He rubbed his hand on the ragged breeches.
“Being angry with you. You don’t care a bit whether you give yourself pneumonia, or get eaten by bears, or worry me half to death, do you?”
“Well, I’m no much worrit about the bears. They sleep in the winter, ye know.”
I lost my temper and swung my hand at him, intending to slap his ear through the side of his head. He caught my wrist and held it without difficulty, laughing at me. After a moment’s fruitless struggle, I gave up and laughed too.
“Are you coming back, now?” I asked. “Or have you got anything else to prove?”
He gestured back along the road with his chin. “Take the horse back to that big oak tree and wait for me there. I’ll walk that far. Alone.”
I bit my tongue to repress the several remarks I felt bubbling to the surface, and mounted. At the oak tree, I got off and looked down the road. After a moment, though, I found I couldn’t bear to watch his labored progress. When he fell the first time, I clutched the reins tight in my gloved hands, then resolutely turned my back, and waited.
We barely made it back to the guests’ wing, but managed, staggering through the corridor, his arm looped over my shoulder for support. I spotted Brother Roger, anxiously lurking in the hall, and sent him. scampering for a warming pan, while I steered my awkward burden into the chamber and dumped him onto the bed. He grunted at the impact, but lay still, eyes closed, as I proceeded to strip the filthy rags off him.
“All right; in you get.”
He rolled obediently under the covers I held back for him. I thrust the warming pan hastily between the sheets at the foot of the bed and shoved it back and forth. When I removed it, he stretched his long legs down and relaxed with a blissful sigh as his feet reached the pocket of warmth.
I went quietly about the room, picking up the discarded clothes, straightening the trifling disorder on the table, putting fresh charcoal in the brazier, adding a pinch of elecampane to sweeten the smoke. I thought he was asleep, and was startled when he spoke behind me.
“Claire.”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
“Oh.” I was mildly surprised, but undeniably pleased. “I love you too.”
He sighed, and opened his eyes halfway.
“Randall,” he said. “Toward the end. That’s what he wanted.” I was even more startled by this, and replied cautiously.
“Oh?”
“Aye.” His eyes were fixed on the open window, where the snow clouds filled the space with a deep, even grey.
“I was lying on the floor, and he was lying next to me. He was naked by then, too, and both of us were smeared with blood – and other things. I remember trying to lift my head, and feeling my cheek stuck to the stone of the floor with dried blood.” He frowned, a distant look in his eyes as he conjured the memory.
“I was far gone by then; so far that I didna even feel much pain – I was just terribly tired, and everything seemed far away and not very real.”
“Just as well,” I said, with some asperity, and he smiled briefly.
“Aye, just as well. I was drifting a bit, half-fainted, I expect, so I don’t know how long we both lay there, but I came awake to find him holding me and pressing himself against me.” He hesitated, as though the next part were difficult to say.
“I’d not fought him ’til then. But I was so tired, and I thought I couldna bear it again… anyway, I started to squirm away from him, not really fighting, just pulling back. He had his arms round my neck, and he pulled on me, and buried his face in my shoulder, and I could feel he was crying. I couldna tell what he was saying for a bit, and then I could; he was saying ‘I love you, I love you,’ over and over, with his tears and his spittle ru
“I ca
“I would not do it. I di
“He used me again – hard. And he kept on saying it: ‘Tell me that you love me, Alex. Say that you love me.’ ”
“He called you Alex?” I interrupted, not able to hold back.
“Aye. I remember I wondered how he knew my second name. Did not occur to me to wonder why he’d use it, even if he knew.” He shrugged.
“Anyway, I didna move or say a word, and when he’d finished, he jumped up as though he’d gone mad, and started to beat me with something – I could not see what – cursing and shouting at me, saying ‘You know you love me! Tell me so! I know it’s true!” I got my arms up over my head to protect it, and after a bit I must have fainted again, because the pain in my shoulders was the last I remember, except for sort of a dream about bellowing kine. Then I woke, jouncing along belly-down on a horse for a few moments, and then nothing again ’til I came round on the hearthside at Eldridge, with you looking down on me.” He closed his eyes again. His tone was dreamy, almost unconcerned.