“Aye,” Ian said, and laughed a little. “Though I didna take much notice. I had my own bit o’ trouble to settle, with the Abenaki. And I did settle it, too,” he added, grimness coming into his voice. “Your men got one o’ them, but I killed the other in the British camp that night, wi’ his own tomahawk.”
“I hadna heard about that,” Jamie said, surprised. “Ye did it in the British camp? Ye never told me that. How did ye come to be there, for that matter? Last I saw ye was just before the battle, and the next I saw ye, your cousin William was bringin’ what I thought was your corpse into Freehold on a mule.”
And the next time he’d seen William had been in Savannah, when his son had come to ask his help in saving Jane Pocock. They’d been too late. That failure had been neither of their faults, but his heart still hurt for the poor wee lassie … and for his poor lad.
“I dinna mind most o’ that, myself,” Ian said. “I came in wi’ Lord John—we got arrested together—but then I walked out o’ the camp, meanin’ to go find Rachel or you, but I was bad wi’ the fever, the night goin’ in and out around me like as if it was breathin’ and I was walkin’ along through the stars wi’ my da beside me, just talkin’ to him, as if …”
“As if he was there,” Jamie finished, smiling. “I expect he was. I feel him beside me, now and then.” He glanced automatically to his right as he said this, as though Ian Mòr might indeed be there now.
“We were talkin’ o’ the Indian I’d just killed—and I said it put me in mind o’ that gobshite who tried to extort ye, Uncle—the one I killed there by the fire after Saratoga. I said something about how it seemed different, killing a man face-to-face, but I’d thought I ought to be used to such things by now, and I wasn’t. And he said I maybe shouldn’t be,” Ian said thoughtfully. “He said it couldna be good for my soul, bein’ used to things like that.”
“Your da’s a wise man.”
THEY WALKED BACK into town, easy with each other, talking now and then, but not of anything that mattered.
“Ye’ve got all ye need, Ian?” Jamie asked. “For the journey?”
“If I don’t, it’s too late now,” Ian said, laughing.
Jamie smiled, but the words “too late” lingered in the back of his mind. He’d part with the travelers at daybreak, see them onto the Great Wagon Road, and then they’d be gone—God knew for how long.
They were nearly to the Widow Hambly’s house when he stopped, a hand on Ian’s arm.
“I wasna going to ask, and I’m not,” Jamie said abruptly. “Because ye must be free to do whatever ye need to. But I find I must say a thing to ye, before ye go.”
Ian didn’t say anything, but made a slight adjustment of posture that gave Jamie his full attention.
“Ken, when Brianna brought us the books,” Jamie began carefully, “there was the strange one for the bairns, and a romance for me about … well, fanciful things, to say the least. And a medical book for your auntie.”
“Aye, I’ve maybe seen that one,” Ian said thoughtfully. “A big blue one, very thick? Ye could kill a rat wi’ that one.”
“That’s the one, aye. But the lass brought along a book for herself.” He hesitated; he’d never spoken to Ian about Claire’s life away from him. “It was written by a man named Randall. A historian.”
Ian’s head turned sharply toward him.
“Randall. Was his name Frank Randall?”
“Aye, it was.” Jamie felt as though Ian had rabbit-punched him, and shook his head to clear it. “How—did Bree tell ye about him? Her—her—”
“Her other father? Aye. Years ago.” He made a small motion with one hand, disturbing the dark. “Doesna matter.”
“Aye, it does.” He paused for a moment; he’d never talked about Randall with anyone save Claire. But he had to, so he did.
“I kent about him, from the first day I met Claire—though I thought he was dead, and in fact, he was, but …” He cleared his throat, and Ian reached into his pack and handed him a battered flask. Dark as it was, he felt the crude fleur-de-lis under his thumb. It was Ian Mòr’s old soldier’s flask, which his friend had kept from their time in France as young mercenaries, and the feel of it steadied him.
“The thing is, a bhalaich, he kent about me, too.” He uncorked the flask and drank from it; watered brandy, but it helped. “Claire told him, when she … went back. She thought I was dead at Culloden, and—”
Ian made a small noise that might have been amusement.
“Aye,” Jamie said dryly. “I meant to be. But ye dinna always get to choose what happens to ye, do you?”
“True enough. But Brianna told me her father was dead—so … he was, he is … really dead?”
“Well, I’d thought so. But the bugger wrote a damn book, didn’t he? The one Brianna brought wi’ her—to remember him by. I read it.”
Ian rubbed a thumb across his chin; Jamie could hear the scratch of the bristles, and it made his own chin itch.
“What the devil did he say in it?”
Jamie sighed and saw his breath, white for an instant in the dark. The moon had faded out of sight behind the clouds. They couldn’t stay out here long; Ian needed sleep before the journey, and Jamie’s bad hand was telling him that rain was coming.
“It’s about Scots, ken? In America. What they—we—did, what we’ll do, in the Revolution. The thing is … aye, well. There are a good many men named Jamie Fraser in Scotland, and I’m sure there are plenty here, too.”
“Och, ye’re in his book?” Ian straightened up, and Jamie made a negative gesture.
“I dinna ken, that’s the trouble. It might be me, and it bloody well might not be, too. He mentions my name fourteen times, but never makin’ enough of it to be able to tell whether it’s me or someone else. He never comes right out and says, ‘Jamie Fraser of Fraser’s Ridge,’ or ‘Broch Tuarach,’ or anything o’ that sort.”
“Why are ye worried, then, Uncle?”
“Because he says there’s going to be a battle nearby us—at a place called Kings Mountain. And Jamie Fraser’s killed in it. Will be, I mean. A Jamie Fraser.” Saying it aloud actually steadied him a little. It seemed ridiculous.
Ian wasn’t taking it that way, though. He gripped Jamie’s arm, close in the darkness.
“Ye think it’s you he means?”
“Well, that’s the devil of it, Ian. I canna say, at all. See—” His lips were dry, and he licked them briefly. “The man kent about me, and he had nay reason to love me. We—Claire and Bree and I—think Frank Randall knew that the lass would come back, to find her mother and me. And if he looked, in—in history—he’d maybe find us.”
Ian clicked his tongue in consternation—in just the way his father had, and Jamie smiled involuntarily.
“And if he did …”
“No man is objective about Claire,” Jamie said. “I mean—they’re just not.”