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Jenny stayed by Jamie's side while his fever raged. She pressed cool cloths to his over-heated skin and changed the bandages on his leg––she did everything Claire would have and should have done. From Jamie's fevered rantings it was clear something horrifying had happened to Claire despite Fergus' assurances that the last he'd seen Milady, she had been well if a little pale and hungry; Jenny knew enough of the fighting and how it had been going to know they had all been weary and hungry.
"Still no sign or word of either Claire or Murtagh," Ian reported when he came in to check on them one evening.
"His fever's broken," Jenny was finally able to tell him. "I want to wake him and hear what he has to say but dinna want to tear him from his dreams as they sound a sight better than what he has to wake up to."
Ian rested a comforting hand on his wife's shoulder.
Jamie eventually woke on his own with a groan that startled Jenny from a light doze.
"So ye've decided to stay here with us among the living after all," she quipped before clapping her mouth shut. "I'm sorry, brother. I spoke wi'out thinking. I'm just relieved to see ye awake and sensible again."
"Aye," Jamie answered gruffly, blinking and thinking his way through everything Jenny had said as his mind caught up to his conscious state. "If decisions were made as to where I would end up, I wasna consulted about them."
The bitterness and pain in his voice were unmistakable and worry over it drove Jenny to speak without thinking a second time, this time from desperation.
"What happened Jamie? How did ye lose Claire?"
She watched his face crumble and reached out to pull him up and into her arms.
"Hush man, hush," she murmured as she patted his head the way she did with her own wee Jamie.
"Christ... that she might be safe," Jamie sobbed quietly. "She and the child."
Jenny froze. "Child? Oh, Jamie..." She pulled back to look into his broken face. "A child? I'm... so verra sorry, brother. To lose Claire..." She found she couldn't speak about her sister-in-law without the words tangling in her throat. A moment later she had recovered enough to add, "But, as ye said, they're safe wi' God––Claire... and yer bairn."
Jamie shook his head and wiped his eyes.
"She's no... Ach! Ye'll just think me mad," he muttered, moving to lie down again and turn away from Jenny.
"Do ye mean to say Claire's no dead?"
Some of what Jamie had said in his fevered state came back to her with renewed force to match her new understanding.
"Go lass––he'll care for ye... the bastard."
"Promise ye'll no look for me."
"I'll wait for ye, Sassenach... always."
There had been far more cries of "Claire––where are ye?" and "Stay wi' me, mo nighean donn; I'll no be long" that had over-shadowed the rest in Jenny's mind as she sat listening to him mumble in his sleep.
"Did ye send her away, Jamie?" Jenny asked gently and resting a hand on the warm, clammy skin of Jamie's bare arm. "Is she still alive? We can find her, Jamie. Ye thought ye'd die and didna want her in harm's way, but she'll come back soon as she hears ye're alive," Jenny insisted with quiet enthusiasm.
"She can't come back, Jenny," Jamie explained with yearning and desperation.
"Ye may have sent her somewhere ye think she'll be safer," Jenny continued to contradict, "but we can––and will––care for her and the bairn here at Lallybroch. We'll find––"
"She went through the fairy stones at Craig na Dun," Jamie spat. His face turned red as he covered it with the broad expanse of his cut-up and bruised hand and began to sob again.
There was a twinge in Jenny's chest that was the urge to laugh but watching her baby brother's shoulders heaving with the force of his grief, the impulse died in her rib cage.
"The fairy hill? Ye're saying... that Claire..."
"She's no wi' the fairies," Jamie said as he regained control of his sobbing, his breath still coming and going in heaving sighs. "She's no from this time to start with. She came from two hundred years hence––kent all about the Rising and still we couldna change it, couldna stop it or do any more than protect Lallybroch... I think we have––I pray we have... Lord," he prayed, "dinna take Lallybroch too."
Jenny was stunned but found herself rubbing Jamie's arm and back in an effort to calm him. "Lallybroch isna going anywhere," she said firmly. Whatever the shifting truth might be about Claire, of that fact Jenny was certain. The deed Jamie had sent with Fergus ahead of Culloden would be enough to protect the estate from being seized by the English. The more pressing concern was the health and welfare of the tenants. Word of English soldiers raiding the countryside and harassing the general population were already beginning to spread. As soon as he was well enough to move they would need Jamie to go into the priest hole with the extra store of potatoes; both would prove invaluable in the weeks and months––if not years––ahead.
Jenny gasped. The priest hole and potatoes. Both had been Claire's suggestions. Was it... possible?
Jenny looked at Jamie again. The lines of his pain and grief were already beginning to etch themselves deeply and permanently into his face. The burden he bore... She wouldn't add to it further by denying him someone to confide it.
"I believe ye," she told him. "About Claire. I believe ye. And I believe she's safe in her time along wi' yer bairn. And... perhaps ye were spared on the battlefield for a reason. Maybe it's no the last ye'll see of them; maybe ye lived so they could find ye again someday."
"Do ye really believe that?" he asked in a hopeless voice.
Jenny touched his cheek lightly and waited for him to look up at her.
"If Claire can pass through time on a fairy hill then she can find ye and come back to ye... and if she does she'll no thank ye for giving up on her now. Rest and heal as best ye can. I'm here, mo bhràthair."