“No,” he said. He knew exactly what she meant; the wildness of the glens and the moors was inhabited, in a way that this place of forests and rushing waters was not.
“I think—” he began, then stopped. Would she think him daft? But she was looking up at him, wanting him to say. “The spirits that live there,” he said, a little awkwardly. “They are auld, and they’ve seen men for thousands on thousands of years; they ken us weel, and they’re none so wary of showing themselves. What lives here”—he laid a hand on the trunk of a chestnut tree that rose a hundred feet above them, whose girth measured more than thirty feet around—“they havena seen our like before.”
She nodded, seeming not at all taken back.
“They’re curious, though, aren’t they,” she said, “some of them?” and tipped back her head to look up into the dizzy spiral of the branches overhead. “Don’t you feel them watching, now and then?”
“Now and then.”
He sat on the rock beside her and watched the light spread, spilling over the edge of the mountain, lighting the distant falls the way kindling catches from a spark, filling the mist with a glow like pearls, then burning it away altogether. Together they saw the slope of the mountain come to the light of day, and he said a quiet word to the spirit of this place, in thanks. If it had no Gaelic, still it might catch his meaning.
She stretched her long legs, breathing in the scent of the morning.
“You didn’t really mind, did you?” Her voice was soft, and she kept her eyes on the valley below, careful not to look at him. “Living in the cave near Broch Mhorda.”
“No,” he said. The sun was warm on his breast and face, and filled him with a sense of peace. “No, I didna mind it.”
“Only hearing about it—I thought it must have been terrible. Cold and dirty and lonely, I mean.” She did look at him then, and the morning sky lived in her eyes.
“It was,” he said, and smiled a little.
“Ian—Uncle Ian—took me there to show me.”
“Did he, then? It’s none so bleak, in the summertime, when the yellow’s on the broom.”
“No. But even when it was—” She hesitated.
“No, I didna mind it.” He closed his eyes and let the sun heat his eyelids.
At first he had thought the loneliness would kill him, but once he had learned it would not, he came to value the solitude of the mountainside. He could see the sun clear, though his eyes were closed; a great red ball, flaming round the edges. Was that how Jocasta saw it behind her blind eyes?
She was silent for a long time, and so was he, content to listen. There were wee birds working in the spruce nearby, hanging upside down from the branches, hunting the bugs that they ate and talking to themselves about what they found.
“Roger—” she said suddenly, and his heart was struck by a dart of jealousy, the more painful for being unexpected. Was he not to have her to himself, even for so short a time? He opened his eyes and did his best to look interested.
“I tried to tell him, once, about being alone. That I thought it maybe wasn’t a bad thing.” She sighed, the heavy brows drawn down. “I don’t think he understood.”
He made a noncommittal sound in his throat.
“I thought—” She hesitated, glanced at him, then away. “I thought maybe that was why it’s—why you and Mama…” Her skin was so clear, he could see the blood bloom under it. She took a deep breath, hands braced on the rock.
“She’s like that too. She doesn’t mind being alone.”
He glanced at her, wanting badly to know what made her say so. What had Claire’s life been in their years apart to give her that knowledge? It was so; Claire knew the flavor of solitude. It was cold as spring water, and not all could drink it; for some it was not refreshment, but mortal chill. But she had lived daily with a husband; how had she drunk deep enough of loneliness to know?
Brianna could maybe tell him, but he wouldn’t ask; the last name he wished to hear spoken in this place was Frank Randall’s.
He coughed instead.
“Well, it’s maybe true,” he agreed cautiously. “I’ve seen women—and men too, sometimes—as canna bear the sound of their own thoughts, and they maybe dinna make such good matches with those who can.”
“No,” she said, brooding. “Maybe they don’t.”
The small pang of jealousy eased. So she had doubts about this Wakefield, did she? She’d told him and Claire everything, about her search, the death notice, the journey from Scotland, the visit to Lallybroch—damn Laoghaire!—and about the man Wakefield, who’d come after her. She wasn’t telling everything there, he thought, but that was as well; he didn’t want to hear it. He was less bothered at the prospect of a distant death by fire than by the more imminent interruption of his idyll with his long-lost daughter.
He drew up his knees and sat quiet. Much as he wanted to recapture his sense of tranquility, he could not free his mind from the thought of Randall.
He had won. Claire was his; so was this glorious child—this young woman, he corrected himself, looking at her. But Randall had had the keeping of them for twenty years; there was no doubt he had set his mark on them. But what mark had it been?
“Look.” Brianna’s hand squeezed his arm as she breathed the word.
He followed her gaze and saw them; two does, standing just under the shadow of the trees, not twenty feet away. He didn’t move, but breathed quietly. He could feel Brianna beside him, enchanted into stillness too.
The deer saw them; delicate heads upraised, dark, moist nostrils flaring for scent. After a moment, though, one doe stepped out, dainty, nervous footsteps leaving streaks in the dew-wet grass. The other followed, cautious, and they grazed along the grassy strips between the rocks, turning now and then to lift their head and cast tranquil eyes on the strange but harmless creatures on the ledge.
He couldn’t have come within a mile of a Scottish red deer that had his scent. The red stags kent weel what a man was.
He watched the deer graze, with the innocence of perfect wildness, and felt the sun’s benediction on his head. This was a new place, and he was content to be alone here with his daughter.
* * *
“What are we hunting, Da?” He was standing still, eyes squinted as he scanned the horizon, but she was reasonably sure he wasn’t looking at an animal; she could speak without scaring the game.
They’d seen a good many animals in the course of the day; the two deer at dawn, a red fox that sat watching on a rock, licking dainty black paws until they came too close, then vanishing like a blown-out flame. Squirrels—dozens of them—chattering through the treetops, playing hide-and-seek past the tree boles. Even a flock of wild turkey, with two males strutting, chests puffed and tail fans spread for the edification of a gobbling harem.
None of these were the chosen prey, for which she was glad. She had no objection to killing for food, but would have been sorry to have the beauty of the day soiled by blood.
“Bees,” he said.
“Bees? How do you hunt bees?”
He picked up his gun and smiled at her, nodding downhill toward a brilliant patch of yellow.