The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [164]
Fraser made a small sound, a sort of soft grunt, as though he’d been punched in the belly, but then listened in silence. They walked for some time after Grey had finished speaking.
“Kyrie, eleison,” Fraser said at last, very quietly. Lord, have mercy.
“Well enough for you,” Grey said without rancor. “It must help, to think there is some ultimate sense to things.”
Fraser turned his head to look at him curiously.
“Do ye not think so? Whether ye call the ultimate cause—or the ultimate effect, I suppose—God or merely Reason? I have heard ye speak with admiration of logic and reason.”
“Where is the logic in this?” Grey burst out, flinging out his hands.
“Ye ken that as well as I do,” Fraser said rather sharply. “The logic of duty, and what each man of us—you, me, and Edward Twelvetrees—conceived that to be.”
“I—” Grey stopped, unable to formulate his thoughts coherently; there were too many of them.
“Aye, we’re guilty of that man’s death—the two of us, and dinna think I say so out of kindness. I ken well what ye mean—and what ye feel.” Fraser stopped for a moment, turning to face Grey, his eyes intent. They stood outside the house of the Earl of Prestwick; the lanterns had been lit and the light fell through the wrought-iron bars of the fence, striping them both.
“I accused him of treason in public, to stop him executing actions that would have injured folk who are mine. He challenged me, to prevent any suspicion attaching to him, so that he could carry out his schemes, though they were not the schemes I—we—assumed him to have. You then challenged him, to—” He halted suddenly and stared hard at Grey. “Ostensibly,” he said, more slowly, “ye challenged him to preserve your honor, to refute the slur of sodomy.” His lips compressed into a tight line.
“Ostensibly,” Grey echoed. “Why the bloody hell else would I have done it?”
Fraser’s eyes searched his face. Grey felt the touch of the other man’s gaze, an odd sensation, but kept his own face composed. Or hoped he did.
“Her Grace says that ye did it for the sake of your friendship with me,” Fraser said at last, quietly. “And I am inclined to think her right.”
“Her Grace should mind her own bloody business.” Grey turned away abruptly and began walking. Fraser caught him up within a pace or two, bootheels muffled on the sandy path. Small forms darted in and out of the scattered light from the lanterns of the big houses: children, mostly, scavenging the piles of horse droppings left on the riding path.
Grey had noticed the nice distinction: “for the sake of your friendship with me,” as opposed to the simpler—but far more threatening—“for me.” He didn’t know if the distinction was Minnie’s or Fraser’s, but supposed it didn’t matter. Both statements were true, and if Fraser preferred the greater distance of the former, he was welcome to it.
“We are both guilty in his death,” Fraser repeated doggedly. “But so is he.”
“How? He couldn’t have suffered your accusation without response. And he couldn’t have told you, even privately, what the truth of his position was.”
“He could,” Fraser corrected, “save that he saw it as his duty not to.”
Grey looked at him blankly. “Of course.”
Fraser turned his head away, but Grey thought he detected the glimmer of a smile among the shadows. “You are an Englishman,” Fraser said dryly. “So was he. And had he not tried to kill ye at the last—”
“He had to,” Grey interrupted. “His only other choice would have been to ask me to yield—and he knew bloody well I wouldn’t.”
Fraser gave a cursory nod of acknowledgment. “Did I not say it was logical?”
“You did. But …” He let his voice trail away. In the enormity of his own regret, he hadn’t paused to think that what Fraser said was true: he also had a share in Twelvetrees’s death—and therefore in the regret.
“Aye, but,” Fraser said with a sigh, “I would have done the same. But ye’ve killed men before, and likely better men than Twelvetrees.”
“Quite possibly. But I killed them as—as enemies.