The Scottish Prisoner

The air seemed to shiver with the force of his words. No one spoke for a long moment, and there was no sound save the drip of water from the fallen vase, dropping from the edge of the table.

“Why, then?” Grey said quietly, at last.

Fraser rounded on him, dangerous—and beautiful—as a red stag at bay, and Grey felt his heart seize in his chest.

Fraser’s own chest heaved visibly, as he sought to control his emotions.

“Why,” he repeated, and it was not a question, but the preface to a statement. He closed his eyes for an instant, then opened them, fixing them on Grey with great intensity.

“Because what I said of Twelvetrees is true. With Siverly dead, he holds the finances of the rising in his hands. He must not be allowed to act. Mustnot.”

“The rising?” Hal had subsided into his chair as Fraser spoke but now sprang to his feet. “There is a rising, then? You know this for a fact?”

Fraser spared him a single glance of contempt.

“I know it.” And in a few words, he laid the plan before them: Qui

He seemed to have stopped speaking, letting his head fall forward. But then he drew a deep, trembling breath and looked up again.

“If I thought that there was the slightest chance of success,” he said, “I should ha’ kept my own counsel. But there is not, and I know it. I ca

Grey heard the desolation in his voice and glanced briefly at Hal. Did his brother know the enormity of what Fraser had just done? He doubted it, though Hal’s face was intent, his eyes live as coals.

“A minute,” Hal said abruptly, and left the room. Grey heard him in the hall, urgently summoning the footmen, sending them at once for Harry Quarry and the other senior officers of the regiment. Calling for his secretary.

“A note to the prime minister, Andrews,” Hal’s voice floated back from the hallway, tense. “Ask if I may wait upon him this evening. A matter of the greatest importance.”

A murmur from Andrews, a great rush of exodus, then a silence, and Hal’s footsteps on the stairs.

“He’s gone to tell Mi

Fraser sat by the hearth, elbow on his knee and his head sunk upon one hand. He didn’t answer or move.

After a few moments, Grey cleared his throat.

“Di

THEY SAT IN SILENCE for half an hour by the carriage clock on the mantelpiece, which chimed the quarter in a small silver voice. The only interruption was the entrance of the butler, coming in first to light the candles, and then again, bringing a note for Grey. He opened this, read it briefly, and thrust it into his waistcoat pocket, hearing Hal’s footsteps on the stair, coming down.

His brother was pale when he came in and clearly excited, though plainly in command of himself.

“Claret and biscuits, please, Nasonby,” he said to the butler, and waited ’til the man had left before speaking further. Fraser had risen to his feet when Hal came in—not out of respect, Grey thought, but only to be ready for whatever bloody thing was coming next.

Hal folded his hands behind him and essayed a small smile, meant to be cordial.

“As you point out, Mr. Fraser, you are not an Englishman,” Hal said. Fraser gave him a blank stare, and the smile died aborning. Hal pressed his lips together, breathed in through his nose, and went on.

“You are, however, a paroled prisoner of war, and my responsibility. I must reluctantly forbid you to fight Twelvetrees. Much as I agree that the man needs killing,” he added.

“Forbid me,” Fraser said, in a neutral tone. He stood looking at Hal as he might have examined something found on the bottom of his shoe, with a mix of curiosity and disgust.

“You cause me to betray my friends,” Jamie said, as reasonably as one might lay out a geometric proof, “to betray my nation, my king, and myself—and now you suppose that you will deprive me of my honor as a man? I think not, sir.”

And, without another word, he strode out of the library, brushing past a surprised Nasonby, coming in with the refreshments. The butler, nobly concealing any response to current goings-on—he had worked for the family for some time, after all—set down his tray and retired.

“That went well,” said Grey. “Mi

“I didn’t need Mi

“You could stop him,” Grey observed, and poured claret into one of the crystal cups, the wine dark red and fragrant.

Hal snorted.

“Could I? Yes, possibly—if I wanted to lock him up. Nothing else would work.” He noticed the fallen bud vase and absently righted it, picking up the small daisy it had held. “He has the choice of weapon.” Hal frowned. “Sword, do you think? It’s surer than a pistol if you truly mean to kill someone.”

Grey made no reply to this; Hal had killed Nathaniel Twelvetrees with a pistol; he himself had killed Edwin Nicholls with a pistol much more recently—though, granted, it had been sheer accident. Nonetheless, Hal was technically right. Pistols were prone to misfire, and very few were accurate at distances beyond a few feet.

“I don’t know how he is with a sword,” Hal went on, frowning, “but I’ve seen the way he moves, and he’s got a six-inch reach on Twelvetrees, at least.”

“To the best of my knowledge—which is reasonably good—he hasn’t had any sort of weapon in his hands for the last seven or eight years. I don’t doubt his reflexes”—a fleeting memory of Fraser’s catching him as he fell on a dark Irish road, the scream of frogs and toads in his ears—“but it’s you who is constantly prating on at me about the necessity of practice, is it not?”

“I never prate,” Hal said, offended. He twiddled the daisy’s stem between his fingers, shedding white petals on the rug. “If I let him fight Twelvetrees and Twelvetrees kills him … that would cause trouble for you, he being nominally under your protection as the officer in charge of his parole.”

Grey felt a sudden clench in the belly. “I should not consider damage to my reputation the worst result arising from that situation,” he said, imagining—all too well—Jamie Fraser dying in some bleak dawn, his pumping blood hot on Grey’s guilty hands. He took a gulp of wine, not tasting it.

“Well, neither would I,” Hal admitted, putting down the tattered stem. “I’d rather he wasn’t killed. I like the man, stubborn and contentious as he is.”

“To say nothing of the fact that he has rendered us a signal service,” Grey said, with a noticeable edge to his voice. “Have you any notion what it cost him to tell us?”

Hal gave him a quick, hard look, but then glanced away and nodded.

“Yes, I have,” he said quietly. “You know the oath of loyalty that they made the Jacobite prisoners swear—those who were allowed to live?”

“Of course I do,” Grey muttered, rolling the cup restlessly between his palms. It had been his duty to administer that oath to incoming prisoners at Ardsmuir.

May I never see my wife and children, father, mother, or relations. May I be killed in battle as a coward and lie without Christian burial in a strange land, far from the graves of my forefathers and kindred …

He could only thank God that Fraser had been in the prison already for some time when Grey was appointed governor. He hadn’t had to hear Jamie speak that oath or see the look on his face when he did so.

“You’re right,” Hal said, sighing deeply and reaching for a biscuit. “We owe him. But if he should kill Twelvetrees—there’s no chance of it stopping with a mere drawing of blood, I don’t suppose? No, of course not.” He began to pace to and fro slowly, nibbling the biscuit.