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“You may have your choice, Claire. Him, or me.” The candle flames danced in the polished metal as he turned the knife slowly. “I cannot live while he lives. If ye wilna have me kill him, then kill me now, yourself!” He grabbed my hand and forced my fingers around the handle of the dirk. Ripping the lacy jabot open, he bared his throat and yanked my hand upward, fingers hard around my own.
I pulled back with all my strength, but he forced the tip of the blade against the soft hollow above the collarbone, just below the livid cicatrice that Randall’s own knife had left there...
My eyes dropped to the splint on Jamie’s broken left hand, tight around mine, but needing the strength of his right to support it. Realization slowly dawned on me, and unthinkingly, I whispered aloud, “It would be whole."
Jamie frowned. "What?" He didn't hear me, or at least, he didn't understand. How could he? I didn't understand the implications of my own thought.
I rapidly shook my head. "Nothing. I... I don't know. I'm sorry." I tried to let go of the dirk, but his grip was too tight.
"What did ye say?"
"I'm sorry."
His fist opened slightly. "No, before that."
It was enough for me to toss the dirk away. I evaded his question by repeating, "I don't... Jamie. I... I... I'll always choose you."
His jaw clenched for a brief second, and he nodded at me. Then he seemed to register my devastated expression, and he misunderstood what it was for. "Aye. Claire, I wouldna do this if there was another way. Don't worry for me. 'Tis no' a fight I'll lose."
I couldn't listen. I couldn't hear whatever it was that he wanted to say. If I continued to argue with him, it would be from an emotional place, and right now, that would do me no good. I needed space to think, to process, to follow my train of thought to its logical conclusion. I fingered Frank's gold band on my finger. If it was any indication, I still had time to do so. I cut him off. "I know. I... I need a minute." I backed away, and he tried to follow.
"Claire, ye can't ken what he's done. I know we spoke of it, but ye canna understand. I can't live in this world knowing he's out there, knowing what he's done to me, knowing he might do it again to someone else." He tried to place his hands on my shoulders, but I backed away. I couldn't think properly when he touched me.
"When will they let him go?" I asked flatly. Now he paused, uncertain. "It's late," I pointed out. "No matter what, they're not letting him out until tomorrow at the earliest. Midday, perhaps?"
"They do need to interview the witnesses," he conceded. "They'll no' let him free until the morning."
It was long enough. Long enough for me to think things through. "And where will you be?"
Now his face darkened. "Don't try to stop me, Claire. It's righteous justice, what I mean to do."
"Is it really too much for me to ask? Or must I wonder where you are, and know nothing?"
He sighed heavily, gave me the name of the inn, and swept out of the house. He was a fearsome sight, flaming hair flying wild, face set in a deadly expression, hand gripping the hilt of his sword. His fury was glorious, indeed, and in any state, he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I prayed it would not be my last sight of him.
At midnight I called for the carriage. I had spent the last several hours working through all the possible outcomes, and I was ready to lay them bare.
The butler was appalled. "At this hour? Madame, it is midnight. Monsieur Fraser would not allow it."
"Monsieur Fraser isn't here to stop me. Besides, I'm going to him, not to meet some other lover. I'm going to the inn. Either I go by carriage, or I walk."
He ran to rouse the coachman.
Forty minutes later, I stepped onto a filthy street in one of the worst quarters of Paris. After all, the Bastille was not surrounded by rich estates, and my husband wanted to be as close to Jack Randall as possible, so as not to miss his chance. A pair of drunken young men stumbled toward me, staring at my décolletage lasciviously and whispering loudly about what they would like to do to me, but my coachman repelled them before they could get close. I hurried into the squalid inn before I could meet anyone else.
The innkeeper didn't hide his surprise at seeing a well-heeled lady appear in his establishment at this time of night. When I asked after my husband, he feigned ignorance, probably assuming that I was attempting to to catch Jamie in flagrante delicto with a mistress or whore. I promised him discretion, which he cared nothing for, but he responded readily to an offer of coin and led me up the stairs. He was obviously disappointed when he opened the door to find my husband fully clothed with only whiskey for company.
Jamie stood, frowning. "Don't try to stop me, Claire. This is something I must do."
"I'm just here to talk." It was the truth, much to the innkeeper's dissatisfaction. He left us alone. Jamie didn't ask me to sit, and I felt more courageous standing, so all I did was lower my hood.
"Words don't exist to stop me seeking justice," he declared.
"It's your choice, Jamie. It always was.” This too was the truth.
He nodded and sat down again. "Then why are ye here? 'Tis no place for a woman, a duel. And I'm no company tonight.”
"Nor am I." I turned and walked about the small room, stopping at the window. This was easier to say if I wasn't looking at him. "I thought about staying home. Waiting to find out what would happen. But I couldn't. If it was my choice, well, I'd want to know."
His voice was hard. "It is my choice. And I've made it."
"That's what I thought. I was worried, you know, when I thought Black Jack was dead, when I believed him trampled to death." Then I took off my gloves and held up my hand, revealing the gold ring. "But this was still here. Still is."
He knew what I meant. A part of it, anyway. If Frank's ring was still on my hand, he would still be born. Would live. Would marry me. I heard him stand so quickly that his chair toppled over. “So you are here to stop me, to save your precious Frank!”
“No, I…”
He wouldn’t let me continue. "Do you think I'll lose? Is that it? Is that why you're here? I won't. And then you'll see." He was angry. So angry. I had never heard him direct this tone at me before. It made my blood run hot and cold at the same time. "So you can go now. I'll see you when it's done. Please go." He opened the door to usher me out, but I did not move.
"I'll go soon. And I know you won't lose if you fight him." Out the window I could see a group of poor vagrants huddled around a fire, and I stared at the flame, hoping I could find the proper words in the light like a seer of old. "But I'm not sure you'll see me again after tonight, not if he dies tomorrow."
Now he slammed the door. "Are you threatening to leave me? What, and go back to Frank? Who won't be there because he was never born? Or is it that you won't forgive me, and you'll simply go?"
I whirled on him. "Not that. I'd never leave you. Don't you know that? You gave me my choice when you took me to the stones, and I made it."
"Then why are ye here?"
"Oh, I very nearly didn't come. Trust me. I know what it meant, what Randall did to you. I know that you need, deep in your soul, to pay him back. Do you think I don't want him to suffer? You think I wouldn't kill him myself if I could? I already tried! I thought I'd give anything to take away what he's done to you, to change it."
"You thought," he hissed. "But now you've remembered your first husband, and you would not give his life. You haven't let him go, not completely, else you wouldna be here trying to stop me."
I threw my gloves to the floor and snapped, "It's not about him! Not the way you think. You'd know that if you'd listen, just for a minute. But you're too busy arguing with me to even know what you're arguing about!"
"So speak, and then leave me in peace!"
I couldn't look at him any longer and say what I needed to say. He looked too devastated, too angry, too betrayed. But this time, in his mind, it was I who had betrayed him. I turned back to the window and gripped the sill to keep from collapsing to the floor. I took a deep, steadying breath and began, “It’s as I said. I thought I’d give anything to undo what he did to you, to erase it. And now I am faced with that choice.”
“It isna your choice, Claire, it’s mine. And if you think that anything can erase what’s been done to me, you’re sorely mistaken. Killing him will ease my soul, yes, but nothing can undo what’s been done.”
Now I began to pace, needing some way to release the chaos inside me. I was wracked with guilt, and had been so ever since I realized what could happen. I had felt the burden of knowledge ever since I realized that I had gone back in time, ever since I realized I knew what the future held. It started with guilt over what would happen to the Highlanders if I did not prevent it, and that still weighed heavily on my heart. But the burden had never been so great. Because now it was not just guilt for Frank or guilt for Jamie, but guilt for the babe. “But it can! I want that for you. Don’t you know that? Don’t you know me? Don’t you know that I want to take away what he did to you more than anything in the world? All I have to do is walk away and let you kill him, and maybe, just maybe, it will all be erased. That’s why I almost didn’t come.”
He still didn’t understand what I was saying, because he still hadn’t allowed me to explain. “Dinna be daft! There is no power on earth that change what happened. All I can do is seek my vengeance.”
“Listen to me!” I finally yelled. “You stubborn, bloody man, just listen! This isn’t just about vengeance, or right and wrong, or you versus Black Jack, or you versus Frank. Or rather, it is about Frank, but not how you think. Yes, there is a good chance that killing Randall will change what happened, that it will change everything. Look, you only offered yourself to him because of me, right? Because I was there, and because of what you thought he’d do to me. Right?”
Now he paused in his fury, and he tried to console me. “Claire, it wasn’t your fault. I don’t blame you, and I’m so sorry if you thought I did.”
“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, Jamie! Shut up and listen! I’m not talking about blame. I’m talking about cause and effect. If I hadn’t been there, he’d have beaten you, but he didn’t rape you until you offered to give yourself over, which you only did because I was there. That’s a fact, and you can’t convince me otherwise. If I’d never shown up, he’d never have had you, not in that way.”
He nodded slowly, finally listening, yet somehow still arguing with me. “But if ye hadna come for me, I’d simply be dead. Though in my darkest moments, I longed for that oblivion, in my right mind, I am grateful for my life. You must know that.”
“But if I’d never come, if you’d never met me, you wouldn’t have been caught in the first place. You’d never have been taken to Wentworth at all. You’d still be at Leoch, I expect, or still collecting rents with Dougal. Or maybe you’d be Colum’s man. We both know that’s what he wanted.”
Now he was completely perplexed, and his rage was replaced with confusion. “If I’d never met ye? What are you going on about?”
Suddenly all the energy drained out of me, the nervous, anxious, angry energy that had held me aloft until this very moment. I no longer had the energy to stand, not if I was going to explain this properly. I dropped to the edge of the bed and explained what I had come to understand just hours before. “If you’d never met me, you’d still be in line for MacKenzie chieftain. You wouldn’t have gone back to Lallybroch when we did, and even if you had, you wouldn’t have stayed to attend Jenny’s delivery. You wouldn’t have been captured, because you wouldn’t have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Your hand would be whole. Randall wouldn’t have had the opportunity to beat you again, let alone anything else, if you hadn’t met me.”
“Are you mad, woman? What nonsense is this? Why wouldn’t I know ye?”
“If I’d never come though those stones, you would have led an entirely different life, Jamie. A life in which Randall never had you in Wentworth. You can have that, I think. It’s still possible.”
Jamie finally came to kneel in front of me, trying to understand. “I dinna ken what you’re saying, Claire.”
His hand hovered mid air, as if he couldn’t decide if he ought to touch me. I took his hand and pressed my lips to his knuckles, much as he had done to mine so many times before. “Just listen. If you kill Randall now, he’ll never sire Frank’s ancestor, so Frank will never be born. If Frank is never born, I won’t marry him 200 years from now. If I don’t marry him, he won’t take me on a second honeymoon to Scotland, or to see Craig Na Dun. I won’t go to the fairy hill to collect plants, and I won’t fall through the stones, because I won’t even know they’re there. I'll stay in 1946. I won’t fix your shoulder; Rupert will make a mess of it, and he’ll break your arm instead. But it’s a small price to pay.” I laughed a little hysterically now and continued, “Laoghaire won’t mind. I expect you’ll marry her when you don’t come back from collecting rents already wed. You won’t take her back to Lallybroch, because Colum will want you for the next MacKenzie. So you won’t get caught, and you won’t get taken to Wentworth. Randall won’t break your hand, which is probably a good trade for the broken arm…”
Jamie had been trying to speak, but between my babbling and the immense implications of what I said, he seemed to have lost the power of speech. He finally just grabbed me, fell upon the floor, and pulled me into his lap. He clutched me tightly and said, “Shh. Shh. Shush.”
I quieted, tucked my nose into his neck, and I held tightly to him, breathing him in. He smelled of sweat and stress and man. I tried not to think anymore, and I failed.
After a time, he said, “You're saying I can change what happened to me, make it so it never happened, by killing Randall now?”
“That's right. I think so, at least.”
“And all I have to do is lose you. You are my heart, Claire! You are my wife! You’re asking me to tear my own heart out with my bare hands. Is that it?”
“Not lose me, exactly,” I mumbled. “You’re being melodramatic. You won’t know I’m missing, because you won’t know I exist. It's not like the second Randall dies, I'll blink out of existence and leave you here in Paris wondering where I've gone. You won’t feel the loss. You won’t mourn me. Everything will just change. You’ll be wherever you would have been if you hadn’t met me, and you’ll live your life.”
He brushed my hair back and pressed his lips firmly to my forehead. “And what would be the point of such a life without you in it?”
“The same as it was before we met, I expect.”
His arms were strong around me, and I felt safe and secure for the first time since learning Randall was still alive. “Ah. No point at all, then,” he chuckled.
I held tightly to his collar and frowned. “That's just foolish. Your life had value, and you know it. Just as mine did.”
“Are you telling me to send ye back?” he laughed. “Are we both so much trouble, your husbands, that ye’d be better off without either of us?”
I ruefully answered, “Don't ask me that right now. I'm not sure you want to know the answer.”
I felt his mirth in the way his body shook. “Ah, don't ye ken, mo ghraidh , that my life began the day we met? Before then, I was but wandering, directionless, aimless. And then you stumbled into it, and everything changed. I dinna even want to imagine what my life would be like without you in it!”
Neither did I, but realistically, I thought he'd be fine. “You’d just go about your business like you did before we met.”
Now he laughed and held me tighter. “The business of getting injured, throwing myself off horses, and bleedin’ to death? Like that? How many times have ye saved me, Sassenach? I’d never survive without you!”
I remembered the gunshot wound to his shoulder. “At Cocknammon Rock? You wouldn’t have died from that, I don’t think. Someone would have patched you up.”
“We’d ha’ been ambushed if you hadna warned us about the English hiding there!” he reminded me. “And as you said, I’d have had to fight with a broken arm, as Rupert would have snapped it in half trying to jam it back into my shoulder! I’d never have made it past that day! Or perhaps I'd have been captured and hanged within the week!” This hadn’t occurred to me, and I made a noncommittal noise. “God, how many of us did you save that day?”
“I hadn't thought of that. I suppose it is a good thing I came to talk to you.”
He stiffened under my hand. “Was there any other option?” I shrugged noncommittally. “Claire?”
“I knew once I told you, once you understood, what you’d do. I… I didn’t want to force it on you.”
He pushed me away far enough that we could look one another in the eye. “You thought about letting me go through wi’ it? About allowing yourself to just disappear from my life?”
“Not because I don’t want to be here,” I defended myself. “To spare you Wentworth. But I didn’t keep it from you, did I? I’m right here!”
He pulled me close again, this time holding me so tightly that it was hard to breathe. “Aye, mo ghraidh , aye. Now I only want to know why you even let me leave the apartment. Why did you not say so earlier?”
Irritably, I said, “I did! I begged you to spare Frank!”
“I didna care a fig about Frank, other than to be mad jealous of the man!”
“There's nothing to be jealous of!”
“Jealousy doesn't always make sense, and ye ken that well. But in this case, I have cause. I surely have more reason to be jealous of Frank than you do of Laoghaire.”
My hackles rose. “I'm not jealous of that little wench!”
“Ye are,” he insisted, “otherwise you’d not have said I’d ha’ wed her were it not for you! What foolishness! When first I saw ye, my heart cracked open to make space for you inside it! No other lassie in the world would fit there to make it whole again, certainly not Laoghaire MacKenzie, nor anyone else.” This mollified me, and I reached up to try to bring him down for a kiss, but instead he kept talking. “But Frank? He’s had you! He’s known you, not just in lust, but in love. Even now, you still love the man…”
“Jamie, you know I don’t want to go back. You know I love you, that…”
Now he cut me off by cupping the back of my skull with his hand, tilting me up, and kissing me deeply until I nearly forgot what we were talking about. With his forehead pressed against mine, he murmured, “I ken, I ken. But that’s why I grew so angry when you said his name. It’s wrong, I ken that, but a part of me wants to wipe him from existence so that I can have you all to myself, so that I dinna have to share you with him or any other man.”
“You’re not sharing me, Jamie. I’m yours.” And I was, with all my heart, even the parts of my heart that still cared for Frank. This time I kissed him, and he smiled against my mouth.
When we paused to breathe, he lifted me to my feet. Then he sat on the bed behind me and began methodically untying my laces. It was slow going, but now we had all the time in the world. All the while, he kissed my neck and shoulders, and I finally allowed my overtaxed mind to stop spinning and let the sensations of my body take over.
I tried to undress him when he had me down to my shift, but he pushed my hands away once more. Despite the fact that he sat while I stood, he held all the power, and we both knew it. His voice was low and gentle, but firm. “Let me.” He ran one finger in a path from my jaw, down my neck, to my shoulder, and pushed the edge of the shift so it fell down my arm. Then he repeated the touch on the other side, and the fabric puddled to the floor.
I wanted to reach for him, but I held still. His gaze was intense as it roamed over my naked body, and I knew he was memorizing me should I ever disappear. “I’m not going anywhere,” I whispered.
He placed his hands on my hips and kissed the swell of our child within me, and I felt his voice vibrating across my skin. “No, you’re not. For I willna let you go.”
Now he drew me into his lap, leaned over my belly, and kissed his way up my chest and to my lips, and then he rolled me beneath him, never pausing in his kisses while he peeled off his clothes. He lost his balance while trying to remove his boots, and he landed face first in my breasts, laughing. Then he paid them court, warm hands cupping and kneading, tongue darting out to tease and taunt, mouth hot and eager.
He was so distracted that he forgot to finishing undressing. I finally decided to take control and pushed him onto his back. After yanking off his boots and tossing them to the floor, I still had to work his breeches off his hips, which left me in the perfect position to pay him back for the torment I had felt all night long. I took him into my mouth with a hum, and his head dropped back against the pillows with a strangled noise. I applied just enough pressure with my tongue, just where he liked it, and suckled steadily, trying to drive all thoughts but me from his brain. He was panting in seconds. His hands went to my hair, and he tried to keep me in place, but I didn’t give him exactly what he wanted. Instead I backed off and replaced my mouth with my hand. Rather than use a firm grip and a fast pace, I traced the veins with the tip of my finger. I kissed up and down the shaft, and I touched the sensitive head just enough to make him wild. When he became desperate and guided me with a shaking hand on the back of my head, I obliged him with the warmth of my mouth, but not for long enough to give him satisfaction.
After three of these tortuous cycles, I was ready for more, and he had reached his limit. He grabbed me by the shoulders, tossed me onto my back, and knelt over me. But instead of settling himself between my thighs, he pressed his cock deep inside my mouth, and he let out a strangled version of my name. He tilted his hips again, and again, and again.
Yet he would not leave me unsatisfied. Before I knew what was happening, Jamie spread my legs apart and thrust home. He held rigidly still, holding back so that he would not immediately spend himself and end it all, and looked down at me. “In any time, in any place, you are mine, Claire Fraser. Mine and no one else’s. In this world, in the next, in any world.”
I drew his hands into mine and acquiesced. “And you’re mine, James Fraser. Always.”
He interlaced our fingers, pushed my hands into the bed above my head, and began to move. He started slowly and deliberately, but each thrust was hard, sending a wave reverberating through my entire body. I squirmed beneath him, trying to urge him on by tipping my hips into his, by wrapping my legs around his thighs. But he would not be deterred. He would do this, he would have me, in whichever manner he chose. Right now, he chose to take his time. All the while, he stared into my eyes, and I was unable to look away. As he moved inside me, I saw a hundred emotions in the subtle expressions of his face: tenderness, passion, hope, bliss. But most of all, love.
And when I smiled at him, when I allowed him to see all these things reflected back at him wholeheartedly, he returned a joyful smile, and he released his restraint. He let go of my hands, so I held onto his shoulders, his arms, his neck, and he rode me. It was hard and fast and deep, and so, so satisfying. He held me tightly by my hips, slammed into me again and again, and we clung to each other. Sensation washed over us and through us, rolling from him to me and back again, uniting us at the point where we were joined. He took my heart and soul as he took my body, and he gave his own to me.
When neither of us could come closer to the other, when we reached that place where there was nothing left but to fuse as one, when we knew there was nothing greater in the universe than this thing between us, when we knew we had reached the point of no return, he threw his head back and released a sound of euphoric satisfaction. The sound echoed through me, and I followed him over the peak.
Afterward, he lay behind me, gently stroking my belly and our baby within. “Did ye think of the bairn? When you thought about letting me go through with it?”
“Of course. That’s what settled it. I would pay nearly any price to undo the hurt he caused, Jamie, but not our child.”
“Mmm.” He nosed my hair away so that he could kiss the back of my neck.
I started to fall asleep, melting into the warmth of his body, but was awake enough to hear him say, “Sassenach, you have the power to erase men from the universe itself. You can give life,” he said as he cupped the new one inside me, ”and ye can take it away. You can travel through time, and you can change history. Are ye sure you're no’ a witch?”
I could finally laugh at the notion. “Hmm. La Dame Blanche, indeed.”