He ran a hand through his thick black hair, until it stood on end like a shaving brush, trying to envision himself with a beard and long hair, like some of his students. Would he look dashing, or merely moth-eaten? Possibly an earring, while he was about it. He might look piratical then, like Edward Teach or Henry Morgan. He drew his brows together and bared his teeth.
“Grrrrr,” he said to his reflection.
“Mr. Wakefield?” said the reflection.
Roger leaped back, startled, and stubbed his toe painfully against the protruding claw-foot of the ancient bath.
“Ow!”
“Are you all right, Mr. Wakefield?” the mirror said. The porcelain doorknob rattled.
“Of course I am!” he snapped testily, glaring at the door. “Go away, Fiona, I’m bathing!”
There was a giggle from the other side of the door.
“Ooh, twice in one day. Aren’t we the dandy, though? Do you want some of the bay-rum soap? It’s in the cupboard there, if you do.”
“No, I don’t,” he snarled. The water level had risen midway in the tub, and he cut off the taps. The sudden silence was soothing, and he drew a deep breath of steam into his lungs. Wincing slightly at the heat, he stepped into the water and lowered himself gingerly, feeling a light sweat break out on his face as the heat rushed up his body.
“Mr. Wakefield?” The voice was back, chirping on the other side of the door like a hectoring robin.
“Go away, Fiona,” he gritted, easing himself back in the tub. The steaming water rose around him, comforting as a lover’s arms. “I have everything I want.”
“No, you haven’t,” said the voice.
“Yes, I have.” His eye swept the impressive lineup of bottles, jars, and implements arrayed on the shelf above the tub. “Shampoo, three kinds. Hair conditioner. Shaving cream. Razor. Body soap. Facial soap. After-shave. Cologne. Deodorant stick. I don’t lack a thing, Fiona.”
“What about towels?” said the voice, sweetly.
After a wild glance about the completely towel-less confines of the bathroom, Roger closed his eyes, clenched his teeth and counted slowly to ten. This proving insufficient, he made it twenty. Then, feeling himself able to answer without foaming at the mouth, he said calmly.
“All right, Fiona. Set them outside the door, please. And then, please…please, Fiona.…go.”
A rustle outside was succeeded by the sound of reluctantly receding footsteps, and Roger, with a sigh of relief, gave himself up to the joys of privacy. Peace. Quiet. No Fiona.
Now, able to think more objectively about his upsetting discovery, he found himself more than curious about Brianna’s mysterious real father. Judging from the daughter, the man must have had a rare degree of physical attractiveness; would that alone have been sufficient to lure a woman like Claire Randall?
He had wondered already whether Brianna’s father might have been a Scot. Did he live—or had he lived—in Inverness? He supposed such proximity might account for Claire’s nervousness, and the air she had of keeping secrets. But did it account for the puzzling requests she had made of him? She didn’t want him to take Brianna to Craigh na Dun, nor to mention the captain of the Broch Tuarach men to her daughter. Why on earth not?
A sudden thought made him sit upright in the tub, water sloshing heedlessly against the cast-iron sides. What if it were not the eighteenth-century Jacobite soldier she was concerned about, but only his name? What if the man who had fathered her daughter in 1947 was also named James Fraser? It was a common enough name in the Highlands.
Yes, he thought, that might very well explain it. As for Claire’s desire to show her daughter the stone circle herself, perhaps that was also connected with the mystery of her father; maybe that’s where she’d met the man, or perhaps that’s where Brianna had been conceived. Roger was well aware that the stone circle was commonly used as a trysting spot; he’d taken girls there himself in high school, relying on the circle’s air of pagan mystery to loosen their reserve. It always worked.
He had a sudden startling vision of Claire Randall’s fine white limbs, locked in wild abandon with the naked, straining body of a red-haired man, the two bodies slick with rain and stained with crushed grass, twisting in ecstasy among the standing stones. The vision was so shocking in its specificity that it left him trembling, sweat running down his chest to vanish into the steaming water of the bath.
Christ! How was he going to meet Claire Randall’s eyes, next time they met? What was he going to say to Brianna, for that matter? “Read any good books lately?” “Seen any good flicks?” “D’you know you’re illegitimate?”