Moved by the deepest of memories, I leaned over and picked her up, holding her against my breast, tiny head cupped in my hand. In an instant, I was holding my lost daughter, grief knifing through me. I closed my eyes, knowing I had to put her down, had to go about my job, but unable to let her go, feeling the slow beating of my heart against the fading warmth of her fragile skin.

I couldn’t let her go. I couldn’t let Faith go; they had taken her from my arms, finally. Left me empty, alone, in that place of cold stone.

Snot was running down my face, tickling my lip, and I rubbed at it with my sleeve, still holding the child to my breast, listening to my heart break again.

“Let me take her, Sassenach,” Jamie whispered, and held out his hands.

I swallowed hard. I had to let her go.

“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t.” And bowed my head over the little girl I’d lost, rocking back and forth on my knees, feeling my heart beat, in chest and ears and fingertips, trying to make up for the heart that would never beat again.

I didn’t know how long it was that I stayed there, curled around the child, trying futilely to give her my heat, my life. There was nothing sudden, no sound, no movement. But in the midst of the searing grief, I slowly realized … something. It didn’t happen; it was already there. But I hadn’t felt it and now I did.

“Claire?” Jamie’s hand touched my shoulder and I seized it with my free hand and held on. Warmth, strength.

“Stay,” I said, to him and to her, breathless. “Stay.”

My heart. I was still feeling it, distinctly, slow and regular. I let go of Jamie’s hand, but he didn’t take it away. Holding the baby in one arm, I laid my other hand on her back, feeling. No sensation, nothing I could really say I felt—but there was something there.

I pressed lightly on her back, waited for the space of a breath, pressed again. And again. Hearing my own heartbeat in my ears, in the pulse of my blood. Pressed my heartbeat into her back, into her chest where it pressed against me.

Push.

My fingers were warm, and so was the child. The fire, I thought dimly. Crackle of fire and the sound of my heart. Thup-tup, thup-tup, thup-tup … And suddenly I heard Roger, telling me what Dr. McEwan had done, a hand on Buck’s breast, tapping slowly and patiently, over and over, in the rhythm of a beating heart.

Thup-tup … thup-tup … thup-tup …

There were more sounds in the room now, soft voices, the spitting of a cracking log, the wind under the eaves of the roof, the rushing sound of pines and the sloshing of water. Movement, warmth, life. Jamie’s hand, solid on my shoulder. I heard it all, I felt it all, but it was removed from me, happening in another world. All I was, was the sound of a heartbeat.