I blinked hard, unshed tears sliding down my temples.
“Bloody, bloody, f**king hell,” I said very softly. “Now what?”
JAMIE STOOPED WITHOUT thought, seized the girl by the elbows, and hauled her unceremoniously to her feet. Her one cheek bore a crimson patch where Claire had struck her, and for an instant, he had a strong urge to give her one to match on the other side.
He hadn’t the chance either to quell that desire or to execute it; a hand seized his shoulder to yank him round, and it was reflex alone that made him dodge aside as Allan Christie’s fist glanced off the side of his head, catching him painfully on the tip of the ear. He pushed the young man hard in the chest with both hands, then hooked a heel behind his calf as he staggered, and Allan dropped on his backside with a thud that shook the room.
Jamie stepped back, a hand to his throbbing ear, and glared at Tom Christie, who was standing staring at him like Lot’s wife.
Jamie’s free left hand was clenched in a fist, and he raised it a little, in invitation. Christie’s eyes narrowed further, but he made no move toward Jamie.
“Get up,” Christie said to his son. “And keep your fists to yourself. There’s nay need for that now.”
“Isn’t there?” cried the lad, scrambling to his feet. “He’s made a whore of your daughter, and you’ll let him stand? Well, and ye’ll play coward, auld man, I’ll not!”
He lunged at Jamie, wild-eyed, hands grabbing for his throat. Jamie stepped to the side, shifted weight back on one leg, and hooked the lad in the liver with a vicious left that drove his wame into his backbone and doubled him over with a whoof. Allan stared up at him, open-mouthed and the whites of his eyes showing all round, then subsided onto his knees with a thud, mouth opening and closing like a fish’s.
It might have been comical under other circumstances, but Jamie felt no disposition to laugh. He wasted no more time on either of the men, but swung round on Malva.
“So, what mischief is this ye’re about, nighean na galladh?” he said to her. It was a serious insult, and Tom Christie knew what it meant, Gaelic or not; Jamie could see Christie stiffen, in the corner of his eye.
The girl herself was already in tears, and burst into sobs at this.
“How can ye speak to me so?” she wailed, and clutched her apron to her face. “How can ye be so cruel?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” he said crossly. He shoved a stool in her direction. “Sit, ye wee loon, and we’ll hear the truth of whatever ye think ye’re up to. Mr. Christie?” He glanced at Tom, nodded toward another stool, and went to take his own chair, ignoring Allan, who had collapsed onto the floor and was curled up on his side like a kitten, holding his belly.
“Sir?”
Mrs. Bug, hearing the racket, had come out from her kitchen, and was standing in the doorway, eyes wide under her cap.
“Will ye . . . be needin’ anything, sir?” she asked, making no pretense of not staring from Malva, red-faced and sobbing on her stool, to Allan, white and gasping on the floor.
Jamie thought that he needed a strong dram—or maybe two—but that would have to wait.
“I thank ye, Mrs. Bug,” he said politely, “but no. We’ll bide.” He lifted his fingers in dismissal, and she faded reluctantly from view. She hadn’t gone far, though, he knew, just round the edge of the door.
He rubbed a hand over his face, wondering what it was about young girls these days. It was a full moon tonight; perhaps they truly did run lunatic.
On the other hand, the wee bitch had undoubtedly been playing the loon with someone; with her apron up like that, the bairn was showing plainly, a hard round swell like a calabash under her thin petticoat.
“How long?” he asked Christie, with a nod toward her.
“Six months gone,” Christie said, and sank reluctantly onto the offered stool. He was dour as Jamie had ever seen him, but in control of himself, that was something.
“It was when the sickness came late last summer; when I was here, helping to nurse his wife!” Malva burst out, lowering her apron and staring reproachfully at her father, full lip a-tremble. “And not just the once, either!” She switched her gaze back to Jamie, wet-eyed and pleading. “Tell them, sir, please—tell them the truth!”
“Oh, I mean to,” he said, giving her a black look. “And ye’ll do the same, lass, I assure ye.”
The shock of it was beginning to fade, and while his sense of irritation remained—in fact, it was growing by the moment—he was beginning to think, and furiously.
She was pregnant by someone grossly unsuitable; that much was clear. Who? Christ, he wished Claire had stayed; she listened to the gossip on the Ridge and she took interest in the lass; she’d know which young men were likely prospects. He’d seldom noticed young Malva particularly himself, save she was always about, helping Claire.
“The first time was when Herself was so ill as we despaired of her life,” Malva said, snapping him back to attention. “I told ye, Faither. It wasna rape—only Himself being off his heid wi’ the sorrow of it, and me, as well.” She blinked, a pearly tear sliding down the unmarked cheek. “I came down from her room late at night, to find him in here, sitting in the dark, and grieving. I felt so sorry for him. . . .” Her voice shook, and she stopped, swallowing.
“I asked could I fetch him a wee bite, maybe something to drink—but he’d drink taken already, there was whisky in a glass before him. . . .”
“And I said no, thank ye kindly, and that I’d be alone,” Jamie broke in, feeling the blood begin to surge in his temples at her recounting. “Ye left.”
“No, I didn’t.” She shook her head; the cap had come half off when she fell and she hadn’t settled it again; dark tendrils of hair hung down, framing her face. “Or rather, ye did say that to me, that ye’d be alone. But I couldn’t bear to see ye in such straits, and—I know ’twas forward and unseemly, but I did pity ye so much!” she burst out, looking up and then immediately dropping her gaze again.
“I . . . I came and touched him,” she whispered, so low that he had trouble hearing her. “Put my hand on his shoulder, like, only to comfort him. But he turned then, and put his arms round me, all of a sudden and grasped me to him. And—and then . . .” She gulped, audibly.
“He . . . he took me. Just . . . there.” The toe of one small buskin stretched out, pointing delicately at the rag rug just in front of the table. Where there was, in fact, a small and ancient brown stain, which might have been blood. It was blood—Jemmy’s, left when the wee lad had tripped on the rug and bumped his nose so it bled.
He opened his mouth to speak, but was so choked by outraged amazement that nothing emerged but a sort of gasp.
“So ye’ve not the balls to deny it, eh?” Young Allan had recovered his breath; he was swaying on his knees, hair hanging in his face, and glaring. “Balls enough to do it, though!”
Jamie gave Allan a quelling look, but didn’t bother replying to him. He turned his attention instead to Tom Christie.
“Is she mad?” he inquired. “Or only clever?”
Christie’s face might have been carved in stone, save for the pouchy flesh quivering beneath his eyes, and the eyes themselves, bloodshot and narrowed.
“She’s not mad,” Christie said.
“A clever liar, then.” Jamie narrowed his own eyes at her. “Clever enough to ken no one would believe a tale of rape.”
Her mouth opened in horror.
“Oh, no, sir,” she said, and shook her head so hard the dark curls danced by her ears. “I should never say such a thing of ye, never!” She swallowed, and timidly raised her eyes to meet his—swollen with weeping, but a soft dove gray, guileless with innocence.
“Ye needed comfort,” she said, softly but clearly. “I gave it ye.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose hard betwixt thumb and forefinger, hoping the sensation would wake him from what was plainly nightmare. This failing to occur, he sighed and looked at Tom Christie.
“She’s with child by someone, and not by me,” he said bluntly. “Who might it have been?”
“It was you!” the girl protested, letting her apron fall as she sat bolt upright on her stool. “There’s no one else!”
Christie’s eyes slid reluctantly toward his daughter, then came back to meet Jamie’s. They were the same dove gray, but they’d never possessed any trace of either guilelessness or innocence.
“I know of no one,” he said. He took a deep breath, squaring his stocky shoulders. “She says it wasn’t just the once. That ye had her a dozen times or more.” His voice was nearly colorless, but not from lack of feeling, rather, from the grip he had upon his feelings.
“Then she’s lied a dozen times or more,” Jamie said, keeping his own voice under as much control as Christie’s.
“Ye know I have not! Your wife believes me,” Malva said, and a steely note had entered her voice. She lifted a hand to her cheek, where the flaming color had subsided but where the print of Claire’s fingers was still clear, livid in outline.
“My wife has better sense,” he said coldly, but was conscious all the same of a sinking sensation at the mention of Claire. Any woman might find such an accusation shock enough to make her flee—but he did wish that she’d stayed. Her presence, stoutly denying any misbehavior by him and personally rebuking Malva’s lies, would have helped.
“Does she?” The vivid color had faded from the girl’s face altogether, but she had stopped weeping. She was white-faced, her eyes huge and brilliant. “Well, I’ve sense, as well, sir. Sense enough to prove what I say.”
“Oh, aye?” he said skeptically. “How?”
“I’ve seen the scars on your naked body; I can describe them.”
That declaration brought everyone up short. There was silence for a moment, broken by Allan Christie’s grunt of satisfaction. He rose to his feet, one hand still pressed to his middle, but an unpleasant smile upon his face.
“So, then?” he said. “Nay answer to that one, have ye?”
Irritation had long since given way to a monstrous anger. Under that, though, was the barest thread of something he would not—not yet—call fear.
“I dinna put my scars on display,” he said mildly, “but there are a number of folk who’ve seen them, nonetheless. I havena lain with any of them, either.”
“Aye, folk speak sometimes of the scars on your back,” Malva shot back. “And everyone kens the great ugly one up your leg, that ye took at Culloden. But what of the crescent-shaped one across your ribs? Or the wee one on your left hurdie?” She reached a hand behind her, cupping her own buttock in illustration.
“Not in the center, quite—a bit down, on the outer side. About the size of a farthing.” She didn’t smile, but something like triumph blazed in her eyes.
“I havena got—” he began, but then stopped, appalled. Christ, he did. A spider’s bite, taken in the Indies, that festered for a week, made an abscess, then burst, to his great relief. Once healed, he’d never thought of it again—but it was there.