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It should have felt victorious, taking my wife on the dining room table of the man who’d last had her.
A great many things should have been true, but weren’t.
Perhaps I’d expected too much. Perhaps this was the triage she’d spoken of; perhaps we’d only stemmed the bleeding, and that would have to be enough for now.
Still… it had been a great many years since the two of us were unable to resolve a lingering hurt between us with honest conversation and the joining of our bodies. It was hubris, I supposed, to have thought us beyond that — for even as Claire trembled in my arms, satisfied and gasping and mine, I found that I was no closer to smothering the blackened pit of betrayal within me than before we’d begun.
I made sure there was no sign of it on my face when I drew back to button my trousers and tuck in the shirttails. Even a mask of perfect neutrality, though, was telling to my wife. A terrible, swirling sense of helplessness sank through me as I watched her face fall, made all the worse because I didn’t know how to fix this. We would, I knew — we always did — but if there was a path out of this tangled bramble we found ourselves in, I couldn’t yet see it. My one abiding comfort was that I was married to a woman much braver than I; Claire had proven time and again that she would forge her own path out of sheer stubbornness if there was none to be found.
Because I cannot admit, she’d told me on the smoldering remains of our porch, that there is anything to do but go on.
When she rose at last from the table, she hesitated only a moment, wringing her finger at the knuckle, before moving her hand to my shoulder.
“You must be hungry,” she said, whisper-soft in the quiet of the empty house. “Come to the kitchen, let me see if I can find you something to eat.”
She was right, of course. I hadn’t had anything since breakfast, and my wame gave a roiling gurgle at the thought. It must have been loud enough for her to hear, for she smiled a little and took my hand. I closed my fingers over hers immediately, reflexively, and felt us both relax by a degree.
There was a small round table just inside the kitchen where Mrs. Figg had been shelling peas: a wicker basket of pods sat on the floor, the smooth green pearls separated into a bowl on the tabletop. I took a handful at once and popped them in my mouth, grunting with pleasure at the unexpected sweetness.
“You really are starving,” said Claire, and I glanced up just in time to catch her look of wry amusement before she ducked out of sight, rummaging below the counter. “Willingly eating your vegetables without being asked.”
Even in the familiarity of a well-loved joke, there was a strain beneath my ribs where the warm rumble of mirth should have been. I made a Scottish noise in my throat to try and ease it, and prayed my wife wouldn’t tell the difference. “Aye, well, I’m hoping ye’ve found somethin’ more tempting in yon cupboard than rabbit food, Sassenach.”
“Nothing fancy,” she admitted, placing a few linen-wrapped bundles and a knife on a silver tray. She began to pick it up by the handles, but paused to add a cluster of grapes from the fruit bowl before bringing it over to me. “But it should hold you over for now.”
I wasted little time in unwrapping the offerings, and even less before tearing ravenously into a hunk of good brown bread. There was cheese, too, and hearty strips of salt pork… even the fruit was appealing to me when I was this hungry.
“Plenty enough for us both,” I urged Claire when she settled in the chair opposite me.
She shook her head. “I’ve already eaten, thank you. Mrs. Figg made supper before she left.” I could feel her eyes on me, even when I couldn’t quite bring myself to meet them. After a moment, she reached over to stroke the hollow of my cheek with a curved finger. “You’re terribly thin, Jamie. How long was the crossing?”
“Eleven weeks,” I said gruffly around a mouthful of cheese and bread, “four days, and nine hours. Not that I was keeping track, mind.”
“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” she whispered. Her hand found mine on the tabletop, and without conscious thought, I turned my palm into hers and laced our fingers. “Was there no one to help you with the acupuncture? A-a ship’s surgeon, or—”
“Nah, I asked,” I interrupted softly, swallowing against the remembered nausea so horrific that it had finally driven me to such folly. “But the man was… He reminded me a great deal of Father Bain, d’ye recall? At Cranesmuir?”
“Of course.” I didn’t need to look at her to know that revulsion was etched into every line of her face. “He tried to have me burnt at the stake.”
“Mmphm.” I popped a grape in my mouth and chewed it thoughtfully for a moment before swallowing and continuing. “Thought the ship’s surgeon might do the same to me. Have me thrown overboard, I mean. He thought the wee needles were the Devil’s own instruments. Told the captain as much.”
“What did you do?”
I shrugged. “Convinced them I’d been bewitched. Flung the needles into the sea to break the hex.”
“And they believed you?”
“I’m here, am I no’?”
I meant it lightly; I hadn’t expected the crack in Claire’s voice when she answered. “You are. Thank God.”
I did look up at her then; how could I not?
Tear-rimmed eyes found mine and held, so raw with grief that I felt the gash through my own heart split anew, hemorrhaging with every wretched pulse. Our hands squeezed white on the tabletop, a lifeline — the bone to hold us when the blood ran dry.
“Ye ken,” I said hoarsely, “we had this same supper on our wedding night. And again at Madame Jeanne’s, the night you came back to me.”
Claire’s gaze dropped to the tray, and a single tear streaked from her lashes as she nodded, smiling tremulously. “So we did.” When she looked up again, a glint of humor twinkled in her eyes like a gold coin on a seabed, though it was another few seconds before she tried it aloud: “Should we find a quaint brothel for the night again, do you think?”
A tear of my own slipped loose as I gave a pant of a laugh. “Ken of any offhand, Sassenach?”
“No.” Her smile was achingly beautiful, fleeting as it was. The same thought seemed to occur to us in the same moment, sobering us both: where would we sleep, after all? I’d just begun to run through a mental catalogue of the taverns I’d seen nearby when Claire suddenly straightened, her face hardening with resolve. “I think we should stay here tonight.”
“Here?” My brows knitted before slackening again in bewilderment. “What, in the-the room where ye—?”
“In my room,” she clarified. “In my bed, with my husband. Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”
I hesitated, lips moving soundlessly for a moment before I wet them and shut them again. On the one hand, I appreciated her certainty, her air of possessiveness even moreso. On the other…
“Claire—”
She rose abruptly with the scrape of chair legs on the wooden floor. “Are you finished with this?” she asked, and barely waited for my stiff nod of agreement before sweeping the tray away and setting it on the counter. I sat motionless, feeling as if my limbs had gone to stone as she hastily re-wrapped the leftover cheese and meat and tucked them away in the cupboard again.
When she returned to me, extending a hand, I stared at it for a long moment before following the graceful line of her arm up to her face. The resolve was still there, the firm set of her chin and press of her lips, but her eyes were vulnerable when they met mine, damp and pleading.
I put my hand in hers, and didn’t look away.
The trek up the stairs was slow and creaking, a haunted echo of the climb to the gallows. There was a muffled ringing in my ears and my extremities had gone numb, save the faint, almost painful throb of my pulse in my fingertips. I couldn’t reconcile, at first, why it should be so difficult to face the same room I’d charged into myself less than an hour ago. But there was a certain level of protection, I supposed, in blind rage; it was the same power that could drive a sane man screaming across the battlefield, straight into the line of musket fire. Now that the blaze of anger had burned itself out, only the ashen husk of a man remained.
A man who loved his wife very… very much.
There were things she’d said to me earlier, things that I couldn’t process at the time — things I was not at all confident I had the capacity to process now. I would have no choice, though, for every step brought us closer to the room where I could not forget.
I’d gone with her, unresisting, up to that point. But the moment Claire crossed the threshold, I stopped short as if my feet had been bolted to the floorboards.
She turned back to look at me, but silhouetted against the moonlit window, her face was cast in shadow; I couldn’t make out her expression at all, couldn’t read her at a glance the way I would have by candlelight. But as soon as her hand withdrew from mine and began to untie her stays, a decades-deep memory stirred: the image of her face on another moonlit night, when she’d bared herself and come to find me, hiding under a blade of grass.
Piece by piece, Claire’s layers fell to the floor with the soft rustle of fabric — fichu and corset, ribbons and garters, shoes and stockings and finally her chemise. She was ethereal, almost glowing in the soft blue moonlight, just as she had been all those years ago.
Sorcha, I thought, and was surprised when she answered; I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud.
“What did you say?”
I swallowed against the lump in my throat. “Sorcha,” I said again, my voice croaky and deep, almost unrecognizable. “It’s your name, in the Gàidhlig, but it means… it also means ‘light.’”
She nodded very slowly, then took a half-step toward me. “You’ve never told me that before.”
“I hadna thought of it,” I told her honestly, “‘til just now.”
Christ, I wished I could see her face. The silence seemed to stretch on for an eternity before she spoke again, holding out both hands for me.
“Come here,” she whispered.
I wasn’t entirely sure that I could move, but then suddenly I was — staggering toward her on one stiff leg and then another, the force of her gravity more powerful than even the shackles of my own mutinous mind.
It should have only been the two of us there in that room, in that empty house on Chestnut Street. But we had summoned demons by daylight, and they’d bided their time; it was always in darkness that ghosts grew uncommon bold.
That night, mine were on the hunt.
There was breath on the back of my neck, cold and gurgling; with my first step over the threshold, my nostrils flared with the fetid reek of blood and lavender oil. At the foot of the bed, two familiar shadows writhed together on the floor, and I thought my wame would wrench itself up into my throat.
My footsteps shuffled and faltered.
“Jamie…”
I couldn’t find her eyes in the dark. But even in the act of searching, I looked away from the floor.
Another step. Two.
The moment I placed my hands in hers, Claire drew me the last step into her with a soft breath of relief. Our foreheads came together at once, the connection unbroken even as she made quick work of my clothes, relieving me of the layers with practiced hands until we both stood naked together. Closing my eyes, I tried to ground myself in the feeling of her fingertips on my face, not the icy whisper of the ones dancing over the ruin of my back.
“Let’s go to bed.” The words were a balm, familiar and tender even in this terrible place. In very great need of the distraction, I obliged without protest, lifting her into my arms and carrying her the few strides to the four-poster. The covers rustled in the silence as I pushed them down and lowered her onto the feather mattress, her arms locked tight around my neck to ensure I didn’t leave her. One of us was trembling as we laid down; I didn’t know which. A few adjustments of hips and shoulders, then my wife’s thigh nestled between mine, our ankles crossed together, and I squeezed my eyes tight again, focusing on her breathing, on the smell of her hair, the creamy smoothness of her skin, until my senses were filled with her and only her.
As soon as we were settled, Claire’s fingertips went back to stroking my face again, as though she were trying desperately to re-commit it to memory.
“I missed you,” she breathed, so faint that I could barely hear it, close as we were. “I can’t tell you how I— Jamie, I thought I’d never—”
I shook my head and leaned in to kiss her fiercely, tasting salt on her lips. Her breath shook against mine as she opened to me, and for a long while we did what we hadn’t on the godforsaken table downstairs: tasted and lingered, easing into one another again, aching from the words we’d flung in anger, apologizing and soothing.
By the time we drew away with one final, slow, delicate brush of lips, it was plain enough that we were both trembling. Closing my eyes on unshed tears, I moved slowly up to kiss the tip of her nose, the bridge, her brow.
“Rest, mo chridhe,” I told her, cuddling her into my chest. “It’s been a long day.”
At first, it seemed as if she would do just that; she nuzzled against the skin right over my heartbeat, and I thought perhaps the sound of it would soothe her as it often did. After a while, though, her fingertip began to draw faint serpentines on my chest, and I knew her mind was too troubled for sleep.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” she murmured at last, unmoving save that small, restless finger.
I was silent for what must have felt an eternity to her. We’d only just found a bit of peace between us; I had no great desire to upset her again. “I feel like I’ve already said a great deal today.”
“You asked a lot of questions,” she clarified, pulling back just slightly and propping herself on an elbow so she could look at me. “That isn’t the same thing.”
My eyesight had adjusted enough to be able to make out the general shapes of her features by moonlight — there was some trepidation there, but mostly curiosity, an earnest desire to know. I had to fight the instinctive desire to retreat into myself, to shield her from the darkest parts of me as if she had not already seen them flayed open in hideous, gruesome detail many times before. I knew she could bear it; I knew she could help. But still… still, I hated her to see me like this.
“There was one question you didn’t answer,” I reminded her at last, slowly, somberly. “And whether ye wish to or no, I… I need you to tell me the truth, Claire.” Bracing myself, jaw set and muscles drawn protectively tight, I looked away from her to the floor and ground out each word with grave deliberation: “Did… he… bugger you?”
Just as I’d expected, Claire recoiled from the question for a second time. “Why?” she seethed, outrage casting her face in long blocks of shadow. “What bloody difference would it make if—”
“Because of Randall,” I said in a gravelly rasp, and she cut off at once. I could feel her anger sputter out as if it had been doused in ice water, and after a stunned beat of silence she eased back toward me again, frowning, confused, but listening.
“Randall?”
I nodded once, stiffly. My hand sought hers, needing the anchor; she gave it, and squeezed. For several seconds, I simply rubbed the pad of my thumb back and forth over her knuckles, summoning the courage for vulnerability. When I found it, I began.
“I told you that he… forced me to picture you,” I explained haltingly, unable to meet her eye, “while he…”
“Yes,” she whispered.
Chills ran down my arms, pebbling the skin in gooseflesh. “That was the worst of it, Claire. Not the pain. The tenderness. Using… you… as torture, as relief… while he had me.”
The silence was so complete that I could hear her hair rustle as she nodded. She took a breath that cracked with tears. “I remember.”
“So to think of…” I swallowed, shaking my head faintly in mute horror before I found my voice again. “... of another man picturing me, while he did the same to you…”
Claire was moving before I’d even finished the thought, gathering me to her with frantic hands. “No.” She pressed her lips to my crown and cradled my head on her breasts, trying to wrap me in her smaller body. “Oh, Jamie, no, it wasn’t like that at all. It—” I felt her shake her head, at a loss. The two of us were quiet for several beats, clinging together, before she spoke again, very gently. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I didn’t know why you were asking, but… but no. He took me in the… traditional way.” When I lay unmoving and unresponsive on her breast, glazed-eyed, she smoothed my hair back from my temple. “Does that make it any better?” she asked, in the soft, knowing voice only a wife could have.
“I dinna ken,” I told her honestly, and with very little warning, began to clutch with jerking, wracking sobs.
“Oh, my love,” Claire breathed, and held on tight.
They were the last words either of us spoke for hours.
When I woke in her arms, just before dawn, it was only the two of us in the room.