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“What are you all laughing at?” Patience demanded, opening the door. She frowned censoriously from one sister to the other, making them all laugh harder. When Mrs. Hardman came in a few moments later with a large grubby root in her hand, they had reached the point of laughing at absolutely nothing, and she blinked in bewilderment, but then shook her head and smiled.
“Well, they do say laughter is good medicine,” she remarked, when the hilarity had run its course, leaving the girls pink-faced and Jamie feeling slightly better—to his surprise. “May I borrow thy knife, Friend James? It is more suited to the purpose than mine.”
This was patently true; her knife was a crude iron blade, badly sharpened, the haft bound with string. Jamie had a good ivory case knife, bought in Brest, of hardened steel, with an edge that would shave the hairs off his forearm. He saw her smile with involuntary pleasure at the feel of it in her hand and had a momentary flash of memory—Bria
Claire appreciated good tools, too. But she touched tools with immediate thought of what she meant to do with them, rather than simple admiration for elegance and function. A blade in her hand was no longer a tool but an extension of her hand. His own hand closed, thumb rubbing gently against his fingertips, remembering the knife he had made for her, the handle carefully grooved and sanded smooth to fit her hand, to match her grip exactly. Then he closed his fist tight, not wanting to think of her so intimately. Not just now.
Bidding the girls stand well back out of the way, Silvia carefully peeled the root and grated it into a small wooden bowl, keeping her face averted as much as possible from the rising fumes of the fresh horseradish but still with tears streaming down her face. Then, wiping her eyes on her apron and taking up the “special flask”—this being a dark-brown stoneware bottle stained with earth (had the lass just dug it up?)—she cautiously poured a small amount of the very alcoholic contents. What was it? Jamie wondered, sniffing cautiously. Very old applejack? Twice-fermented plum brandy? It had probably started life as some sort of fruit, but it had been some time since that fruit hung on a tree.
Mrs. Hardman relaxed, putting the cork back into the bottle as though relieved that the contents had not in fact exploded upon being decanted.
“Well, then,” she said, coming over to pick up Chastity, who squealed and fussed at being removed from Jamie, whom she plainly regarded as a large toy. “That must steep for a few hours. Thee needs heat. Thee should sleep, if thee can. I know thee passed a wakeful night, and tonight may not be much better.”

JAMIE HAD STEELED himself to the prospect of drinking horseradish liquor with a mix of trepidation and curiosity. The first of these emotions was momentarily relieved when he discovered that Mrs. Hardman didn’t mean him to drink it, but it returned in force when he found himself a moment later facedown on the bed with his shirt rucked up to his oxters and his hostess vigorously rubbing the stuff into his buttocks.
“Have a care, Friend Silvia,” he managed, trying to turn his head enough to get his mouth clear of the pillow without either twisting his back or unclenching his bum. “If ye drip that down the crack of my arse, I may be cured wi’ a somewhat sudden violence.”
A small snort of amusement tickled the hairs in the small of his back, where the flesh was still smarting and tingling from her administrations.
“My grandmother did say this receipt would raise the dead,” she said, her voice pitched low in order not to disturb the girls, who were rolled up on the hearth in their blankets like caterpillars. “Perhaps she was less careful in her applications.”

“THEE NEEDS HEAT,” she’d said. Between the horseradish liniment and the mustard plaster resting on his lower back, he thought he might suffer spontaneous combustion at any moment. He was sure his skin was blistering. “I know thee passed a wakeful night, and tonight may not be much better.” She’d got that right.
He shifted, trying to turn stealthily onto his side without making noise or dislodging the plaster—she’d bound it to his lower back by means of strips of torn fla
He hadn’t, while she was working on him, and hadn’t said a word. Not after seeing the state of her hands: red as a lobsterback’s coat, and a milky blister rising on the side of her thumb. She hadn’t said a word, either, just drawn down his shirt when she was done and patted him gently on the backside before going to wash and then smooth a little cooking grease gingerly into her hands.
She was asleep now, too, a hunched form curled up in the corner of the settle, little Chastity’s cradle by her foot, safely away from the banked embers of the fire. Now and then one of the glowing chunks of wood split with a loud crack! and a small fountain of sparks.
He stretched gingerly, experimenting. Better. But whether he was cured in the morning or not, he was leaving—if he had to drag himself on his elbows to the road. The Hardmans must have their bed back—and he must have his. Claire’s bed.
The thought made the heat in his flesh bloom up through his belly, and he did squirm. His thoughts squirmed, too, thinking of her, and he grabbed one, pi
It’s nay her fault, he thought fiercely. She’s done me nay wrong. They’d thought him dead—Marsali had told him so and told him that Lord John had wed Claire in haste following the news of Jamie’s death, in order to protect not only her but Fergus and Marsali as well, from imminent arrest.
Aye, and then he took her to his bed! The knuckles of his left hand twinged as he curled his fist. “Never hit them in the face, lad.” Dougal had told him that a lifetime ago, as they watched a knockdown fight between two of Colum’s men in the courtyard at Leoch. “Hit them in the soft parts.”
They’d hit him in the soft parts.
“Nay her fault,” he muttered under his breath, turning restlessly into his pillow. What the bloody hell had happened, though? How had they done it—why?
He felt as though he was fevered, his mind dazed with the waves of heat that throbbed over his body. And like the half-glimpsed things in fever dreams, he saw her naked flesh, pale and shimmering with sweat in the humid night, slick under John Grey’s hand …
We were both fucking you!
His back felt as though someone had laid a hot girdle on it. With a deep growl of exasperation, he turned onto his side again and fumbled at the bandages holding the scalding plaster to his skin, at last wriggling out of its torrid embrace. He dropped it on the floor and flung back the quilt that covered him, seeking the relief of cool air on body and mind.
But the cabin was filled to the rooftree with the fuggy warmth of fire and sleeping bodies, and the heat that flamed over him seemed to have rooted itself between his legs. He clenched his fists in the bedclothes, trying not to writhe, trying to calm his mind.
“Lord, let me stand aside from this,” he whispered in Gàidhlig. “Grant me mercy and forgiveness. Grant me understanding!”
What his mind presented him with instead was a fleeting sense, a memory of cold, as startling as it was refreshing. It was gone in a flash but left his hand tingling with the touch of cold stone, cool earth, and he clung to the memory, closing his eyes, in imagination pressing his hot cheek to the wall of the cave.