MacKenzie wasn’t that sort. He sat up straight, and drew a deep breath.
“I know her well,” he said levelly. “She is my wife.”
Jamie sat up straight in turn, and clenched his teeth on a hiss of pain.
“The hell she is.”
MacKenzie’s black brows drew down at that.
“We are handfast, she and I. Did she not tell you that?”
She hadn’t—but he hadn’t given her much chance to tell him, either. Too furious at the thought of her willing to bed a man, stung at thinking she’d made a fool of him, proud as Lucifer and suffering the Devil’s pains for it, in wishing her perfect and finding her only as human as himself.
“When?” Jamie asked.
“Early September, in Wilmington. When I—just before I left her.” The admission came unwillingly, and through the black veil of his own guilt he saw a reflection of it on MacKenzie’s face. As well deserved as his own, he thought viciously. If the coward had not left her…
“She didna tell me.”
He saw the doubt and the pain in MacKenzie’s eyes quite clearly now. The man worried that Brianna did not want him—for if she did, she would have come. He knew well enough that no power on earth or below it would keep Claire from his side if she thought him in danger—and felt a jolt of fear renewed at that thought; for where was she?
“I suppose she thought you wouldn’t see handfasting as a legal form of marriage,” MacKenzie said quietly.
“Or perhaps she didna see it so herself,” Jamie suggested cruelly. He could relieve the man’s mind by telling him a part of the truth—that Brianna had not come because she was with child—but he was in no charitable mood.
It was getting quite dark, but even so he could see MacKenzie’s face flush at that, and his hands clench on the ragged deerskin.
“I saw it so,” was all he said.
Jamie closed his eyes, and said no more. The last coals in the fire died slowly, leaving them in darkness.
61
THE OFFICE OF A PRIEST
The smell of burnt things hung in the air. We passed close by the pit and I couldn’t help seeing from the corner of my eye the heap of charred fragments, shattered ends frosted white with ash. I hoped it was wood. I was afraid to look directly.
I stumbled on the frozen ground, and my escort caught me by the arm. Pulled me up without comment and pushed me toward a longhouse where two men stood on guard, huddled against a cold wind that filled the air with drifting ashes.
I had not slept and had not eaten, though food was offered. My feet and my fingers were cold. There was keening from a longhouse at the far end of the village, and over it the louder formal chant of a death song. Was it for the girl that they sang, or someone else? I shivered.
The guards glanced at me and stood aside. I lifted the hide flap at the door and went in.
It was dark; the fire inside as dead as the one outside. Gray light from the smokehole gave me enough illumination to see an untidy heap of skins and cloth on the floor, though. A patch of red tartan showed amid the jumble, and I felt a surge of relief.
“Jamie!”
The pile heaved and came apart. Jamie’s rumpled head popped up, alert but looking a good deal the worse for wear. Next to him was a dark, bearded man who seemed oddly familiar. Then he moved into the light, and I caught the flash of green eyes above the shrubbery.
“Roger!” I exclaimed.
Without a word he rose out of the blankets and clasped me in his arms. He held so tight, I could hardly breathe.
He was terribly thin; I could feel every one of his ribs. Not starved, though; he stank, but with the normal scents of dirt and stale sweat, not the yeasty effluvium of starvation.
“Roger, are you all right?” He let go, and I looked him up and down, searching for any signs of injury.
“Yes,” he said. His voice was husky, from sleep and emotion. “Bree? She’s all right?”
“She’s fine,” I assured him. “What’s happened to your foot?” He wore nothing but a tattered shirt and a stained rag wrapped around one foot.
“A cut. Nothing. Where is she?” He clutched my arm, anxious.
“At a place called River Run, with her great-aunt. Didn’t Jamie tell you? She’s—”
I was interrupted by Jamie clutching my other arm.
“Are ye all right, Sassenach?”
“Yes, of course I—my God, what happened to you?” My attention was momentarily distracted from Roger by the sight of Jamie. It wasn’t the nasty contusion on his temple or the dried blood on his shirt that struck my notice, so much as the unnatural way he held his right arm.
“My arm’s maybe broken,” he said. “Hurts like a bugger. Will ye come and tend to it?”
Without waiting for an answer he turned and walked away, sitting down heavily near the broken bed frame. I gave Roger a brief pat and went after him, wondering what the hell. Jamie wouldn’t admit to being in pain in front of Roger Wakefield, if splintered raw bone were sticking out of his flesh.
“What are you up to?” I muttered, kneeling beside him. I felt the arm gingerly through his shirt—no compound fractures. I rolled it carefully up for a better look.
“I havena told him about Brianna,” he said, very softly. “And I think it better you do not.”
I stared at him.
“We can’t do that! He has to know.”
“Keep your voice down. Aye, he maybe should know about the bairn—but not the other, not Bonnet.”
I bit my lip, feeling gingerly down the swell of his biceps. He had one of the worst bruises I had ever seen; a huge mottled splotch of purple-blue—but I was fairly sure the arm wasn’t broken.
I wasn’t so sure about his suggestion.
He could see the doubt on my face; he squeezed my hand hard.
“Not yet; not here. Let it wait, at least until we’re safe away.”
I thought for a moment, as I ripped the sleeve of his shirt and used it to make a rough sling. Learning that Brianna was pregnant was going to be a shock by itself. Perhaps Jamie was right; there was no telling how Roger would react to the news of the rape, and we were a long way from being home free yet. Better he should have his head clear. At last I nodded, reluctantly.
“All right,” I said aloud, getting up. “I don’t think it’s broken, but the sling will help.”
I left Jamie sitting on the ground and went to Roger, feeling like a Ping-Pong ball.
“How’s the foot?” I knelt to unwrap the unsanitary-looking rag around it, but he stopped me with an urgent hand on my shoulder.
“Brianna. I know there’s something wrong. Is she—”
“She’s pregnant.”
Whatever possibilities he had been turning over in his mind, that hadn’t been among them. It isn’t possible to mistake sheer amazement. He blinked, looking as though I’d hit him on the head with an ax.
“Are you sure?”
“She’ll be seven months gone by now; it’s noticeable.” Jamie had come up so quietly that neither of us had heard him. He spoke coldly, and looked even colder, but Roger was well beyond noticing subtleties.
Excitement brightened his eyes, and his shocked face came alive beneath the black whiskers.