An echo in the bone

The rain had passed, and the sun shone on the puddles as they splashed through the streets. There was a sense of movement all around, agitation in the air. The army was quartered in Germantown, but there were always soldiers in the city, and their knowledge of imminent departure, anticipation of the return to campaigning, infected the city like a plague, a fever passing invisibly from man to man.

A patrol on the road out of the city stopped them but waved them on when Grey gave his name and rank. His companion he introduced as Mr. Alexander MacKenzie and thought he felt a vibration of humor from said companion. Alex MacKenzie was the name Jamie had used at Helwater—as Grey’s prisoner.

Oh, God, Grey thought suddenly, leading the way out of sight of the patrol. William. In the shock of the confrontation and their abrupt departure, he hadn’t had time to think. If Grey were dead, what would William do?

His thoughts buzzed like a swarm of hiving bees, crawling over one another in a seething mass; impossible to focus on one for more than an instant before it was lost in the deafening hum. Denys Randall-Isaacs. Richardson. With Grey gone, he would almost certainly move to arrest Claire. William would try to stop him, if he knew. But William didn’t know what Richardson was…. Grey didn’t know, either, not for sure. Henry and his Negro lover—Grey knew they were lovers now, had seen it in both their faces—Dottie and her Quaker: if the twin shocks didn’t kill Hal, he’d be on a ship bound for America in nothing flat, and that would certainly kill him. Percy. Oh, Jesus, Percy.

Jamie was in front of him now, leading the way. There were little groups of people on the road: mostly farmers coming in with wagonloads of supplies for the army. They looked curiously at Jamie, much more so at Grey. But no one stopped or challenged them, and an hour later Jamie led them down a trace off the main road and into a small woodland dripping and steaming from the recent rain. There was a stream; Jamie swung down off his horse and left it to drink, and Grey did likewise, feeling strangely unreal, as though the leather of saddle and reins was foreign to his skin, as though rain-chilled air passed through him, body and bones, rather than around him.

Jamie crouched by the stream and drank, then splashed water over his head and face and stood up, shaking himself like a dog.

“Thank ye, John,” he said. “I hadna time to say it earlier. I’m verra grateful to ye.”

“Thank me? It was hardly my choice. You abducted me at gunpoint.”

Jamie smiled; the tension of the last hour had eased, and with it the lines of his face.

“Not that. For taking care of Claire, I mean.”

“Claire,” he repeated. “Ah. Yes. That.”

“Aye, that,” Jamie said patiently, and bent a little to peer at him in concern. “Are ye quite well, John? Ye look a wee bit peaked.”

“Peaked,” Grey muttered. His heart was beating very erratically; perhaps it would conveniently stop. He waited for a moment to allow it to do this if it liked, but it went on cheerfully thumping away. No help, then. Jamie was still looking quizzically at him. Best to get it over quickly.

He took a deep breath, shut his eyes, and commended his soul to God.

“I have had carnal knowledge of your wife,” he blurted.

He had expected to die more or less instantaneously upon this utterance, but everything continued just as usual. Birds continued chirping in the trees, and the rip and slobber of the horses champing grass was the only sound above that of the rushing water. He opened one eye to find Jamie Fraser standing there regarding him, head to one side.

“Oh?” said Jamie curiously. “Why?”

BRED IN THE BONE

I … UH … IF you’ll excuse me for a moment…” I backed slowly to the door of my room and, seizing the knob, whipped inside and shut the door, leaving Willie to recover himself in decent privacy. And not only Willie.

I pressed myself against the door as though pursued by werewolves, my blood thundering in my ears.

“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” I whispered. Something like a geyser rose up inside me and burst in my head, the spray of it sparkling with sunlight and diamonds. I was dimly aware that it had come on to rain outside, and dirty gray water was streaking the windowpanes, but that didn’t matter a bit to the effervescence inside me.

I stood still for several minutes, eyes closed, not thinking anything, just murmuring, “Thank you, God,” over and over, soundlessly.

A tentative rap on the door jarred me out of this trance, and I turned to open it. William stood on the landing.

His shirt still hung open where he’d torn it, and I could see the pulse beat fast in the hollow of his throat. He bowed awkwardly to me, trying to achieve a smile but notably failing in the attempt. He gave it up.

“I am not sure what to call you,” he said. “Under the—the circumstances.”

“Oh,” I said, mildly disconcerted. “Well. I don’t think—at least I hope that the relationship between you and me hasn’t changed.” I realized, with a sudden dampening of my euphoria, that it very well might now, and the thought gave me a deep pang. I was very fond of him, for his own sake, as well as for his father’s—or fathers’, as the case might be.

“Could you bring yourself to go on calling me ‘Mother Claire,’ do you think? Just until we can think of something more… appropriate,” I added hastily, seeing reluctance narrow his eyes. “After all, I suppose I am still your stepmother. Regardless of the … er… the situation.”

He turned that over for a moment, then nodded briefly.

“May I come in? I wish to talk to you.”

“Yes, I suppose you do.”

If I hadn’t known both his fathers, I would have marveled at his ability to suppress the rage and confusion he had so clearly exhibited a quarter of a hour ago. Jamie did it by instinct, John by long experience—but both of them had an iron power of will, and whether William’s was bred in the bone or acquired by example, he most assuredly had one.

“Shall I send for something?” I asked. “A little brandy? It’s good for shock.”

He shook his head. He wouldn’t sit—I didn’t think he could—but leaned against the wall.

“I suppose that you knew? You could scarcely help but notice the resemblance, I suppose,” he added bitterly.

“It is rather striking,” I agreed, with caution. “Yes, I knew. My husband told me”—I groped for some delicate way of putting it— “the, um, circumstances of your birth some years ago.”

And just how was I going to describe those circumstances?

It hadn’t exactly escaped me that there were a few awkward explanations to be made—but caught up in the alarms of Jamie’s sudden reappearance and escape and the giddiness of my own subsequent euphoria, it somehow hadn’t occurred to me that I would be the person making them.

I’d seen the little shrine he kept in his room, the double portrait of his two mothers—both so heartbreakingly young. If age was good for anything, surely it should have given me the wisdom to deal with this?

How could I tell him that he was the result of an impulsive, self-willed young girl’s blackmail? Let alone tell him that he had been the cause of both his legal parents’ deaths? And if anyone was going to tell him what his birth had meant to Jamie, it was going to have to be Jamie.

“Your mother…” I began, and hesitated. Jamie would have taken the blame solely upon himself rather than blacken Geneva’s memory to her son, I knew. I wasn’t having that.

“She was reckless,” William said, watching me closely. “Everybody says she was reckless. Was it—I suppose I only want to know, was it rape?”

“God, no!” I said, horrified, and saw his fists uncurl a little.

“That’s good,” he said, and let out the breath he’d been holding. “You’re sure he didn’t lie to you?”

“I’m sure.” He and his father might be able to hide their feelings; I certainly couldn’t, and while I would never be able to make a living playing cards, having a glass face was occasionally a good thing. I stood still and let him see that I told the truth.