“Well, here I am, in paradise, so to speak, wi’ you and wine and biscuits, while Ian’s out tramping the pavements and worrying for his son.”
“Are you worried about Young Ian?” I asked, concentrating on my laces.
He frowned slightly, pulling on the other stocking.
“Not so much worried for him, as afraid he may not turn up before tomorrow.”
“What happens tomorrow?” I asked, and then belatedly recalled the encounter with Sir Percival Turner. “Oh, your trip to the north—that was supposed to be tomorrow?”
He nodded. “Aye, there’s a rendezvous set at Mullin’s Cove, tomorrow being the dark of the moon. A lugger from France, wi’ a load of wine and cambric.”
“And Sir Percival was warning you not to make that rendezvous?”
“So it seems. What’s happened, I canna say, though I expect I’ll find out. Could be as there’s a visiting Customs Officer in the district, or he’s had word of some activity on the coast there that has nothing to do wi’ us, but could interfere.” He shrugged and finished his last garter.
He spread out his hands upon his knees then, palm up, and slowly curled the fingers inward. The left curled at once into a fist, compact and neat, a blunt instrument ready for battle. The fingers of his right hand curled more slowly; the middle finger was crooked, and would not lie along the second. The fourth finger would not curl at all, but stuck out straight, holding the little finger at an awkward angle beside it.
He looked from his hands to me, smiling.
“D’ye remember the night when ye set my hand?”
“Sometimes, in my more horrible moments.” That night was one to remember—only because it couldn’t be forgotten. Against all odds, I had rescued him from Wentworth Prison and a death sentence—but not in time to prevent his being cruelly tortured and abused by Black Jack Randall.
I picked up his right hand and transferred it to my own knee. He let it lie there, warm, heavy and inert, and didn’t object as I felt each finger, pulling gently to stretch the tendons and twisting to see the range of motion in the joints.
“My first orthopedic surgery, that was,” I said wryly.
“Have ye done a great many things like that since?” he asked curiously, looking down at me.
“Yes, a few. I’m a surgeon—but it doesn’t mean then what it means now,” I added hastily. “Surgeons in my time don’t pull teeth and let blood. They’re more like what’s meant now by the word ‘physician’—a doctor with training in all the fields of medicine, but with a specialty.”
“Special, are ye? Well, ye’ve always been that,” he said, grinning. The crippled fingers slid into my palm and his thumb stroked my knuckles. “What is it a surgeon does that’s special, then?”
I frowned, trying to think of the right phrasing. “Well, as best I can put it—a surgeon tries to effect healing…by means of a knife.”
His long mouth curled upward at the notion.
“A nice contradiction, that; but it suits ye, Sassenach.”
“It does?” I said, startled.
He nodded, never taking his eyes off my face. I could see him studying me closely, and wondered self-consciously what I must look like, flushed from lovemaking, with my hair in wild disorder.
“Ye havena been lovelier, Sassenach,” he said, smile growing wider as I reached up to smooth my hair. He caught my hand, and kissed it gently. “Leave your curls be.
“No,” he said, holding my hands trapped while he looked me over, “no, a knife is verra much what you are, now I think of it. A clever-worked scabbard, and most gorgeous to see, Sassenach”—he traced the line of my lips with a finger, provoking a smile—“but tempered steel for a core…and a wicked sharp edge, I do think.”
“Wicked?” I said, surprised.
“Not heartless, I don’t mean,” he assured me. His eyes rested on my face, intent and curious. A smile touched his lips. “No, never that. But you can be ruthless strong, Sassenach, when the need is on ye.”
I smiled, a little wryly. “I can,” I said.
“I have seen that in ye before, aye?” His voice grew softer and his grasp on my hand tightened. “But now I think ye have it much more than when ye were younger. You’ll have needed it often since, no?”
I realized quite suddenly why he saw so clearly what Frank had never seen at all.
“You have it too,” I said. “And you’ve needed it. Often.” Unconsciously, my fingers touched the jagged scar that crossed his middle finger, twisting the distal joints.
He nodded.
“I have wondered,” he said, so low I could scarcely hear him. “Wondered often, if I could call that edge to my service, and sheathe it safe again. For I have seen a great many men grow hard in that calling, and their steel decay to dull iron. And I have wondered often, was I master in my soul, or did I become the slave of my own blade?
“I have thought again and again,” he went on, looking down at our linked hands…“that I had drawn my blade too often, and spent so long in the service of strife that I wasna fit any longer for human intercourse.”
My lips twitched with the urge to make a remark, but I bit them instead. He saw it, and smiled, a little wryly.
“I didna think I should ever laugh again in a woman’s bed, Sassenach,” he said. “Or even come to a woman, save as a brute, blind with need.” A note of bitterness came into his voice.
I lifted his hand, and kissed the small scar on the back of it.
“I can’t see you as a brute,” I said. I meant it lightly, but his face softened as he looked at me, and he answered seriously.
“I know that, Sassenach. And it is that ye canna see me so that gives me hope. For I am—and know it—and yet perhaps…” He trailed off, watching me intently.
“You have that—the strength. Ye have it, and your soul as well. So perhaps my own may be saved.”
I had no notion what to say to this, and said nothing for a while, but only held his hand, caressing the twisted fingers and the large, hard knuckles. It was a warrior’s hand—but he was not a warrior, now.
I turned the hand over and smoothed it on my knee, palm up. Slowly, I traced the deep lines and rising hillocks, and the tiny letter “C” at the base of his thumb; the brand that marked him mine.
“I knew an old lady in the Highlands once, who said the lines in your hand don’t predict your life; they reflect it.”
“Is that so, then?” His fingers twitched slightly, but his palm lay still and open.
“I don’t know. She said you’re born with the lines of your hand—with a life—but then the lines change, with the things you do, and the person you are.” I knew nothing about palmistry, but I could see one deep line that ran from wrist to midpalm, forking several times.
“I think that might be the one they call a life-line,” I said. “See all the forks? I suppose that would mean you’d changed your life a lot, made a lot of choices.”
He snorted briefly, but with amusement rather than derision.
“Oh, aye? Well, that’s safe enough to say.” He peered into his palm, leaning over my knee. “I suppose the first fork would be when I met Jack Randall, and the second when I wed you—see, they’re close together, there.”