Laoghaire’s mouth was open wider than anyone’s, but no sound came out.
“You didn’t tell them all about Cranesmuir, did you? My mother should have, but she didn’t. She thought you were too young to know what you were doing. You weren’t, though, were you?”
“What…?” said Jenny, in a faint voice.
Young Jamie looked wildly at his father, who stood as though poleaxed, staring at Brianna.
“She tried to kill my mother.” Brianna was having trouble controlling her voice; it cracked and trembled, but she got the words out. “You did, didn’t you? You told her Geillis Duncan was ill and calling for her—you knew she’d go, she always went to anybody sick, she’s a doctor! You knew they were going to arrest Geilie Duncan for witchcraft, and if my mother was there, they’d take her, too! You thought they’d burn her, and then you could have him—have Jamie Fraser.”
Laoghaire was white to the lips, her face set like stone. Even her eyes had no life; they were blank and dull as marbles.
“I could feel her hand on him,” she whispered. “In our bed. Lying there between us, wi’ her hand on him, so he would stiffen and cry out to her in his sleep. She was a witch. I always knew.”
The room was silent, save for the hissing of the fire, and the tender singing of a small bird outside the window. Hobart MacKenzie stirred at last, coming forward to take his sister by the arm.
“Come away, a leannan,” he said quietly. “I’ll see ye safe home now.” He nodded to Ian, who returned the nod, with a small gesture that somehow conveyed both sympathy and regret.
Laoghaire allowed her brother to lead her away, unresisting, but at the door she stopped and turned back. Brianna stood still; she didn’t think she could move if she tried.
“If you’re Jamie Fraser’s daughter,” Laoghaire said, in a cold clear voice, “and ye may be, given your looks—know this. Your father is a liar and a whoremaster, a cheat and a pander. I wish ye well of each other.” She gave in then to Hobart’s tugging at her sleeve, and the door swung to behind her.
The rage that had filled her drained suddenly away, and Brianna leaned forward, resting her weight on the palms of her hands, the necklace hard and lumpy under her hand. Her hair had come loose, and a thick strand fell over her face.
Her eyes were closed against the dizziness that threatened to engulf her; she felt, rather than saw, the hand that touched her and tenderly smoothed the locks back from her face.
“He went on loving her,” she whispered, as much to herself as to anyone else. “He didn’t forget her.”
“Of course he didna forget her.” She opened her eyes to see Ian’s long face and kind brown eyes six inches away. A broad work-worn hand rested on hers, warm and hard, a hand even larger than her own.
“Neither did we,” he said.
* * *
“Will ye no have a bit more, Cousin Brianna?” Joan, Young Jamie’s wife, smiled across the table, serving spoon poised invitingly above the crumbled remains of a gigantic gooseberry tart.
“Thank you, no. I couldn’t eat another bite,” Brianna said, smiling back. “I’m stuffed!”
This made Matthew and his little brother Henry giggle loudly, but a gimlet gleam from their grandmother’s eye shut them up sharply. Looking round the table, though, Brianna could see suppressed laughter blooming on all the faces; from grown-ups to toddlers, they all seemed to find her slightest remark endlessly entertaining.
It was neither her unorthodox costume nor the sheer novelty of seeing a stranger, she thought—even one stranger than most. There was something else; some current of joy that ran among the members of the family, unseen but lively as electricity.
She realized only slowly what it was; a remark from Ian brought it into focus.
“We didna think that Jamie would ever have a bairn of his own.” Ian’s smile across the table was warm enough to melt ice. “You’ll never have seen him, though?”
She shook her head, swallowing the remains of the last bite, smiling back in spite of her full mouth. That was it, she thought; they were delighted with her not so much for her sake, but for Jamie’s. They loved him, and they were happy not for themselves but for him.
That realization brought tears to her eyes. Laoghaire’s accusations had shaken her, wild as they were, and it was a great comfort to realize that to all of these people who knew him well, Jamie Fraser was neither a liar nor a wicked man; he was indeed the man her mother thought him.
Mistaking her emotion for choking, Young Jamie pounded her helpfully on the back, making her choke in good earnest.
“Will ye have written Uncle Jamie, then, to say as ye were coming to us?” he asked, ignoring her coughing and red-faced spluttering.
“No,” she said hoarsely. “I don’t know where he is.”
Jenny’s gull-winged brows went up.
“Aye, ye said that; I’d forgotten.”
“Do you know where he is now? He and my mother?” Brianna bent forward anxiously, brushing pastry crumbs from her jabot.
Jenny smiled and rose from the table.
“Aye, I do—more or less. If ye’ve eaten your fill, d’ye come with me, lassie. I’ll fetch his last letter for ye.”
Brianna rose to follow Jenny, but stopped abruptly near the door. She had vaguely noticed some paintings on the walls of the parlor earlier, but hadn’t really looked at them, in the rush of emotion and event. She looked at this one, though.
Two little boys with red-gold hair, stiffly solemn in kilts and jackets, white shirts with frills showing bright against the dark coat of a huge dog that sat beside them, tongue lolling in patient boredom.
The older boy was tall and fine-featured; he sat straight and proud, chin lifted, one hand resting on the dog’s head, the other protectively on the shoulder of the small brother who stood between his knees.
It was the younger boy Brianna stared at, though. His face was round and snub-nosed, cheeks translucent and ruddy as apples. Wide blue eyes, slightly slanted, looked out under a bell of bright hair combed into an unnatural tidiness. The pose was formal, done in classic eighteenth-century style, but there was something in the robust, stocky little figure that made her smile and reach a finger to touch his face.
“Aren’t you a sweetie,” she said softly.
“Jamie was a sweet laddie, but a stubborn wee fiend, forbye.” Jenny’s voice by her ear startled her. “Beat him or coax him, it made no difference; if he’d made up his mind, it stayed made up. Come wi’ me; there’s another picture you’ll like to see, I think.”
The second portrait hung on the landing of the stairs, looking thoroughly out of place. From below she could see the ornate gilded frame, its heavy carving quite at odds with the solid, battered comfort of the house’s other furnishings. It reminded her of pictures in museums; this homely setting seemed incongruous.
As she followed Jenny onto the landing the glare of light from the window disappeared, leaving the painting’s surface flat and clear before her.
She gasped, and felt the hair rise on her forearms, under the linen of her shirt.
“It’s remarkable, aye?” Jenny looked from the painting to Brianna and back again, her own features marked with something between pride and awe.