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Eloise had the sweetest voice of them all. Not perfectly in tune, and rarely remembering the correct lyrics, but nevertheless, she sang as though she were drifting through a field of wildflowers, not squatting over a basin in the corner of her room in a brothel. Her songs were lewd and coarse, delivered in dulcet tones.
Fergus would hold a fresh cloth out for her and snatch it away at the last second, trying to disrupt her. When that didn’t work, he would pretend to sing along with her, prancing dramatically, and invariably she’d break, dissolving into giggles. They would both quickly cover their mouths, silencing their joy at the sound of the Madame’s heavy footsteps in the hall. Eloise was only a few years older than him, still a child herself.
For years, he would recall those silly songs, Eloise tapping a rhythm with her hair clip against the side of the basin. In the midst of depravity and abuse, she had found a way for them to be children, to stem the tide of misery, if only for a moment.
Fergus had been born on a tattered blanket in the corner of a dark room. He had learned to guard himself, to hide in shadows and disappear into the folds of drapery. If life insisted on punishing him for existing, then he would hide from life. He would find the splits in the seams where eyes did not linger.
He had relied on the rhythm of his movements to become invisible. The smooth motion of his hand brushing against an elbow, distracting from his other hand dipping into their pockets. Most people were content in their inattention. Until Milord.
He should have known. The man stood out in the crowds of pompous Frenchmen, his body disrupting the air, broad shoulders and a discomforting gaze. He should have noticed from the narrowed, darting glances that the man was no mark. But hubris overruled his better instincts
Madame had often told the girls their arrogance would attract ire. Too haughty in their replies, and fists met flesh with little recourse. Men paid as much for the pleasure as for the pain. Fergus learned this lesson himself but had forgotten it over time. And when the rugged Scot caught him at his game, the anticipation of his punishment filled his tiny frame with adrenaline, escape his only hope for survival.
What then to make of mercy? He had no knowledge of it, but recognized it nonetheless. Milord was the first person to ask something of him instead of taking what he wanted.
A new rhythm developed with Milord and Milady. Pride punctuated his narrow escapes. He found joy in not merely surviving but pleasing. Milady washed his hair whenever it grew matted with grime, her long fingers tracing a pattern through his curls, nearly putting him to sleep with the motion. She hummed under her breath, sweet songs whose words were not bawdy. He became soft with them, longing for Milord’s heavy hand to squeeze his shoulder in thanks. Sighing at the gentle press of Milady’s fingertips on his neck as she wished him a good sleep.
Arrogance. Soft and trusting, he had not noticed the world searching for him in the shadows, ready to sink its teeth into him again. Milord’s fists fell upon the Captain, too quick to count the blows. Had he cursed them? They who had done nothing to deserve this misery, who had rescued him from that life? He confessed to Milady one night as he imagined Milord dying in prison, but instead of striking him, she held him.
The drums at Prestonpans restarted their hearts. The blood had slowed in their veins, but he felt his heart shuddering as it sped up. All his life, death had tried to trip him up, sneaky and unexpected, and he ran from it. The battle had forced him to face it head on while it rushed at him through the fog. His skin had been cold until blood sprayed across his vision, wet and reeking of drained life. He must have been shouting. All the men were shouting, except for the ones sinking into the mud under his feet. When the drums disappeared, he could hear only his heartbeat, the pulse of raging life.
Milady’s heartbeat was nearly as fast as his own when she pressed him to her chest, her fingers no longer gentle against his neck, but desperate.
When had that been? It felt like years ago. Was he still a child at Prestonpans? What was he now?
“Milord. Milord, you must drink. Your lips are bleeding.”
Jamie’s eyes looked right through Fergus. He tilted his head and accepted the water, swallowing painfully and groaning with the effort. He had stopped shaking, and Fergus was grateful for it, the erratic movement disturbing in its intensity. But the rhythm of breath moving in and out had slowed and faltered, the space between too long, the drawing in too short. And now he worried Milord might be giving up, letting death settle into his weary bones.
Anger welled in Fergus at the thought. That after everything, he might be abandoned by both of them. That without Milord and Milady, the Murrays could not keep him, and he’d be left to starve in this strange land. There was no one to rob here. No one to sell himself to. He would rather have died on the battlefield.
“Go to bed, Fergus.” Jamie’s voice was raspy and raw with disuse. It was the most Fergus had heard him say since he returned.
“It is not so late, Milord. Dark from storms, but too early for sleep.”
Jenny had moved Jamie to a makeshift bed in the office, wanting to keep him from the chaos of the children. The fear of soldiers returning to take Jamie away cast a pall over the household. They’d practiced moving him quickly to the priest’s hole with him biting a strip of leather to keep from crying out in pain. After one attempt that had left him soaked in sweat and nauseated, he insisted there would be no other practice runs.
Fergus leaned in closer to Jamie, glancing around to make sure Jenny and Ian weren’t lurking in the hall. “You must tell me where Milady has gone. I can go to her, and protect her.”
Fergus drew back slightly at the startling focus of Jamie’s eyes on him. Despite his weakened state, a tremor of fear ran through Fergus at the power still held in Milord’s large frame, the rage that might be unleashed were he not exhausted from fighting to live through what seemed like endless days.
“She…” His voice faded, swallowed by a mist of sorrow.
Tears began to well in the corners of his eyes and Fergus felt desperation rise in his gut, stemming the sadness he’d unwittingly loosed in the man before him. Fergus opened his mouth to apologize. “Milord, I’m -”
He was interrupted by Jamie’s hand grasping the cuff of Fergus’s shirt, fingers trembling, still swollen and bruised. “No. ‘Tis no’ for you nor I to see her safe now.” A tear escaped the grip of his lashes and disappeared in the stubble of his cheek. “Ye must keep watch here now. Jenny and Ian need ye. The bairns need ye. Dinna… Dinna speak of her.”
His final words were not spoken as a command, but a plea. The vulnerability in his voice was as foreign a sound as pettiness would be from Milady. Fergus wanted to shake him, tell him to sit up and fight. To cut through the Redcoats with his blood-stained sword until he found her, and together they would run from this haunted land.
Death had not claimed her. This much Fergus knew. He told himself he would have felt it. His heart would have skipped a beat, his muscles gone slack if her spirit had been freed from its body. A chill would have filled the air in his lungs. But he had felt no such thing. Could Milord go on if she was truly gone? He did not believe it.
He looked down at Milord’s hand now grasping his knee, and he saw the strength of him slumbering beneath the surface. It was not gone. In that moment Fergus resolved to be the man Milord and Milady had encouraged him to be. He would protect this new family, ensure they survived the years ahead, so Milord might know he’d made the right decision that day in Paris, taking a chance on him. And should they live to find Milady again, that she, too, might be proud of what he’d become.