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Ian glanced back as the door to the… house closed behind them. He was glad to be away from the place- it had made him uncomfortable from the first moment he’d stepped in- but it did hold…
“Claire,” he said, turning to look at Jamie now. That word was statement, question, exclamation, and censure in a single syllable.
“Aye, Claire,” Jamie said, quietly, answering them all.
Ian glanced at his brother-in-law. He hadn’t heard that name cross his lips in twenty years. Even when she’d been among them, Jamie had rarely called her by her name, preferring to call her “Sassenach” in affectionate teasing. To hear her given name on his tongue seemed to cement the strangeness of the situation.
Jenny had told him that Jamie had spoken of Claire to her only twice in the time since she’d died.
No, he corrected his own thoughts, not died. Gone.
He felt suddenly furious with his sister-in-law for having left them. For having left Jamie. How could she not know how much they would need her? How much he would.
Jamie, seeming to catch his friend’s thought, answered it. “No, it isna what you’re thinking. She did not leave me, I sent her away.”
“Sent-” Ian began, stunned. That didn’t track with anything he knew of Jamie or Claire- they had been mad for each other from the moment they had met, so far as Ian could tell. For Jamie to have sent her away would have been…
Jamie sighed and stopped. He glanced around, then pulled Ian into one of the small alcoves between buildings that pockmarked the city of Edinburgh. Jamie faced his best friend, his blue eyes looking directly into Ian’s hazel, and for the first time, he spoke of Culloden.
“I knew I was dead, Ian,” he said, and his voice rang with that bleak emptiness that it had held for so long after Tcharlach’s cause had been lost. “Every man standing on Drumossie moor that day knew that the Prince’s cause was lost, and every man knew we would die in droves, but I knew more than that. If I did not die on the moor- if I tried to run or even if I were to somehow survive the battle,” and here his eyes lit with a wry amusement, for this he had done, “still I knew that I would be dead. If not there, then at Tower Hill in London, upon the scaffold.”
Yes, Ian knew that. Had known it, even then, though he had not gone with Jamie to war. Not that time.
“I chose to die at swordpoint, standing for Scotland. But I couldna do it with Claire by my side. And she would have been too,” Jamie shook his head, and looked away from his friend to hide the tears that had sprung to his eyes. “She said that she would put on breeks and go to the field with me. Die beside me. The brave wee fool.” He shook his head at that. “But I couldna do it. I did not have the strength to do what must be done if it meant her death. So I sent her away.”
“But did you never look for her?” Ian asked, appalled. They had all believed her dead for twenty years and Jamie had…
“After Culloden? How?” Jamie sounded angry now. “In case you’ve forgotten, I lived in a cave.”
“I could have looked for her,” Ian objected. “Or Jenny. Or Jared. Or your uncle Alexander. Anyone could have done it.”
“And if she’d been alive and we’d found her, what then? What had she to return to? A fugitive husband? Starvation? The chance of being arrested as a traitor along with me? No. If she were by some miracle alive, she was safe.”
“But what about-”
“I did look for her once,” Jamie interrupted. “When… after I left Lallybroch.”
During his years as a prisoner and a slave, Ian knew he meant.
“I thought… maybe. But she wasna there, and I knew for certain then that she was dead. Or thought I did.”
He must have done. So many things would have been different in the last few years had he harboured even the smallest doubt that Claire still lived, Ian was sure.
“But now she’s back,” Ian said.
It was as though a fugitive sunbeam fell on his brother’s face then. He smiled, and his eyes lit with life again. “Aye. Now she’s back.”
Ian did hate to see that look go, but there was still one thing to ask. “And Laoghaire? Does she know?”
Jamie’s mouth compressed, and Ian knew that she did not.
“Come along,” Jamie said, not answering the question. “We must find your son.”