“What in God’s name are you doing here?” The shock of seeing him was subsiding, though my heart still pounded. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and a sudden wave of queasiness washed over me. He stepped forward and grasped me by the arm, pulling me toward a chair.

“Sit ye down, lass,” he said. “Ye’ll no be feeling just the thing, it looks like.”

“Very observant of you,” I said. Black spots floated at the edge of my vision, and small bright flashes danced before my eyes. “Excuse me,” I said politely, and put my head between my knees.

Jamie. Frank. Randall. Dougal. The faces flickered in my mind, the names seemed to ring in my ears. My palms were sweating, and I pressed them under my arms, hugging myself to try to stop the tremblings of shock. Jamie wouldn’t be facing Randall immediately; that was the important thing. There was a little time, in which to think, to take preventive action. But what action? Leaving my subconscious to wrestle with this question, I forced my breathing to slow and turned my attention to matters closer to hand.

“I repeat,” I said, sitting up and smoothing back my hair, “what are you doing here?”

The dark brows flickered upward.

“Do I need a reason to visit a kinsman?”

I could still taste the bile at the back of my throat, but my hands had stopped trembling, at least.

“Under the circumstances, yes,” I said. I drew myself up, grandly ignoring my untied laces, and reached for the brandy decanter. Anticipating me, Dougal took a glass from the tray and poured out a teaspoonful. Then, after a considering glance at me, he doubled the dose.

“Thanks,” I said dryly, accepting the glass.

“Circumstances, eh? And which circumstances would those be?” Not waiting for answer or permission, he calmly poured out another glass for himself and lifted it in a casual toast. “To His Majesty.”

I felt my mouth twist sideways. “King James, I suppose?” I took a small sip of my own drink, and felt the hot aromatic fumes sear the membranes behind my eyes. “And does the fact that you’re in Paris mean that you’ve converted Colum to your way of thinking?” For while Dougal MacKenzie might be a Jacobite, it was his brother Colum who led the MacKenzies of Leoch as chieftain. Legs crippled and twisted by a deforming disease, Colum no longer led his clan into battle; Dougal was the war chieftain. But while Dougal might lead men into battle, it was Colum who held the power to say whether the battle would take place.

Dougal ignored my question, and having drained his glass, immediately poured out another drink. He savored the first sip of this one, rolling it visibly around his mouth and licking a final drop from his lips as he swallowed.

“Not bad,” he said. “I must take some back for Colum. He needs something a bit stronger than the wine, to help him sleep nights.”

This was indeed an oblique answer to my question. Colum’s condition was degenerating, then. Always in some pain from the disease that eroded his body, Colum had taken fortified wine in the evenings, to help him to sleep. Now he needed straight brandy. I wondered how long it would be before he might be forced to resort to opium for relief.

For when he did, that would be the end of his reign as chieftain of his clan. Deprived of physical resources, still he commanded by sheer force of character. But if the strength of Colum’s mind were lost to pain and drugs, the clan would have a new leader – Dougal.

I gazed at him over the rim of my glass. He returned my stare with no sign of abashment, a slight smile on that wide MacKenzie mouth. His face was much like his brother’s – and his nephew’s – strong and boldly modeled, with broad, high cheekbones and a long, straight nose like the blade of a knife.

Sworn as a boy of eighteen to support his brother’s chieftainship, he had kept that vow for nearly thirty years. And would keep it, I knew, until the day that Colum died or could lead no longer. But on that day, the mantle of chief would descend on his shoulders, and the men of clan MacKenzie would follow where he led – after the saltire of Scotland, and the banner of King James, in the vanguard of Bonnie Prince Charlie.

“Circumstances?” I said, turning to his earlier question. “Well, I don’t suppose one would consider it in the best of taste to come calling on a man whom you’d left for dead and whose wife you’d tried to seduce.”

Being Dougal MacKenzie, he laughed. I didn’t know quite what it would take to disconcert the man, but I certainly hoped I was there to see it when it finally happened.

“Seduction?” he said, lips quirked in amusement. “I offered ye marriage.”

“You offered to rape me, as I recall,” I snapped. He had, in fact, offered to marry me – by force – after declining to help me in rescuing Jamie from Wentworth Prison the winter before. While his principal motive had been the possession of Jamie’s estate of Lallybroch – which would belong to me upon Jamie’s death – he hadn’t been at all averse to the thought of the minor emoluments of marriage, such as the regular enjoyment of my body.

“As for leaving Jamie in the prison,” he went on, ignoring me as usual, “there seemed no way to get him out, and no sense in risking good men in a vain attempt. He’d be the first to understand that. And it was my duty as his kinsman to offer his wife my protection, if he died. I was the lad’s foster father, no?” He tilted back his head and drained his glass.

I took a good gulp of my own, and swallowed quickly so as not to choke. The spirit burned down my throat and gullet, matching the heat that was rising in my cheeks. He was right; Jamie hadn’t blamed him for his reluctance to break into Wentworth Prison – he hadn’t expected me to do it, either, and it was only by a miracle that I had succeeded. But while I had told Jamie, briefly, of Dougal’s intention of marrying me, I hadn’t tried to convey the carnal aspects of that intention. I had, after all, never expected to see Dougal MacKenzie again.

I knew from past experience that he was a seizer of opportunities; with Jamie about to be hanged, he had not even waited for execution of the sentence before trying to secure me and my about-to-be-inherited property. If – no, I corrected myself, when – Colum died or became incompetent, Dougal would be in full command of clan MacKenzie within a week. And if Charles Stuart found the backing he was seeking, Dougal would be there. He had some experience in being a power behind the throne, after all.

I tipped up the glass, considering. Colum had business interests in France; wine and timber, mostly. These undoubtedly were the pretext for Dougal’s visit to Paris, might even be his major ostensible reason. But he had other reasons, I was sure. And the presence in the city of Prince Charles Edward Stuart was almost certainly one of them.

One thing to be said for Dougal MacKenzie was that an encounter with him stimulated the mental processes, out of the sheer necessity of trying to figure out what he was actually up to at any given moment. Under the inspiration of his presence and a good slug of Portuguese brandy, my subconscious was stirring with the birth of an idea.

“Well, be that as it may, I’m glad you’re here now,” I said, replacing my empty glass on the tray.

“You are?” The thick dark brows rose incredulously.

“Yes.” I rose and gestured toward the hall. “Fetch my cloak while I do up my laces. I need you to come to the commissariat de police with me.”

Seeing his jaw drop, I felt the first tiny upsurge of hope. If I had managed to take Dougal MacKenzie by surprise, surely I could stop a duel?

“D’ye want to tell me what you think you’re doing?” Dougal inquired, as the coach bumped around the Cirque du Mireille, narrowly avoiding an oncoming barouche and a cart full of vegetable marrows.

“No,” I said briefly, “but I suppose I’ll have to. Did you know that Jack Randall is still alive?”