I put a hand over his, stroking the grooves of his knuckles.

“Was he looking back at you?”

He snorted briefly.

“Aye, he was. Reckon he didna take his eyes off me from the time I came down the hill ’til my ship sailed away; I could feel them borin’ into my back like an auger. And when I looked at him, there he was, wi’ his eyes black under his brows, starin’ into mine.”

He fell silent, still looking at the castle, ’til I gently prodded him.

“How did he look, then?”

He pulled his eyes from the dark cloud mass on the far horizon to look down at me, the customary expression of good humor missing from the curve of his mouth, the depths of his eyes.

“Cold as stone, Sassenach,” he replied. “Cold as the stone.”

We were lucky in the weather; it had been warm all the way from Edinburgh.

“It’s no going to last,” Jamie predicted, squinting toward the sea ahead. “See the bank of cloud out there? It will be inland by tonight.” He sniffed the air, and pulled his plaid across his shoulders. “Smell the air? Ye can feel weather coming.”

Not so experienced at olfactory meteorology, I still thought that perhaps I could smell it; a dampness in the air, sharpening the usual smells of dried heather and pine resin, with a faint, moist scent of kelp from the distant shore mixed in.

“I wonder if the men have got back to Lallybroch yet,” I said.

“I doubt it.” Jamie shook his head. “They’ve less distance to go than we’ve had, but they’re all afoot, and it will ha’ been slow getting them all away.” He rose in his stirrups, shading his eyes to peer toward the distant cloud bank. “I hope it’s just rain; that willna trouble them overmuch. And it might not be a big storm, in any case. Perhaps it willna reach so far south.”

I pulled my arisaid, a warm tartan shawl, tighter around my own shoulders, in response to the rising breeze. I had thought this few days’ stretch of warm weather a good omen; I hoped it hadn’t been deceptive.

Jamie had spent an entire night sitting by the window in Holyrood, after receipt of Charles’s order. And in the morning, he had gone first to Charles, to tell His Highness that he and I would ride alone to Beauly, accompanied only by Murtagh, to convey His Highness’s respects to Lord Lovat, and his request that Lovat honor his promise of men and aid.

Next, Jamie had summoned Ross the smith to our chamber, and given him his orders, in a voice so low that I could not make out the words from my place near the fire. I had seen the burly smith’s shoulders rise, though, and set firm, as he absorbed their import.

The Highland army traveled with little discipline, in a ragtag mob that could scarcely be dignified as a “column.” In the course of one day’s movement, the men of Lallybroch were to drop away, one by one. Stepping aside into the shrubbery as though to rest a moment or relieve themselves, they were not to return to the main body, but to steal quietly away, and make their way, one by one, to a rendezvous with the other men from Lallybroch. And once regathered under the command of Ross the smith, they were to go home.

“I doubt they’ll be missed for some time, if at all,” Jamie had said, discussing the plan with me beforehand. “Desertion is rife, all through the army. Ewan Cameron told me they’d lost twenty men from his regiment within the last week. It’s winter, and men want to be settling their homes and making things ready for the spring planting. In any case, it’s sure there’s no one to spare to go after them, even should their leavin’ be noticed.”

“Have you given up, then, Jamie?” I had asked, laying a hand on his arm. He had rubbed a hand tiredly over his face before answering.

“I dinna ken, Sassenach. It may be too late; it may not. I canna tell. It was foolish to go south so near to the winter; and more foolish still to waste time in beseiging Stirling. But Charles hasna been defeated, and the chiefs – some of them – are coming in answer to his summons. The MacKenzies, now, and others because of them. He’s twice as many men now as we had at Preston. What will that mean?” He flung up his hands, frustrated.

“I dinna ken. There’s no opposition; the English are terrified. Well, ye know; you’ve seen the broadsheets.” He smiled without humor. “We spit small children and roast them ower the fire, and dishonor the wives and daughters of honest men.” He gave a snort of wry disgust. While such crimes as theft and insubordination were common among the Highland army, rape was virtually unknown.

He sighed, a brief, angry sound. “Cameron’s heard a rumor that King Geordie’s makin’ ready to flee from London, in fear that the Prince’s army will take the city soon.” He had – a rumor that had reached Cameron through me, from Jack Randall. “And there’s Kilmarnock, and Cameron. Lochiel, and Balmerino, and Dougal, with his MacKenzies. Bonny fighters all. And should Lovat send the men he’s promised – God, maybe it would be enough. Christ, should we march into London-” He hunched his shoulders, then stretched suddenly, shrugging as though to fight his way out of a strangling shirt.

“But I canna risk it,” he said simply. “I canna go to Beauly, and leave my own men here, to be taken God knows where. If I were there to head them – that would be something else. But damned if I’ll leave them for Charles or Dougal to throw at the English, and me a hundred miles away at Beauly.”

So it was arranged. The Lallybroch men – including Fergus, who had protested vociferously, but been overruled – would desert, and depart inconspicuously for home. Once our business at Beauly was completed, and we had returned to join Charles – well, then it would be time enough to see how matters went.

“That’s why I’m takin’ Murtagh with us,” Jamie had explained. “If it looks all right, then I shall send him to Lallybroch to fetch them back.” A brief smile lightened his somber face. “He doesna look much on a horse, but he’s a braw rider, is Murtagh. Fast as chain lightning.”

He didn’t look it at the moment, I reflected, but then, there was no emergency at hand. In fact, he was moving even slower than usual; as we topped one hill, I could see him at the bottom, pulling his horse to a halt. By the time we had reached him, he was off, glaring at the packhorse’s saddle.

“What’s amiss, then?” Jamie made to get down from his own saddle, but Murtagh waved him irritably off.

“Nay, nay, naught to trouble ye. A binding’s snapped, is all. Get ye on.”

With no more than a nod of acknowledgment, Jamie reined away, and I followed him.

“Not very canty today, is he?” I remarked, with a flip of the hand back in Murtagh’s direction. In fact, the small clansman had grown more testy and irritable with each step in the direction of Beauly. “I take it he’s not enchanted with the prospect of visting Lord Lovat?”

Jamie smiled, with a brief backward glance at the small, dark figure, bent in absorption over the rope he was splicing.

“Nay, Murtagh’s no friend of Old Simon. He loved my father dearly” – his mouth quirked to one side – “and my mother, as well. He didna care for Lovat’s treatment of them. Or for Lovat’s methods of getting wives. Murtagh’s got an Irish grandmother, but he’s related to Primrose Campbell through his mother’s side,” he explained, as though this made everything crystal clear.

“Who’s Primrose Campbell?” I asked, bewildered.

“Oh.” Jamie scratched his nose, considering. The wind off the sea was rising steadily, and his hair was being whipped from its lacing, ruddy wisps flickering past his face.

“Primrose Cambell was Lovat’s third wife – still is, I suppose,” he added, “though she’s left him some years since and gone back to her father’s house.”

“Popular with women, is he?” I murmured.

Jamie snorted. “I suppose ye can call it that. He took his first wife by a forced marriage. Snatched the Dowager Lady Lovat from her bed in the middle o’ the night, married her then and there, and went straight back to bed with her. Still,” he added fairly, “she did later decide she loved him, so maybe he wasna so bad.”