discover that he’s never laid eyes on Monsieur Etienne Alexandre and his wife, let alone a wee yellow murdering fiend.”
“That might be a trifle awkward,” I observed, thinking of Fergus and the militiaman. “We’re already rather unpopular on Mr. Willoughby’s account.”
“Nothing to what we will be, if six days pass and they havena found him,” he assured me. “Six days is also maybe as long as it will take for gossip to spread from Blue Mountain House to Kingston about the MacIvers’ visitors—for ye ken the servants there all know who we are.”
“Damn.”
He smiled briefly at that, and my heart turned over to see it.
“You’ve a nice way wi’ words, Sassenach. Aye, well, all it means is that we must find Ian within six days. I shall go to Rose Hall at once, but I think I must just have a wee rest before setting out.” He yawned widely behind his hand and shook his head, blinking.
We didn’t speak again until after we had arrived at Blue Mountain House and made our way on tiptoe through the slumbering house to our room.
I changed in the dressing room, dropping the heavy stays on the floor with relief, and taking out the pins to let my hair fall free. Wearing only a silk chemise, I came into the bedroom, to see Jamie standing by the French door in his shirt, looking out over the lagoon.
He turned when he heard me, and beckoned, putting a finger to his lips.
“Come see,” he whispered.
There was a small herd of manatees in the lagoon, big gray bodies gliding under the dark crystal water, rising gleaming like smooth, wet rocks. Birds were beginning to call in the trees near the house; besides this, the only sound was the frequent
We watched them in silence, side by side. The lagoon began to turn green as the first rays of sun touched its surface. In that state of extreme fatigue where every sense is preternaturally heightened, I was as aware of Jamie as though I were touching him.
John Grey’s revelations had relieved me of most of my fears and doubts—and yet there remained the fact that Jamie had not told me about his son. Of course he had reasons—and good ones—for his secrecy, but did he not think he could trust me to keep his secret? It occurred to me suddenly that perhaps he had kept quiet because of the boy’s mother. Perhaps he had loved her, in spite of Grey’s impressions.
She was dead; could it matter if he had? The answer was that it did. I had thought Jamie dead for twenty years, and it had made no difference at all in what I felt for him. What if he had loved this young English girl in such a way? I swallowed a small lump in my throat, trying to find the courage to ask him.
His face was abstracted, a small frown creasing his forehead, despite the dawning beauty of the lagoon.
“What are you thinking?” I asked at last, unable to ask for reassurance, fearing to ask for the truth.
“It’s only that I had a thought,” he answered, still staring out at the manatees. “About Willoughby, aye?”
The events of the night seemed far away and unimportant. Yet murder had been done.
“What was that?”
“Well, I couldna think at first that Willoughby could do such a thing—how could any man?” He paused, drawing a finger through the light mist of condensation that formed on the windowpanes as the sun rose. “And yet…” He turned to face me.
“Perhaps I can see.” His face was troubled. “He was alone—verra much alone.”
“A stranger, in a strange land,” I said quietly, remembering the poems, painted in the open secrecy of bold black ink, sent flying toward a long-lost home, committed to the sea on wings of white paper.
“Aye, that’s it.” He stopped to think, rubbing a hand slowly through his hair, gleaming copper in the new daylight. “And when a man is alone that way—well, it’s maybe no decent to say it, but making love to a woman is maybe the only thing will make him forget it for a time.”
He looked down, turning his hands over, stroking the length of his scarred middle finger with the index finger of his left hand.
“That’s what made me wed Laoghaire,” he said quietly. “Not Jenny’s nagging. Not pity for her or the wee lassies. Not even a pair of aching balls.” His mouth turned up briefly at one corner, then relaxed. “Only needing to forget I was alone,” he finished softly.
He turned restlessly, back to the window.
“So I am thinking that if the Chinee came to her, wanting that—needing that—and she wouldna take him…” He shrugged, staring out across the cool green of the lagoon. “Aye, maybe he could have done it,” he said.
I stood beside him. Out in the center of the lagoon, a single manatee drifted lazily to the surface, turning on her back to hold the infant on her chest toward the sunlight.
He was silent for several minutes, and I was as well, not knowing how to take the conversation back to what I had seen and heard at Government House.
I felt rather than saw him swallow, and he turned from the window to face me. There were lines of tiredness in his face, but his expression was filled with a sort of determination—the sort of look he wore facing battle.
“Claire,” he said, and at once I stiffened. He called me by my name only when he was most serious. “Claire, I must tell ye something.”
“What?” I had been trying to think how to ask, but suddenly I didn’t want to hear. I took half a step back, away from him, but he grabbed my arm.
He had something hidden in his fist. He took my unresisting hand and put the object into it. Without looking, I knew what it was; I could feel the carving of the delicate oval frame and the slight roughness of the painted
