“He is?” She seemed disproportionately surprised. “But I thought he’d never—”
A flash of yellow apron interrupted her; one of the kitchen maids was in the adjoining garden. Without comment, Lord John stood up and gave her a hand; she got ponderously to her feet and they sailed out onto the dry brown scurf of the dead lawn, cloaks billowing like sails around them.
The stone bench under the willow tree was devoid of its usual charm at this time of year, but it was at least sheltered from the icy blasts off the river. Lord John saw her seated, sat down himself, and sneezed explosively. She opened her cloak and dug in the bosom of her dress, finally coming out with a crumpled handkerchief, which she handed to him with apologies.
It was warm and smelled of her—a disconcerting odor of girl-flesh, spiced with cloves and lavender.
“What you said about teaching me to play with fire,” she said. “Just what did you mean by that?”
“Nothing,” he said, but now it was his turn to flush.
“Nothing, hm?” she said, and gave him the ghost of an ironic smile. “That was a threat if I ever heard one.”
He sighed, and wiped his face once more with her handkerchief.
“You have been frank with me,” he said. “To the point of embarrassment and well beyond. So yes, I suppose I—no, it was a threat.” He made a small gesture of surrender. “You look like your father, don’t you see?”
She frowned at him, his words obviously meaning nothing. Then realization flickered, sprang to full life. She sat bolt upright, staring down at him.
“Not you—not Da! He wouldn’t!”
“No,” Lord John said, very dryly. “He wouldn’t. Though your shock is scarcely flattering. And for what the statement is worth, I would under no circumstances take advantage of your likeness to him—that was as much an idle threat as was your menacing me with exposure.”
“Where did you…meet my father?” she asked carefully, her own troubles superseded for the moment by curiosity.
“In prison. You knew he was imprisoned, after the Rising?”
She nodded, frowning slightly.
“Yes. Well. Leave it as said that I harbor feelings of particular affection for Jamie Fraser, and have for some years.” He shook his head, sighing.
“And here you come offering me your innocent body, with its echoes of his flesh—and add to that the promise of giving me a child who would mingle my blood with his—and all this, because your honor will not let you wed a man you love, or love a man you wed.” He broke off and sank his head in his hands.
“Child, you would make an angel weep, and God knows I am no angel!”
“My mother thinks you are.”
He glanced up at her, startled.
“She thinks what?”
“Maybe she wouldn’t go quite that far,” she amended, still frowning. “She says you’re a good man, though. I think she likes you, but she doesn’t want to. Of course, I understand that now; I suppose she must know—how you…er…feel about…” She coughed, hiding her blushes in a fold of her cloak.
“Hell,” he muttered. “Oh, hell and thundering damnation. I ought never to have come out with you. Yes, she does. Though in all truth, I am not sure why she regards me with suspicion. It cannot be jealousy, surely.”
Brianna shook her head, chewing thoughtfully on her lower lip.
“I think it’s because she’s afraid you’ll hurt him, somehow. She’s afraid for him, you know.”
He glanced up at her, startled.
“Hurt him? How? Does she think I will overpower him and commit depraved indignities upon his person?”
He spoke lightly, but a flicker in her eyes froze the words in his throat. He tightened his grip on her arm. She bit her lip, then gently detached his hand, laying it on his knee.
“Have you ever seen my father with his shirt off?”
“Do you mean the scars on his back?”
She nodded.
He drummed his fingers restlessly on his knees, soundless on the fine broadcloth.
“Yes, I’ve seen them. I did that.”
Her head jerked back, eyes wide. The end of her nose was cherry-red, but the rest of her skin so pale that her hair and eyebrows seemed to have leached all the life from it.
“Not all of it,” he said, staring off into a bed of dead hollyhocks. “He’d been flogged before, which made it all the worse—that he knew what he was doing, when he did it.”
“Did…what?” she asked. Slowly, she rearranged herself on the bench, not so much turning toward him as flowing in her garments, like a cloud changing shape in the wind.
“I was the commander at Ardsmuir prison; did he tell you? No, I thought not.” He made an impatient gesture, brushing back the strands of fair hair that whipped across his face.
“He was an officer, a gentleman. The only officer there. He spoke for the Jacobite prisoners. We dined together, in my quarters. We played chess, we spoke of books. We had interests in common. We…became friends. And then…we were not.”
He stopped speaking.
She drew away from him a bit, distaste in her eyes.
“You mean—you had him flogged because he wouldn’t—”
“No, damn it, I did not!” He snatched the handkerchief and scrubbed angrily at his nose. He flung it down on the seat between them and glared at her. “How dare you suggest such a thing!”
“But you said yourself you did it!”
“He did it.”
“You can’t flog yourself!”
He started to reply, then snorted. He raised one brow at her, still angry, but with his feelings coming back under control.
“The hell you can’t. You’ve been doing it for months, according to what you’ve told me.”
“We aren’t talking about me.”
“Of course we are!”
“No, we’re not!” She leaned toward him, heavy brows drawn down. “What the hell do you mean, he did it?”
The wind was blowing from behind her, into his face. It made his eyes sting and water, and he looked away.
“What am I doing here?” he muttered to himself. “I must be mad to be talking with you in this manner!”
“I don’t care if you’re mad or not,” she said, and gripped him by the sleeve. “You tell me what happened!”
He pressed his lips tight together, and for a moment, she thought he wouldn’t. But he had already said too much to stop, and he knew it. His shoulders rose under his cloak and dropped, slumping in surrender.
“We were friends. Then…he discovered my feeling for him. We were no longer friends, by his choice. But that was not enough for him; he wished a final severance. And so he deliberately brought about an occasion so drastic that it must alter our relation irrevocably and prevent any chance of friendship between us. So he lied. During a search of the prisoners’ quarters, he claimed a piece of tartan publicly as his own. Possession was against the law, then—it still is, in Scotland.”
He drew a deep breath and let it out. He wouldn’t look at her, but kept his eyes focused on the ragged fringe of bare trees across the river, raw against the pale spring sky.
“I was the governor, charged with execution of the law. I was obliged to have him flogged. As he damn well knew I would be.”