When? I wondered uneasily. When would it begin to happen? Not yet; I was almost sure of that. What was it, what would it be, that turned this gallant, honorable man from patriot to traitor? Who would he talk to, what would plant the deadly seed?
Lord, I thought in a moment of sudden, horrified prayer, please! Don’t let it be something I said to him!
The very idea made me shudder, in spite of the oppressive heat. The more I saw of how things worked, the less I knew. Roger worried a lot about it, I knew: the why of it. Why were a few people able to do this? What effect—conscious or unconscious—did travelers have? And what ought they to do about it if they—we—did?
Knowing what would happen to Charles Stuart and the Rising hadn’t stopped him, and it hadn’t stopped our being dragged into the tragedy, either. But it had—maybe—saved the lives of a number of men whom Jamie had led from Culloden before the battle. It had saved Frank’s life, or so I thought. Would I have told Jamie, though, if I’d known what the cost would be to him and me? And if I hadn’t told him, would we have been dragged into it anyway?
Well, there weren’t any bloody answers, no more than there had been the hundreds of other times I’d asked those bloody questions, and I heaved a sigh of relief as the gate to Bartram’s Garden came in sight. An hour in the midst of acres of cool greenery was just what I needed.
IN WHICH MRS. FIGG TAKES A HAND
JAMIE’S BREATH CAME SHORT, and he found that he was clenching and unclenching his fists as he turned in to Chestnut Street. Not as a means of controlling his temper—he had it well leashed and it would stay that way—but only to let out more of the energy inside him.
He was trembling with it, with the need to see her, touch her, have her tight against him. Nothing else mattered. There’d be words, there needed to be words—but those could wait. Everything could wait.
He’d left Rachel and Ian at the corner of Market and Second, to go on to the printshop to find Jenny, and he spared an instant’s quick prayer that his sister and the wee Quaker might get on well together, but this vanished like smoke.
There was a burning just under his ribs that spread through his chest and throbbed in his restless fingers. The city smelled like burning, too; smoke hung under a lowering sky. He noted automatically the signs of looting and violence—a half-burnt wall, the smudge of soot like a giant thumbprint on the plaster, broken windows, a woman’s cap snagged on a bush and left to hang limp in the heavy air—and the streets around him were full of people, but not those going about their business. Mostly men, many of them armed, half of them walking warily, glancing about, the rest standing in loose knots of excited conversation.
He didn’t care what was happening, providing only that it wasn’t happening to Claire.
There it was, Number 17; the neat brick three-story house that he’d rushed into—and out of—three days ago. The sight of it hit him in the pit of the stomach. He’d been in there perhaps five minutes and recalled every second. Claire’s hair, half brushed and clouding up around his face as he bent to her, smelling of bergamot, vanilla, and her own green scent. Her warmth and solidness in his arms, his hands; he’d grabbed her by the arse, her lovely round arse so warm and firm under the thin shift, and his palms tingled with the memory of instant lust. And no more than an instant later . . .
He pushed the vision of William out of his mind. William could wait, too.
His knock at the door was answered by the rotund black woman he’d seen on his first arrival, and he greeted her in much the same way, though with not quite the same words.
“Good day to ye, madam. I’ve come for my wife.” He stepped inside, past her open mouth and raised brows, and paused, blinking at the damage.
“What happened?” he demanded, rounding on the housekeeper. “Is she all right?”
“I expect she is, if you’re meaning Lady John,” the woman said, with a heavy emphasis on the name. “As to all this”—she rotated smoothly on her axis, gesturing toward the gouged, blood-smeared wall, the broken banister, and the iron skeleton of a chandelier, lying drunkenly in a corner of the foyer—“that would be Captain Lord Ellesmere. Lord John’s son.” She narrowed her eyes and glared at Jamie in a way that made it apparent to him that she knew damned well what had happened in the hallway above when he’d come face-to-face with William—and she was not at all pleased.
He hadn’t time to worry about her feelings and pushed past her as politely as possible, heading up the stairs as quickly as his twitching back muscles would allow.
As he reached the top of the stair, he heard a woman’s voice—but not Claire’s. To his astonishment, it was his sister’s voice, and he approached the farthest bedroom to see her back blocking the doorway. And over her shoulder . . .
He’d felt unreal ever since his conversation with William at the roadside. Now he was convinced that he was hallucinating, because what he thought he saw was the Duke of Pardloe, face contorted in annoyance, rising from a chair, clad in nothing but a nightshirt.
“Sit down.” The words were spoken quietly, but their effect on Pardloe was instantaneous. He froze, and everything in his face save his eyes went blank.
Leaning forward, Jamie peered over Jenny’s shoulder to see a large Highland dag in her hand, its eighteen-inch barrel trained steady on the duke’s chest. What he could see of her face was white and set like marble. “Ye heard me,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper.
Very slowly, Pardloe—yes, it really was him, Jamie’s eyes informed his dazed mind—took two steps backward and lowered himself into the chair. Jamie could smell the gunpowder in the priming pan and thought the duke very likely could, too.