THE BENEFICIAL EFFECTS of half a bottle of wine were sufficient to get me up the stairs with Jamie’s supportive elbow, and I emerged into the open space of the third floor with a sense of exhilaration. There was a strong, cold breeze blowing from the east, and it swept away the last remnants of cooking, dog, sweaty young men, and left-too-long laundry from the house below. I spread my arms and my shawl flared out behind me like wings, my skirts pressed flapping round my legs.
“Ye look like you’re meaning to fly away, Sassenach,” Jamie said. “Maybe ye’d best sit down.” He sounded half serious but was smiling when I turned to look at him.
He had brought a stool up with him, along with the second bottle of wine. He hadn’t bothered with glasses but drew the cork with his teeth, sniffed the contents appraisingly, and then handed me the bottle.
“I dinna think decanting would improve it much.”
I was in no mood for niceties. The relief of having him home subsumed all minor considerations, and I wouldn’t have minded drinking water. Still, the wine was good, and I held a mouthful for a few moments before swallowing.
“This is wonderful,” I said, gesturing toward the view with the bottle. “I haven’t been up since we saw Bree and Roger off.” The memory of standing up here, watching their wagon disappear slowly into the trees, twisted my heart a little, but the Ridge spread out around us now in all its glory—and it was glorious, with flaming patches and sparks of autumn beginning to burn amongst the rippling cool dark greens and blues of spruce and fir and pine and sky. Here and there I could make out the white threads of chimney smoke, though the tossing trees hid the cabins themselves.
“Aye, it is,” Jamie said, though most of his attention was—naturally—focused on the timbers of the framing around us. The walls were skeletal but undeniably walls, and the rooftree and trusses creaked overhead. It was a remarkable feeling: to be inside a house and still outside, the solid floorboards under our feet marked with water stains from earlier rains and drifts of dry leaves caught in the corners of the framing timbers.
Jamie shook two or three of the uprights, grunting in satisfaction when they didn’t move.
“Well, those are no going anywhere,” he said.
“You built them,” I pointed out. “Surely you didn’t think they’d come loose?”
He made a noise indicating extreme skepticism, though I couldn’t tell whether he was skeptical of his own skills, the perversity of weather, or of the trustworthiness of building materials in general. Probably all three.
“I’ll maybe have time to get the roof on before snow flies,” he said, squinting up.
“And walls?”
“Ach. With a couple of men, I can do the outer walls in a day. Maybe two,” he amended, as a fresh blast of wind roared through the framing, whipping strands of hair out of the scarf I’d wrapped round it. “I can take my time with the plastering, over the winter.”
“It’s not as peaceful as the second floor when it was open,” I said. “But somewhat more exciting.”
“I dinna want the top of my house to be exciting,” he said, but he smiled and came to stand behind me, hands on my shoulders to keep me from blowing away.
“I don’t suppose we’ll really need it to be finished before spring,” I said, when the wind dropped enough to make speech possible. “None of our wanderers will be back before …” I trailed off, because in fact, there was no telling when—or if—everyone would come home. The war had already begun to move south, and the calming chill of approaching winter would be only a short delay of what was coming.
“They’ll be home safe,” Jamie said firmly. “All of them.”
“I hope so,” I said, and leaned back against him, wanting his firmness, of belief as well as body. “Do you think Bree and Roger have got to Charles Town yet?”
“Oh, aye,” he said at once. “It’s a bit more than three hundred miles, but the weather should have been fine for the most part. If they didna lose a wheel or meet a catamount, they’d make it in two weeks or so. I expect we’ll have a letter soon; Brianna will write to say that all is well.”
That was a heartening thought, in spite of the catamounts, but I thought the force of his belief was a little less.
“It will be fine,” I said, reaching back and wrapping a hand round his leg in reassurance. “Marsali and Fergus will be so happy to have Germain back again.”