“Jamie,” I said, striving for reasonableness. “You know what I am.”

“You’re my wife!”

“Well, that, too.” I flicked the idea aside with my fingers. “I’m a nurse, Jamie. A healer. You have reason to know it.”

He flushed hotly. “Aye, I do. And because ye’ve mended me when I’m wounded, I should think it right for ye to tend beggars and prostitutes? Sassenach, do ye no ken the sort of people that L’Hopital des Anges takes in?” He looked pleadingly at me, as though expecting me to return to my senses any minute.

“What difference does that make?”

He looked wildly around the room, imploring witness from the portrait over the mantelpiece as to my unreasonableness.

“You could catch a filthy disease, for God’s sake! D’ye have no regard for your child, even if ye have none for me?”

Reasonableness was seeming a less desirable goal by the moment.

“Of course I have! What kind of careless, irresponsible person do you think I am?”

“The kind who would abandon her husband to go and play with scum in the gutter!” he snapped. “Since you ask.” He ran a big hand through his hair, making it stick up at the crown.

“Abandon you? Since when is it abandoning you to suggest really doing something, instead of rotting away in the d’Arbanvilles’ salon, watching Louise de Rohan stuff herself with pastry, and listening to bad poetry and worse music? I want to be useful!”

“Taking care of your own household isna useful? Being married to me isna useful?” The lacing round his hair broke under the stress, and the thick locks fluffed out like a flaming halo. He glared down his nose at me like an avenging angel.

“Sauce for the gander,” I retorted coldly. “Is being married to me sufficient occupation for you? I don’t notice you hanging round the house all day, adoring me. And as for the household, bosh.”

“Bosh? What’s bosh?” he demanded.

“Stuff and nonsense. Rot. Horsefeathers. In other words, don’t be ridiculous. Madame Vionnet does everything, and does it several dozen times better than I could.”

This was so patently true that it stopped him for a moment. He glared down at me, jaw working.

“Oh, aye? And if I forbid ye to go?”

This stopped me for a moment. I drew myself up and looked him up and down. His eyes were the color of rain-dark slate, the wide, generous mouth clamped in a straight line. Shoulders broad and back erect, arms folded across his chest like a cast-iron statue, “forbidding” was precisely the word that best described him.

“Do you forbid me?” The tension crackled between us. I wanted to blink, but wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of breaking off my own steely gaze. What would I do if he forbade me to go? Alternatives raced through my mind, everything from planting the ivory letter-opener between his ribs to burning down the house with him in it. The only idea I rejected absolutely was that of giving in.

He paused, and drew a deep breath before speaking. His hands were curled into fists at his sides, and he uncurled them with conscious effort.

“No,” he said. “No, I dinna forbid ye.” His voice shook slightly with the effort to control it. “But if I asked you?”

I looked down then, and stared at his reflection in the polished tabletop. At first, the idea of visiting L’Hopital des Anges had seemed merely an interesting idea, an attractive alternative to the endless gossip and petty intrigues of Parisian society. But now… I could feel the muscles of my arms swell as I clenched my own fists. I didn’t just want to work again; I needed to.

“I don’t know,” I said at last.

He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

“Will ye think about it, Claire?” I could feel his eyes on me. After what seemed a long time, I nodded.

“I’ll think about it.”

“Good.” His tension broken, he turned restlessly away. He wandered round the drawing room, picking up small objects and putting them down at random, finally coming to roost by the bookshelf, where he leaned, staring unseeingly at the leather-bound titles. I came tentatively up beside him, and laid a hand on his arm.

“Jamie, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

He glanced down at me and gave me a sidelong smile.

“Aye, well. I didna mean to fight wi’ you, either, Sassenach. I’m short-tempered and over-touchy, I expect.” He patted my hand in apology, then moved aside, to stand looking down at his desk.

“You’ve been working hard,” I said soothingly, following him.

“It’s not that.” He shook his head, and reached out to flip open the pages of the huge ledger that lay in the center of the desk.

“The wine business; that’s all right. It’s a great deal of work, aye, but I dinna mind it. It’s the other.” He gestured at a small stack of letters, held down by an alabaster paperweight. One of Jared’s, it was carved in the shape of a white rose – the Stuarts’ emblem. The letters it secured were from Abbot Alexander, from the Earl of Mar, from other prominent Jacobites. All filled with veiled inquiry, misty promises, contradictory expectations.

“I feel as though I’m fighting feathers!” Jamie said, violently. “A real fight, something I could get my hands on, that I could do. But this…” He snatched up the handful of letters from the desk, and tossed them into the air. The room was drafty, and the papers zigzagged wildly, sliding under furniture and fluttering on the carpet.

“There’s nothing to get hold of,” he said helplessly. “I can talk to a thousand people, write a hundred letters, drink wi’ Charles ’til I’m blind, and never know if I’m getting on or not.”

I let the scattered letters lie; one of the maids could retrieve them later.

“Jamie,” I said softly. “We can’t do anything but try.”

He smiled faintly, hands braced on the desk. “Aye. I’m glad you said ‘we,’ Sassenach. I do feel verra much alone with it all sometimes.”

I put my arms around his waist and laid my face against his back.

“You know I wouldn’t leave you alone with it,” I said. “I got you into it in the first place, after all.”

I could feel the small vibration of a laugh under my cheek.

“Aye, you did. I wilna hold it against ye, Sassenach.” He turned, leaned down, and kissed me lightly on the forehead. “You look tired, mo duinne. Go up to bed, now. I’ve a bit more work to do, but I’ll join ye soon.”

“All right.” I was tired tonight, though the chronic sleepiness of early pregnancy was giving way to new energy; I was beginning to feel alert in the daytime, brimming with the urge to be active.

I paused at the door on my way out. He was still standing by the desk, staring down into the pages of the open ledger.

“Jamie?” I said.

“Aye?”

“The hospital – I said I’d think about it. You think, too, hm?”

He turned his head, one brow sharply arched. Then he smiled, and nodded briefly.

“I’ll come to ye soon, Sassenach,” he said.

It was still sleeting, and tiny particles of frozen rain rattled against the windows and hissed into the fire when the night wind turned to drive them down the flue. The wind was high, and it moaned and grumbled among the chimneys, making the bedroom seem all the cozier by contrast. The bed itself was an oasis of warmth and comfort, equipped with goose-down quilts, huge fluffy pillows, and Jamie, faithfully putting out British Thermal Units like an electric storage heater.

His large hand stroked lightly across my stomach, warm through the thin silk of my nightdress.

“No, there. You have to press a little harder.” I took his hand and pressed the fingers downward, just above my pubic bone, where the uterus had begun to make itself obvious, a round, hard swelling a little larger than a grapefruit.

“Aye, I feel it,” he murmured. “He’s really there.” A tiny smile of awed delight tugged at the corner of his mouth, and he looked up at me, eyes sparkling. “Can ye feel him move, yet?”