Chapter Text
The Lady
Faith, Faith, Faith.
Faith, Faith, Faith.
Faith, Faith, Faith.
It was their last night in France.
The ship began boarding passengers at five in the morning, and they intended to be at the dock at half-four at the latest, just in case it wound up being more crowded than the captain had assured them it would be. It was a miracle, really, that they were able to leave so soon. Jamie’s cousin knew a man who knew a man who knew an esteemed captain, Guy Bernon, and upon learning of their situation, he offered them passage on a first-class ship to Edinburgh the following Monday. They’d offered payment, and he’d refused. The day after their meeting with him, a basket showed up on the doorstep: flowers, a deck of cards and set of marbles for Fergus, and a Mass card signed by the Captain and dedicated to the Fraser baby. Claire had cried.
Faith, Faith, Faith.
She felt that all she did was cry these days.
So they’d packed up the house as much as they could with five trunks between the four of them, and eventually all trunks were latched shut and set to wait by the front door (Fergus had had to stand on the last one to get it to close, but close it did, and that was all that mattered in the end). They’d purchased three novels to share between them, as well as arithmetic and history books, inkwells, and quills for Fergus—there would be a tutor on the ship, and though they weren’t certain how Fergus would feel about sitting down and doing schoolwork, they figured they’d at least give him the chance to do what other children his age were doing for once. They’d even mustered up the energy to say farewell to a few of their closer acquaintances, including Louise, to whom saying goodbye was harder than Claire had expected. Faith, Faith, Faith.
The weather had been clear for the past few weeks aside from the occasional light shower, so there was no reason to expect any trouble setting sail tomorrow. And with a seasoned captain such as Captain Bernon and only one twenty-four hour stop in the north of Spain, they expected a journey of three weeks or less. The ship was rumoured to be luxurious (“I dinna ken how any of the damn rolling, tipping, cramped things could be any kind of luxury,” Murtagh had grumbled, “But if it’ll take us home, you’ll no’ hear me complain. Much.”), and they were travelling free of charge. Really, on paper, everything looked perfect.
And yet it was the farthest thing from perfect. It was so despicably imperfect, any thought of luxury or happiness or luck made Claire feel sick to her stomach. It was sinful, this trip, unfair and desolate and hellish in its most literal sense. Tomorrow, she would board that ship without her daughter in her arms, and she would never be the same again.
Faith, Faith, Faith.
It almost didn’t feel real, all these preparations, and perhaps that’s why she was able to do them—she had been the one to lead most of their goodbyes, she had spoken more than Jamie in their meeting with the captain, and she had purchased all their books and Fergus’s school supplies. Even through tears that seemed to flow without her even knowing and with lips mumbling a never-ending mantra, she latched each trunk of luggage shut— Faith, Faith, Faith ; swept through all the rooms to make sure they hadn’t forgotten anything— Faith, Faith, Faith ; reminded Fergus to pack his knapsack with his deck of cards and schoolbooks— Faith, Faith, Faith . And yet with each step, each latch, each task completed, Claire’s stomach grew sicker and sicker and panic welled up in her throat because she knew she was another moment closer to leaving France forever— Faith, Faith, Faith — and another moment farther away from the last time she’d seen her daughter’s face— Faith, Faith, Faith . Some part of her expected a do-over; some part of her thought that she’d wake up tomorrow and she’d get to have another try, that somehow she would find a way to board the ship with a party of five rather than four, and though her stomach was sick, she didn’t fight herself over the thought too much—it was denial, to be sure, but it was keeping her just barely afloat, and she couldn’t sink now, not while there was planning and packing and hurrying to do.
It was easier to keep distracted during the day. The night was a different story. When everyone at last retired to their chambers, Claire was limited in her planning and packing and hurrying tasks. Faith, Faith, Faith . Jamie was there, of course, because Jamie was always there, but he grieved best in silence, and silence was not much of a distraction. They talked mildly about the journey, the ship, the captain, the tutor. They did not mention her to one another, except for in their nightly rosary (or, Jamie’s nightly rosary in which Claire half-participated) when Jamie would say, after the Apostle’s Creed and before the first Pater Noster , “For our daughter, Lord Jesus.”
Faith, Faith, Faith.
He couldn’t say her name, and Claire couldn’t stop saying it. In the dark, once Jamie turned on his side to fall into restless sleep, she turned the other direction and stared at the wall, and as in day, so in night: soundlessly, her lips moved.
“Faith, Faith, Faith.”
Through it all, Faith, Faith, Faith.
She’d been lying in the silence for near an hour now, Jamie’s deep breathing on the other side of the bed indicating his slumber. Part of her was desperate to wake him and beg him to talk to her, to ask about the baby’s hair one more time, to ask how she smelled. She wanted to talk about the shape of that little nose, the length of her fingernails, the newness of her, the warmth and coldness of her. But she could not bring herself to do it; she could not disturb what little rest her weary husband was able to get. She hadn’t slept for more than an hour at a time in what felt like an age, and despite her loneliness, she wouldn’t deprive Jamie of his sleep—at least one of them needed to be able to function.
Then, she heard it. Down the hall, a cry rang out, so softly at first she thought she might have imagined it. But then after a minute of silence, there it was again, just loud enough this time to convince her that it was, in fact, real. She sat up on the edge of the bed and waited, furrowing her brow in concentration, and the next time the noise came, it was loud enough, pained enough, to propel her into action.
She stood up and reached blindly for her yellow robe, tying it hastily around herself as she hurried out of the room and down the hall. She flung open the door of the last room on the right.
Fergus.
The child was writhing in his bed, curled up on his left side with his hands clutched to his chest and his hair matted with sweat. A pained expression plagued his usually smiling face, and though she’d only heard the loudest of his cries from her chambers, now that she was close, she could hear him whimpering constantly to himself, moaning and mumbling indecipherably in his sleep as he shook his head and kicked his legs restlessly. As she drew near to the bed, another one of those loud wails escaped his throat, and familiar words left his mouth:
“Non! S’il vous plait, stop, ça fait mal!”
It hurts.
Breathing heavily now herself, Claire sat with one knee on the bed and leaned over his little body to touch his head and grab his clammy hands. Her heart broke as he sobbed in his sleep.
“Fergus,” she said, her voice tight with concern. “Fergus, darling, wake up. Come on.”
“Arrêtez,” whimpered Fergus, pulling his hands away from her touch, “Please! Milord! Milord!”
“Fergus,” said Claire, more loudly than before, and she added a firm shake to his shoulder. “Fergus, you need to wake up.”
And with one more shake, his eyes flew open. To her sorrow but not her surprise, he sat up with a gasp and fought her still, and she ignored the cramping in her hollow abdomen as she climbed further onto the bed to half-wrestle, half-soothe him still, shushing him all the while.
“It’s all right, Fergus,” she insisted, taking his face in her hands and marvelling for the millionth time at the length of his eyelashes, even as she ached to see the panic, the agony in the eyes they framed. He had calmed ever so slightly, and she took the opportunity to press a long kiss to the middle of his forehead. She wrapped her arms around him. His body burned without fever. “You’re safe, Fergus. It’s just me. It’s only me.”
He half-fought for another moment, and then Fergus went limp in her grasp, choking out a few relieved puffs of breath when he realised where he was and who was with him. Unlike the first time, he said nothing at all—Claire supposed there was not much else to say. She knew, and he knew she knew, and he could not have had the energy to speak. So, he simply began to weep against her, no longer in alarm but in grief for his trials, and for the pain he’d endured in his body and his spirit.
Claire did not consider herself a particularly spiteful person, or an envious one. But for the past month, she’d been spiteful and envious indeed, and most things that people said to her sat in her stomach like jagged rocks: comments on the beauty of the ship they would board, on their luck and the kindness of the captain; offhand remarks about unwinding, dropped dishes, traffic, and the summer warmth; even, God forgive her, tears and grief. Suzette subtly crying to herself in the corridor and murmuring to the servants about her poor mistress made her head spin; Murtagh’s grumpiness was set to grate her into pulp. For none of this mattered: kindness or luxury ships or secondhand grief, and she wanted to shake everyone for it, to grab them by their shoulders and scream in panic because couldn’t they see what was happening to her? Didn’t they understand that her daughter was beneath the Earth? Didn’t they understand that nothing, nothing, nothing else mattered anymore, and nothing ever would, because Faith had been ripped from her grasping arms?
And Jamie…oh, God forgive her, Jamie. Jamie’s tears and sleeplessness, the glassy fog across his eyes, the forgetfulness that plagued his sharp mind—all these lit a fire of rage within her. Though the guilt of it tore her to bits, she couldn’t deny she resented his grief. Even as she longed for him to hold her in his arms, to wrap her up and hide her from the world; even as a kind of visceral fright she’d never known consumed her each time she remembered that he’d never even got to kiss his daughter goodbye; even as she grieved for him, she was unable to manage him grieving for himself.
Part of her had feared, for those first few weeks, that she’d never be able to feel anything for anyone but herself again.
But then, Fergus had brought her home, and he, gentle spirit that he was, had treated her with unending kindness and a kind of silent understanding—how a child his age could look her in the eye and seem to understand her pain was beyond her comprehension. He combed her hair for her; he brought her breakfast in bed; he even sat in a chair by her bed at night until she fell asleep, or until he thought she was—on four nights now she had heard him rise from his chair and whisper, “Goodnight, Milady,” in such a sweet voice she thought she might melt. Once, when he must have been extra certain she was sleeping deeply, she’d felt him brush his lips against her cheek. It was a burden that seemed brutally unfair to place upon him, being her caretaker, and still he took it up, even as she tried to shut herself away.
And she should have noticed—the redness of his eyes, the distance in his gaze when he thought she couldn’t see, the way he jumped at loud noises and avoided touch. But she was so caught up in her own grief that it wasn’t till that night, that dreadful night where she’d first heard him cry out, that she’d finally known what had happened to him. And as she’d held him to her breast, the same panic she felt for Faith rose within her: a churning dread for something that had already happened. Once he’d fallen back asleep, she’d wept for him so powerfully her ribs had ached.
Some corner of her mind feared that she might resent Fergus when she woke up in the morning, that the same anger she felt towards everyone else for expressing emotion might poison her against this little boy who had suffered so much. But when she woke up in the armchair by his bed, all she’d felt was sympathy of the fiercest and most protective kind, and she’d vowed that even though her heart was in pieces, she’d use every bit of it she could to look after Fergus.
And God help him, the boy was strong. Stubbornly so. Over the past few months, she and Jamie both had become accustomed to a certain melodrama from him; there was an element of theatre to every move he made. He was a sensitive little soul, and this often made her forget that he’d had to be so mature for so long, had to defend himself against a world that had never treated him kindly, which meant that in spite of his flair for the dramatic, he had long since mastered the art of shutting down his own emotions for his survival. And since she’d come home, he’d been so stoic that in her grief, Claire would forget what had happened to him; she would fall into her mantra and be unable to claw her way out towards reality. But then, in the night—not every night, but any night—she’d hear the crying, and she would run to find her way back to him. Comforting Fergus did not take away from her grief, did not make it easier to bear, but it reminded her in the worst way that she still had a job to do here on this Earth, that even as one child slept in a grave and would not wake, another cried in his bed and would not sleep. She owed them both her love, if in different ways.
Faith in her memory. Fergus in her arms. Both in what remained of her tattered heart.
“Are you all right, milady?” Fergus’s small voice, hoarse from weeping, broke through her thoughts, his breath still unsteady. One hand clung to her robe. Claire might have laughed had it not been so sad—he was the one who wept, and still he felt responsible for her.
“Yes,” she said, then paused, swallowing. She shook her head. “No. No, Fergus, I’m not. Are you?”
It took a moment for him to answer. “No.”
“No,” agreed Claire, hugging the child tighter to her and kissing his hair. “So we’ll just have to be not all right together. Okay, darling? We just hold tight and keep going, the both of us.”
She felt Fergus nod his head against her, and she kissed his hair some more and rocked him in her arms until the sniffling had stopped. She rubbed his back and whispered, “I’m going to stay with you until you’re asleep, like we’ve done before, okay? Just like you did for me.”
He looked up at her, and for a moment it seemed like he might argue as he’d done before, insisting that she needed rest and that he would be fine on his own, but he looked down at his own fist, still hooked tightly onto Claire’s dressing gown, and nodded his head. She wanted to offer him a smile, but couldn’t do so honestly, so instead she coaxed him into lying down again and drew the covers up to beneath his armpits, tucking them in on one side of his body and not the other, just how he liked it. She did smile just barely as he kicked the covers off of one foot and left it to hang somewhat awkwardly over the side of the bed, snuggling down comfortably against his sweat-soaked pillow.
“What time must I wake in the morning, milady?” asked Fergus, his voice husky with sleep already. That was the fortunate thing about the child—aside from the nightmares, he slept easily and solidly, so Claire didn’t have to worry about him lying awake, tossing and turning all night long.
“We have to be at the docks at half-four,” she said for the millionth time, and there was a certain comfort in reciting the mundane details of their schedule, “But we won’t wake you unless you want us to. You can sleep the whole morning, as far as I’m concerned. All our things are packed. Nothing left to fuss over.”
“My satchel,” said Fergus, and Claire looked over to see it on the armchair.
“Is right there in your chair,” she said, and touched his cheek. “Are you afraid you might forget it?”
A shake of a curly head.
Claire quirked an eyebrow in gentle amusement. “That we might?”
A small nod.
“Tell you what,” said Claire as she rose to her feet. She grabbed the small bag and brought it back to the bed, placing it beneath Fergus’s arm. “You can keep it with you all night, and that way when Milord and I come to get you, we won’t leave it behind, even if you sleep the whole time. All right?”
That seemed to satisfy Fergus, because he simply tucked the bag a little more tightly beneath his arm and nestled down further beneath the covers. He said, “Thank you, Milady.”
Whether the thanks were for the satchel, for waking him from his dreams, or just for being there, she was unsure. Still, she said, “You’re welcome, Fergus.
“Go to sleep now,” she said, and kissed his forehead. “Have lovely dreams.”
She placed her hand on top of his own, rubbing her thumb lightly against his skin, and within the minute he was out like a light, his chest rising and falling deeply and slowly, his expression peaceful, almost happy. Claire sat with him for another few minutes, just watching him breathe and be, before finally rising to her feet, touching one of his curls fondly, and making her leave.
She made her way down the hall, and, the stress of managing Fergus’s nightmares abiding, her mantra returned to the forefront of her mind, and she was so tired that she scarcely noticed that something was different. Silently, she slipped into her bed, careful not to wake Jamie. His warmth beside her felt more comforting than before. Eyes fluttering without her permission, she lay her head on her soft pillow, tucked a hand beneath it, and stared at the wall, then the backs of her eyelids.
Her lips barely moved, but her mind recited the words, each sacred in its own right.
Faith, Fergus, Faith.
Faith, Fergus, Faith.
Faith, Fergus, Faith.
At last, she slept.
The Lord
They’d been on this blasted ship for nearly a week now, and already Jamie was sick of it.
He’d never been much of one for the sea. He didn’t loathe it quite as much as Murtagh, who had been intolerable from the moment they’d stepped on board, but he hated the way the ground always moved beneath his feet, how he’d think he’d be fine to stand still and breathe for a moment before suddenly being rocked violently to his knees. And in some ways, he hated this ship more than any other he’d ever been on. Its fanciness was meant to distract, he supposed, from the fact that they were to be trapped in a wooden vessel for a time, each night of fine dining and exquisite music a mere distraction from the misery of being stranded on the ocean. Jamie disliked distraction. He disliked ado, disliked fanfare and ribbons, disliked the bizarre human tendency to mask inconvenience and pain with laughter and gold-trim.
Claire, on the other hand, kept herself busy every moment of every day. Sometimes it felt like he never saw her, which pained him. Sometimes it felt like when she was beside him, he still couldn’t see her, which pained him more. He missed her deeply. A few times now, he’d tried for more, turning over to kiss her neck in the night, the reflected blue light from the ocean dancing across her skin, and each time, she pushed him away, rolling over and curling up into a ball like a child. Each rejection was a new dagger in his chest.
Tonight, she stood in front of the mirror in their shockingly spacious cabin, donning her prettiest jewellery for the ship’s Friday night symphony. He would not be in attendance, and though he felt slightly guilty in rejecting the Captain’s invitation, he knew he could not bear it. Just another distraction, it was, another fanfare of lies. He needed his head clear; he could not forget for a moment his responsibility to Claire, to Fergus, to Lallybroch. If he forgot, even for a moment, that his child was buried in a foreign grave beneath people speaking a foreign tongue, never to be seen or held or kissed or told she was loved again, he’d have to remember again. The forgetting would be bliss. But the remembering would break him, and he couldn’t afford to break.
But being with Claire was not forgetting. There was not a moment when he looked at his wife and did not remember the pain she was in, the pain he had put her in, tied as his hands may have been. He longed to touch her, to feel her beneath him, to hold onto her tightly and never let go. And tonight…tonight she looked more beautiful than ever, and he ached to have her in his arms. Slowly, he rose from where he sat on the chaise longue and walked behind her, placing one hand on the curve of her waist and touching her rouged cheek with the other, leaving an intentional kiss on the crest of her ear.
“Christ, lass,” he murmured, nipping at her skin, “You’re beautiful.”
There was movement, and he was reeling backwards, his hand flying to clutch his cheek. The smarting slap delivered, Claire hurried away from him, snatching up her evening shawl from where she had it set out on their sourly chaste bed.
“Jesus Christ, Jamie,” she spat, her voice sounding wet, “You won’t even talk to me. You won’t say a word, and you just expect me to be there for you whenever you want me? Is that your idea of a happy marriage? Leave me to suffer on my own and come seek me out whenever you’d like a fuck?”
“Sassenach,” he breathed, shaking his head in dismay, “I—”
“You can sleep on the fucking chaise longue tonight,” she said, tucking her shawl around her. As she threw open the door, she snapped, “Don’t wait up.”
So here he lay, on the damned tiny chaise longue, unable to fall asleep from the discomfort of the couch and the buzzing of his brain. Claire had been gone for three and a half hours, give or take, and upon returning had immediately undressed and climbed into bed, curling up to face away from him. She was awake for a long time, going by her breathing, but she said nothing to him, and he let her be, slightly cross himself at her reaction to him earlier. She knew damn well he didn’t want her for just her body, and she also knew he didn’t have the words she wanted to hear—no matter how badly he wanted to, he could not ever say to her, “I brought our baby back, Claire. I saved our baby. I saved our daughter.”
Faith.
His throat tightened as he thought that this, this collection of impossible words, may be what stood between him and his wife forever, parting them with a mourner’s veil, denying them reconciliation.
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.
Claire did eventually fall asleep, just a few minutes before the one-and-a-quarter bells chimed, and Jamie pictured himself going to her, kissing her head, wrapping her in his arms. In sleep, she sometimes looked as she once had—hopeful, rested, happy. He wondered what she dreamt about now, if she dreamt at all.
Just as he was about to finally doze off, having found a semi-comfortable position on this godforsaken piece of French-made furniture, a noise from the adjacent room disturbed him. He opened his eyes, listening carefully. He heard it again, clearer this time to his attuned ears, and his heart clenched painfully. As he rose to his feet and moved as quietly but quickly as he could to the door connecting the two rooms of the suite, the third cry rang out.
“ Allez! Milord!”
Fergus’s nightmares were relentless. Foolishly, Jamie had hoped that due to his age, the lad might forget sooner what had happened to him, or at least be able to block the memory from his mind. But as one who had been held at the mercy of Jack Randall, he should have known better—it was the kind of memory one could never forget, no matter how hard one tried. It had gotten better, certainly, and thank Christ for that, but there were still nights when Jamie closed his eyes and Jack Randall made him open them again, leaving him grasping at the pillows as the shadows of that night at Wentworth clouded his mind and shrouded his heart. And now, the same kind of shadows hung around the boy who’d, by the grace of God, been given to him as a son, and Jamie loathed himself. He should have known better.
He should never have let Fergus out of his sight. He should have cut Randall’s throat when he had the chance. He should have run faster when he heard the lad cry. He should have done so many things, because now he could do nothing at all to stop his child from screaming in the night, and he thought he might die of grief. He should have known better.
He didn’t light a candle; the moon’s light was bright enough to allow him to walk through the room easily, but he did open the window slightly, hoping the sea breeze would help gently wake Fergus, who lay tossing and turning in his bunk. The room was intended to be a nursery, so it was quite small, but the captain had made adjustments for them: originally, he’d allotted Fergus a bunk in the children’s quarters, which were located on the other side of the ship, but Jamie and Claire had politely declined the offer. Not only did they worry that Fergus would have a nightmare without anyone there to wake him up and tend to him, but after what had happened, there seemed to be a different sort of silent consensus between them. Neither of them ever spoke of it, but Jamie could tell from the anxiety in his wife’s eyes and the way she breathed upon hearing the captain’s offer that the same thoughts plagued both of their minds: they feared leaving Fergus alone, away from their protection, lest once again evil hands come to maim him.
So, the captain had removed the crib from the nursery—a blessing in multiple parts—and added a small but cosy cot, a small desk, and an easel (in addition to an academic tutor for the children on the ship’s staff, there was also one who provided art lessons every day before tea, and Jamie and Claire had been surprised with how beautifully Fergus painted). Aside from a small baby rattle inside the chest of drawers (Jamie’s stomach had soured upon seeing it, and he’d tossed it angrily out the window into the rolling sea before Claire could find it) and a creaking rocking chair, the room had been transformed into small but tranquil room perfectly suited for a nine-almost-ten year old boy. Tonight, as Jamie eyed the child whimpering in his bed, he was grateful the rocking chair had been left in place.
He didn’t go over to the bed, not yet, instead snatching a spare blanket out of the trunk beneath the window. Suzette had knitted it specifically for the lad in his favourite shade of red, hoping it would provide him a bit of comfort and a bit of France on his journey to a foreign land. It was hard for Jamie to remember that, at times—while he and Claire were going home, Fergus was leaving his, and though he anticipated no major issues with the child acclimating to Scotland, he knew he still must maintain some degree of sensitivity to any amount of homesickness Fergus felt. Gazing at the blanket, he thought of what he would say if the boy ever asked to visit his motherland again. The image of his daughter’s grave flashed in his mind’s eye. He shuddered it away. He’d cross that treacherous bridge if and when Fergus led him to it.
The blanket tossed over his arm, he made his way over to Fergus’s bedside table and opened the small drawer to obtain what he needed. Then, slowly and without speaking, he leaned over the bed and scooped Fergus up into his arms, holding the lad firmly as he thrashed within his grip. He ignored the mild bursts of pain against his chest and shoulders as Fergus, still mostly asleep, fought him with helpless fists, and walked calmly over to the rocking chair. He dragged the chair out of its corner, leaving it somewhat centred in the small room, facing the wall that sported the open window so the moonlight would catch it at an angle. Carefully manoeuvring Fergus in his arms, he made the sign of the cross, pulled Fergus back against his chest, and sat down.
Jamie draped the blanket across both their laps, holding his arms across Fergus’s middle and resting his chin on the lad’s shoulder. He eyed the crucifix of the simple twine rosary he’d taken from Fergus’s drawer, then closed his eyes tightly.
“Credo in Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, creatorem caeli et terrae…”
Jamie prayed slowly and deliberately in a voice that was not quite a whisper, fingering the rosary with reverence. Fergus, now fully awake, gulped air in a desperate attempt to regulate his breathing, and as he struggled, Jamie tucked him closer to his chest, deepening his own inhales and exhales. Soon, the breaths Fergus took mirrored Jamie’s perfectly, and they breathed together, child and parent, in the glimmering blue moonlight. Nightmares and evil men and grief aside, it was almost peaceful.
And then, Fergus’s fingers came up to meet Jamie’s own, holding on to the knot he prayed over. A lump formed in Jamie’s throat, and he was glad his eyes were shut, that no water could spill from them. He resisted the temptation to stop the prayer, to kiss Fergus’s head, to whisper apologies and assurances and anything else he could to stop Fergus from suffering, because there was nothing he could say that could pry Jack Randall from the lad’s mind. Besides, if he were to speak, it would be through tears of his own, and he would not burden Fergus with his own sorrow. So, instead, he pulled Fergus closer again, covered one small hand with his own, and continued to pray, and if his voice wavered slightly as Fergus began to whisper along with him, neither of them paid it too much mind.
By the time the rosary was finished, Fergus’s head was lolling back gently against Jamie’s chest, and Jamie could hear his frequent yawns in the relatively quiet room. Jamie made the sign of the cross, and Fergus did the same, and then Jamie tucked the rosary safely into Fergus’s hands, squeezing once as a small gesture of comfort. Then, Jamie leaned back a bit more in the chair, taking the boy back with him, and began to rock, the loud creaking noise surprisingly soothing as they moved back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth. If Fergus had been in a better state, he likely would have protested furiously that he was not a baby and such treatment was entirely unnecessary, but as it was, he just yawned some more and leaned all his weight against his foster father, shifting to get more comfortable. And Jamie continued to rock, and rock, and rock, and soon, the sound of soft snoring reached his ears. He breathed deeply in contented relief. Finally, the lad could rest.
He’d intended to put the child back into bed the moment he fell asleep—Fergus slept like a log; he’d no concerns about waking him—but now that he had him in his arms, Jamie found himself rather disinclined to let go of him. One more minute, he’d reason, continuing to rock, and one minute turned to two, and two to three, and soon, the two o’clock bells tolled from somewhere deep in the ship. At last, he reluctantly shifted Fergus in his grip and rose to his feet.
He placed Fergus back into bed carefully, and, after replacing the rocking chair to its corner and closing over the window, he sat on the edge of the bed running a gentle hand across the lad’s curls, wild and untameable as his own. Finally, he took one of Fergus’s hands, tucked the knotted rosary into it, and stood up, kissing two of his fingers and touching them to Fergus’s forehead. Fergus’s fist tightened around the rosary. Fondly, Jamie smiled.
As quietly as he could, he snuck back into the main bedroom—Fergus may be able to sleep through a hurricane, but Claire was a different story entirely. When the floorboard creaked beneath his foot, he winced, swore beneath his breath, and looked up at the bed anxiously, but his wife’s frame remained undisturbed on the far side of the bed. Whether she was asleep or not, he could not tell; he wasn’t close enough to tell, but at the very least, she hadn’t been frightened or made restless by his own movement or Fergus’s cries. Jamie lowered himself onto the chaise longue, wincing again as it made noise beneath his weight. He gazed at the ceiling and thought of all that had happened this evening, and beyond it. The slap, the argument, the stony silence. The crying, the rocking chair, the quiet rosary. The brothel, the screaming, the man with empty eyes. Fergus. Faith. Claire.
Oh, Christ, Claire. Forgive me.
“Is he all right?” she asked in the darkness, surprising him. He looked up at the wooden ceiling, exhaling loudly.
“He’s asleep,” he said.
Claire said nothing, and her breathing evened out again. He assumed she’d gone to sleep, and he was just about to drift off himself, when her voice rang out one more time, pretty as winter bells in the quiet of their room.
“Come hold me, Jamie.”
And hold her he did. He came and curled up in the bed beside her, tucking her body safely into his own and breathing in the scent of her beautiful black hair. He kissed her cheekbone. She turned her head. He kissed her mouth. She kissed back.
He wasn’t quite sure when both of their faces had grown wet.
By the time the quarter hour bell had chimed, he’d fallen asleep with her head nestled beneath his chin, his last waking thought one of marvel at the music of her breath.