"I was just thinking," I said, still snorting a bit, "if your definition of a good husband is one with money and position who doesn't beat his wife… what does that make you?"
"Oh," he said. He grinned. "Well, Sassenach, I never said I was a good husband. Neither did you. 'Sadist,' I think ye called me, and a few other things that I wouldna repeat for the sake of decency. But not a good husband."
"Good. Then I won't feel obliged to poison you with cyanide."
"Cyanide?" He looked down curiously at me. "What's that?"
"The thing that killed Arthur Duncan. It's a bloody fast, powerful poison. Fairly common in my time, but not here." I licked my lips meditatively.
"I tasted it on his lips, and just that tiny bit was enough to make my whole face go numb. It acts almost instantly, as you saw. I should have known then—about Geilie, I mean. I imagine she made it from crushed peach pits or cherry stones, though it must have been the devil of a job."
"Did she tell ye why she did it, then?" I sighed and rubbed my feet. My shoes had been lost in the struggle at the loch, and I tended to pick up stickers a cockleburs, my feet not being hardened as Jamie's were.
"That and a good deal more. If there's anything to eat your saddlebags, why don't you fetch it, and I'll tell you about it."
We entered the valley of Broch Tuarach the next day. As we came down out of the foothills, I spotted a solitary rider, some distance away, heading roughly in our direction. He was the first person I had seen since we had left Cranesmuir.
The man approaching us was stout and prosperous-looking, with a snowy stock showing at the neck of a serviceable grey serge coat, its long tails covering all but an inch or two of his breeches.
We had been traveling for the best part of a week, sleeping out-of-doors, washing in the cold, fresh water of the burns, and living quite well off such rabbits and fish as Jamie could catch, and such edible plants and berries as I could find. Between our efforts, our diet was better than that in the Castle, fresher, and certainly more varied, if a little unpredictable.
But if nutrition was well served by an outdoor life, appearance was another thing, and I took hasty stock of our looks as the gentleman on horseback hesitated, frowning, then changed direction and trotted slowly toward us to investigate.
Jamie, who had insisted on walking most of the way to spare the horse, was a disreputable sight indeed, hose stained to the knees with reddish dust, spare shirt torn by brambles and a week's growth of beard bristling fiercely from cheek and jaw.
His hair had grown long enough in the last months to reach his shoulders. Usually clubbed into a queue or laced back, it was free now, thick and unruly, with small bits of leaf and stick caught in the disordered coppery locks. Face burned a deep ruddy bronze, boots cracked from walking, dirk and sword thrust through his belt, he looked a wild Highlander indeed.
I was hardly better. Covered modestly enough in the billows of Jamie's best shirt and the remnants of my shift, barefoot, and shawled in his plaid, I looked a right ragamuffin. Encouraged by the misty dampness and lacking any restraint in the form of comb or brush, my hair rioted all over my head. It had grown as well during my sojourn at the Castle, and floated in clouds and tangles about my shoulders, drifting into my eyes whenever the wind was behind us, as it was now.
Shoving the wayward locks out of my eyes, I watched the cautious approach of the gentleman in grey. Jamie, seeing him, brought our own horse to a stop and waited for him to draw near enough for speech.
"It's Jock Graham," he said to me, "from up the way at Murch Nardagh."
The man came within a few yards, reined up and sat looking us over carefully. His eyes, pouched with fat, crinkled and rested suspiciously on Jamie, then suddenly sprang wide.
"Lallybroch?" he said unbelievingly.
Jamie nodded benignly. With a completely unfounded air of proprietorial pride, he laid a hand on my thigh and said, "and my lady Lallybroch."
Jock Graham's mouth dropped an inch or two, then was hastily drawn up again into an expression of flustered respect.
"Ah… my… lady," he said, belatedly doffing his hat and bowing in my direction. "You'll be, er, going home, then?" he asked, trying to keep his fascinated gaze from resting on my leg, bared to the knee by a rent in my shift, and stained with elderberry juice.
"Aye." Jamie glanced over his shoulder, toward the rift in the hill he had told me was the entrance to Broch Tuarach. "You'll have been there lately, Jock?"