“Jemmy, Mandy!” she called. “Take off your hats and mufflers and mittens and put them over by the door, so the goats don’t chew on them!” She left Jem to distentangle Mandy from her fuzzy muffler and went up the stair to see what was on the second floor.

Pale winter light from the windows striped the haunches of burlap bags that filled most of the floor space. She breathed in and coughed a little; flour dust was floating in the air, but she smelled the sweetness of dried corn—maize, they called it—and the deeper, nutty smell of ripe barley, as well, and when she nudged her foot against a particularly lumpy sack, she heard the shift and clack of hazelnuts. Lallybroch wouldn’t starve this winter.

Curious, she went up one more flight and on the top floor found a good number of small wooden casks arrayed against the wall. It was much colder up here, but the heady aroma of good whisky filled the air with the illusion of warmth. She stood breathing it in for a moment, wanting very badly to be drunk on the fumes, to obliviate her mind, be able not to bloody think, if only for a few minutes.

But that was the last thing she could do. In minutes, she’d have to act.

She stepped back onto the narrow stair that wound up between the inner and outer walls of the broch and looked out toward the house, with vivid memories of the last time she had been here, crouched on the stair in the dark with a shotgun in her hands, watching the light of strangers in her house.

There were strangers here now, too, although her own blood. What if … She swallowed. If Roger had found Jerry MacKenzie, his father would be only in his early twenties—much younger than Roger himself. And if her own da was here now—

“He can’t be,” she whispered to herself, and wasn’t sure if that was reassurance or regret. She’d met him for the first time in North Carolina, pissing against a tree. He’d been in his forties, she twenty-two.

You couldn’t enter your own lifeline, couldn’t exist in the same time twice. They thought they knew that for sure. But what if you entered someone else’s life twice, at different times?

That was what was turning her blood to ice and making her curled fists tremble. What happened? Did one or the other of your appearances change things, perhaps cancel out the other? Would it not happen that way, would she not meet Jamie Fraser in North Carolina if she met him now?

But she had to find Roger. No matter what else happened. And Lallybroch was the only place she knew for sure he’d been. She took a deep, deep breath and closed her eyes.

Please, she prayed. Please help me. Thy will be done, but please show me what to do …

“Mam!” Jemmy came running up the stair, his footsteps loud in the confined stone corridor. “Mam!” He popped into sight, blue eyes round and hair standing half on end with excitement. “Mam, come down! A man’s coming!”

“What does he look like?” she asked, urgent, grabbing him by the sleeve. “What color is his hair?”

He blinked, surprised.

“Black, I think. He’s at the bottom of the hill—I couldn’t see his face.”

Roger.

“All right. I’m coming.” She felt half choked but no longer frozen. It was happening now, whatever it was, and energy fizzed through her veins.

Even as she hurtled down the stairs behind Jemmy, rationality told her that it wasn’t Roger—distance or not, Jemmy would know his father. But she had to see.

“Stay here,” she said to the children, with so much command in her voice that they blinked but didn’t argue. She threw open the door, saw the man coming up the path, and stepped out to meet him, closing the door firmly behind her.

From the first glance, she saw that it wasn’t Roger, but the disappointment was subsumed at once in relief that it wasn’t Jamie. And intense curiosity, because it must surely be …

She’d run down the path, to get well away from the broch, just in case, and was picking her way through the stones of the family burying ground, eyes on the man coming up the steep, rocky path.

A tall, solid-looking man, his dark hair graying a little but still thick, glossy, and loose on his shoulders. His eyes were on the rough ground, watching his footing. And then he came to his destination and made his way across the hill, to one of the stones in the burying ground. He knelt by it and laid down something he’d been carrying in his hand.

She shifted her weight, uncertain whether to call out or wait ’til he’d finished his business with the dead. But the small stones under her feet shifted, too, rolling down with a click-clack-click that made him look up and, seeing her, rise abruptly to his feet, black brows raised.

Black hair, black brows. Brian Dubh. Black Brian.

I met Brian Fraser (you would like him, and he, you) …

Wide, startled hazel eyes met hers, and for a second that was all she saw. His beautiful deep-set eyes, and the expression of stunned horror in them.

“Brian,” she said. “I—”

“A Dhia!” He went whiter than the harled plaster of the house below. “Ellen!”

Astonishment deprived her of speech for an instant—long enough to hear light footsteps scrambling down the hill behind her.

“Mam!” Jem called, breathless.

Brian’s glance turned up, behind her, and his mouth fell open at sight of Jem. Then a look of radiant joy suffused his face.

“Willie!” he said. “A bhalaich! Mo bhalaich!” He looked back at Brianna and stretched out a trembling hand to her. “Mo ghràidh … mo chridhe …”

“Brian,” she said softly, her heart in her voice, filled with pity and love, unable to do anything but respond to the need of the soul that showed so clearly in his lovely eyes. And with her speaking of his name for the second time, he stopped dead, swaying for a moment, and then the eyes rolled up in his head and he fell.



SHE WAS KNEELING in the crunchy dead heather beside Brian Fraser before she’d even thought to move. There was a slight blue tinge to his lips, but he was breathing, and she drew a deep cold breath of relief herself, seeing his chest rise slowly under the worn linen shirt.

Not for the first time, she wished fervently that her mother was there, but turned his head to one side and laid two fingers on the pulse she could see at the side of his neck. Her fingers were cold, and his flesh was startlingly warm. He didn’t rouse or stir at her touch, though, and she began to fear that he hadn’t just fainted.

He’d died—would die—of a stroke. If there was some weakness in his brain … oh, God. Had she just killed him prematurely?

“Don’t die!” she said to him aloud. “For God’s sake, don’t die here!”

She glanced hastily toward the house below, but no one was coming. Looking down again, she saw what it was he’d held: a small bouquet of evergreen twigs, tied with red thread. Yew—she recognized the oddly tubular red berries—and holly.

And then she saw the stone. She knew it well, had sat on the ground beside it often, contemplating Lallybroch and those who lay sleeping on its hillside.

Ellen Caitriona Sileas MacKenzie Fraser

Beloved wife and mother

Born 1691, Died in childbed 1729

And below, in smaller letters:

Robert Brian Gordon MacKenzie Fraser

Infant son

Died at birth 1729

And:

William Simon Murtagh MacKenzie Fraser

Beloved son

Born 1716, Died of the smallpox 1727

“Mam!” Jem skidded down the last few feet, almost falling beside her. “Mam, Mam—Mandy says—who is he?” He stared from Brian’s pallid face to her own and back again.

“His name’s Brian Fraser. He’s your great-grandfather.” Her hands were trembling, but to her surprise she felt suddenly calm at the speaking of the words, as though she had stepped into the center of a puzzle and found herself to be the missing piece. “What about Mandy?”