“I’ll tell Jeanne on the way out,” he said. He frowned slightly, thinking. “It may be some time, Sassenach. There are things—well, I’ve business to take care of.” He squeezed my hand, his expression softening as he looked at me.
“I dinna want to leave ye,” he said softly. “But I must. You’ll stay here until I come again?”
“Don’t worry,” I assured him, waving a hand at the linen towel he had just discarded. “I’m not likely to go anywhere in that.”
The thud of their feet retreated down the hall and faded into the sounds of the stirring house. The brothel was rising, late and languid by the stern Scottish standards of Edinburgh. Below me I could hear the occasional slow muffled thump, the clatter of shutters thrust open nearby, a cry of “Gardyloo!” and a second later, the splash of slops flung out to land on the street far below.
Voices somewhere far down the hall, a brief inaudible exchange, and the closing of a door. The building itself seemed to stretch and sigh, with a creaking of timbers and a squeaking of stairs, and a sudden puff of coal-smelling warm air came out from the back of the cold hearth, the exhalation of a fire lit on some lower floor, sharing my chimney.
I relaxed into the pillows, feeling drowsy and heavily content. I was slightly and pleasantly sore in several unaccustomed places, and while I had been reluctant to see Jamie go, there was no denying that it was nice to be alone for a bit to mull things over.
I felt much like one who has been handed a sealed casket containing a long-lost treasure. I could feel the satisfying weight and the shape of it, and know the great joy of its possession, but still did not know exactly what was contained therein.
I was dying to know everything he had done and said and thought and been, through all the days between us. I had of course known that if he had survived Culloden, he would have a life—and knowing what I did of Jamie Fraser, it was unlikely to be a simple one. But knowing that, and being confronted with the reality of it, were two different things.
He had been fixed in my memory for so long, glowing but static, like an insect frozen in amber. And then had come Roger’s brief historical sightings, like peeks through a keyhole; separate pictures like punctuations, alterations; adjustments of memory, each showing the dragonfly’s wings raised or lowered at a different angle, like the single frames of a motion picture. Now time had begun to run again for us, and the dragonfly was in flight before me, flickering from place to place, so I saw little more yet than the glitter of its wings.
There were so many questions neither of us had had a chance to ask yet—what of his family at Lallybroch, his sister Jenny and her children? Obviously Ian was alive, and well, wooden leg notwithstanding—but had the rest of the family and the tenants of the estate survived the destruction of the Highlands? If they had, why was Jamie here in Edinburgh?
And if they were alive—what would we tell them about my sudden reappearance? I bit my lip, wondering whether there was
Well, we’d manage that when we came to it, I supposed. I was more curious just now about the extent and the danger of Jamie’s less legitimate activities. Smuggling and sedition, was it? I was aware that smuggling was nearly as honorable a profession in the Scottish Highlands as cattle-stealing had been twenty years before, and might be conducted with relatively little risk. Sedition was something else, and seemed like an occupation of dubious safety for a convicted ex-Jacobite traitor.
That, I supposed, was the reason for his assumed name—or one reason, at any rate. Disturbed and excited as I had been when we arrived at the brothel the night before, I had noticed that Madame Jeanne referred to him by his own name. So presumably he smuggled under his own identity, but carried out his publishing activities—legal and illegal—as Alex Malcolm.
I had seen, heard and felt enough, during the all too brief hours of the night, to be fairly sure that the Jamie Fraser I had known still existed. How many other men he might be now remained to be seen.
There was a tentative rap at the door, interrupting my thoughts. Breakfast, I thought, and not before time. I was ravenous.
“Come in,” I called, and sat up in bed, pulling up the pillows to lean against.
The door opened very slowly, and after quite a long pause, a head poked its way through the opening, much in the manner of a snail emerging from its shell after a hailstorm.
