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“I can’t …” he said. “Oh, God, I canna help it.” His buttocks clenched suddenly, taut beneath my hands.

I sighed with deep satisfaction, and pulled him hard against me.

“You’re all right?” he asked, a few moments later.

“I won’t break, you know,” I said, smiling into his eyes.

He laughed huskily. “Maybe not, Sassenach, but I may.” He gathered me close against him, his cheek pressed against my hair. I flipped the quilt up and tucked it around his shoulders, sealing us in a pocket of warmth. The heat of the fire had not yet reached the bed, but the ice on the window was thawing, the crusted edge of the rime melted into glowing diamonds.

We lay quiet for a time, listening to the occasional crack of the burning applewood in the hearth and the faint sounds of the inn as the guests stirred to life. There were callings to and fro from the balconies across the courtyard, the swish and clop of hooves on the slushy stones outside, and the odd squeal now and then from below, from the piglets the landlady was raising in the kitchen behind the stove.

“Très français, n’est-ce pas?” I said, smiling at the sounds of an altercation drifting up through the floorboards, an amiable settling of accounts between the innkeeper’s wife and the local vintner.

“Diseased son of a pox-ridden whore,” the female voice remarked. “The brandy from last week tasted like horse-piss.”

I didn’t need to see the reply to imagine the one-shouldered shrug that went with it.

“How would you know, Madame? After the sixth glass, it all tastes the same, is it not so?”

The bed shook slightly as Jamie laughed with me. He lifted his head from the pillow and sniffed appreciatively at the scent of frying ham that filtered through the drafty chinks of the floorboards.

“Aye, it’s France,” he agreed. “Food, and drink—and love.” He patted my bare hip before tugging the wrinkled gown down over it.

“Jamie,” I said softly, “are you happy about it? About the baby?” Outlawed in Scotland, barred from his own home, and with only vague prospects in France, he could pardonably have been less than enthused about acquiring an additional obligation.

He was silent for a moment, only hugging me harder, then sighed briefly before answering.

“Aye, Sassenach.” His hand strayed downward, gently rubbing my belly. “I’m happy. And proud as a stallion. But I am most awfully afraid, too.”

“About the birth? I’ll be all right.” I could hardly blame him for apprehension; his own mother had died in childbirth, and birth and its complications were the leading cause of death for women in these times. Still, I knew a thing or two myself, and I had no intention whatever of exposing myself to what passed for medical care here.

“Aye, that—and everything,” he said softly. “I want to protect ye, Sassenach—spread myself over ye like a cloak and shield you and the child wi’ my body.” His voice was soft and husky, with a slight catch in it. “I would do anything for ye … and yet … there’s nothing I can do. It doesna matter how strong I am, or how willing; I canna go with you where ye must go … nor even help ye at all. And to think of the things that might happen, and me helpless to stop them … aye, I’m afraid, Sassenach.

“And yet”—he turned me toward him, hand closing gently over one breast—“yet when I think of you wi’ my child at your breast … then I feel as though I’ve gone hollow as a soap bubble, and perhaps I shall burst with joy.”

He pressed me tight against his chest, and I hugged him with all my might.

“Oh, Claire, ye do break my heart wi’ loving you.”

***

I slept for some time, and woke slowly, hearing the clang of a church bell ringing in the nearby square. Fresh from the Abbey of Ste. Anne, where all the day’s activities took place to the rhythm of bells, I automatically glanced at the window, to gauge the intensity of the light and guess the time of day. Bright, clear light, and a window free of ice. The bells rang for the Angelus then, and it was noon.

I stretched,