“A customer?” He stared up at me, eyebrows raised. “Here? God, Sassenach, what d’ye think I am?”
“Damned if I know,” I said. “That’s why I’m asking. Are you going to answer my question?”
He stared at his stockinged feet for a moment, wiggling his toes on the floorboard. At last he looked up at me, and answered calmly, “I suppose so. I’m not a customer of Jeanne’s, but she’s a customer of mine—and a good one. She keeps a room for me because I’m often abroad late on business, and I’d as soon have a place I can come to where I can have food and a bed at any hour, and privacy. The room is part of my arrangement with her.”
I had been holding my breath. Now I let out about half of it. “All right,” I said. “Then I suppose the next question is, what business has the owner of a brothel got with a printer?” The absurd thought that perhaps he printed advertising circulars for Madame Jeanne flitted through my brain, to be instantly dismissed.
“Well,” he said slowly. “No. I dinna think that’s the question.”
“It’s not?”
“No.” With one fluid move, he was off the bed and standing in front of me, close enough for me to have to look up into his face. I had a sudden urge to take a step backward, but didn’t, largely because there wasn’t room.
“The question is, Sassenach, why have ye come back?” he said softly.
“That’s a hell of a question to ask me!” My palms pressed flat against the rough wood of the door. “Why do you
“I dinna ken.” The soft Scottish voice was cool, but even in the dim light, I could see the pulse throbbing in the open throat of his shirt.
“Did ye come to be my wife again? Or only to bring me word of my daughter?” As though he sensed that his nearness unnerved me, he turned away suddenly, moving toward the window, where the shutters creaked in the wind.
“You are the mother of my child—for that alone, I owe ye my soul—for the knowledge that my life hasna been in vain—that my child is safe.” He turned again to face me, blue eyes intent.
“But it has been a time, Sassenach, since you and I were one. You’ll have had your life—then—and I have had mine here. You’ll know nothing of what I’ve done, or been. Did ye come now because ye wanted to—or because ye felt ye must?”
My throat felt tight, but I met his eyes.
“I came now because before…I thought you were dead. I thought you’d died at Culloden.”
His eyes dropped to the windowsill, where he picked at a splinter.
“Aye, I see,” he said softly. “Well…I meant to be dead.” He smiled, without humor, eyes intent on the splinter. “I tried hard enough.” He looked up at me again.
“How did ye find out I hadna died? Or where I was, come to that?”
“I had help. A young historian named Roger Wakefield found the records; he tracked you to Edinburgh. And when I saw ‘A. Malcolm,’ I knew…I thought…it might be you,” I ended lamely. Time enough for the details later.
“Aye, I see. And then ye came. But still…why?”
I stared at him without speaking for a moment. As though he felt the need of air, or perhaps only for something to do, he fumbled with the latch of the shutters and thrust them halfway open, flooding the room with the sound of rushing water, and the cold, fresh smell of rain.
“Are you trying to tell me you don’t want me to stay?” I said, finally. “Because if so…I mean, I know you’ll have a life now…maybe you have…other ties…” With unnaturally acute senses, I could hear the small sounds of activity throughout the house below, even above the rush of the storm, and the pounding of my own heart. My palms were damp, and I wiped them surreptitiously against my skirt.
He turned from the window to stare at me.
“Christ!” he said. “Not want ye?” His face was pale now, and his eyes unnaturally bright.
“I have burned for you for twenty years, Sassenach,” he said softly. “Do ye not know that? Jesus!” The breeze stirred the loose wisps of hair around his face, and he brushed them back impatiently.
“But I’m no the man ye knew, twenty years past, am I?” He turned away, with a gesture of frustration. “We know each other now less than we did when we wed.”
“Do you want me to go?” The blood was pounding thickly in my ears.
“No!” He swung quickly toward me, and gripped my shoulder tightly, making me pull back involuntarily. “No,” he said, more quietly. “I dinna want ye to go. I told ye so, and I meant it. But…I must know.” He bent his head toward me, his face alive with troubled question.
“Do ye want me?” he whispered. “Sassenach, will ye take me—and risk the man that I am, for the sake of the man ye knew?”
I felt a great wave of relief, mingled with fear. It ran from his hand on my shoulder to the tips of my toes, weakening my joints.
“It’s a lot too late to ask that,” I said, and reached to touch his cheek, where the rough beard was starting to show. It was soft under my fingers, like stiff plush. “Because I’ve already risked everything I had. But whoever you are now, Jamie Fraser—yes. Yes, I do want you.”
The light of the candle flame glowed blue in his eyes, as he held out his hands to me, and I stepped wordless into his embrace. I rested my face against his chest, marveling at the feel of him in my arms; so big, so solid and warm. Real, after the years of longing for a ghost I could not touch.
Disentangling himself after a moment, he looked down at me, and touched my cheek, very gently. He smiled slightly.
