“I dinna ken exactly, Sassenach,” he said finally. “Could be I thought I owed it to you. Or maybe to myself.”
I laid a light palm across the width of one shoulder blade, broad and flat, the edges of the bone clear-drawn beneath the skin.
“Not to me.”
“Aye? Is it the act of a gentleman to unclothe his wife in the presence of thirty men?” His tone was suddenly bitter, and my hands stilled, pressing against him. “Is it the act of a gallant man to use violence against a captive enemy, and a child to boot? To consider doing worse?”
“Would it have been better to spare me – or him – and lose half your men in two days’ time? You had to know. You couldn’t – you can’t afford to let notions of gentlemanly conduct sway you.”
“No,” he said softly, “I can’t. And so I must ride wi’ a man – with the son of my King – whom duty and honor call me to follow – and seek meanwhiles to pervert his cause that I am sworn to uphold. I am forsworn for the lives of those I love – I betray the name of honor that those I honor may survive.”
“Honor has killed one bloody hell of a lot of men,” I said to the dark groove of his bruised back. “Honor without sense is… foolishness. A gallant foolishness, but foolishness nonetheless.”
“Aye, it is. And it will change – you’ve told me. But if I shall be among the first who sacrifice honor for expedience… shall I feel nay shame in the doing of it?” He rolled suddenly to face me, eyes troubled in the starlight.
“I willna turn back – I cannot, now – but Sassenach, sometimes I do sorrow for that bit of myself I have left behind.”
“It’s my fault,” I said softly. I touched his face, the thick brows, wide mouth, and the sprouting stubble along the clean, long jaw. “Mine. If I hadn’t come… and told you what would happen…” I felt a true sorrow for his corruption, and shared a sense of loss for the naive, gallant lad he had been. And yet… what choice had either of us truly had, being who we were? I had had to tell him, and he had had to act on it. An Old Testament line drifted through my mind: “When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long.”
As though he had picked up this biblical strain of thought, he smiled faintly.
“Aye, well,” he said. “I dinna recall Adam’s asking God to take back Eve – and look what she did to him.” He leaned forward and kissed my forehead as I laughed, then drew the blanket up over my bare shoulders. “Go to sleep, my wee rib. I shall be needin’ a helpmeet in the morning.”
An odd metallic noise woke me. I poked my head out of the blanket and blinked in the direction of the noise, to find my nose a foot from Jamie’s plaid-covered knee.
“Awake, are ye?” Something silvery and chinking suddenly descended in front of my face, and a heavy weight settled around my neck.
“What on earth is this?” I asked, sitting up in astonishment and peering downward. I seemed to be wearing a necklace composed of a large number of three-inch metal objects, each with a divided shank and a hooped top, strung together on a leather bootlace. Some of the objects were rusted at the tops, others brand-new. All showed scratches along the length of the shanks, as though they had been wrenched by force out of some larger object.
“Trophies of war, Sassenach,” said Jamie.
I looked up at him, and uttered a small shriek at the sight.
“Oh,” he said, putting a hand to his face. “I forgot. I hadna time to wash it off.”
“You scared me to death,” I said, hand pressed to my palpitating heart. “What is it?”
“Charcoal,” he said, voice muffled in the cloth he was rubbing over his face. He let it down and grinned at me. The rubbing had removed some of the blackening from nose, chin and forehead, which glowed pinkish-bronze through the remaining smears, but his eyes were still ringed black as a raccoon’s, and charcoal lines bracketed his mouth. It was barely dawn, and in the dim light of the tent, his darkened face and hair tended to fade into the drab background of the canvas wall behind him, giving the distinctly unsettling impression that I was speaking to a headless body.
“It was your idea,” he said.
“My idea? You look like the end man in a minstrel show,” I replied. “What the hell have you been doing?”
His teeth gleamed a brilliant white amid the sooty creases of his face.
“Commando raid,” he said, with immense satisfaction. “Commando? Is that the right word?”
“Oh, God,” I said. “You’ve been in the English camp? Christ! Not alone, I hope?”
“I couldna leave my men out of the fun, could I? I left three of them to guard you, and the rest of us had a verra profitable night.” He gestured at my necklace with pride.
“Cotter pins from the cannon carriages. We couldna take the cannon, or damage them without noise, but they’ll no be goin’ far, wi’ no wheels to them. And the hell of a lot of good sixteen gallopers will do General Cope, stranded out on the moor.”
I examined my necklace critically.
“That’s well and good, but can’t they contrive new cotter pins? It looks like you could make something like this from heavy wire.”
He nodded, his air of smugness abating not a whit.
“Oh, aye. They could. But nay bit o’ good it will do them, wi’ no new wheels to put them to.” He lifted the tent flap, and gestured down toward the foot of the hill, where I could now see Murtagh, black as a wizened demon, supervising the activities of several similarly decorated subdemons, who were gaily feeding the last of thirty-two large wooden wheels into a roaring fire. The iron rims of the wheels lay in a stack to one side; Fergus, Kincaid, and one of the other young men had improvised a game with one of them, rolling it to and fro with sticks. Ross sat on a log nearby, sipping at a horn cup and idly twirling another round his burly forearm.
I laughed at the sight.
“Jamie, you are clever!”
“I may be clever,” he replied, “but you’re half-naked, and we’re leaving now. Have ye something to put on? We left the sentinels tied up in an abandoned sheep-pen, but the rest of them will be up by now, and none so far behind us. We’d best be off.”
As though to emphasize his words, the tent suddenly shook above me, as someone jerked free the lines on one side. I uttered an alarmed squeak and dived for the saddlebags as Jamie left to superintend the details of departure.
It was midafternoon before we reached the village of Tranent. Perched on the hills above the seaside, the usually tranquil hamlet was reeling under the impact of the Highland army. The main bulk of the army was visible on the hills beyond, overlooking the small plain that stretched toward the shore. But with the usual disorganized comings and goings, there were as many men in Tranent as out of it, with detachments coming and going in more or less military formation, messengers galloping to and fro – some on ponies, some by shanks’ mare – and the wives, children, and camp followers, who overflowed the cottages and sat outside, leaning on stone walls and nursing babies in the intermittent sun, calling to passing messengers for word of the most recent action.
We halted at the edge of this seethe of activity, and Jamie sent Murtagh to discover the whereabouts of Lord George Murray, the army’s commander in chief, while he made a hasty toilet in one of the cottages.
My own appearance left a good bit to be desired; while not deliberately covered with charcoal, my face undoubtedly sported a few streaks of grime left as tokens of several nights spent sleeping out-of-doors. The goodwife kindly lent me a towel and a comb, and I was seated at her table, doing battle with my ungovernable locks, when the door opened and Lord George himself burst in without ceremony.
His usually impeccable dress was disheveled, with several buttons of his waistcoat undone, his stock slipped loose, and one garter come untied. His wig had been thrust unceremoniously into his pocket, and his own thinning brown curls stood on end, as though he had been tugging at them in frustration.