“Must have been rather special in bed, at least,” I said flippantly. “Runs in the family, I expect.”

He cast me a mildly shocked look, which dissolved into a sheepish grin.

“Aye, well,” he said. “If he was or no, it didna help him much. The Dowager’s maids spoke up against him, and Simon was outlawed and had to flee to France.”

Forced marriages and outlawry, hm? I refrained from further remark on family resemblances, but privately trusted that Jamie wouldn’t follow in his grandfather’s footsteps with regard to subsequent wives. One had apparently been insufficient for Simon.

“He went to visit King James in Rome and swear his fealty to the Stuarts,” Jamie went on, “and then turned round and went straight to William of Orange, King of England, who was visiting in France. He got James to promise him his title and estates, should a restoration come about, and then – God knows how – got a full pardon from William, and was able to come home to Scotland.”

Now it was my turn for raised eyebrows. Apparently it wasn’t just attractiveness to the opposite sex, then.

Simon had continued his adventures by returning later to France, this time to spy on the Jacobites. Being found out, he was thrown into prison, but escaped, returned to Scotland, masterminded the assembling of the clans under the guise of a hunting-party on the Braes of Mar in 1715 – and then managed to get full credit with the English Crown for putting down the resultant Rising.

“Proper old twister, isn’t he?” I said, completely intrigued. “Though I suppose he can’t have been so old then; only in his forties.” Having heard that Lord Lovat was now in his middle seventies, I had been expecting something fairly doddering and decrepit, but was rapidly revising my expectations, in view of these stories.

“My grandsire,” Jamie observed evenly, “has by all reports got a character that would enable him to hide conveniently behind a spiral staircase. Anyway,” he went on, dismissing his grandfather’s character with a wave of his hand, “then he married Margaret Grant, the Grant o’ Grant’s daughter. It was after she died that he married Primrose Campbell. She was maybe eighteen at the time.”

“Was Old Simon enough of a catch for her family to force her into it?” I asked sympathetically.

“By no means, Sassenach.” He paused to brush the hair out of his face, tucking the stray locks back behind his ears. “He kent well enough that she wouldna have him, no matter if he was rich as Croesus – which he wasn’t – so he had her sent a letter, saying her mother was fallen sick in Edinburgh, and giving the house there she was to go to.”

Hastening to Edinburgh, the young and beautiful Miss Campbell had found not her mother, but the old and ingenious Simon Fraser, who had informed her that she was in a notorious house of pleasure, and that her only hope of preserving her good name was to marry him immediately.

“She must have been a right gump, to fall for that one,” I remarked cynically.

“Well, she was verra young,” Jamie said defensively, “and it wasna an idle threat, either; had she refused him, Old Simon would ha’ ruined her reputation without a second thought. In any event, she married him – and regretted it.”

“Hmph.” I was busy doing sums in my head. The encounter with Primrose Campbell had been only a few years ago, he’d said. Then… “Was it the Dowager Lady Lovat or Margaret Grant who was your grandmother?” I asked curiously.

The high cheekbones were chapped by sun and wind; now they flushed a sudden, painful red.

“Neither one,” he said. He didn’t look at me, but kept his gaze fixed straight ahead, in the direction of Beaufort Castle. His lips were pressed tightly together.

“My father was a bastard,” he said at last. He sat straight as a sword in the saddle, and his knuckles were white, fist clenched on the reins. “Acknowledged, but a bastard. By one of the Castle Downie maids.”

“Oh,” I said. There didn’t seem a lot to add.

He swallowed hard; I could see the ripple in his throat.

“I should ha’ told ye before,” he said stiffly. “I’m sorry.”

I reached out to touch his arm; it was hard as iron.

“It doesn’t matter, Jamie,” I said, knowing even as I spoke that nothing I said could make a difference. “I don’t mind in the slightest.”

“Aye?” he said at last, still staring straight ahead. “Well… I do.”

The steadily freshening wind off Moray Firth rustled its way through a hillside of dark pines. The country here was an odd combination of mountain slope and seashore. Thick growth of alders, larch, and birch blanketed the ground on both sides of the narrow track we followed, but as we approached the dark bulk of Beaufort Castle, over everything floated the effluvium of mud flats and kelp.

We were in fact expected; the kilted, ax-armed sentries at the gate made no challenge as we rode through. They looked at us curiously enough, but seemingly without enmity. Jamie sat straight as a king in his saddle. He nodded once to the man on his side, and received a similar nod in return. I had the distinct feeling that we entered the castle flying a white flag of truce; how long that state would last was anyone’s guess.

We rode unchallenged into the courtyard of Beaufort Castle, a small edifice as castles went, but sufficiently imposing, for all that, built of the native stone. Not so heavily fortified as some of the castles I had seen to the south, it looked still capable of withstanding a certain amount of abrasion. Wide-mouthed gun-holes gaped at intervals along the base of the outer walls, and the keep still boasted a stable opening onto the courtyard.

Several of the small Highland ponies were housed in this, heads poking over the wooden half-door to whicker in welcome to our own mounts. Near the wall lay a number of packs, recently unloaded from the ponies in the stable.

“Lovat’s summoned a few men to meet us,” Jamie observed grimly, noting the packs. “Relatives, I expect.” He shrugged. “At least they’ll be friendly enough to start with.”

“How do you know?”

He slid to the ground and reached up to help me down.

“They’ve left the broadswords wi’ the luggage.”

Jamie handed over the reins to an ostler who came out of the stables to meet us, dusting his hands on his breeks.

“Er, now what?” I murmured to Jamie under my breath. There was no sign of chatelaine or majordomo; nothing like the cheery, authoritative figure of Mrs. FitzGibbons that had welcomed us to Castle Leoch two years before.

The few ostlers and stable-lads about glanced at us now and then, but continued about their tasks, as did the servants who crossed the courtyard, lugging baskets of laundry, bundles of peat, and all the other cumbrous paraphernalia that living in a stone castle demanded. I looked approvingly after a burly manservant sweating under the burden of two five-gallon copper cans of water. Whatever its shortcomings in the hospitality department, Beaufort Castle at least boasted a bathtub somewhere.

Jamie stood in the center of the courtyard, arms crossed, surveying the place like a prospective buyer of real estate who harbors black doubts about the drains.

“Now we wait, Sassenach,” he said. “The sentries will ha’ sent word that we’re here. Either someone will come down to us… or they won’t.”

“Um,” I said. “Well, I hope they make up their minds about it soon; I’m hungry, and I could do with a wash.”

“Aye, ye could,” Jamie agreed, with a brief smile as he looked me over. “You’ve a smut on your nose, and there’s teasel-heads caught in your hair. No, leave them,” he added, as my hand went to my head in dismay. “It looks bonny, did ye do it on purpose or no.”

Definitely no, but I left them. Still, I sidled over to a nearby watering trough, to inspect my appearance and remedy it so far as was possible using nothing but cold water.