“Nothing save my own will,” Jamie agreed pleasantly. “But that’s some small obstacle, no?” His own eyes creased at the corners as they narrowed further.

“Mmphm.” Lovat’s eyes were almost closed, and he shook his head slowly from side to side. “Oh, aye, lad, you’re your father’s thon. Thtubborn as a block, and twith ath thtupid. I thould have known that Brian would thire nothing but fools from that harlot.”

Jamie reached forward and plucked the beechwood teeth from the plate. “Ye’d better put these back, ye auld gomerel,” he said rudely. “I canna understand a word ye say.”

His grandfather’s mouth widened in a humorless smile that showed the yellowed stump of a lone broken tooth in the lower jaw.

“No?” he said. “Will ye underthand a bargain?” He shot a quick look at me, seeing nothing more than another counter to be put into play. “Your oath for your wife’s honor, how’s that?”

Jamie laughed out loud, still holding the teeth in one hand.

“Oh, aye? D’ye mean to force her before my eyes, then, Grandsire?” He lounged back contemptuously, hand on the table. “Go ahead, and when she’s done wi’ ye, I’ll send Aunt Frances up to sweep up the pieces.”

His grandfather looked him over calmly. “Not I, lad.” One side of the toothless mouth rose in a lopsided smile as he turned his head to look at me. “Though I’ve taken my pleasure with worthe.” The cold malice in the dark eyes made me want to pull my cloak over my breasts in protection; unfortunately, I wasn’t wearing one.

“How many men are there in Beaufort, Jamie? How many, who’d be of a mind to put your thathenach wench to the only uth thee’s good for? You cannot guard her night and day.”

Jamie straightened slowly, the great shadow echoing his movements on the wall. He stared down at his grandfather with no expression on his face.

“Oh, I think I needna worry, Grandsire,” he said softly. “For my wife’s a rare woman. A wisewoman, ye ken. A white lady, like Dame Aliset.”

I had never heard of Dame Aliset, but Lord Lovat plainly had; his head jerked round to stare at me, eyes sprung wide with shocked alarm. His mouth drooped open, but before he could speak, Jamie had gone on, an undercurrent of malice clearly audible in his smooth speech.

“The man that takes her in unholy embrace will have his privates blasted like a frostbitten apple,” he said, with relish, “and his soul will burn forever in hell.” He bared his teeth at his grandfather, and drew back his hand. “Like this.” The beechwood teeth landed in the midst of the fire with a plop, and at once began to sizzle.

Most of the Lowland Scots had gone over to Presbyterianism in the two centuries before. Some of the Highland clans had gone with them, but others, like the Frasers and MacKenzies, had kept their Catholic faith. Especially the Frasers, with their strong family ties to Catholic France.

There was a small chapel in Beaufort Castle, to serve the devotional uses of the Earl and his family, but Beauly Priory, ruined as it was, remained the burying place of the Lovats, and the floor of the open-roofed chancel was paved thick with the flat tombstones of those who lay under them.

It was a peaceful place, and I walked there sometimes, in spite of the cold, blustery weather. I had no idea whether Old Simon had meant his threat against me, or whether Jamie’s comparing me to Dame Aliset – who turned out to be a legendary “white woman” or healer, the Scottish equivalent of La Dame Blanche – was sufficient to put a stop to that threat. But I thought that no one was likely to accost me among the tombs of extinct Frasers.

One afternoon, a few days after the scene in the study, I walked through a gap in the ruined Priory wall and found that for once, I didn’t have it to myself. The tall woman I had seen outside Lovat’s study was there, leaning against one of the red-stone tombs, arms folded about her for warmth, long legs thrust out like a stork.

I made to turn aside, but she saw me, and motioned me to join her.

“You’ll be my lady Broch Tuarach?” she said, though there was no more than a hint of question in her soft Highland voice.

“I am. And you’re… Maisri?”

A small smile lit her face. She had a most intriguing face, slightly asymmetrical, like a Modigliani painting, and long black hair that flowed loose around her shoulders, streaked with white, though she was plainly still young. A seer, hm? I thought she looked the part.

“Aye, I have the Sight,” she said, the smile widening a bit on her lopsided mouth.

“Do mind-reading, too, do you?” I asked.

She laughed, the sound vanishing on the wind that moaned through the ruined walls.

“No, lady. But I do read faces, and…”

“And mine’s an open book. I know,” I said, resigned.

We stood side by side for a time then, watching tiny spatters of fine sleet dashing against the sandstone and the thick brown grass that overgrew the kirkyard.

“They do say as you’re a white lady,” Maisri observed suddenly. I could feel her watching me intently, but with none of the nervousness that seemed common to such an observation.

“They do say that,” I agreed.

“Ah.” She didn’t speak again, just stared down at her feet, long and elegant, stockinged in wool and clad in leather sandals. My own toes, rather more sheltered, were growing numb, and I thought hers must be frozen solid, if she’d been here any time.

“What are you doing up here?” I asked. The Priory was a beautiful, peaceful place in good weather, but not much of a roost in the cold winter sleet.

“I come here to think,” she said. She gave me a slight smile, but was plainly preoccupied. Whatever she was thinking, her thoughts weren’t overly pleasant.

“To think about what?” I asked, hoisting myself up to sit on the tomb beside her. The worn figure of a knight lay on the lid, his claymore clasped to his bosom, the hilt forming a cross over his heart.

“I want to know why!” she burst out. Her thin face was suddenly alight with indignation.

“Why what?”

“Why! Why can I see what will happen, when there’s no mortal thing I can be doin’ to change it or stop it? What’s the good of a gift like that? It’s no a gift, come to that – it’s a damn curse, though I havena done anything to be cursed like this!”

She turned and glared balefully at Thomas Fraser, serene under his helm, with the hilt of his sword clasped under crossed hands.

“Aye, and maybe it’s your curse, ye auld gomerel! You and the rest o’ your damned family. Did ye ever think that?” she asked suddenly, turning to me. Her brows arched high over brown eyes that sparked with furious intelligence.

“Did ye ever think perhaps that it’s no your own fate at all that makes you what ye are? That maybe ye have the Sight or the power only because it’s necessary to someone else, and it’s nothing to do wi’ you at all – except that it’s you has it, and has to suffer the having of it. Have you?”

“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “Or yes, since you say it, I have wondered. Why me? You ask that all the time, of course. But I’ve never come up with a satisfactory answer. You think perhaps you have the Sight because it’s a curse on the Frasers – to know their deaths ahead of time? That’s a hell of an idea.”

“A hell is right,” she agreed bitterly. She leaned back against the sarcophagus of red stone, staring out at the sleet that sprayed across the top of the broken wall.

“What d’ye think?” she asked suddenly. “Do I tell him?”

I was startled.

“Who? Lord Lovat?”

“Aye, his lordship. He asks what I see, and beats me when I tell him there’s naught to see. He knows, ye ken; he sees it in my face when I’ve had the Sight. But that’s the only power I’ve got; the power not to say.” The long white fingers snaked out from her cloak, playing nervously with the folds of soaked cloth.