Jamie had left his rifle standing beside the door the day before, and now grabbed it, his face set and wary.
“Bidh socair,” he said briefly to the boys. “Go to the kitchen, but stay inside and keep your lugs open. Ye hear any kind of a stramash, take the women out the back and put them up a tree. Then go fetch your fathers, quick.”
The boys nodded, breathless, and I pushed past them with a brief look strongly suggesting that they’d best not even think of trying to haul me out the back door and shove me up a tree, no matter what happened. They all looked shifty, but hung their heads.
Jamie yanked the door open and cold air whooshed down the hall, whipping my petticoats up in a froth round my knees.
The men—three of them, on horseback—were riding slowly up the rise toward the house. And just as the boys had said, all three were red-coated British soldiers, and the third, the man in the lead, was indeed a black man. In fact … they all were.
I saw Jamie glance round at the woods and surrounding landscape—were they alone? I peered anxiously past his elbow, but couldn’t see or sense anything amiss. Neither did he; his shoulders relaxed slightly, and he checked his rifle to be sure it was primed—it was always kept loaded—and set it carefully back behind the door, then stepped out onto the porch. I wasn’t letting go of my knife, but did hide it in the folds of my skirt.
The oncoming men saw us on the porch; the leader checked his horse for a moment, then raised a hand to us. Jamie raised a hand in reply, and they came on.
Dozens of possible reasons for such a visitation were darting through my head, but at least they didn’t look overtly threatening. The leader halted by our hitching post, swung down, and dropped his reins, leaving his horse to the other soldiers, who remained mounted. That was vaguely reassuring; perhaps they’d come only to ask directions—so far as I knew (and devoutly hoped), the British army had no present business with us. Plainly this wasn’t Major Patrick Ferguson.
I had an odd feeling between my shoulder blades, though. Not fright, but something uneasy. Something seemed very familiar about this man. I felt Jamie take a deep breath and let it out again, carefully.
“I bid ye welcome, sir,” he said, his voice pleasant, but neutral. “Ye’ll pardon my not using your surname; I never kent what it was.”
“Stevens,” said our visitor, and taking off his laced hat, bowed to me. “Captain Joseph Stevens. Your servant, Mrs. Fraser. And … yours, sir,” he added, in a distinctly ironic tone that made me blink. He was wearing a military wig, and suddenly I saw him as I’d known him before, in a neat white wig and green livery, at River Run plantation.
“Ulysses!” I said, and dropped the knife with a loud thunk.
JAMIE INVITED “CAPTAIN STEVENS” to come in, with the sort of exquisite courtesy that meant he was doing a mental rundown of the location of all weapons inside the house. I saw him usher Ulysses before him to the laird’s study and glance at the rifle that was standing behind the front door as he followed, nodding to the round-eyed boys—and an equally round-eyed Fanny, who had appeared from the springhouse—as he went.
“Fanny,” I said, “go to the kitchen, please, and get a pitcher of milk and a plate of biscuits—”
“We ate all the biscuits for breakfast, ma’am,” Fanny said helpfully. “There’s half a pie in the pie safe, though.”
“Thank you, sweetheart. You and Agnes take the pie and milk out to the two men on the porch, please. Oh—Aidan. Take this back to my surgery, will you?” I handed him the amputation knife, which he received as one being given Excalibur, and bore it off, gingerly balanced across his palms.
I slipped into the study and closed the door behind me. I’d last seen Ulysses at River Run plantation, near Cross Creek, where he had been butler to Jamie’s aunt Jocasta. He had left under what might politely be called strained circumstances, it having been revealed that he’d been not only Jocasta’s butler for twenty years but also her lover—and had killed at least one man and—just possibly—Hector Cameron, Jocasta’s third husband. I didn’t know what he’d been doing for the last seven or eight years, but the fact that he’d come anywhere near Jamie now—and accompanied by an armed escort—was deeply unsettling.
“Mrs. Fraser.” He’d turned when I came in, and now bowed to me, looking me over with a deliberately appraising, un-butler-like gaze. “I’m pleased to see you well.”
“Thank you. You’re looking quite … well, yourself. Captain Stevens.” He was. Tall and imposing in a well-tailored uniform, broad-shouldered and fit. Despite his apparent health, though, his face showed the marks of hard living—and his eyes were different. No longer the courteous blankness of a servant. These eyes were deep-lined, fierce, and, quite frankly, made me want to take a step backward.
He saw that, and his lips drew in a little in amusement, but he looked away.
Jamie was reaching into his cupboard for whisky. He nodded Ulysses to the visitor’s chair across the desk and set the battered pewter tray with bottle and glasses on the desk before taking his own chair.
“May I?” I said, and at Ulysses’s nod I poured him a respectable dram, and the same for Jamie. And for me. I wasn’t going anywhere until I found out what “Captain Stevens” was doing here. I took my glass and sat down on a stool, a little behind Jamie.
“Slàinte.” Jamie lifted his glass briefly, and Ulysses smiled slightly.
“Slàinte mhath,” he said.
“Ye’ll have kept your Gàidhlig, then,” Jamie said, a deliberate reference, I thought, to River Run, where most of the servants had had at least a passing acquaintance with the language of the Highlands.
“Not surprising,” Ulysses replied, not at all discomposed. He took a sip of the whisky, paused to let it spread through his mouth, and shook his head with a small “mm” of approval. “I joined Lord Dunmore’s company in ’74. You’ll know his lordship, of course.”
Jamie stiffened slightly.
“I do,” he said politely. “Though I’ve not had the pleasure of his acquaintance since the days before Culloden.”
“What?” I said. “I don’t recall a Lord Dunmore.”
“Well, he hadna got the title then.” Jamie glanced back at me and smiled a little, a rueful sharing of the memory of those fraught days. “But ye kent him, too, Sassenach—John Murray, he was then; just a lad, a page to Charles Stuart.”
“Oh. Yes.” I did recall him, just barely—a homely boy with receding chin, a large nose, and red hair that stuck out in tufts. “So now he’s Lord Dunmore …?”
“Yes. Of late, governor of the Colony of Virginia,” Ulysses said. “And more recently, commander of a major force against the Shawnee Indians in Ohio. A successful venture in which I was privileged to take part.” He did smile then, and I felt a small qualm in the pit of my stomach at the look of it. Indian wars were a messy business.
“Aye,” Jamie said, dismissively. “But surely the army has nay business of that kind wi’ the Cherokee. Though perhaps ye’ve come wi’ their allowance of powder and bullets from the government?”