Faith. Our mother, Fanny had said. I’d looked more than once at the miniature in the locket—but it was too small to show anything more than a young woman with dark hair, maybe naturally curly, maybe curled and dressed in the fashion of the times.
No. It can’t be. I rolled over for the dozenth time, settling on my stomach and burying my face in the pillow, in hopes of losing myself in the scent of clean linen and goose down.
“It can’t be what, Sassenach?” Jamie’s voice spoke in my ear, sleepily resigned. “And if it can’t, can it not wait ’til dawn?”
I rolled onto my side in a rustle of bedding, facing him.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and touched him apologetically. His hand took mine automatically, warm and firm. “I didn’t realize I’d said it out loud. I was … just thinking about Fanny’s locket.”
Faith.
“Ach,” he said, and stretched himself a little, groaning. “Ye mean the name. Faith?”
“Well … yes. I mean—it can’t possibly … have anything to do with …”
“It’s no an uncommon name, Sassenach.” His thumb rubbed gently over my knuckles. “Of course ye’d … feel it. I did, too.”
“Did you?” I said softly. I cleared my throat a little. “I—I don’t really do it anymore, but for a time, just—just every now and then—I’d think of her, of our Faith—out of nowhere. I’d imagine I could feel her near me.”
“Imagine what she might look like—grown?” His voice was soft, too. “I did that, sometimes. In prison, mostly; too much time to think, in the nights. Alone.”
I made a small sound and hitched closer, laying my head in the curve of his shoulder, and his arm came round me. We lay still, silent, listening to the night and the house around us. Full of our family—but with one small angel hovering in the calm sweet air, peaceful as rising smoke.
“The locket,” I said at last. “It can’t possibly have anything whatever to do with—”
“No, it can’t,” he said, a cautious note in his voice. “But what are ye thinking, Sassenach? Because ye’re no thinking what ye just said, and I ken that fine.”
That was true, and a spasm of guilt at being found out tightened my body.
“It can’t be,” I said, and swallowed. “It’s only …” My words died away and his hand rubbed between my shoulder blades.
“Well, ye’d best tell me, Sassenach,” he said. “Nay matter how foolish it is, neither one of us will sleep until ye do.”
“Well … you know what Roger told me, about the doctor he met in the Highlands, and the blue light?”
“I do. What—”
“Roger asked me if I’d ever seen blue light like that—when I was healing people.”
The hand on my back stilled.
“Have ye?” He sounded guarded, though I didn’t know whether he was afraid of finding out something he didn’t want to know, or just finding out that I was losing my mind.
“No,” I said. “Or not—well, no. But … I have seen it. Felt it. Twice. Just a flash, when Malva’s baby died.” Died in my hands, covered with his mother’s blood. “But when Faith was born, when I was so ill. I was dying—really dying, I felt it—and Master Raymond came.”
“Ye told me that much,” he said. “Is there more?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “But this is what I thought happened.” And I told him, about seeing my bones glow blue through the flesh of my arms, the feeling of the light spreading through my body and the infection dying, leaving me limp, but whole and healing.
“So … um … I know this is nothing but pure fantasy, the sort of thing you think in the middle of the night when you can’t sleep …”
He made a low noise, indicating that I should stop apologizing and get on with it. So I took a deep breath and did, whispering the words into his chest.
“Master Raymond was there. What if—if he found … Faith … and was able to … somehow bring her … back?”
Dead silence. I swallowed and went on.
“People … aren’t always dead, even though it looks like it. Look at old Mrs. Wilson! Every doctor knows—or has heard—about people who’ve been declared dead and wake up later in the morgue.”
“Or in a coffin.” He sounded grim, and a shudder went over me. “Aye, I’ve heard stories like that. But—a wee babe and one born too soon—how—”