“Your father is a wise man.” His heart twisted, with something between jealousy and gratitude—but gratitude was far the uppermost.
“Papa was a soldier.” Willie drew himself up a little, straightening his shoulders with unconscious pride. “He fought in Scotland, in the Ris—oh.” He coughed, and his face went a dull red as he caught sight of Jamie’s kilt and realized that he was quite possibly talking to a defeated warrior of that particular fight. He fiddled with the rod, not knowing where to look.
“Aye, I know. That’s where I met him, first.” Jamie was careful to keep any hint of amusement from his voice. He was tempted to tell the boy the circumstances of that first meeting, but that would be poor repayment to John for his priceless gift, these precious few days with his son.
“He was a verra gallant soldier, indeed,” Jamie agreed, straight-faced. “And right about the hands, as well. Have ye begun your schooling with the sword, then?”
“Just a little.” Willie was forgetting his embarrassment in enthusiasm for the new topic. “I’ve had a little whinger since I was eight, and learnt feint and parry. Papa says I shall have a proper sword when we reach Virginia, now I am tall enough for the reach of tierce and longé.”
“Ah. Well, then, if ye’ve been handling a sword in your left hand, I think ye’ll have nay great trouble in mastering a rod that way. Here, let us try again, or we’ll have no supper.”
On the third try, the fly settled sweetly, to float for no more than a second before a small but hungry trout roared to the surface and engulfed it. Willie let out a shriek of excitement, and yanked the rod so hard that the astounded trout flew through the air and past his head, to land with a splat on the bank beyond.
“I did it! I did it! I caught a fish!” Willie waved his rod and ran around in little circles whooping, forgetting the dignity of both age and title.
“Indeed ye did.” Jamie picked up the trout, which measured perhaps six inches from nose to tail, and clapped the capering Earl on the back in congratulations. “Well done, lad! It looks as though they’re biting well the e’en; let’s have another cast or two, aye?”
The trout were indeed biting well. By the time the sun had sunk below the rim of the distant black mountains, and the silver water faded to dull pewter, they had each a respectable string of fish. They were also both wet to the eyebrows, exhausted, half blind from the glare, and thoroughly happy.
“I have never tasted anything half so delicious,” Willie said dreamily. “Never.” He was naked, wrapped in a blanket, his shirt, breeches and stockings draped on a tree limb to dry. He lay back with a contented sigh, and belched slightly.
Jamie rearranged his damp plaid on a bush and laid another chunk of wood on the fire. The weather was fine, God be thanked, but it was chilly with the sun down, the night wind rising, and a wet sark on his back. He stood close to the edge of the fire and let the heated air rise up under his shirt. The warmth of it ran up his thighs and touched his chest and belly, comforting as Claire’s hands on the chilly flesh between his legs.
He stood quietly for a time, watching the boy without seeming to look at him. Putting vanity aside and judging fairly, he thought William a handsome child. Thinner than he should be; every rib showed—but with a wiry muscularity of limb and well formed in all his parts.
The boy had turned his head, gazing into the fire, and he could look more openly. Sap in the pinewood cracked and popped, flooding Willie’s face for a moment with golden light.
Jamie stood quite still, feeling his heart beat, watching. It was one of those strange moments that came to him rarely, but never left. A moment that stamped itself on heart and brain, instantly recallable in every detail, for all of his life.
There was no telling what made these moments different from any other, though he knew them when they came. He had seen sights more gruesome and more beautiful by far, and been left with no more than a fleeting muddle of their memory. But these—the still moments, as he called them to himself—they came with no warning, to print a random image of the most common things inside his brain, indelible. They were like the photographs that Claire had brought him, save that the moments carried with them more than vision.
He had one of his father, smeared and muddy, sitting on the wall of a cow byre, a cold Scottish wind lifting his dark hair. He could call that one up and smell the dry hay and the scent of manure, feel his own fingers chilled by the wind, and his heart warmed by the light in his father’s eyes.
He had such glimpses of Claire, of his sister, of Ian…small moments clipped out of time and perfectly preserved by some odd alchemy of memory, fixed in his mind like an insect in amber. And now he had another.
For so long as he lived, he could recall this moment. He could feel the cold wind on his face, and the crackling feel of the hair on his thighs, half singed by the fire. He could smell the rich odor of trout fried in cornmeal, and feel the tiny prick of a swallowed bone, hair-thin in his throat.
He could hear the dark quiet of the forest behind, and the soft rush of the stream nearby. And forever now he would remember the firelight golden on the sweet bold face of his son.
“Deo gratias,” he murmured, and realized that he had spoken aloud only when the boy turned toward him, startled.
“What?”
“Nothing.” To cover the moment, he turned away and took down his half-dry plaid from the bush. Even soaking wet, Highland wool would keep in a man’s heat, and shelter him from cold.
“Ye should sleep, my lord,” he said, sitting down and arranging the damp folds of plaid around himself. “It will be a long day tomorrow.”
“I’m not sleepy.” As though to prove it, Willie sat up and scrubbed his hands vigorously through his hair, making the thick russet mass stand out like a mane round his head.
Jamie felt a stab of alarm; he recognized the gesture only too well as one of his. In fact, he had been just about to do precisely the same thing, and it was with an effort that he kept his hands still.
He swallowed the heart that had risen into his throat, and reached for his sporran. No. Surely the lad would never think—a boy of that age paid little heed to anything his elders said or did, let alone thought to look at them closely. Still, it had been the hell of a risk for all of them to take; the look on Claire’s face had been enough to tell him just how striking the resemblance was.
He took a deep breath, and began to take out the small cloth bundles that contained his fly-tying materials. They had used all his made flies, and if he meant to fish for their breakfast, a few more should be got ready.
“Can I help?” Willie didn’t wait for permission, but scooted around the fire, to sit beside him. Without comment, he pushed the small wooden box of birds’ feathers toward the boy, and picked a fishhook from the piece of cork that held them.
They worked in silence for a time, stopping only to admire a completed Silver Doctor or Broom-eye, or for Jamie to lend a word of advice or help in tying. Willie soon tired of the exacting work, though, and laid down his half-done Green Whisker, asking numerous questions about fishing, hunting, the forest, the Red Indians they were going to see.
“No,” Jamie said in answer to one such. “I’ve never seen a scalp in the village. They’re verra kindly folk, for the most part. Do one some injury, mind, and they’ll not be slow to take revenge for it.” He smiled wryly. “They do remind me a bit of Highlanders in that regard.”