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“Aye, I do.” His hand left my shoulder and cupped beneath my buttock, touching the flesh of our joining, stretched and slippery. I made a small sound of surrender, and my knees loosened.
He pulled back, then came back into me, strongly enough that I gave a small, high-pitched cry of relief.
“Ask me to your bed,” he said, breathless, hands on my arms. “I shall come to ye. For that matter—I shall come, whether ye ask it or no. But remember, Sassenach—I am your man; I serve ye as I will.”
“Do,” I said. “Please do. Jamie, I want you so!”
He seized my arse in both hands, hard enough to leave bruises, and I arched up into him, grasping, hands sliding on his sweat-slick skin.
“God, Claire, I need ye!”
Rain was roaring on the tin roof now, and lightning struck close by, blue-white and sharp with ozone. We rode it together, forked and light-blind, breathless, and the thunder rolled through our bones.

GIVE ME LIBERTY …
AND AS THE SUN set on the third day since he had left his home, Lord John William Bertram Amstrong Grey found himself once more a free man, with a full belly, a swimming head, a badly mended musket, and severely chafed wrists, standing before the Reverend Peleg Woodsworth, right hand uplifted, reciting as prompted:
“I, Bertram Armstrong, swear to be true to the United States of America, and to serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies and opposers whatsoever, and to observe and obey the orders of the Continental Congress and the orders of the generals and officers set over me by them.”
Bloody hell, he thought. What next?
PART TWO

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch …

A STEP INTO THE DARK
October 30, 1980
Craigh na Dun
A BLOTCH OF SWEAT darkened the shirt between William Buccleigh’s shoulder blades; the day was cool, but it was a steep climb to the top of Craigh na Dun—and the thought of what awaited them at the top was enough to make anybody sweat.
“Ye haven’t got to come,” Roger said to Buccleigh’s back.
“Get stuffed,” his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather replied briefly. Buck spoke absentmindedly, though, all his attention, like Roger’s, focused on the distant crest of the hill.
Roger could hear the stones from here. A low, sullen buzz, like a hive of hostile bees. He felt the sound move, crawling under his skin, and scratched viciously at his elbow, as though he could root it out.
“Ye’ve got the stones, aye?” Buck stopped, clinging one-handed to a birch sapling as he looked back over his shoulder.
“I have,” Roger said shortly. “D’ye want yours now?”
Buck shook his head and wiped shaggy fair hair off his brow with the back of his free hand.
“Time enough,” he said, and began to climb again.
Roger knew the diamonds were there—he knew Buck knew, too—but put a hand into his jacket pocket anyway. Two rough pieces of metal clinked together, the halves of an old brooch Bria
The day was only cool, but a bone-deep shudder ran through him. He’d done it twice—three times, if he counted the first attempt, the one that had almost killed him. It got worse each time. He’d thought he wouldn’t make it the last time, coming back on Ocracoke, mind and body shredding in that place that was neither place nor passage. It had only been the feel of Jem in his arms that made him hold on, come through. And it was only the need to find Jem now that would make him do it again.
A hydroelectric tu
under the Loch Errochty dam
HE MUST BE getting near the end of the tu
He pulled back a bit on the lever that made the train go, and it slowed down. More. Just a little more, and the lever clicked into a kind of slot and the train stopped with a small jerk that made him stumble and grab the edge of the cab.
An electric train didn’t make any engine noise, but the wheels rattled on the track and the train made squeaks and clunks as it moved. When it stopped, the noise stopped, too. It was really quiet.
“Hey!” he said out loud, because he didn’t want to listen to his heart beating. The sound echoed, and he looked up, startled. Mam had said the tu
“Hey!” he shouted at the invisible ceiling. “Are there any bats up there?”
Silence. He’d kind of been hoping there were bats. He wasn’t afraid of them—there were bats in the old broch, and he liked to sit and watch them come out to hunt in the summer evenings. But he was alone. Except for the dark.
His hands were sweating. He let go of the metal cab and scrubbed both hands on his jeans. Now he could hear himself breathing, too.
“Crap,” he whispered under his breath. That made him feel better, so he said it again. Maybe he ought to be praying, instead, but he didn’t feel like that, not yet.
There was a door, Mam said. At the end of the tu
Suddenly he realized that he’d stepped away from the train and he didn’t know whether he was facing the end of the tu
He got up, wiped his nose, and shuffled slowly along, kicking the track every few steps to be sure he stayed with it. He thought he was in front of where the train had stopped, so it didn’t really matter which way he was going—either he’d find the train or he’d find the end of the tu
Something like an electric shock ran right through him. He gasped and fell over backward. The only thing in his mind was the idea that somebody had hit him with a lightsaber like Luke Skywalker’s, and for a minute he thought maybe whoever it was had cut off his head.
He couldn’t feel his body, but he could see in his mind his body lying bleeding in the dark and his head sitting right there on the train tracks in the dark, and his head couldn’t see his body or even know it wasn’t attached anymore. He made a breathless kind of a noise that was trying to be a scream, but it made his stomach move and he felt that, he felt it, and suddenly he felt a lot more like praying.
“Deo … gratias!” he managed to gasp. It was what Grandda said when he talked about a fight or killing something, and this wasn’t quite that sort of thing, but it seemed like a good thing to say anyway.
Now he could feel all of himself again, but he sat up and grabbed his neck, just to be sure his head was still on. His skin was jumping in the weirdest way. Like a horse’s does when a horsefly bites it, but all over. He swallowed and tasted sugared silver and he gasped again, because now he knew what had hit him. Sort of.