“You—what?”
“I threw it into the sea,” Fraser repeated patiently. The slanted blue eyes met Grey’s steadily. “Ye’ll maybe have heard of a place called the Devil’s Cauldron, Major? It’s no more than half a mile from the saint’s pool.”
“Why? Why would you have done such a thing?” Grey demanded. “It isn’t sense, man!”
“I wasna much concerned with sense at the time, Major,” Fraser said softly. “I had gone there hoping—and with that hope gone, the treasure seemed no more to me than a wee box of stones and bits of tarnished metal. I had no use for it.” He looked up, one brow slightly raised in irony. “But I didna see the ‘sense’ in giving it to King Geordie, either. So I flung it into the sea.”
Grey sat back in his chair and mechanically poured out another cup of sherry, hardly noticing what he was doing. His thoughts were in turmoil.
Fraser sat, head turned away and chin propped on his fist, gazing into the fire, his face gone back to its usual impassivity. The light glowed behind him, lighting the long, straight line of his nose and the soft curve of his lip, shadowing jaw and brow with sternness.
Grey took a good-sized swallow of his drink and steadied himself.
“It is a moving story, Mr. Fraser,” he said levelly. “Most dramatic. And yet there is no evidence that it is the truth.”
Fraser stirred, turning his head to look at Grey. Jamie’s slanted eyes narrowed, in what might have been amusement.
“Aye, there is, Major,” he said. He reached under the waistband of his ragged breeches, fumbled for a moment, and held out his hand above the tabletop, waiting.
Grey extended his own hand in reflex, and a small object dropped into his open palm.
It was a sapphire, dark blue as Fraser’s own eyes, and a good size, too.
Grey opened his mouth, but said nothing, choked with astonishment.
“There is your evidence that the treasure existed, Major.” Fraser nodded toward the stone in Grey’s hand. His eyes met Grey’s across the tabletop. “And as for the rest—I am sorry to say, Major, that ye must take my word for it.”
“But—but—you said—”
“I did.” Fraser was as calm as though they had been discussing the rain outside. “I kept that one wee stone, thinking that it might be some use, if I were ever to be freed, or that I might find some chance of sending it to my family. For ye’ll appreciate, Major”—a light glinted derisively in Jamie’s blue eyes—“that my family couldna make use of a treasure of that sort, without attracting a deal of unwelcome attention. One stone, perhaps, but not a great many of them.”
Grey could scarcely think. What Fraser said was true; a Highland farmer like his brother-in-law would have no way of turning such a treasure into money without causing talk that would bring down the King’s men on Lallybroch in short order. And Fraser himself might well be imprisoned for the rest of his life. But still, to toss away a fortune so lightly! And yet, looking at the Scot, he could well believe it. If ever there was a man whose judgment would not be distorted by greed, James Fraser was it. Still—
“How did you keep this by you?” Grey demanded abruptly. “You were searched to the skin when you were brought back.”
The wide mouth curved slightly in the first genuine smile Grey had seen.
“I swallowed it,” Fraser said.
Grey’s hand closed convulsively on the sapphire. He opened his hand and rather gingerly set the gleaming blue thing on the table by the chess piece.
“I see,” he said.
“I’m sure ye do, Major,” said Fraser, with a gravity that merely made the glint of amusement in his eyes more pronounced. “A diet of rough parritch has its advantages, now and again.”
Grey quelled the sudden urge to laugh, rubbing a finger hard over his lip.
“I’m sure it does, Mr. Fraser.” He sat for a moment, contemplating the blue stone. Then he looked up abruptly.
“You are a Papist, Mr. Fraser?” He knew the answer already; there were few adherents of the Catholic Stuarts who were not. Without waiting for a reply, he rose and went to the bookshelf in the corner. It took a moment to find; a gift from his mother, it was not part of his usual reading.
He laid the calf-bound Bible on the table, next to the stone.
“I am myself inclined to accept your word as a gentleman, Mr. Fraser,” he said. “But you will understand that I have my duty to consider.”
Fraser gazed at the book for a long moment, then looked up at Grey, his expression unreadable.
“Aye, I ken that fine, Major,” he said quietly. Without hesitation, he laid a broad hand on the Bible.
“I swear in the name of Almighty God and by His Holy Word,” he said firmly. “The treasure is as I told you.” His eyes glowed in the firelight, dark and unfathomable. “And I swear on my hope of heaven,” he added softly, “that it rests now in the sea.”
11
THE TORREMOLINOS GAMBIT
With the question of the French gold thus settled, they returned to what had become their
