The Scottish Prisoner

Jamie surreptitiously flexed his right hand. He also frequently felt weather coming; the badly mended bones seemed to have odd spaces that cold crept into. He felt nothing now, but he wasn’t going to call Crusoe a liar.

“Aye, it might be,” he said equably. “But Miss Isobel and Lady Dunsany are wanting to take Master Willie up to the old shepherd’s hut for a wee wander.” Having heard the screams and roarings from the nursery as he passed under its windows after breakfast, he had the impression that the proposed outing was the outcome of a domestic counsel of desperation.

According to kitchen gossip, Master William had a new tooth coming, a back tooth, and it was coming hard—particularly for those who had to deal with him. Opinion was divided as to the best treatment for this ailment, some advising a leech upon the gums, some bleeding, others a poultice of hot mustard at the back of the neck. Jamie supposed that all these things would at least distract the child from his suffering by giving him something else to roar about but would himself have rubbed the lad’s gums with whisky.

“Use enough of it,”his sister had told him, a practiced finger in his new niece’s squalling mouth, “and they’ll go quiet. It helps to take a wee dram for yourself, too, in case they don’t.”He smiled briefly at the memory.

Isobel, though, had evidently decided that an outing would take Willie’s mind off his tooth and had sent word for horses and a groom. Lady Dunsany, Lady Isobel, Betty—old Na

Jamie wondered what Lady Isobel would say when she found that he was to escort the party, but he was too pleased with the prospect of seeing Willie—roaring or not—for a few hours to worry about it.

In the event, Lady Isobel seemed barely to notice his presence. She was flushed and cheerful, doubtless because of lawyer Wilberforce’s presence, though her gaiety had a strange edge to it. Even Lady Dunsany, most of her attention fixed on Willie, noticed Isobel’s mood and smiled a little.

“You’re in good spirits, daughter,” she said.

“Who could not be?” Isobel said, throwing back her head dramatically and raising her face to the sun. “So intoxicating a day!”

It was a fine day. A sky you could fall into, and never mind how far. The copper beeches near the house had gone to gold and rust, and a sweet, nippy little breeze whirled the fallen leaves round in skittish circles. Jamie remembered another day with air like blue wine, and Claire in it.

Lord, that she may be safe. She and the child. For an odd moment, he felt as though he stood outside himself, outside time, sensing Claire’s hand warm on his arm, her smile as she looked at Willie—red-faced, tearstained, and obviously miserable, but still his bo

Then the world snapped into place, and he picked up the boy to set him on Betty’s saddle. William kicked him in the stomach, scrunched his face, and howled.

“NOOoooooo! Don’t want her, don’t want HER, wa

Jamie tucked Willie under one arm, so that his sturdy legs churned harmlessly in the air, and looked to the ladies for advice, one eyebrow raised.

Betty looked as though she would prefer to share her horse with a wildcat but didn’t say anything. Lady Dunsany glanced dubiously from the maidservant to Jamie, but Lady Isobel—her conversation with Mr. Wilberforce interrupted—drew up her reins and said impatiently, “Oh, let him.”

And so they rode up toward the fells, skirting the moss, though at this time of year it was dry and mostly safe. Willie was breathing thickly through his mouth, his nose being blocked from crying, and was drooling now and then, but Jamie found his small, solid presence a pleasure, though he was disturbed to find that the boy was wearing a corset under his shirt.

As soon as the party reached a place where the horses were not compelled to follow one another, he maneuvered his own mount so as to drop back and ride beside Betty, who affected not to notice him.

“Is the wean not ower-young to be trussed up like a Christmas goose?” he asked bluntly.

Betty blinked at him, taken by surprise.

“Like … Oh, you mean the corset? It’s only a light thing, barely any boning. He won’t have a real one ’til he’s five, but his grandmother and his aunt thought he might as well grow used to it now. While they can still overpower him,” she added in an undertone, with an unwilling twitch of amusement. “The little bugger kicked a hole in the wall of the nursery yesterday and broke six of the best teacups the day before. Stole them off the table and flung them against the wall to hear them smash, laughing all the time. He’ll be a right devil when he’s grown, you mark my words,” she said, nodding at William, who had a thumb in his mouth and was dreamily lost in the horse’s motion and the soothing proximity of Jamie’s body.

Jamie contented himself with a neutral sound in his throat, though he felt his ears grow hot. They would not discipline the boy, and yet they meant to case his sweet small body in linen and whalebone, to narrow his shoulders and sway his back to meet the demands of what they thought fashionable?

He knew that the custom of corseting children was common among the wealthy English—to form their bodies into the slope-shouldered, high-chested figure thought most fashionable—but such things were not done in the Highlands, save perhaps among the nobles. The odious garment—he could feel the hard edge of it pressing into Willie’s soft flesh, just below his oxter—made Jamie want to spur up and ride hell-bent for the Border, pausing only to strip the thing off and throw it into the mere as they passed.

But he couldn’t do that and so rode on, one arm tight around William, seething.

“He’s selling,” Betty murmured, distracting him from his dark thoughts, “but Lady D’s not buying. Poor Isobel!”

“Eh?”

She nodded and he looked ahead, seeing Mr. Wilberforce riding between the two ladies, now and then casting a quick, possessive glance at Isobel but turning the most of his winsome charm on Lady Dunsany. Who, as Betty said, seemed less than overwhelmed.

“Why poor Isobel?” Jamie asked, watching this byplay with interest.

“Why, she’s sweet on him, you great nit. Surely even you can see that?”

“Aye, so?”

Betty sighed and rolled her eyes dramatically but was sufficiently bored as to put aside her pose of disinterest.

“So,” she said, “Lady Isobel wants to marry him. Well,” she added fairly, “she wants to be married, and he’s the only one in the county that’s halfway presentable. But only halfway, and I don’t think that’ll be enough,” she said, squinting judiciously at Wilberforce, who was nearly falling out of his saddle in the effort to pay a compliment to Lady Dunsany, who was pretending to be hard of hearing.

On Wilberforce’s other side, Isobel was glaring at her mother, with a look of mingled frustration and apprehension on her face. Lady Dunsany rode tranquilly, rocking a little on her sidesaddle, glancing vaguely at Wilberforce’s importunate face from time to time, with an expression that said plainly, “Oh, are you still here?”

“Why do they not like him for their daughter, then?” Jamie asked, interested despite himself. “Do they not wish her to be married?”

Betty snorted. “After what happened to Geneva?” she asked, and looked pointedly at William, then raised her face to Jamie, with a tiny smirk. He kept his own face carefully blank, despite a lurch of the i

They rode in silence for a bit, but Betty’s i

“They’d let her marry well, I s’pose,” she said, grudging. “But they don’t mean to let her throw herself away on a lawyer. And one that’s talked about, too.”