We made love to each other, under the layers of sodden clothing, finding little warmth save that at the point of connection. We kept on well past the point where it was clear that neither of us could finish. Our bodies slowly left each other and we clung together through the dark until the dawn.

144

A Hanging Matter

October 3, 1780

IT WASN’T THE FIRST time he’d gone to a battle knowing he’d die. The difference was that last time, he’d wanted to.

The rain had kept them from lighting fires. They’d eaten what scraps they had left and then huddled in the dark, under what shelter they could find. He’d found a fallen tree, a big poplar whose roots had come up when the tree went down, making a rudimentary shelter. There wasn’t much room; he sat cross-legged, his back to the roots, and Claire was curled up beside him like a dormouse, wrapped in her soggy cloak and covered with half of his, her head resting warm on his thigh under the woolen folds. It was the only place he felt warm.

He wasn’t the sort of soldier who fought old battles over beer and salted bread in taverns. He didn’t seek to summon ghosts; they came by themselves, in his dreams.

But dreams don’t always tell the truth; he’d had dreams of Culloden many, many times over the years—and yet none of his dreams had shown him how Murtagh died or given him the peace of knowing that he’d killed Jack Randall.

Did you know? he thought suddenly, toward Frank Randall. The man was a historian—and Jack Randall had been his ancestor, or at least he’d thought so. That was how it had all begun, Claire had told him: Frank had wanted to go to Scotland, to see what he could find regarding his five-times-great-grandfather. Maybe he had found out what happened to him, found some survivor’s account that told about Red Jamie, the Jacobite who’d gutted the gallant British captain. And maybe that finding-out had set Frank Randall on that Jacobite’s trail …

He snorted, watching the breath curl away from him, white in the dark. Claire stirred and huddled closer and he put a hand on her, patting her as he might reassure a dog who’d just heard thunder in the distance.

“Uncle Jamie?” Ian’s voice came out of the darkness near his shoulder, making him start, and Claire shuddered, waking.

“Aye,” he said. “I’m here, Ian.”

Ian’s lanky shape separated itself briefly from the night, and he crouched beside Jamie, dripping.

“The colonels want ye, Uncle,” he said, low-voiced. “Someone’s brought in some Tory prisoners and they’re arguing whether to hang the lot of them, or only one or two as an example.”

“Christ. Ye dinna need to tell me whose idea that was.”

“What?” Claire said blearily. She’d lifted her head off his leg, and he felt the sudden chill of the spot where she’d lain. She shook off the fold of his cloak, emerging into the rain-chilled air. “What’s going on? Is someone hurt?”