"What is it, Sassenach?"
I took a deep breath. "Jamie… if I tell you something will you promise not to ask me how I know?"
He took me by both arms, looking down into my face. The rain misted his hair and small droplets ran down the sides of his face. He smiled at me.
"I told you that I wouldna ask for anything that ye dinna wish to tell me. Yes, I promise."
"Let's sit down. You shouldn't be standing on that foot so long."
We made our way to the wall where the overhanging slates of the roof sheltered a small dry patch of pavement, and settled ourselves comfortably, backs against the wall.
"All right, Sassenach. What is it?" Jamie asked.
"The Duke of Sandringham," I said. I bit my lip. "Jamie, don't trust him. I don't know everything about him myself, but I do know—there's something about him. Something wrong."
"You know about that?" He looked surprised.
Now it was my turn to stare.
"You mean you know about him already? Have you met him?" I was relieved. Perhaps the mysterious links between Sandringham and the Jacobite cause were much better known than Frank and the vicar had thought.
"Oh, aye. He was here, visiting, when I was sixteen. When I… left."
"Why did you leave?" I was curious, remembering suddenly what Geillis Duncan had said when first I'd met her in the wood. The odd rumor that Jamie was the real father of Colum's son Hamish. I knew myself that he wasn't, couldn't have been—but I was quite possibly the only person in the Castle who did know. A suspicion of that sort could easily have led to Dougal's earlier attempt on Jamie's life—if in fact that's what the attack at Carryarick had been.
"It wasn't because of… the lady Letitia, was it?" I asked with some hesitation.
"Letitia?" His startled astonishment was plain, and something inside me that I hadn't known was clenched suddenly relaxed. I hadn't really thought there was anything to Geilie's supposition, but still…
"What on earth makes ye mention Letitia?" Jamie asked curiously. "I lived at the Castle for a year, and had speech of her maybe once that I remember, when she called me to her chamber and gave me the raw side of her tongue for leading a game of shinty through her rose garden."
I told him what Geilie had said, and he laughed, breath misting in the cool, rainy air.
"God," he said, "as though I'd have the nerve!"
"You don't think Colum suspected any such thing, do you?" I asked.
He shook his head decidedly.
"No, I don't, Sassenach. If he had any inkling of such a thing, I wouldna have lived to be seventeen, let alone achieve the ripe old age of three-and-twenty."
This more or less confirmed my own impression of Colum, but I was relieved, nonetheless. Jamie's expression had grown thoughtful, blue eyes suddenly remote.
"Come to think on it, though, I don't know that Colum does know why I left the Castle so sudden, then. And if Geillis Duncan is goin' about the place spreading such rumors—that woman's a troublemaker, Sassenach; a gossip and a scold, if not the witch folk say she is—well, I'd best see that he finds out, then."
He glanced up at the sheet of water pouring from the eaves.
"Perhaps we'd best go down, Sassenach. It's getting a wee bit damp out."
We took a different way down, crossing the roof to an outer stairway that led down to the kitchen gardens, where I wanted to pull a bit of borage, if the downpour would let me. We sheltered under the wall of the Castle, one of the jutting window ledges diverting the rain above.
"What do ye do wi' borage, Sassenach?" Jamie asked with interest, looking out at the straggly vines and plants, beaten to the earth by the rain.
"When it's green, nothing. First you dry it, and then—"
I was interrupted by a terrific noise of barking and shouting, coming from outside the garden wall. I raced through the downpour toward the wall, followed more slowly by Jamie, limping.
Father Bain, the village priest, was running up the path, puddles exploding under his feet, pursued by a yelping pack of dogs. Hampered by his voluminous soutane, the priest tripped and fell, water and mud flying in spatters all around him. In a moment, the dogs were upon him, growling and snapping.
A blur of plaid vaulted over the wall next to me, and Jamie was among them, laying about with his stick and shouting in Gaelic, adding his voice to the general racket. If the shouts and curses had little effect, the stick had more. There were sharp yelps as the club struck hairy flesh, and gradually the pack retreated, finally turning and galloping off in the direction of the village.