color of blood against the white smock.
“He’s old enough, Jenny,” Jamie said quietly.
“He’s not!” she objected. “He’s but barely fifteen; Michael and Jamie were both sixteen at least, and better grown.”
“Aye, but wee Ian’s a better swimmer than either of his brothers,” Ian said judiciously. His forehead was furrowed with thought. “It will have to be one of the lads, after all,” he pointed out to Jenny. He jerked his head toward Jamie, cradling his arm in its sling. “Jamie canna very well be swimming himself, in his present condition. Or Claire, for that matter,” he added, with a smile at me.
“Swim?” I said, utterly bewildered. “Swim
Ian looked taken aback for a moment; then he glanced at Jamie, brows lifted.
“Oh. Ye hadna told her?”
Jamie shook his head. “I had, but not all of it.” He turned to me. “It’s the treasure, Sassenach—the seals’ gold.”
Unable to take the treasure with him, he had concealed it in its place and returned to Ardsmuir.
“I didna ken what best to do about it,” he explained. “Duncan Kerr gave the care of it to me, but I had no notion who it belonged to, or who put it there, or what I was to do with it. ‘The white witch’ was all Duncan said, and that meant nothing to me but you, Sassenach.”
Reluctant to make use of the treasure himself, and yet feeling that someone should know about it, lest he die in prison, he had sent a carefully coded letter to Jenny and Ian at Lallybroch, giving the location of the cache, and the use for which it had—presumably—been meant.
Times had been hard for Jacobites then, sometimes even more so for those who had escaped to France— leaving lands and fortunes behind—than for those who remained to face English persecution in the Highlands. At about the same time, Lallybroch had experienced two bad crops in a row, and letters had reached them from France, asking for any help possible to succor erstwhile companions there, in danger of starvation.
“We had nothing to send; in fact, we were damn close to starving here,” Ian explained. “I sent word to Jamie, and he said as he thought perhaps it wouldna be wrong to use a small bit of the treasure to help feed Prince
“It seemed likely it was put there by one of the Stuarts’ supporters,” Jamie chimed in. He cocked a ruddy brow at me, and his mouth quirked up at one corner. “I thought I wouldna send it to Prince Charles, though.”
“Good thinking,” I said dryly. Any money given to Charles Stuart would have been wasted, squandered within weeks, and anyone who had known Charles intimately, as Jamie had, would know that very well.
Ian had taken his eldest son, Jamie, and made his way across Scotland to the seals’ cove near Coigach. Fearful of any word of the treasure getting out, they had not sought a fisherman’s boat, but instead Young Jamie had swum to the seals’ rock as his uncle had several years before. He had found the treasure in its place, abstracted two gold coins and three of the smaller gemstones, and secreting these in a bag tied securely round his neck, had replaced the rest of the treasure and made his way back through the surf, arriving exhausted.
They had made their way to Inverness then, and taken ship to France, where their cousin Jared Fraser, a successful expatriate wine merchant, had helped them to change the coins and jewels discreetly into cash, and taken the responsibility of distributing it among the Jacobites in need.
Three times since, Ian had made the laborious trip to the coast with one of his sons, each time to abstract a small part of the hidden fortune to supply a need. Twice the money had gone to friends in need in France; once it had been needed to purchase fresh planting-stock for Lallybroch and provide the food to see its tenants through a long winter when the potato crop failed.
Only Jenny, Ian, and the two elder boys, Jamie and Michael, knew of the treasure. Ian’s wooden leg prevented his swimming to the seals’ island, so one of his sons must always make the trip with him. I gathered that it had been something of a rite of passage for both Young Jamie and Michael, entrusted with such a great secret. Now it might be Young Ian’s turn.
“No,” Jenny said again, but I thought her heart wasn’t in it. Ian was already nodding thoughtfully.
“Would ye take him with ye to France, too, Jamie?”
Jamie nodded.
“Aye, that’s the thing. I shall have to leave Lallybroch, and stay away for a good bit, for Laoghaire’s sake—I canna be living here with you, under her nose,” he said apologetically to me, “at least not until she’s suitably wed to someone else.” He switched his attention back to Ian.
“I havena told ye everything that’s happened in Edinburgh, Ian, but all things considered, I think it likely best I stay away from there for a time, too.”
I sat quiet, trying to digest this news. I hadn’t realized that Jamie meant to leave Lallybroch—leave Scotland altogether, it sounded like.
“So what d’ye mean to do, Jamie?” Jenny had given up any pretense of sewing, and sat with her hands in her lap.
He rubbed his nose, looking tired. This was the first day he had been up; I privately thought he should have been back in bed hours ago, but he had insisted upon staying up to preside over dinner and visit with everyone.
“Well,” he said slowly, “Jared’s offered more than once to take me into his firm. Perhaps I shall stay in France, at least for a year. I was thinking Young Ian could go with us, and be schooled in Paris.”
Jenny and Ian exchanged a long look, one of those in which long-married couples are capable of carrying out complete conversations in the space of a few heartbeats. At last, Jenny tilted her head a bit to one side. Ian smiled and took her hand.
“It’ll be all right,
