“He liked to hurt people,” I said. “He liked it a lot.”
“Did he…hurt you?” Roger put the question with some delicacy, after a rather noticeable pause. Bree seemed to be drawing into herself, the skin tightening across her cheekbones.
“Not directly. Or not much, at least.” I shook my head. I could feel a cold spot in the pit of my stomach, which the whisky was doing little to thaw. Jack Randall had hit me there, once. I felt it in memory, like the ache of a long-healed wound.
“He had fairly eclectic tastes. But it was Jamie that he.…wanted.” Under no circumstances would I have used the word “loved.” My throat felt thick, and I swallowed the last drops of whisky. Roger held up the decanter, one brow raised questioningly, and I nodded and held out my glass.
“Jamie. That’s Jamie Fraser? And he was…”
“He was my husband,” I said.
Brianna shook her head like a horse driving off flies.
“But you had a husband,” she said. “You couldn’t…even if…I mean…you couldn’t.”
“I had to,” I said flatly. “I didn’t do it on purpose, after all.”
“Mother, you can’t get married accidentally!” Brianna was losing her kindly-nurse-with-mental-patient attitude. I thought this was probably a good thing, even if the alternative was anger.
“Well, it wasn’t precisely an accident,” I said. “It was the best alternative to being handed over to Jack Randall, though. Jamie married me to protect me—and bloody generous of him, too,” I finished, glaring at Bree over my glass. “He didn’t have to do it, but he did.”
I fought back the memory of our wedding night. He was a virgin; his hands had trembled when he touched me. I had been afraid too—with better reason. And then in the dawn he had held me, naked back against bare chest, his thighs warm and strong behind my own, murmuring into the clouds of my hair, “Dinna be afraid. There’s the two of us now.”
“See,” I turned to Roger again, “I couldn’t get back. I was running away from Captain Randall when the Scots found me. A party of cattle-raiders. Jamie was with them, they were his mother’s people, the MacKenzies of Leoch. They didn’t know what to make of me, but they took me with them as a captive. And I couldn’t get away again.”
I remembered my abortive efforts to escape from Castle Leoch. And then the day when I had told Jamie the truth, and he—not believing, any more than Frank had, but at least willing to act as though he did—had taken me back to the hill and the stones.
“He thought I was a witch, perhaps,” I said, eyes closed, smiling just a bit at the thought. “Now they think you’re mad; then they thought you were a witch. Cultural mores,” I explained, opening my eyes. “Psychology is just what they call it these days instead of magic. Not the hell of a lot of difference.” Roger nodded, seeming a little stunned.
“They tried me for witchcraft,” I said. “In the village of Cranesmuir, just below the castle. Jamie saved me, though, and then I told him. And he took me to the hill, and told me to go back. Back to Frank.” I paused and drew a deep breath, remembering that October afternoon, where control of my destiny, taken from me for so long, had been suddenly thrust back into my hands, and the choice not given, but demanded of me.
“Go back!” he had said. “There’s nothing here for ye! Nothing save danger.”
“Is there really nothing here for me?” I had asked. Too honorable to speak, he had answered nonetheless, and I had made my choice.
“It was too late,” I said, staring down at my hands, lying open on my knees. The day was darkening to rain, but my two wedding rings still gleamed in the fading light, gold and silver. I hadn’t taken Frank’s gold band from my left hand when I married Jamie, but had worn Jamie’s silver ring on the fourth finger of my right hand, for every day of the twenty-odd years since he put it there.
“I loved Frank,” I said quietly, not looking at Bree. “I loved him a lot. But by that time, Jamie was my heart and the breath of my body. I couldn’t leave him. I couldn’t,” I said, raising my head suddenly to Bree in appeal. She stared back at me, stone-faced.
I looked down at my hands again, and went on.
“He took me to his own home—Lallybroch, it was called. A beautiful place.” I shut my eyes again, to get away from the look on Brianna’s face, and deliberately summoned the image of the estate of Broch Tuarach—Lallybroch, to the people who lived there. A beautiful Highland farm, with woods and streams; even a bit of fertile ground—rare for the Highlands. A lovely, peaceful place, sealed within high hills above a mountain pass that kept it remote from the recurrent strife that troubled the Highlands. But even Lallybroch had proved only a temporary sanctuary.