She touched the leg of her breeches, and the secret pocket sewn into the seam. It was still there, the small round hardness of the talisman. Her mother was still alive. That was all that mattered.
After eating, she went once more to check on Lizzie. Hanneke Viorst was sitting by the bed darning socks. She nodded to Brianna, smiling.
“She is gut.”
Looking down at the wasted, sleeping face, Brianna wouldn’t have said that much. Still, the fever was gone; a hand on Lizzie’s brow came away cool and damp, and a half-empty bowl on the table nearby showed that she had managed a little nourishment.
“You vill rest, too?” Hanneke half rose, gesturing toward the trundle bed pulled out in readiness.
Brianna cast a glance of longing at the clean quilts and puffy bolster, but shook her head.
“Not yet, thank you. What I’d really like is to borrow your mule, if I might.”
There was no telling where Jamie Fraser was now. Viorst had told her that River Run was a good distance from the town; he might be there, or he might be staying somewhere in Cross Creek, for convenience. She couldn’t leave Lizzie long enough to ride all the way to River Run, but she did want to go into town and find the courthouse where the trial would be held tomorrow. She was taking no chance of missing him by not knowing where to go.
The mule was large and elderly, but not averse to ambling along the riverbank road. He walked somewhat slower than she could have done herself, but that didn’t matter; she was in no hurry, now.
Despite her tiredness, she began to feel better as she rode, her bruised, stiff body relaxing into the easy rhythm of the mule’s slow gait. It was a hot, humid day, but the sky was clear and blue, and great elms and hickory trees overhung the road, cool leaves filtering the sun.
Torn between Lizzie’s illness and her own painful memories, she had noticed nothing of the second half of their voyage, taken no notice of change in the countryside they passed. Now it was like being magically transported during sleep, waking up in a different place. She put everything else aside, determined to forget the last few days and everything in them. She was going to find Jamie Fraser.
The sandy roads, scrub-pine forests, and marshy swamps of the coast were gone, replaced by thickets of cool green, by tall, thick-trunked, canopied trees, and a soft orange dirt that darkened to black mold where the dead leaves lay matted at the edge of the road. The shrieks of gulls and terns were gone, replaced by the muted chatter of a jay, and the soft liquid song of a whippoorwill, far back in the forest.
How would it be? she wondered. She had wondered the same thing a hundred times, and a hundred times imagined different scenes: what she would say, what he would say—would he be glad to see her? She hoped so; and yet he would be a stranger. Likely he would bear no resemblance at all to the man of her imagination. With some difficulty, she fought back the memory of Laoghaire’s voice: A liar and a cheat…Her mother hadn’t thought so.
“ ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,’ ” she murmured to herself. She had come into the town of Cross Creek itself; the scattered houses thickened, and the dirt track widened into a cobbled street, lined with shops and larger houses. There were people about, but it was the hottest part of the afternoon, when the air lay still and heavy on the town. Those who could be, were inside in the shade.
The road curved out, following the riverbank. A small sawmill stood by itself on a point of land, and near it, a tavern. She’d ask there, she decided. Hot as it was, she could use something to drink.
She patted the pocket of her coat, to be sure she had money. She felt instead the prickly outline of a horse chestnut’s hull, and pulled her hand away as though she’d been burned.
She felt hollow again, in spite of the food she’d eaten. Lips pressed tight together, she tethered the mule and ducked into the dark refuge of the tavern.
The room was empty save for the landlord, perched in somnolence on his stool. He roused himself at her step, and after the usual goggle of surprise at her appearance, served her beer and gave her courteous directions to the courthouse.
“Thank you.” She wiped the sweat from her forehead with a coat sleeve—even inside, the heat was stifling.
“You’ll have come for the trial, then?” the landlord ventured, still looking at her curiously.
“Yes—well, not really. Whose trial is it?” she asked, belatedly realizing that she had no idea.
“Oh, it’ll be Fergus Fraser,” the man said, as though assuming that naturally everyone knew who Fergus Fraser was. “Assault on an officer of the Crown is the charge. He’ll be acquitted, though,” the landlord went on matter-of-factly. “Jamie Fraser’s come down from the mountain for him.”
Brianna choked on her beer.
“You know Jamie Fraser?” she asked breathlessly, swabbing at the spilled foam on her sleeve.
The landlord’s brows went up.
“Wait but a moment and you’ll know him, too.” He nodded at a pewter tankard full of beer, sitting on the nearby table. She hadn’t noticed it when she came in. “He went out the back, just as you came in. He—hey!” He fell back with a cry of surprise as she dropped her own tankard on the floor, and shot out the back door like a bat out of hell.
The light outside was dazzling after the taproom’s gloom. Brianna blinked, eyes tearing at the shafts of sun that stabbed through the shifting greens of a screen of maples. Then a movement caught her eye, below the flickering leaves.
He stood in the shade of the maples, half turned away from her, head bent in absorption. A tall man, long-legged, lean and graceful, with his shoulders broad under a white shirt. He wore a faded kilt in pale greens and browns, casually rucked up in front as he urinated against a tree.
He finished and, letting the kilt fall, turned toward the post house. He saw her then, standing there staring at him, and tensed slightly, hands half curling. Then he saw past her men’s clothes, and the look of wary suspicion changed at once to surprise as he realized that she was a woman.
There was no doubt in her mind, from the first glimpse. She was at once surprised and not surprised at all; he was not quite what she had imagined—he seemed smaller, only man-sized—but his face had the lines of her own; the long, straight nose and stubborn jaw, and the slanted cat-eyes, set in a frame of solid bone.
He moved toward her out of the maples’ shadow, and the sun struck his hair with a spray of copper sparks. Half consciously she raised a hand and pushed a strand of hair back from her face, seeing from the corner of her eye the matching gleam of thick red-gold.
“What d’ye want here, lassie?” he asked. Sharp, but not unkind. His voice was deeper than she had imagined; the Highland burr slight but distinct.
“You,” she blurted. Her heart seemed to have wedged itself in her throat; she had trouble forcing any words past it.
He was close enough that she caught the faint whiff of his sweat and the fresh smell of sawn wood; there was a golden scatter of sawdust caught in the rolled sleeves of his linen shirt. His eyes narrowed with amusement as he looked her up and down, taking in her costume. One reddish eyebrow rose, and he shook his head.
“Sorry, lass,” he said, with a half-smile. “I’m a marrit man.”
He made to pass by, and she made a small incoherent sound, putting out a hand to stop him, but not quite daring to touch his sleeve. He stopped and looked at her more closely.