“Hm.” Colum cast a brief glance of disapproval at the door, then returned his attention to me.

“I asked to see you because I owe ye an apology,” he said, without preamble.

I leaned back in my chair, goblet resting nonchalantly on my stomach.

“Oh, an apology?” I said, with as much sarcasm as could be mustered on short notice. “For trying to have me burnt for witchcraft, I suppose you mean?” I flipped a hand in gracious dismissal. “Pray think nothing of it.” I glared at him. “Apology?!”

He smiled, not disconcerted in the slightest.

“I suppose it seems a trifle inadequate,” he began.

“Inadequate?! For having me arrested and thrown into a thieves’ hole for three days without decent food or water? For having me stripped half-naked and whipped before every person in Cranesmuir? For leaving me a hairsbreadth away from a barrel of pitch and a bundle of faggots?” I stopped and took a deep breath. “Now that you mention it,” I said, a little more calmly, “ ‘inadequate’ is precisely what I’d call it.”

The smile had vanished.

“I beg your pardon for my apparent levity,” he said softly. “I had no intent to mock you.”

I looked at him, but could see no lingering gleam of amusement in the black-lashed eyes.

“No,” I said, with another deep breath. “I don’t suppose you did. I suppose you’re going to say that you had no intent to have me arrested for witchcraft, either.”

The gray eyes sharpened. “You knew that?”

“Geilie said so. While we were in the thieves’ hole. She said it was her you meant to dispose of; I was an accident.”

“You were.” He looked suddenly very tired. “Had ye been in the castle, I could have protected you. What in the name of God led ye to go down to the village?”

“I was told that Geilie Duncan was ill and asking for me,” I replied shortly.

“Ah,” he said softly. “You were told. By whom, and I may ask?”

“Laoghaire.” Even now, I could not repress a brief spurt of rage at the girl’s name. Out of thwarted jealousy over my having married Jamie, she had deliberately tried to have me killed. Considerable depths of malice for a sixteen-year-old girl. And even now, mingled with the rage was that tiny spark of grim satisfaction; he’s mine, I thought, almost subconsciously. Mine. You’ll never take him from me. Never.

“Ah,” Colum said again, staring thoughtfully at my flushed countenance. “I thought perhaps that was the way of it. Tell me,” he continued, raising one dark brow, “if a mere apology strikes you as inadequate, will ye have vengeance instead?”

“Vengeance?” I must have looked startled at the idea, for he smiled faintly, though without humor.

“Aye. The lass was wed six months ago, to Hugh MacKenzie of Muldaur, one of my tacksmen. He’ll do with her as I say, and ye want her punished. What will ye have me do?”

I blinked, taken aback by his offer. He appeared in no hurry for an answer; he sat quietly, sipping the fresh glass of brandy that Angus Mhor poured for him. He wasn’t staring at me, but I got up and moved away toward the windows, wanting to be alone for a moment.

The walls here were five feet thick; by leaning forward into the deep window embrasure I could assure myself of privacy. The bright sun illuminated the fine blond hairs on my forearms as I rested them on the sill. It made me think of the thieves’ hole, that damp, reeking pit, and the single bar of sunlight that had shone through an opening above, making the dark hole below seem that much more like a grave by contrast.

I had spent my first day there in cold and dirt, full of stunned disbelief; the second in shivering misery and growing fear as I discovered the full extent of Geillis Duncan’s treachery and Colum’s measures against it. And on the third day, they had taken me to trial. And I had stood, filled with shame and terror, under the clouds of a lowering autumn sky, feeling the jaws of Colum’s trap close round me, sprung by a word from the girl Laoghaire.

Laoghaire. Fair-skinned and blue-eyed, with a round, pretty face, but nothing much to distinguish her from the other girls at Leoch. I had thought about her – in the pit with Geillis Duncan, I had had time to think of a lot of things. But furious and terrified as I had been, furious as I remained, I couldn’t, either then or now, bring myself to see her as intrinsically evil.

“She was only sixteen, for God’s sake!”

“Old enough to marry,” said a sardonic voice behind me, and I realized that I had spoken aloud.

“Yes, she wanted Jamie,” I said, turning around. Colum was still sitting on the sofa, stumpy legs covered with a rug. Angus Mhor stood silent behind him, heavy-lidded eyes fixed on his master. “Perhaps she thought she loved him.”

Men were drilling in the courtyard, amid shouts and clashing of arms. The sun glanced off the metal of swords and muskets, the brass studding of targes – and off the red-gold of Jamie’s hair, flying in the breeze as he wiped a hand across his face, flushed and sweating from the exercise, laughing at one of Murtagh’s deadpan remarks.

I had perhaps done Laoghaire an injustice, after all, in assuming her feelings to be less than my own. Whether she had acted from immature spite or from a true passion, I could never know. In either case, she had failed. I had survived. And Jamie was mine. As I watched, he rucked up his kilt and casually scratched his bottom, the sunlight catching the reddish-gold fuzz that softened the iron-hard curve of his thigh. I smiled, and went back to my seat near Colum.

“I’ll take the apology,” I said.

He nodded, gray eyes thoughtful.

“You’ve a belief in mercy, then, Mistress?”

“More in justice,” I said. “Speaking of which, I don’t imagine you traveled all the way from Leoch to Edinburgh merely to apologize to me. It must have been a hellish journey.”

“Aye, it was.” The huge, silent bulk of Angus Mhor shifted an inch or two behind him, and the massive head bent toward his laird in eloquent witness. Colum sensed the movement and raised a hand briefly – it’s all right, the gesture said, I’m all right for the present.

“No,” Colum went on. “I did not know ye were in Edinburgh, in fact, until His Highness mentioned Jamie Fraser, and I asked.” A sudden smile grew on his face. “His Highness isn’t over fond of you, Mistress Claire. But I suppose ye knew that?”

I ignored this. “So you really are considering joining Prince Charles?”

Colum, Dougal, and Jamie all had the capacity for hiding what they were thinking when they chose to, but of the three, Colum was undoubtedly best at it. You’d get more from one of the carved heads on the fountain in the front courtyard, if he was feeling uncommunicative.

“I’ve come to see him” was all he said.

I sat a moment, wondering what, if anything, I could – or should – say in Charles’s behalf. Perhaps I would do better to leave it to Jamie. After all, the fact that Colum felt regret over nearly killing me by accident didn’t mean he was necessarily inclined to trust me. And while the fact that I was here, part of Charles’s entourage, surely argued against my being an English spy, it wasn’t impossible that I was.

I was still debating with myself when Colum suddenly put down his glass of brandy and looked straight at me.

“D’ye know how much of this I’ve had since morning?”

“No.” His hands were steady, calloused and roughened from his disease, but well kept. The reddened lids and slightly bloodshot eyes could as easily be from the rigors of travel as from drink. There was no slurring of speech, and no more than a certain deliberateness of movement to indicate that he wasn’t sober as a judge. But I had seen Colum drink before, and had a very respectful idea of his capacity.

He waved away Angus Mhor’s hand, hovering above the decanter. “Half a bottle. I’ll have finished it by tonight.”

“Ah.” So that was why I had been asked to bring my medicine box. I reached for it, where I had set it on the floor.