Ian made a wee fizzing noise of assent.
“Which isna to say everyone loves her …”
“A lot of us do, Uncle,” his nephew assured him. “But aye, I ken what ye mean.”
“Aye. Well, what I mean is—and I ken this sounds as though I’ve lost my senses and maybe I have—but … I’ve read his book, and by God, I think the man is talkin’ to me.”
Ian was silent for quite a while. The dim shape of a nightjar rose from the ground near their feet and shot off into the dark with a high, clear zeeek!
“And if he is talkin’ to you?” Ian said at last.
That scared him.
“If he is—and if the Jamie Fraser who dies at Kings Mountain is me … I just … I …” He couldn’t ask it. And for God’s sake, he was not afraid of dying, not so many times as he’d looked Death in the face. It was only—
Ian’s hand slid into his and clasped it firmly.
“I’ll be there with ye, Uncle. When does it happen? The battle, I mean.”
Relief coursed through him, and the breath he took went down to his feet.
“In about a year. October next, it will be. Or … so he says.”
“That’ll be plenty time enough for me to do whatever needs to be done in the North,” Ian said, then squeezed his hand and let it go. “Dinna fash.”
Jamie nodded, his heart full. In the morning he would bid them all farewell, but he would take his leave of Ian Òg now.
“Turn about, Ian,” he said quietly, and Ian did, looking out at the house across the street, dark save for the glow of a smoored hearth, visible at the edge of the shutters. He put a hand on Ian’s shoulder, and spoke for him the blessing for a warrior going out.
63
The Third Floor
Fraser’s Ridge
IT WAS A BIG house. Roger and Bree were gone, and now Jamie had left to see Ian and Rachel and Jenny safely on their road. The house seemed even bigger now, with only two people and a dog in it.
Fanny, deprived of companionship, clung to me like a small cocklebur, her footsteps echoing behind me—and the tic-tic-tic of Bluebell’s behind hers—as I went to and fro from surgery to kitchen to parlor and back to surgery, the three of us always conscious of the vacant bedrooms overhead and the distant, shadowy, empty third floor high above, its walls a ghostly forest of studs, its glassless windows still covered by laths to keep out rain and snow until the vanished master should return to finish the jobs he’d left undone.
I’d invited her to share my bedroom, and we’d hauled in the truckle bed from the children’s room. It was a comfort to hear each other’s breathing in the night, something warm and quick, almost drowning out the slow, chilled breathing of the house around us—almost imperceptible, but definitely there. Especially at dusk, when the shadows began to rise up the walls like a silent tide, spilling darkness into the room.
Now and then I’d wake at dawn to find Fanny in my bed, curled against me for warmth and sound asleep, Bluey lying in a nest of quilts at our feet. The dog would look up when I woke, gently thwapping her feathery tail against the bedding, but she wouldn’t move until Fanny did.
“They’ll come back,” I assured her, every day. “All of them. We just have to stay busy until they do.”
But Fanny had never lived alone a day in her life. She didn’t know how to deal with solitude, let alone a solitude filled with the menace of one’s own thoughts.
What if—? was the constant refrain of her thoughts. The fact that it was also the refrain—if a silent one—of mine didn’t help.
“Do you think houses are alive?” Fanny blurted one day.
“Yes, I’m sure of it,” I said rather absently.
“You are?” Fanny’s round eyes jarred me back into the present. We were darning socks in front of the fire, having finished the morning chores and eaten lunch. We’d fed the pigs, forked dry hay for the other stock, and milked the cow and two goats—I’d have to churn butter tomorrow, leave aside a couple of buckets for cheese making, and send the rest of the extra milk downhill to Bobby Higgins for his boys.
“Well … yes,” I said slowly. “I think any place that people live for a long time probably absorbs a bit of them. Certainly houses affect the people who live in them—why shouldn’t it work both ways?”
“Both ways?” She looked dubious. “You mean that I left part of me at the brothel—and I brought part of the brothel with me?”
“Didn’t you?” I asked gently. Her face went blank for a moment, but then the life returned to her eyes.
“Yes,” she said, but she was wary now, and added nothing more.
“Who’s doing for Bobby and the boys this week, do you know?” I asked her. The neighbor women—and their daughters—who lived in easy walking distance had been taking it in turn to stop into the Higgins cabin every few days, to bring food, cook supper, and do small jobs of mending and housekeeping, lest the Higginses descend irretrievably into male slovenliness.
“Abigail Lachlan and her sister,” Fanny replied readily. “They always come together because they’re jealous of each other.”
“Jealous? Oh, over Bobby, you mean?” She nodded, squinting at the thread she was trying to put through the eye of her needle. The competition to become the next Mrs. Higgins was still discreet, civil, and unspoken, but becoming somewhat more defined. Bobby showed little sign so far of wanting to make a choice—or of seeming to notice the efforts made to ensnare his attention, though he always thanked the young women sincerely for their help.
“What you said about houses …” Fanny held her breath for a moment, then let it out with a small ah! of triumph when the thread went through the needle’s eye. “Do you think maybe Amy Higgins is still in the cabin? Haunting it, I mean, to keep other women away?”
That took me slightly aback—but the suggestion was made without any emotion beyond curiosity, and I answered it on the same terms. Right after Amy’s death, there had been occasional rumors about her being seen in the gorge where she was killed, or washing clothes in the creek—a very common occupation for Scottish or Irish female ghosts, and no wonder, as they’d likely spent most of their lives doing just that—but these had mostly ceased as the heavy work of autumn came on and people returned to their own preoccupations.
“I don’t know about the house itself. I’ve never felt anything of Amy when I’ve gone there since she died. But when someone dies, naturally the people they leave behind will still sense them. I don’t know whether you’d call that haunting, though; I think it’s maybe just memory and … longing.”
Fanny nodded, eyes intent on the heel of the stocking she was darning. I could hear the faint scrape of her needle on the wooden darning egg.
“I wish Jane would haunt me.” The words weren’t much above a whisper, but I heard it clearly enough, and my heart clenched.
The memory of that sort of wish—the bone-deep need to have contact of any sort, a longing that harrowed the soul, a hollowness that could never be filled—struck me so hard that I couldn’t speak.