Roger nodded, recognizing the statement from the Westminster Confession. When was that—1646? 1647? A generation—or two—before Duncan’s grandfather.
“I expect it was easier for him to think her death was God’s will, and nothing to do with him,” Roger said, not without sympathy. “Ye’ll not believe it yourself, then? Predestination, I mean.”
He asked with true curiosity. The Presbyterians of his own time did still espouse predestination as a doctrine—but, a bit more flexible in attitude, tended to soft-pedal the notion of predestined damnation, and not to think too much on the idea that every detail of life was so predestined. Himself? God knew.
Duncan lifted his shoulders, the right rising higher and making him seem momentarily twisted. “God knows,” he said, and laughed. He shook his head, and drained his glass again.
“Nay, I think I don’t. But I wouldna say as much before Hiram Crombie—nor yet yon Christie.” Duncan lifted his chin toward the meadow, where he could see two dark figures, walking side by side toward the house. Arch Bug’s tall, stooped frame was easy to recognize, as was Tom Christie’s shorter, blocky build. He looked pugnacious even in silhouette, Roger thought, making short, sharp gestures as he walked, clearly arguing something with Arch.
“There’d be wicked fights ower it sometimes, in Ardsmuir,” Duncan said, watching the progress of the two figures. “The Catholics took it amiss, to be told they were damned. And Christie and his wee band took the greatest pleasure in telling them so.” His shoulders shook a little in suppressed laughter, and Roger wondered just how much whisky Duncan had had before he came out to the terrace. He’d never seen the older man so jovial.
“Mac Dubh put a stop to it, finally, when he made us all be Freemasons,” he added, leaning forward to pour a fresh glass. “But a few men were nearly killed, before that.” He lifted the decanter inquiringly in Roger’s direction.
Looking forward to a supper including both Tom Christie and Hiram Crombie, Roger accepted.
As Duncan leaned toward him to pour, still smiling, the last of the sun shone across his weathered face. Roger caught a glimpse of a faint white line through Duncan’s upper lip, half-visible beneath the hair, and realized quite suddenly why Duncan wore a long mustache—an unusual adornment, in a time when most men were clean-shaven.
He would not have spoken, likely, save for the whisky and the mood of strange alliance between them—two Protestants, amazingly bound to Catholics and bemused at the strange tides of fate that had washed over them; two men left quite alone by the misfortunes of life, and now surprised to find themselves the heads of households, holding the lives of strangers in their hands.
“Your lip, Duncan.” He touched his own mouth briefly. “What did that?”
“Och, that?” Duncan touched his own lip, surprised. “Nay, I was born wi’ a harelip, or so they said. I dinna recall it, myself; it was mended when I was nay more than a week old.”
It was Roger’s turn to be surprised.
“Who mended it?”
Duncan shrugged, one-shouldered this time.
“A traveling healer, my mither said. She’d quite resigned herself to losin’ me, she said, because I couldna suck, of course. She and my aunties all took it in turn to drap milk into my mouth from a rag, but she said I’d wasted nearly to a wee skeleton, when this charmer came by the village.”
He rubbed a knuckle self-consciously over his lip, smoothing the thick, grizzled hairs of his mustache.
“My faither gave him six herrings and a mull o’ snuff, and he stitched it up, and gave my mither a bit o’ some ointment to put on the wound. Well, and so . . .” He shrugged again, with a lopsided smile.
“Perhaps I was destined to live, after all. My grandsire said the Lord had chosen me—though God only kens what for.”
Roger was conscious of a faint ripple of unease, dulled though it was by whisky.
A Highland charmer who could repair a harelip? He took another drink, trying not to stare, but covertly examining Duncan’s face. He supposed it was possible; the scar was just barely visible—if you knew to look—under Duncan’s mustache, but didn’t extend up into the nostril. It must have been a fairly simple harelip, then, not one of the hideous cases like that one he’d read about—unable to look away from the page for horror—in Claire’s big black doctor’s book, where Dr. Rawlings had described a child born not only with a split lip, but missing the roof of its mouth, and most of the center of its face, as well.
There had been no drawing, thank God, but the visual picture conjured up by Rawlings’s spare description had been bad enough. He closed his eyes and breathed deep, inhaling the whisky’s perfume through his pores.
Was it possible? Perhaps. People did do surgery now, bloodstained, crude, and agonizing as it was. He’d seen Murray MacLeod, the apothecary from Campbelton, expertly stitch up a man’s cheek, laid open when the man was trampled by a sheep. Would it be any more difficult to stitch a child’s mouth?
He thought of Jemmy’s lip, tender as a blossom, pierced by needle and black thread, and shuddered.
“Are ye cold, then, a charaid? Shall we go in?” Duncan got his feet under him, as though to rise, but Roger waved the older man back.
“Ah, no. Goose walking on my grave.” He smiled, and accepted another drop to keep the nonexistent evening chill away. And yet he felt the hairs on his arms rise, just a little. Could there be another one—more—like us?
There had been, he knew. His own multiple-times great-grandmother, Geillis, for one. The man whose skull Claire had found, complete with silver fillings in its teeth, for another. But had Duncan met another, in some remote Highland village half a century before?
Christ, he thought, freshly unnerved. How often does it happen? And what happens to them?
Before they had quite reached the bottom of the decanter, he heard footsteps behind him, and the rustle of silk.
“Mrs. Cameron.” He rose at once, the world tilting just a little, and took his hostess’s hand, bowing over it.
Her long hand touched his face, as was her habit, her sensitive fingertips confirming his identity.
“Och, there ye are, Jo. Had a good journey wi’ the wee lad, did ye?” Duncan struggled to rise, handicapped by whisky and his single arm, but Ulysses, Jocasta’s butler, had materialized silently out of the twilight behind his mistress in time to move her wicker chair into place. She sank into it without so much as putting a hand out to see that it was there, Roger noticed; she simply knew it would be.
Roger viewed the butler with interest, wondering who Jocasta had bribed to get him back. Accused—and very likely guilty of—the death of a British naval officer on Jocasta’s property, Ulysses had been forced to flee the colony. But Lieutenant Wolff had not been considered a great loss to the navy—and Ulysses was indispensable to Jocasta Cameron. All things might not be possible with gold—but he was willing to bet that Jocasta Cameron hadn’t yet met a circumstance she couldn’t mend with money, political connections, or guile.
“Oh, aye,” she replied to her husband, smiling and putting out a hand to him. “’Twas such fun to show him off, husband! We’d a wonderful luncheon with old Mrs. Forbes and her daughter, and the wee bairn sang a song and charmed them all. Mrs. Forbes had the Montgomery lasses in, as well, and Miss Ogilvie, and we had wee lamb cutlets wi’ raspberry sauce and fried apples and—oh, is that you, Mr. Christie? Do come and join us!” She raised her voice a little, and her face, appearing to look expectantly into the gloom over Roger’s shoulder.
“Mrs. Cameron. Your servant, madam.” Christie stepped up onto the terrace, making a courtly bow that was no less punctilious for the fact that its recipient was blind. Arch Bug followed him, bowing in turn over Jocasta’s hand, and making a genial noise in his throat by way of greeting.
Chairs were brought out, more whisky, a plate of savories appeared as by magic, candles were lit—and suddenly it was a party, echoing on a higher plane the sense of slightly nervous festivity taking place in the meadow below. There was music in the distance; the sound of a tin whistle, playing a jig.
Roger let it all wash over him, enjoying the brief sense of relaxation and irresponsibility. Just for tonight, there was no need to worry; everyone was gathered, safe, fed, and prepared for the morrow’s journey.
He needn’t even trouble to keep up his end of the conversation; Tom Christie and Jocasta were enthusiastically discussing the literary scene in Edinburgh and a book he’d never heard of, with Duncan, looking so mellow that he might slide out of his chair any minute, putting in the occasional remark, and old Arch—where was Arch? Oh, there; gone back toward the meadow, having doubtless thought of some last minute thing he must tell someone.
He blessed Jamie Fraser for his forethought in sending Arch and Tom with him. Between the two of them, they’d saved him from any number of blunders, managed the ten thousand necessary details, and eased the fears of the new tenants regarding this latest leap into the unknown.
He took a deep, contented breath of air scented with the homely smells of campfires in the distance and roasting dinner near at hand—and belatedly recalled the one small detail whose welfare was still his exclusive concern.
Excusing himself, he made his way into the house, and discovered Jem down below in the main kitchen, cozily ensconced in the corner of a settle, eating bread pudding with melted butter and maple syrup on it.
“That’s never your dinner, is it?” he asked, sitting down beside his son.
“Uh-huh. Want some, Daddy?” Jem extended a dripping spoon upward toward him, and he bent hastily to take the offered mouthful before it fell off. It was delicious, bursting-sweet and creamy on the tongue.
“Mmm,” he said, swallowing. “Well, let’s not tell Mummy or Grannie, shall we? They’ve this odd prejudice toward meat and vegetables.”
Jem nodded, agreeable, and offered him another spoonful. They consumed the bowl together in a companionable silence, after which Jem crawled into his lap, and leaning a sticky face against his chest, fell sound asleep.
Servants bustled to and fro around them, smiling kindly now and then. He should, he thought vaguely, get up. Dinner would be being served in a moment—he saw the platters of roasted duck and mutton being skillfully laid out, bowls mounded with heaps of fluffy, steaming rice soaked with gravy, and a huge sallet of greens being tossed with vinegar.
Filled with whisky, bread pudding, and contentment, though, he lingered, putting off from moment to moment the necessity of parting from Jem and ending the sweet peace of holding his sleeping son.
“Mister Roger? I take him, shall I?” said a soft voice. He looked up from an examination of Jem’s hair, which had bits of bread pudding stuck in it, to see Phaedre, Jocasta’s body servant, stooping before him, hands held out to receive the boy.
“I wash him, put him to his bed, sir,” she said, her oval face as soft as her voice as she looked at Jem.
“Oh. Yes, sure. Thanks.” Roger sat up, Jem in his arms, and rose carefully, holding Jem’s considerable weight. “Here—I’ll carry him up for you.”