She didn’t look much less worried, but she smiled at him, despite herself. Seeing that made him want suddenly and urgently to have her, and it plainly showed on his face, for her smile deepened—though her sidewise glance at the door convinced him that she wasn’t going to let him bend her over the table and try to finish before wee Aggie came in.

“After Lodge, then,” he said, grinning at her.

She took a deep breath and nodded.

“After Lodge,” she said, trying to sound as certain as he did.

I WAS THUMBING through my Merck, roaming from pleural disorders and the use of thoracentesis to a gripping account of inflammation of the rectal mucosa, but while my cerebellum could be coaxed into a momentary distraction, my brain stem, spinal cord, and sacral nerves were having none of it. If I’d had a tail, it would have been pressed tight between my legs, and small jolts of something between electricity and nausea spurted unexpectedly through my abdomen.

The girls knew that something was afoot. They’d been silent as mice at supper, gazing as though hypnotized at Jamie. I’d been likewise hypnotized, watching him dress afterward.

I’d stayed to help clear the table, put away the remnants and orts from the meal, and smoor the fire in the kitchen hearth, and when I came up to our bedroom, I found him facing away from me, on the far side of the room. He didn’t turn round; I thought perhaps he hadn’t heard me come in. His face was reflected in the window he stood in front of, but I could see that he wasn’t looking at his reflection.

He wasn’t looking anywhere. His eyes were fixed and full of darkness, and his fingers moved swiftly, twitching buttons free, unwinding his neckcloth, loosening his breeches—all as though he were somewhere else, completely unaware of what his hands were doing. He was preparing to fight.

His plaid lay on the bed, along with a clean shirt and his leather jerkin. He turned, presumably to fetch it, and saw me. He looked blank, and then the life flowed back into him.

“Ye look as though ye’ve seen a ghost, Sassenach,” he said, in a voice that was almost normal. “I ken I’ve aged a bit, but surely it’s none sae bad as all that?”

“You’d scare the Devil himself,” I said. I wasn’t joking, and he knew it.

“I know,” he said simply. “I was remembering how it was, just before the charge. At Drumossie. Folk were shouting and I could see the gunna mòr across the field, but it didna mean anything. I was shedding my clothes, because there was nothing left but draw my sword and run across the moor. I kent I’d never make it to the other side, and I didna care.”

I couldn’t speak. Neither did he, but went quietly about the business of washing, of putting on his clean sark and his belted plaid, and when he got to his feet, he smiled at me, though his eyes still held memories.