The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle (839 page)

“Are you fevered, my lover?” one asked, a tinge of concern in his voice. That made me turn round to look; Lizzie suffered from malaria, and while she hadn’t had an attack in some time, perhaps the stress of birth …

“No,” she said, and kissed Jo or Kezzie on the forehead. “I’m only flushed from bein’ happy.” Kezzie or Jo beamed at her in adoration, while his brother took up the neck-kissing duties on the other side.

Auntie Monika coughed. She’d wiped down the baby with a damp cloth and some wisps of the wool I’d brought—soft and oily with lanolin—and had it now swaddled in a blanket. Rodney had got bored with the proceedings long since and gone to sleep on the floor by the wood-basket, a thumb in his mouth.

“Your
vater
, Lizzie,” she said, a slight hint of reproof in her voice. “He vill cold begetting.
Und die Mädel
he vant see,
mit you
, but maybe not so much
mit der …
” She managed to incline her head toward the bed, while simultaneously modestly averting her eyes from the frolicsome trio on it. Mr. Wemyss and his sons-in-law had had a gingerly reconciliation after the birth of Rodney, but best not to press things.

Her words galvanized the twins, who hopped to their feet, one stooping to scoop up Rodney, whom he handled with casual affection, the other rushing for the door to retrieve Mr. Wemyss, forgotten on the porch in the excitement.

While slightly blue round the edges, relief made his thin face glow as though lit from within. He smiled with heartfelt joy at Monika, sparing a brief
glance and a ginger pat for the swaddled bundle—but his attention was all for Lizzie, and hers for him.

“Your hands are frozen, Da,” she said, giggling a little, but tightening her grip as he made to pull away. “No, stay; I’m warm enough. Come sit by me and say good e’en to your wee granddaughter.” Her voice rang with a shy pride, as she reached out a hand to Auntie Monika.

Monika set the baby gently in Lizzie’s arms, and stood with a hand on Mr. Wemyss’s shoulder, her own weathered face soft with something much deeper than affection. Not for the first time, I was surprised—and vaguely abashed that I should be surprised—by the depth of her love for the frail, quiet little man.

“Oh,” Mr. Wemyss said softly. His finger touched the baby’s cheek; I could hear her making small smacking noises. She’d been shocked by the trauma of birth and not interested in the breast at first, but plainly was beginning to change her mind.

“She’ll be hungry.” A rustle of bedclothes as Lizzie took up the baby and put her to the breast with practiced hands.

“What will ye call her,
a leannan
?” Mr. Wemyss asked.

“I hadna really thought of a girl’s name,” Lizzie answered. “She was so big, I thought sure she was a—ow!” She laughed, a low, sweet sound. “I’d forgot how greedy a newborn wean is. Ooh! There,
a chuisle
, aye, that’s better …”

I reached for the sack of wool, to rub my own raw hands with one of the soft, oily wisps, and happened to see the twins, standing back out of the way, side by side, their eyes fixed on Lizzie and their daughter, and each wearing a look that echoed Auntie Monika’s. Not taking his eyes away, the Beardsley holding little Rodney bent his head and kissed the top of the little boy’s round head.

So much love in one small place. I turned away, my own eyes misty. Did it matter, really, how unorthodox the marriage at the center of this odd family was? Well, it would to Hiram Crombie, I reflected. The leader of the rock-ribbed Presbyterian immigrants from Thurso, he’d want Lizzie, Jo, and Kezzie stoned, at the least—together with the sinful fruit of their loins.

No chance of that happening, so long as Jamie was on the Ridge—but with him gone? I slowly cleaned blood from under my nails, hoping that Ian was right about the Beardsleys’ capacity for discretion—and deception.

Distracted by these musings, I hadn’t noticed Auntie Monika, who had come quietly up beside me.

“Danke,” she
said softly, laying a gnarled hand on my arm.

“Gern geschehen.” I
put my hand over hers and squeezed gently. “You were a great help—thank you.”

She still smiled, but a line of worry bisected her forehead.

“Not so much. But I am afraid,
ja?”
She glanced over her shoulder at the bed, then back at me. “What happens, next time, you are not
hier?
Dey don’t stop, you know,” she added, discreetly making a circle of thumb and forefinger and running the middle finger of the other hand into it in a most indiscreet illustration of exactly what she meant.

I converted a laugh hastily into a coughing fit, which fortunately went ignored by the relevant parties, though Mr. Wemyss glanced over his shoulder in mild concern.

“You’ll be here,” I told her, recovering. She looked horrified.

“Me?
Nein,”
she said, shaking her head.
“Das reicht nicht
. Me—” She poked herself in her meager chest, seeing that I hadn’t understood. “I … am not enough.”

I took a deep breath, knowing that she was right. And yet …

“You’ll have to be,” I said, very softly.

She blinked once, her large, wise brown eyes fixed on mine. Then slowly nodded, accepting.

“Mein Gott, hilf mir,”
she said.

Jamie hadn’t been able to go back to sleep. He had trouble sleeping these days, in any case, and often lay awake late, watching the fading glow of embers in the hearth and turning things over in his mind, or seeking wisdom in the shadows of the rafters overhead. If he did fall asleep easily, he often came awake later, sudden and sweating. He knew what caused that, though, and what to do about it.

Most of his strategies for reaching slumber involved Claire—talking to her, making love to her—or only looking at her while she slept, finding solace in the solid long curve of her collarbone, or the heartbreaking shape of her closed eyelids, letting sleep steal upon him from her peaceful warmth.

But Claire, of course, was gone.

Half an hour of saying the rosary convinced him that he had done as much in that direction as was necessary or desirable for the sake of Lizzie and her impending child. Saying the rosary for penance—aye, he saw the point of that, particularly if you had to say it on your knees. Or to quiet one’s mind, fortify the soul, or seek the insight of meditation on sacred topics, aye, that, too. But not for petition. If he were God, or even the Blessed Virgin, who was renowned for patience, he thought he would find it tedious to listen to more than a decade or so of someone saying please about something over and over, and surely there was no point to boring a person whose aid you sought?

Now, the Gaelic prayers seemed much more useful to the purpose, being as they were concentrated upon a specific request or blessing, and more pleasing both in rhythm and variety. If you asked him, not that anyone was likely to.

he murmured as he climbed.

He’d left the cabin, unable to bear its smothering confines, and wandered in a contemplative fashion through the Ridge in the falling snow, ticking through mental lists. But the fact was that all his preparation was done, bar the packing of the horses and mules, and without really thinking about it, he found that he was making his way up the trail toward the Beardsley place. The snow had ceased to fall now, but the sky stretched gray and gentle overhead, and cold white lay calm upon the trees and stilled the rush of wind.

Sanctuary
, he thought. It wasn’t, of course—there was no safe place in time of war—but the feel of the mountain night reminded him of the feel of churches: a great peace, waiting.

Notre Dame in Paris … St. Giles’ in Edinburgh. Tiny stone churches in the Highlands, where he’d sometimes gone in his years of hiding, when he thought it safe. He crossed himself, remembering that; the plain stones, often nothing more than a wooden altar inside—and yet the relief of entering, sitting on the floor if there was no bench, just sitting, and knowing himself to be not alone. Sanctuary.

Whether the thought of churches or of Claire reminded him, he remembered another church—the one they had married in, and he grinned to himself at the memory of that. Not a peaceful waiting, no. He could still feel the
thunder of his heart against his ribs as he’d stepped inside, the reek of his sweat—he’d smelled like a rutting goat, and hoped she didn’t notice—the inability to draw a full breath. And the feel of her hand in his, her fingers small and freezing cold, clutching at him for support.

Sanctuary
. They’d been that for each other then—and were so now.
Blood of my blood
. The tiny cut had healed, but he rubbed the ball of his thumb, smiling at the matter-of-fact way she’d said it.

He came in sight of the cabin, and saw Joseph Wemyss waiting on the porch, hunched and stamping his feet against the cold. He was about to hail Joseph, when the door suddenly opened and one of the Beardsley twins—Christ, what were
they
doing in there?—reached out and seized his father-in-law by the arm, nearly pulling him off his feet in his excitement.

It
was
excitement, too, not grief or alarm; he’d seen the boy’s face clearly in the glow of the firelight. He let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, white in the dark. The child was come, then, and both it and Lizzie had survived.

He relaxed against a tree, touching the rosary around his neck.

“Moran taing,”
he said softly, in brief but heartfelt thanks. Someone in the cabin had put more wood on the fire; a shower of sparks flew up from the chimney, lighting the snow in red and gold and hissing black where cinders fell.

Yet man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward
. He’d read that line of Job many times in prison, and made no great sense of it. Upward-flying sparks caused no trouble, by and large, unless you had very dry shingles; it was the ones that spat straight out of the hearth that might set your house on fire. Or if the writer had meant only that it was the nature of man to be in trouble—as plainly it was, if his own experience was aught to go by—then he was making a comparison of inevitability, saying that sparks always flew upward—which anyone who’d ever watched a fire for long could tell you they didn’t.

Still, who was he to be criticizing the Bible’s logic, when he ought to be repeating psalms of praise and gratitude? He tried to think of one, but was too content to think of more than odd bits and pieces.

He realized with a small shock that he was entirely happy. The safe birth of the child was a great thing in itself, to be sure—but it also meant that Claire had come safe through her trial, and that he and she were now free. They might leave the Ridge, knowing they had done all that could be done for the folk who remained.

Aye, there was always a sadness in leaving home—but in this case, it might be argued that their home had left
them
, when the house burned, and in any case, it was overbalanced by his rising sense of anticipation. Free and away, Claire by his side, no daily chores to do, no petty squabbles to settle, no widows and orphans to provide for—well, that was an unworthy thought, doubtless, and yet …

War was a terrible thing, and this one would be, too—but it was undeniably exciting, and the blood stirred in him from scalp to soles.

“Moran taing,”
he said again, in heartfelt gratitude.

A short time later, the door of the cabin opened again, spilling light, and
Claire came out, pulling up the hood of her cloak, her basket over her arm. Voices followed her, and bodies crowded the door. She turned to wave farewell to them, and he heard her laugh; the sound of it sent a small thrill of pleasure through him.