The Scottish Prisoner

She did, looking expectant. The look changed to one of astonishment when he put the little purse into her palm.

“What’s this?” she asked, but the chink of coins as she weighed the purse was answer enough.

“That’s your dowry, lass,” he said, smiling.

She looked at him suspiciously, plainly not knowing whether this was a joke or something else.

“A lass like you should be marrit,” he said. “But it’s not me ye should be marrying.”

“Who says so?” she asked, fixing him with a fishy eye.

“I do,” he replied equably. “Like the wicked Mr. Wilberforce, lass—I’ve got a wife.”

She blinked.

“You do? Where?”

Ah, where indeed?

“She couldna come with me, when I was captured after Culloden. But she’s alive still.”

Lord, that she may be safe …

“But there’s a man that wants ye bad, lass, and well ye know it. George Roberts is a fine man, and with that wee bawbee”—he nodded at the purse in her hand—“the two of ye could set up in a bit wee cottage, maybe.”

She didn’t say anything but pursed her lips, and he could see her envisioning the prospect.

“Ye should have your own hearth, lass—and a cradle by it, wi’ your own bairn in it.”

She swallowed and, for the first time since he’d known her, looked tremulous and uncertain.

“I—but—why?” She made a tentative gesture toward him with the purse, not quite offering it back to him. “Surely you need this?”

He shook his head and took a definite step back, waving her off.

“Believe me, lass. There’s nothing I’d rather do with it. Take it wi’ my blessing—and if ye like, ye can call your firstborn Jamie.” He smiled at her, feeling the warmth in his chest rise into the back of his eyes.

She made an incoherent sound and took a pace toward him, rose onto her toes, and kissed him on the mouth.

A strangled gasp broke them apart, and Jamie turned to see Crusoe goggling at them from the corner of the shed.

“What the devil are youlooking at?” Betty snapped at him.

“Not a thing, miss,” Crusoe assured her, and put one large palm over his mouth.

43

Succession

October 26, 1760

GREY ARRIVED IN LONDON TO THE TOLLING OF PASSING BELLS.

“The king is dead!” cried the ballad sellers, the news chanters, the scribblers, the street urchins, their voices echoing through the city. “Long live the king!”

In the furious preparations and public preoccupations that attend a state funeral, the final arrests of the Irish Jacobite plotters who had called themselves the Wild Hunt took place without notice. Harold, Duke of Pardloe, neither ate nor slept for several days during this effort, nor did his brother, and it was in a state of mind somewhere between sleep and death that they came to Westminster Abbey on the night of the king’s obsequies.

The Duke of Cumberland did not look well either. Grey saw Hal’s eyes rest on Cumberland with an odd expression, somewhere between grim satisfaction and grudging sympathy. Cumberland had suffered a stroke not long before, and one side of his face still sagged, the eye on that side almost closed. The other was still pugnacious, though, and looked daggers at Hal from the other side of Henry VII’s chapel. Then the duke’s attention was distracted by his own brother, the Duke of Newcastle, who was crying, alternately mopping his eyes and using his glass to spy out the crowd and see who was there. A look of disgust crossed Cumberland’s face, and he looked back down into the vault, where the huge purple-draped coffin sat somber and majestic in the light of six enormous silver candelabra, all ablaze.

“Cumberland’s thinking he will descend there himself in no short time, I fear.” Horace Walpole’s soft whisper came from behind Grey, but he couldn’t tell whether it was directed to him or merely Walpole making observations to himself. Horry talked all the time, and it seemed to make little difference whether anyone was listening.

Whatever you wanted to say about the royal family—and there was quite a lot you could say—they mostly displayed a becoming fortitude in their time of sorrow. The funeral of George II had been going on for more than two hours now, and Grey’s own feet were mere blocks of ice from standing on the cold marble of the abbey floor, though Tom had made him put on two pair of stockings and his woolen drawers. His shins ached.

Newcastle had surreptitiously stepped onto the five-foot train of Cumberland’s black cloak in order to avoid the mortal chill of the marble floor; Grey hoped he would neglect to get off before his brother started walking again. But Cumberland stood like a rock, despite a bad leg. He’d chosen—God knew why—to wear a dark-brown wig in the style called “Adonis,” which went oddly with his distorted, bloated face. Maybe Horry was right.

The view down into the vault was impressive; he’d admit that much. George II was now once and forever safe from the Wild Hunt—and every other earthly threat. Three officers of the Irish Brigades—so far—had been court-martialed quietly and condemned to hang for treason. The executions would be private, too. The monarchy was safe; the public would never know.

You did it, Charlie, Grey thought. Goodbye. And sudden tears made the candle flames blur bright and huge. No one noticed; there were a number of people moved to tears by the emotion of the occasion. Charles Carruthers had died alone in an attic in Canada and had no resting place. Grey had had Charlie’s body burned, his ashes scattered, that carefully assembled packet of papers his only memorial.

“Such a relief, my dear,” Walpole—who was exceedingly slight—was saying to Grenville. “I was positive they would pair me with a ten-year-old boy, and the young have so little conversation.”

The huge fretted vault of the abbey rustled and chirped as though it were full of roosting bats, the noise a counterpoint to the constant tolling of bells overhead and the firing of minute guns outside. One went off, quite close, and Grey saw Hal close his eyes in sudden pain; his brother had one of his sick headaches and was having trouble staying on his feet. If there had been incense, it would likely have finished him off; he’d thought Hal was about to vomit when Newcastle scampered past him earlier, reeking loudly of bergamot and vetiver.

For all the lack of frankincense and priests saying Masses for the late king’s soul, the ceremony was lavish enough to have pleased a cardinal. The bishop had blundered badly through the prayers, but no one noticed. Now the interminable anthem droned on and on, unmeasurably tedious. Grey found himself wondering whether it sounded any better to him than it would have to Jamie Fraser, with his inability to hear music. Mere rhythmic noise, in either case. It wasn’t doing Hal any good; he gave a stifled moan.

He pulled his thoughts hurriedly away from Fraser, moving a little closer to Hal in case he fell over. His undisciplined thoughts promptly veered to Percy Wainwright. He’d stood thus in church with Percy—his new stepbrother—at the marriage of Grey’s mother to Percy’s stepfather. Close enough that their hands had found each other, hidden in the full skirts of their coats.

He didn’t want to think about Percy. Obligingly, his thoughts veered straight back in the direction of Jamie Fraser.

Will you bloody go away?he thought irritably, and jerked his attention firmly to the sight before him: people were crammed into every crevice of the chapel, sitting on anything they could find. The white breath of the crowd mingled with the smell of smoke from the torches in the nave. If Hal did pass out, Grey thought, he wouldn’t fall down; there wasn’t room. Nonetheless, he moved closer, his elbow brushing Hal’s.