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"When ye were little, eh?" Ath "I’ve seldom seen a lass sae braw I’d say your ave hih to hed and wiped the back of his hand across his azed affectionately at her, brown eyes warm

"Ah, it’s fine to see ye, lassie You’re verra ive to be there when Ja her lip The ground was thick with bracken, and their path up the hill showed plain, where the green fronds that had overgrown the track had been crushed and knocked aside

"I don’t knohether he knows or not," she blurted "About lanced up at hi

"No, that’s true," he said slowly "But I a he maybe hadna ti, that last time he came, with Claire And then, it was such ahis lips, and glanced at her

"Your auntie’s been troubled about that," he said "Thinking that ye ht blame her"

"Blahaire" The brown eyes held hers, intent

A faint chill came over Brianna at the memory of those pale eyes, cold as marbles, and the woman’s hateful words She had dismissed them as siered unpleasantly in her ear

"What did Aunt Jenny have to do with Laoghaire?"

Ian sighed, brushing back a thick lock of brown hair that fell down across his face

"It was her doing that Jamie ly "We did think Claire was dead these many years"

His tone held a question, but Briannathe fabric across her knee This was dangerous ground; better to say nothing, if she could After a land--he was a prisoner there for so--"

"I know"

Ian’s brows shot up in surprise, but he said nothing; simply shook his head

"Aye, well When he came back, he was--different Well, he would be, aye?" He s the fabric of his kilt between his fingers

"It was like talking to a ghost," he said quietly "He would look at me, and smile, and answer--but he wasna really there" He took a deep breath, and she could see the lines between his brows, carved deep in concentration

"Before--after Culloden--it was different, then He was sair wounded--and he’d lost Claire--" He glanced briefly at her, but she kept still, and he went on

"But it was a desperate ti, of sickness or of starving There were English soldiers in the country, burning, killing When it’s like that, ye canna even think of dying, only because the struggle to live and keep your family takes all your time"

A shtened with a private aesture toward the hillside above theorse bush, halfway up It’s what I brought ye here to show ye"

She looked where he pointed, up the tangled slope of rock and heather, the hillside a riot of tiny flowers There was no sign of a cave, but the gorse bush stood out in a blaze of yellow blosso hiue I told him he must come down to the house wi’ me; that Jenny was scairt he’d die up here, all alone He opened one eye, all bright with the fever, and his voice was sae hoarse I could scarcely hear hi in the world seemed set on killin’ him, he didna mean to make it easy for theave her a wry glance "I wasna so sure he had thatto die or no, so I stayed with hiht, after all; he’s verra stubborn, ye ken?" His tone held a note of a ht to speak Instead she stood up abruptly, and headed up the hill Ianher

It was a steep clis Near the cave, she had to scraranite slope

The cavewidening into a sle at the bottom She knelt down and thrust her head and shoulders inside

The chill was immediate; she could feel daht to adapt to the dark, but enough light trickled into the cave past her shoulders for her to see

It was perhaps eight feet long and six feet wide, a di so low that one could stand upright only near the entrance To stay inside for any length of ti entoulps of the fresh spring air Her heart was beating heavily

Seven years! Seven years to have lived here, in cold griht

Wouldn’t you? said another part of her nition that she had felt when she had looked at Ellen’s portrait, and felt her fingers close on an invisible brush

She turned around slowly and sat down, the cave behind her It was very quiet here on the mountainside, but quiet in the way of hills and forests, a quiet that was not silent at all, but cos in the gorse bush nearby, of bees working the yelloers, dusty with pollen Far beloas the rushing of the burn, a low note echoing the rush of the wind above, stirring leaves and rattling twigs, sighing past the jutting boulders

She sat still, and listened, and thought she knehat Jamie Fraser had found here