“Well,” I said, drawing a deep breath. We were on slightly delicate ground here. “No. I mean, boys and girls do play together—like that. You know people dress differently then; I’ve told you. No one’s really covered up a great deal except when the weather’s cold.”
“Mmphm,” he said. “Aye, ye’ve told me.” He managed to convey the distinct impression that on the basis of what I’d told him, he was not impressed with the moral conditions under which his daughter was living.
He scowled at the picture again, and I thought it was fortunate that neither Bree nor Rodney was present. I had seen Jamie as lover, husband, brother, uncle, laird, and warrior, but never before in his guise as a ferocious Scottish father. He was quite formidable.
For the first time, I thought that perhaps it was not altogether a bad thing that he wasn’t able to oversee Bree’s life personally; he would have frightened the living daylights out of any lad bold enough to try to court her.
Jamie blinked at the picture once or twice, then took a deep breath, and I could feel him brace himself to ask.
“D’ye think she is—a virgin?” The halt in his voice was barely perceptible, but I caught it.
“Of course she is,” I said firmly. I thought it very likely, in fact, but this wasn’t a situation in which to admit the possibility of doubt. There were things I could explain to Jamie about my own time, but the idea of sexual freedom wasn’t one of them.
“Oh.” The relief in his voice was inexpressible, and I bit my lip to keep from laughing. “Aye, well, I was sure of it, only I—that is—” He stopped and swallowed.
“Bree’s a very good girl,” I said. I squeezed his arm lightly. “Frank and I may not have got on so well together, but we were both good parents to her, if I do say so.”
“Aye, I know ye were. I didna mean to say otherwise.” He had the grace to look abashed, and tucked the beach picture carefully back into the packet. He put the pictures back into his pocket, patting them to be sure they were safe.
He stood looking up at the moon, then, his brows drew together in a slight frown. The sea wind lifted strands of his hair, tugging them loose from the ribbon that bound it, and he brushed them back absentmindedly. Clearly there was still something on his mind.
“Do ye think,” he began slowly, not looking at me. “Do ye think that it was quite wise to come to me now, Claire? Not that I dinna want ye,” he added hastily, feeling me stiffen beside him. He caught my hand, preventing my turning away.
“No, I didna mean that at all! Christ, I do want ye!” He drew me closer, pressing my hand in his against his heart. “I want ye so badly that sometimes I think my heart will burst wi’ the joy of having ye,” he added more softly. “It’s only—Brianna’s alone now. Frank is gone, and you. She has no husband to protect her, no men of her family to see her safely wed. Will she not have need of ye awhile yet? Should ye no have waited a bit, I mean?”
I paused before answering, trying to get my own feelings under control.
“I don’t know,” I said at last; my voice quivered, in spite of my struggle to control it. “Look—things aren’t the same then.”
“I know that!”
“You don’t!” I pulled my hand loose, and glared at him. “You don’t know, Jamie, and there isn’t any way for me to tell you, because you won’t believe me. But Bree’s a grown woman; she’ll marry when and as she likes, not when someone arranges it for her. She doesn’t need to marry, for that matter. She’s having a good education; she can earn her own living—women do that. She won’t have to have a man to protect her—”
“And if there’s no need for a man to protect a woman, and care for her, then I think it will be a verra poor time!” He glared back at me.
I drew a deep breath, trying to be calm.
“I didn’t say there’s no need for it.” I placed a hand on his shoulder, and spoke in a softer tone. “I said, she can choose. She needn’t take a man out of necessity; she can take one for love.”
His face began to relax, just slightly.
“You took me from need,” he said. “When we wed.”
“And I came back for love,” I said. “Do you think I needed you any less, only because I could feed myself?”
The lines of his face eased, and the shoulder under my hand relaxed a bit as he searched my face.
“No,” he said softly. “I dinna think that.”
He put his arm around me and drew me close. I put my arms around his waist and held him, feeling the small flat patch of Brianna’s pictures in his pocket under my cheek.
“I did worry about leaving her,” I whispered, a little later. “She made me go; we were afraid that if I waited longer, I might not be able to find you. But I did worry.”
“I know. I shouldna ha’ said anything.” He brushed my curls away from his chin, smoothing them down.
“I left her a letter,” I said. “It was all I could think to do—knowing I might…might not see her again.” I pressed my lips tight together and swallowed hard.
His fingertips stroked my back, very softly.
“Aye? That was good, Sassenach. What did ye say to her?”
I laughed, a little shakily.
“Everything I could think of. Motherly advice and wisdom—what I had of it. All the practical things—where the deed to the house and the family papers were. And everything I knew or could think of, about how to live. I expect she’ll ignore it all, and have a wonderful life—but at least she’ll know I thought about her.”
It had taken me nearly a week, going through the cupboards and desk drawers of the house in Boston, finding all of the business papers, the bankbooks and mortgage papers and the family things. There were a good many bits and pieces of Frank’s family lying about; huge scrapbooks and dozens of genealogy charts, albums of photographs, cartons of saved letters. My side of the family was a good deal simpler to sum up.
I lifted down the box I kept on the shelf of my closet. It was a small box. Uncle Lambert was a saver, as all scholars are, but there had been little to save. The essential documents of a small family—birth certificates, mine and my parents’， their marriage lines, the registration for the car that had killed them—what ironic whim had prompted Uncle Lamb to save that? More likely he had never opened the box, but only kept it, in a scholar’s blind faith that information must never be destroyed, for who knew what use it might be, and to whom?
I had seen its contents before, of course. There had been a period in my teens when I opened it nightly to look at the few photos it contained. I remembered the bone-deep longing for the mother I didn’t remember, and the vain effort to imagine her, to bring her back to life from the small dim images in the box.
The best of them was a close-up photograph of her, face turned toward the camera, warm eyes and a delicate mouth, smiling under the brim of a felt cloche hat. The photograph had been hand-tinted; the cheeks and lips were an unnatural rose-pink, the eyes soft brown. Uncle Lamb said that that was wrong; her eyes had been gold, he said, like mine.