“I like the way ye say ‘us,’ Sassenach.”
I flushed a little. “I’m sorry. I know it’s you that has to do the dirty work. But—”
“I wasna joking, Sassenach,” he said softly, and smiled at me. “If I get torn limb from limb doin’ this, who’s going to stitch me back together, if not you?”
“Don’t even joke about being torn limb from limb.”
He looked at me quizzically, then nodded, accepting it.
“Or … I can send back an answer tellin’ him I have my hands full wi’ the local Loyalists and I daren’t leave them loose to cause mischief on the Ridge. And that, Sassenach, is more than halfway true, but I dinna think I want either to say such a thing to Cleveland—nor do I want to put my name to such a thing on paper. Say I did write that—and that someone amongst Cleveland’s acquaintance then takes it into his head to send my wee note to the newspapers in Cross Creek?”
That was a good point, and my stomach curled a little. Putting his name to any sort of political document these days could be essentially painting a target on his back. On all our backs.
“Still … it’s not as though anyone in western North Carolina has any doubts as to your loyalties,” I objected. “I mean, you were one of Washington’s field generals.”
“Aye, I was,” he said cynically. “‘Were’ being the significant word. Half the folk who ken I was a general—for the span of a month or so—also think that I’m a traitorous poltroon who abandoned my men on the battlefield. Which I did. It wouldna surprise any of them to hear I’d turned my coat red.”
And joining the Overmountain men to harass and murder Loyalists would go some way toward restoring his reputation as a dyed-in-the-wool patriot, I supposed.
“Oh, nonsense.” I got up and came behind him, putting my hands on his shoulders and squeezing. “No one who knows you would think that for a moment, and I’d be willing to bet that most people in North Carolina never heard of Monmouth and haven’t got even the slightest idea that you fought there—let alone what really happened.”
What really happened. True, he technically had deserted his men on the field in order to keep me from bleeding to death—even though the battle had ended, and the men in question were all county militias whose enlistment was already up or due to be up the next day. Only the fact that he had formally resigned his commission—in writing, such as it was—at that point had kept him from being court-martialed. That, and the fact that George Washington was so furious with Charles Lee’s behavior on the field at Monmouth that he was unlikely to turn on Jamie Fraser—a man who had followed him through those fields and fought alongside his men with courage and gallantry.
“Take three deep breaths and let them go; your shoulders are hard as rocks.”
He obediently complied with this instruction, and after the third breath bent his head so I could knead the back of his neck, as well as his shoulders. His flesh was warm, and touching him gave me a reassuring sense of solidity.
“But what I likely will do,” he said into his chest, “is to send Cleveland and the others each a bottle o’ the two-year-old whisky, along wi’ a letter saying that my barley’s just been cut and I canna leave it to rot, or there’ll be no whisky next year.”
That made me feel considerably better. The Overmountain men were rebels, and some—like Cleveland—might be bloodthirsty fanatics, but I was sure that all of them had their priorities straight when it came to whisky.
“Excellent thought,” I said, and kissed the back of his neck. “And with luck, we’ll have an early winter with a lot of snow.”
That made him laugh, and the tightness in my lower back relaxed, though my hands felt empty when I took them away.
“Be careful what ye wish for, Sassenach.”
The light of the setting sun was behind him now, his profile black in silhouette. I caught the glint of light on the bridge of his long, straight nose as he turned his head, and the graceful curve of his skull—but what caught at my heart was the back of his neck.
He ran a hand beneath the tail of his hair, lifting it casually as he scratched his head, and the sun shone pure and white as bone through the tiny hidden hairs that ran down the ridge of muscle there.
Only an instant, and he pulled loose his ribbon and shook out his hair over his shoulders, a fading, still-dark mass of bronze and silver, sparking in the sun, and it was gone.