Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [365]
“I dinna ken. There’s no opposition; the English are terrified. Well, ye know; you’ve seen the broadsheets.” He smiled without humor. “We spit small children and roast them ower the fire, and dishonor the wives and daughters of honest men.” He gave a snort of wry disgust. While such crimes as theft and insubordination were common among the Highland army, rape was virtually unknown.
He sighed, a brief, angry sound. “Cameron’s heard a rumor that King Geordie’s makin’ ready to flee from London, in fear that the Prince’s army will take the city soon.” He had—a rumor that had reached Cameron through me, from Jack Randall. “And there’s Kilmarnock, and Cameron. Lochiel, and Balmerino, and Dougal, with his MacKenzies. Bonny fighters all. And should Lovat send the men he’s promised—God, maybe it would be enough. Christ, should we march into London—” He hunched his shoulders, then stretched suddenly, shrugging as though to fight his way out of a strangling shirt.
“But I canna risk it,” he said simply. “I canna go to Beauly, and leave my own men here, to be taken God knows where. If I were there to head them—that would be something else. But damned if I’ll leave them for Charles or Dougal to throw at the English, and me a hundred miles away at Beauly.”
So it was arranged. The Lallybroch men—including Fergus, who had protested vociferously, but been overruled—would desert, and depart inconspicuously for home. Once our business at Beauly was completed, and we had returned to join Charles—well, then it would be time enough to see how matters went.
“That’s why I’m takin’ Murtagh with us,” Jamie had explained. “If it looks all right, then I shall send him to Lallybroch to fetch them back.” A brief smile lightened his somber face. “He doesna look much on a horse, but he’s a braw rider, is Murtagh. Fast as chain lightning.”
He didn’t look it at the moment, I reflected, but then, there was no emergency at hand. In fact, he was moving even slower than usual; as we topped one hill, I could see him at the bottom, pulling his horse to a halt. By the time we had reached him, he was off, glaring at the packhorse’s saddle.
“What’s amiss, then?” Jamie made to get down from his own saddle, but Murtagh waved him irritably off.
“Nay, nay, naught to trouble ye. A binding’s snapped, is all. Get ye on.”
With no more than a nod of acknowledgment, Jamie reined away, and I followed him.
“Not very canty today, is he?” I remarked, with a flip of the hand back in Murtagh’s direction. In fact, the small clansman had grown more testy and irritable with each step in the direction of Beauly. “I take it he’s not enchanted with the prospect of visting Lord Lovat?”
Jamie smiled, with a brief backward glance at the small, dark figure, bent in absorption over the rope he was splicing.
“Nay, Murtagh’s no friend of Old Simon. He loved my father dearly”—his mouth quirked to one side—“and my mother, as well. He didna care for Lovat’s treatment of them. Or for Lovat’s methods of getting wives. Murtagh’s got an Irish grandmother, but he’s related to Primrose Campbell through his mother’s side,” he explained, as though this made everything crystal clear.
“Who’s Primrose Campbell?” I asked, bewildered.
“Oh.” Jamie scratched his nose, considering. The wind off the sea was rising steadily, and his hair was being whipped from its lacing, ruddy wisps flickering past his face.
“Primrose Cambell was Lovat’s third wife—still is, I suppose,” he added, “though she’s left him some years since and gone back to her father’s house.”
“Popular with women, is he?” I murmured.
Jamie snorted. “I suppose ye can call it that. He took his first wife by a forced marriage. Snatched the Dowager Lady Lovat