He nodded, and leaned back against the wall of the carriage house, looking meditatively down his long nose at the wicker chest of paintings. I felt a strong reluctance to go back to the house, myself. The buildings were beautiful, a mellow gold in the late-fall sun, and the grounds were peaceful, well-ordered. The sound of cheerful voices came from the kitchen garden, several horses grazed contentedly in the paddock nearby, and far away down the distant silver river, a small boat came down, a four-oared piretta, its oars stroking the surface, brisk and graceful as a water strider.
“Where every prospect pleases, and only man is vile,” I remarked. Jamie gave me a brief glance of incomprehension, then returned to his thoughts.
So Jocasta would by no means sell Phaedre, and thought Phaedre knew it. I wondered exactly why. Because she felt some duty to the girl, as the child of her husband? Or as a subtle form of revenge on that long-dead husband, keeping his illegitimate daughter as a slave, a body servant? I supposed that the two were not entirely exclusive, come to that—I had known Jocasta long enough to realize that her motives were rarely simple.
There was a chill in the air, with the sun low in the sky. I leaned against the carriage house beside Jamie, feeling the stored warmth of the sun soak from its bricks into my body, and wished that we could step into the old farm wagon and drive posthaste back to the Ridge, leaving River Run to deal with its own legacies of bitterness.
But the note was in my pocket, crackling when I moved. YU CUM. Not an appeal I could dismiss. But I had come—and now what?
Jamie straightened suddenly, looking toward the river. I looked, too, and saw that the boat had drawn into the dock there. A tall figure sprang up onto the dock, then turned to help another out of the boat. The second man was shorter, and moved in an odd fashion, off-kilter and out of rhythm.
“Duncan,” I said at once, seeing this. “And Ulysses. They’re back!”
“Aye,” Jamie said, taking my arm and starting toward the house. “But they havena found her.”
RUNAWAY or STOLEN on the 31st of October, a Negro Wench, twenty-two years of Age, above middling Height and comely in Appearance, with a Scar on the left Forearm in the shape of an Oval, caused by a Burn. Dressed in an indigo Gown, with a green-striped Apron, white Cap, brown Stockings, and leather Shoes. No missing Teeth. Known by the Name of “FAYDREE.” Communicate Particulars to D. Innes, River Run Plantation, in the vicinity of Cross Creek. Substantial Reward will be paid for good Information.
I smoothed the crumpled broadsheet, which also sported a crude drawing of Phaedre, looking vaguely cross-eyed. Duncan had emptied his pockets and dropped a handful of these sheets on the table in the hall when he had come in the afternoon before, exhausted and dispirited. They had, he said, posted the bills in every tavern and public house between Campbelton and Wilmington, making inquiries as they went—but to no avail. Phaedre had vanished like the dew.
“May I have the marmalade, please?” Jamie and I were taking breakfast alone, neither Jocasta nor Duncan having appeared this morning. I was enjoying it, despite the gloomy atmosphere. Breakfast at River Run was normally a lavish affair, extending even to a pot of real tea—Jocasta must be paying her pet smuggler an absolute fortune for it; there was none to be found between Virginia and Georgia, to the best of my knowledge.
Jamie was frowning at another of the broadsheets, deep in thought. He didn’t take his eyes off it, but his hand roamed vaguely over the table, settled on the cream jug, and passed it across to me.
Ulysses, showing little sign of his long journey beyond a certain heaviness of the eyes, stepped silently forward, took the cream jug, replaced it neatly, and set the pot of marmalade beside my plate.
“Thank you,” I said, and he graciously inclined his head.
“Will you require further bloaters, madam?” he inquired. “Or more ham?”
I shook my head, my mouth being full of toast, and he glided off, picking up a loaded tray by the door, this presumably intended for Jocasta, Duncan, or both.
Jamie watched him go, with a sort of abstracted expression.
“I have been thinking, Sassenach,” he said.
“I would never have guessed it,” I assured him. “About what?”
He looked momentarily surprised, but then smiled, realizing.
“Ye kent what I told ye, Sassenach, about Brianna and the widow McCallum? That she wouldna scruple long to act, if Roger Mac were to be taking heed where he shouldn’t?”
“I do,” I said.
He nodded, as though verifying something to himself.
“Well, the lass comes by it honestly enough. The MacKenzies of Leoch are proud as Lucifer, all of them, and black jealous with it. Ye dinna want to cross one—still less to betray one.”
I regarded him warily over my cup of tea, wondering where this was leading.
“I thought their defining trait was charm, allied with cunning. And as for betrayal, both your uncles were past hands at it.”
“The two go together, do they not?” he asked, reaching across to dip a spoon in the marmalade. “Ye must beguile someone before ye can betray them, no? And I am inclined to think that a man who would betray is all the quicker to resent betrayal himself. Or a woman,” he added delicately.
“Oh, really,” I said, sipping with pleasure. “Jocasta, you mean.” Put in those terms, I could see it. The MacKenzies of Leoch had powerful personalities—I did wonder what Jamie’s maternal grandfather, the notorious Red Jacob, had been like—and I’d noted small commonalities of behavior between Jocasta and her elder brothers before.
Colum and Dougal had had an unshakable loyalty to each other—but to no one else. And Jocasta was essentially alone, separated from her family since her first marriage at fifteen. Being a woman, it was natural that the charm should be more apparent in her—but that didn’t mean the cunning wasn’t there. Nor yet the jealousy, I supposed.
“Well, plainly she knew that Hector betrayed her—and I do wonder whether she painted that portrait of Phaedre as a means of indicating to the world at large that she knew it, or merely as a private message to Hector—but what has that got to do with the present situation?”
He shook his head.
“Not Hector,” he said. “Duncan.”
I stared at him, absolutely open-mouthed. All other considerations aside, Duncan was impotent; he had told Jamie so, on the eve of his wedding to Jocasta. Jamie smiled crookedly, and reaching across the table, put a thumb under my chin and pushed my mouth gently shut.
“It’s a thought, Sassenach, is all I’m saying. But I think I must go and have a word wi’ the man. Will ye come?”
DUNCAN WAS IN the small room he used as a private office, tucked away above the stables, along with the tiny rooms that housed the grooms and stable-lads. He was slumped in a chair, looking hopelessly at the untidy stacks of papers and undusted ledgers that had accumulated on every horizontal surface.
He looked desperately tired, and a great deal older than when I had last seen him, at Flora MacDonald’s barbecue. His gray hair was thinning, and when he turned to greet us, the light of the sun shone across his face, and I saw the thin line of the harelip scar Roger had mentioned, hidden in the luxuriant growth of his mustache.
Something vital seemed to have gone out of him, and when Jamie delicately broached the subject upon which we had come, he made no attempt at all to deny it. In fact, he seemed glad, rather than otherwise, to have it out.
“Ye did lie wi’ the lass, then, Duncan?” Jamie asked directly, wanting to have the fact established.
“Well, no,” he said vaguely. “I should have liked to, o’ course—but what wi’ her sleeping in Jo’s dressing room . . .” At this reference to his wife, his face flushed a deep, unhealthy red.
“I mean, ye’ve had carnal knowledge of the woman, have ye not?” Jamie said, keeping a grip on his patience.
“Oh, aye.” He gulped. “Aye. I did.”
“How?” I asked bluntly.
The flush deepened, to such a degree that I feared he might have an apoplexy on the spot. He breathed like a grampus for a bit, though, and finally, his complexion began to fade back to something like normal.
“She fed me,” he said at last, rubbing a hand tiredly across his eyes. “Every day.”
Jocasta rose late and breakfasted in her sitting room, attended by Ulysses, to make plans for the day. Duncan, who had risen before dawn every day of his life, usually in the expectation of a dry crust or at most, a bit of drammach—oatmeal mixed with water—woke now to find a steaming pot of tea beside his bed, accompanied by a bowl of creamy parritch, liberally garnished with honey and cream, toast drenched in butter, eggs fried with ham.
“Sometimes a wee fish, rolled in cornmeal, crisp and sweet,” he added, with mournful reminiscence.
“Well, that’s verra seductive, to be sure, Duncan,” Jamie said, not without sympathy. “A man’s vulnerable when he’s hungry.” He gave me a wry glance. “But still . . .”
Duncan had been grateful to Phaedre for her kindness, and had—being a man, after all—admired her beauty, though in a purely disinterested sort of way, he assured us.
“To be sure,” Jamie said with marked skepticism. “What happened?”
Duncan had dropped the butter, was the answer, whilst struggling to butter his toast one-handed. Phaedre had hastened to retrieve the pieces of the fallen dish, and then hurried to fetch a cloth and wipe the streaks of butter from the floor—and then from Duncan’s chest.
“Well, I was in my nightshirt,” he murmured, starting to go red again. “And she was—she had—” His hand rose and made vague motions in the vicinity of his chest, which I took to indicate that Phaedre’s bodice had displayed her bosom to particular advantage while in such close proximity to him.
“And?” Jamie prompted ruthlessly.
And, it appeared, Duncan’s anatomy had taken note of the fact—a circumstance admitted with such strangulated modesty that we could barely hear him.
“But I thought you couldn’t—” I began.
“Oh, I couldna,” he assured me hastily. “Only at night, like, dreaming. But not waking, not since I had the accident. Perhaps it was being so early i’ the morning; my c**k thought I was still asleep.”
Jamie made a low Scottish noise expressing considerable doubt as to this supposition, but urged Duncan to continue, with a certain amount of impatience.
Phaedre had taken notice in her turn, it transpired.
“She was only sorry for me,” Duncan said frankly. “I could tell as much. But she put her hand on me, soft. So soft,” he repeated, almost inaudibly.
He had been sitting on his bed—and had gone on sitting there in dumb amazement, as she took away the breakfast tray, lifted his nightshirt, climbed on the bed with her skirts neatly tucked above her round brown thighs, and with great tenderness and gentleness, had welcomed back his manhood.
“Once?” Jamie demanded. “Or did ye keep doing it?”
Duncan put his head in his hand, a fairly eloquent admission, under the circumstances.