11

THE TORREMOLINOS GAMBIT

With the question of the French gold thus settled, they returned to what had become their routine; a brief period of formal negotiation over the affairs of the prisoners, followed by informal conversation and sometimes a game of chess. This evening, they had come from the dinner table, still discussing Samuel Richardson’s immense novel Pamela.

“Do you think that the size of the book is justified by the complexity of the story?” Grey asked, leaning forward to light a cheroot from the candle on the sideboard. “It must after all be a great expense to the publisher, as well as requiring a substantial effort from the reader, a book of that length.”

Fraser smiled. He did not smoke himself, but had chosen to drink port this evening, claiming that to be the only drink whose taste would be unaffected by the stink of tobacco.

“What is it—twelve hundred pages? Aye, I think so. After all, it is difficult to sum up the complications of a life in a short space with any hope of constructing an accurate account.”

“True. I have heard the point made, though, that the novelist’s skill lies in the artful selection of detail. Do you not suppose that a volume of such length may indicate a lack of discipline in such selection, and hence a lack of skill?”

Fraser considered, sipping the ruby liquid slowly.

“I have seen books where that is the case, to be sure,” he said. “An author seeks by sheer inundation of detail to overwhelm the reader into belief. In this case, however, I think it isna so. Each character is most carefully considered, and all the incidents chosen seem necessary to the story. No, I think it is true that some stories simply require a greater space in which to be told.” He took another sip and laughed.

“Of course, I admit to some prejudice in that regard, Major. Given the circumstances under which I read Pamela, I should have been delighted had the book been twice as long as it was.”

“And what circumstances were those?” Grey pursed his lips and blew a careful smoke ring that floated toward the ceiling.

“I lived in a cave in the Highlands for several years, Major,” Fraser said wryly. “I seldom had more than three books with me, and those must last me for months at a time. Aye, I’m partial to lengthy tomes, but I must admit that it is not a universal preference.”

“That’s certainly true,” Grey agreed. He squinted, following the track of the first smoke ring, and blew another. Just off target, it drifted to the side.

“I remember,” he continued, sucking fiercely on his cheroot, encouraging it to draw, “a friend of my mother’s—saw the book—in Mother’s drawing room—” He drew deeply, and blew once more, giving a small grunt of satisfaction as the new ring struck the old, dispersing it into a tiny cloud.

“Lady Hensley, it was. She picked up the book, looked at it in that helpless way so many females affect and said, ‘Oh, Countess! You are so courageous to attack a novel of such stupendous size. I fear I should never dare to start so lengthy a book myself.’” Grey cleared his throat and lowered his voice from the falsetto he had affected for Lady Hensley.

“To which Mother replied,” he went on in his normal voice, “‘Don’t worry about it for a moment, my dear; you wouldn’t understand it anyway.’”

Fraser laughed, then coughed, waving away the remnants of another smoke ring.

Grey quickly snuffed out the cheroot, and rose from his seat.

“Come along then; we’ve just time for a quick game.”

They were not evenly matched; Fraser was much the better player, but Grey could now and then contrive to rescue a match through sheer bravado of play.

Tonight, he tried the Torremolinos Gambit. It was a risky opening, a queen’s knight opening. Successfully launched, it paved the way for an unusual combination of rook and bishop, depending for its success upon a piece of misdirection by the king’s knight and king bishop’s pawn. Grey used it seldom, for it was a trick that would not work on a mediocre player, one not sharp enough to detect the knight’s threat, or its possibilities. It was a gambit for use against a shrewd and subtle mind, and after nearly three months of weekly games, Grey knew quite well what sort of mind he was facing across the tinted ivory squares.

He forced himself not to hold his breath as he made the next-to-final move of the combination. He felt Fraser’s eyes rest on him briefly, but didn’t meet them, for fear of betraying his excitement. Instead, he reached to the sideboard for the decanter, and refilled both glasses with the sweet dark port, keeping his eyes carefully on the rising liquid.

Would it be the pawn, or the knight? Fraser’s head was bent over the board in contemplation, small reddish lights winking in his hair as he moved slightly. The knight, and all was well; it would be too late. The pawn, and all was likely lost.

Grey could feel his heart beating heavily behind his breastbone as he waited. Fraser’s hand hovered over the board, then suddenly decided, swooped down and touched the piece. The knight.

He must have let his breath out too noisily, for Fraser glanced sharply up at him, but it was too late. Careful to keep any overt expression of triumph off his face, Grey castled.

Fraser frowned at the board for a long moment, eyes flicking among the pieces, assessing. Then he jerked slightly, seeing it, and looked up, eyes wide.

“Why ye cunning wee bastard!” he said, in a tone of surprised respect. “Where in the bloody hell did ye learn that trick?”

“My elder brother taught it to me,” Grey answered, losing his customary wariness in a rush of delight at his success. He normally beat Fraser no more than three times in ten, and victory was sweet.

Fraser uttered a short laugh, and reaching out a long index finger, delicately tipped his king over.

“I should have expected something like that from a man like my Lord Melton,” he observed casually.

Grey stiffened in his seat. Fraser saw the movement, and arched one brow quizzically.

“It is Lord Melton ye mean, is it not?” he said. “Or perhaps you have another brother?”

“No,” Grey said. His lips felt slightly numb, though that might only be the cheroot. “No, I have only one brother.” His heart had begun to pound again, but this time with a heavy, dull beat. Had the Scottish bastard remembered all the time who he was?

“Our meeting was necessarily rather brief,” the Scot said dryly. “But memorable.” He picked up his glass and took a drink, watching Grey across the crystal rim. “Perhaps ye didna know that I had met Lord Melton, on Culloden Field?”

“I knew. I fought at Culloden.” All Grey’s pleasure in his victory had evaporated. He felt slightly nauseated from the smoke. “I didn’t know that you would recall Hal, though—or know of the relationship between us.”

“As I have that meeting to thank for my life, I am not likely to forget it,” Fraser said dryly.

Grey looked up. “I understand that you were not so thankful when Hal met you at Culloden.”

The line of Fraser’s mouth tightened, then relaxed.

“No,” he said softly. He smiled without humor. “Your brother verra stubbornly refused to shoot me. I wasna inclined to be grateful for the favor at the time.”

“You wished to be shot?” Grey’s eyebrows rose.

The Scot’s eyes were remote, fixed on the chessboard, but clearly seeing something else.

“I thought I had reason,” he said softly. “At the time.”

“What reason?” Grey asked. He caught a gimlet glance and added hastily, “I mean no impertinence in asking. It is only—at that time, I—I felt similarly. From what you have said of the Stuarts, I cannot think that the loss of their cause would have led you to such despair.”

There was a faint flicker near Fraser’s mouth, much too faint to be called a smile. He inclined his head briefly, in acknowledgment.

“There were those who fought for love of Charles Stuart—or from loyalty to his father’s right of kingship. But you are right; I wasna one of those.”

He didn’t explain further. Grey took a deep breath, keeping his eyes fixed on the board.

“I said that I felt much as you did, at the time. I—lost a particular friend at Culloden,” he said. With half his mind he wondered why he should speak of Hector to this man, of all men; a Scottish warrior who had slashed his way across that deadly field, whose sword might well have been the one…At the same time, he could not help but speak; there was no one to whom he could speak of Hector, save this man, this prisoner who could speak to no one else, whose words could do him no damage.

“He made me go and look at the body—Hal did, my brother,” Grey blurted. He looked down at his hand, where the deep blue of Hector’s sapphire burned against his skin, a smaller version of the one Fraser had reluctantly given him.

“He said that I must; that unless I saw him dead, I should never really believe it. That unless I knew Hector—my friend—was really gone, I would grieve forever. If I saw, and knew, I would grieve, but then I should heal—and forget.” He looked up, with a painful attempt at a smile. “Hal is generally right, but not always.”

Perhaps he had healed, but he would never forget. Certainly he would not forget his last sight of Hector, lying wax-faced and still in the early morning light, long dark lashes resting delicately on his cheeks as they did when he slept. And the gaping wound that had half-severed his head from his body, leaving the windpipe and large vessels of the neck exposed in butchery.

They sat silent for a moment. Fraser said nothing, but picked up his glass and drained it. Without asking, Grey refilled both glasses for the third time.

He leaned back in his chair, looking curiously at his guest.

“Do you find your life greatly burdensome, Mr. Fraser?”

The Scot looked up then, and met his eyes with a long, level gaze. Evidently, Fraser found nothing in his own face save curiosity, for the broad shoulders across the board relaxed their tension somewhat, and the wide mouth softened its grim line. The Scot leaned back, and flexed his right hand slowly, opening and closing it to stretch the muscles. Grey saw that the hand had been damaged at one time; small scars were visible in the firelight, and two of the fingers were set stiffly.

“Perhaps not greatly so,” the Scot replied slowly. He met Grey’s eyes with dispassion. “I think perhaps the greatest burden lies in caring for those we cannot help.”

“Not in having no one for whom to care?”

Fraser paused before answering; he might have been weighing the position of the pieces on the table.

“That is emptiness,” he said at last, softly. “But no great burden.”

It was late; there was no sound from the fortress around them save the occasional step of the soldier on sentry in the courtyard below.

“Your wife—she was a healer, you said?”

“She was. She…her name was Claire.” Fraser swallowed, then lifted his cup and drank, as though trying to dislodge something stuck in his throat.

“You cared very much for her, I think?” Grey said softly.

He recognized in the Scot the same compulsion he had had a few moments earlier—the need to speak a name kept hidden, to bring back for a moment the ghost of a love.

“I had meant to thank you sometime, Major,” the Scot said softly.

Grey was startled.

“Thank me? For what?”

The Scot looked up, eyes dark over the finished game.

“For that night at Carryarrick where we first met.” His eyes were steady on Grey’s. “For what ye did for my wife.”

“You remembered,” Grey said hoarsely.

“I hadna forgotten,” Fraser said simply. Grey steeled himself to look across the table, but when he did so, he found no hint of laughter in the slanted blue eyes.

Fraser nodded at him, gravely formal. “Ye were a worthy foe, Major; I wouldna forget you.”

John Grey laughed bitterly. Oddly enough, he felt less upset than he had thought he would, at having the shameful memory so explicitly recalled.

“If you found a sixteen-year-old shitting himself with fear a worthy foe, Mr. Fraser, then it is little wonder that the Highland army was defeated!”

Fraser smiled faintly.

“A man that doesna shit himself with a pistol held to his head, Major, has either no bowels, or no brains.”

Despite himself, Grey laughed. One edge of Fraser’s mouth turned slightly up.

“Ye wouldna speak to save your own life, but ye would do it to save a lady’s honor. The honor of my own lady,” Fraser said softly. “That doesna seem like cowardice to me.”

The ring of truth was too evident in the Scot’s voice to mistake or ignore.

“I did nothing for your wife,” Grey said, rather bitterly. “She was in no danger, after all!”

“Ye didna ken that, aye?” Fraser pointed out. “Ye thought to save her life and virtue, at the risk of your own. Ye did her honor by the notion—and I have thought of it now and again, since I—since I lost her.” The hesitation in Fraser’s voice was slight; only the tightening of the muscles in his throat betrayed his emotion.

“I see.” Grey breathed deep, and let it out slowly. “I am sorry for your loss,” he added formally.

They were both quiet for a moment, alone with their ghosts. Then Fraser looked up and drew in his breath.

“Your brother was right, Major,” he said. “I thank ye, and I’ll bid ye good e’en.” He rose, set down his cup and left the room.

It reminded him in some ways of his years in the cave, with his visits to the house, those oases of life and warmth in the desert of solitude. Here, it was the reverse, going from the crowded, cold squalor of the cells up to the Major’s glowing suite, able for a few hours to stretch both mind and body, to relax in warmth and conversation and the abundance of food.

It gave him the same odd sense of dislocation, though; that sense of losing some valuable part of himself that could not survive the passage back to daily life. Each time, the passage became more difficult.

He stood in the drafty passageway, waiting for the turnkey to unlock the cell door. The sounds of sleeping men buzzed in his ears and the smell of them wafted out as the door opened, pungent as a fart.

He filled his lungs with a quick deep breath, and ducked his head to enter.

There was a stir among the bodies on the floor as he stepped into the room, his shadow falling black across the prone and bundled shapes. The door swung closed behind him, leaving the cell in darkness, but there was a ripple of awareness through the room, as men stirred awake to his coming.

“You’re back late, Mac Dubh,” said Murdo Lindsay, voice rusty with sleep. “Ye’ll be sair tuckered tomorrow.”

“I’ll manage, Murdo,” he whispered, stepping over bodies. He pulled off his coat and laid it carefully over the bench, then took up the rough blanket and sought his space on the floor, his long shadow flickering across the moon-barred window.

Ronnie Sinclair turned over as Mac Dubh lay down beside him. He blinked sleepily, sandy lashes nearly invisible in the moonlight.

“Did Wee Goldie feed ye decent, Mac Dubh?”

“He did, Ronnie, thank ye.” He shifted on the stones, seeking a comfortable position.

“Ye’ll tell us about it tomorrow?” The prisoners took an odd pleasure in hearing what he had been served for dinner, taking it as an honor that their chief should be well fed.

“Aye, I will, Ronnie,” Mac Dubh promised. “But I must sleep now, aye?”

“Sleep well, Mac Dubh,” came a whisper from the corner where Hayes was rolled up, curled like a set of teaspoons with MacLeod, Innes, and Keith, who all liked to sleep warm.

“Sweet dreams, Gavin,” Mac Dubh whispered back, and little by little, the cell settled back into silence.

He dreamed of Claire that night. She lay in his arms, heavy-limbed and fragrant. She was with child; her belly round and smooth as a muskmelon, her breasts rich and full, the nipples dark as wine, urging him to taste them.

Her hand cupped itself between his legs, and he reached to return the favor, the small, fat softness of her filling his hand, pressing against him as she moved. She rose over him, smiling, her hair falling down around her face, and threw her leg across him.

“Give me your mouth,” he whispered, not knowing whether he meant to kiss her or to have her take him between her lips, only knowing he must have her somehow.

“Give me yours,” she said. She laughed and leaned down to him, hands on his shoulders, her hair brushing his face with the scent of moss and sunlight, and he felt the prickle of dry leaves against his back and knew they lay in the glen near Lallybroch, and her the color of the copper beeches all around; beech leaves and beechwood, gold eyes and a smooth white skin, skimmed with shadows.

Then her breast pressed against his mouth, and he took it eagerly, drawing her body tight against him as he suckled her. Her milk was hot and sweet, with a faint taste of silver, like a deer’s blood.

“Harder,” she whispered to him, and put her hand behind his head, gripping the back of his neck, pressing him to her. “Harder.”

She lay at her length upon him, his hands holding for dear life to the sweet flesh of her buttocks, feeling the small solid weight of the child upon his own belly, as though they shared it now, protecting the small round thing between their bodies.

He flung his arms about her, tight, and she held him tight as he jerked and shuddered, her hair in his face, her hands in his hair and the child between them, not knowing where any of the three of them began or ended.

He came awake suddenly, panting and sweating, half-curled on his side beneath one of the benches in the cell. It was not yet quite light, but he could see the shapes of the men who lay near him, and hoped he had not cried out. He closed his eyes at once, but the dream was gone. He lay quite still, his heart slowing, and waited for the dawn.

June 18, 1755

John Grey had dressed carefully this evening, with fresh linen and silk stockings. He wore his own hair, simply plaited, rinsed with a tonic of lemon-verbena. He had hesitated for a moment over Hector’s ring, but at last had put it on, too. The dinner had been good; a pheasant he had shot himself, and a salad of greens, in deference to Fraser’s odd tastes for such things. Now they sat over the chessboard, lighter topics of conversation set aside in the concentration of the midgame.

“Will you have sherry?” He set down his bishop, and leaned back, stretching.

Fraser nodded, absorbed in the new position.

“I thank ye.”

Grey rose and crossed the room, leaving Fraser by the fire. He reached into the cupboard for the bottle, and felt a thin trickle of sweat run down his ribs as he did so. Not from the fire, simmering across the room; from sheer nervousness.

He brought the bottle back to the table, holding the goblets in his other hand; the Waterford crystal his mother had sent. The liquid purled into the glasses, shimmering amber and rose in the firelight. Fraser’s eyes were fixed on the cup, watching the rising sherry, but with an abstraction that showed he was deep in his thoughts. The dark blue eyes were hooded. Grey wondered what he was thinking; not about the game—the outcome of that was certain.

Grey reached out and moved his queen’s bishop. It was no more than a delaying move, he knew; still, it put Fraser’s queen in danger, and might force the exchange of a rook.

Grey got up to put a brick of peat on the fire. Rising, he stretched himself, and strolled behind his opponent to view the situation from this angle.

The firelight shimmered as the big Scot leaned forward to study the board, picking up the deep red tones of James Fraser’s hair, echoing the glow of the light in the crystalline sherry.

Fraser had bound his hair back with a thin black cord, tied in a bow. It would take no more than a slight tug to loosen it. John Grey could imagine running his hand up under that thick, glossy mass, to touch the smooth, warm nape beneath. To touch…

His palm closed abruptly, imagining sensation.

“It is your move, Major.” The soft Scots voice brought him to himself again, and he took his seat, viewing the chessboard through sightless eyes.

Without really looking, he was intensely aware of the other’s movements, his presence. There was a disturbance of the air around Fraser; it was impossible not to look at him. To cover his glance, he picked up his sherry glass and sipped, barely noticing the liquid gold taste of it.

Fraser sat still as a statue of cinnabar, only the deep blue eyes alive in his face as he studied the board. The fire had burned down, and the lines of his body were limned with shadow. His hand, all gold and black with the light of the fire on it, rested on the table, still and exquisite as the captured pawn beside it.

The blue stone in John Grey’s ring glinted as he reached for his queen’s bishop. Is it wrong, Hector? he thought. That I should love a man who might have killed you? Or was it a way at last to put things right; to heal the wounds of Culloden for them both?

The bishop made a soft thump as he set the felted base down with precision. Without stopping, his hand rose, as though it moved without his volition. The hand traveled the short distance through the air, looking as though it knew precisely what it wanted, and set itself on Fraser’s, palm tingling, curved fingers gently imploring.

The hand under his was warm—so warm—but hard, and motionless as marble. Nothing moved on the table but the shimmer of the flame in the heart of the sherry. He lifted his eyes then, to meet Fraser’s.

“Take your hand off me,” Fraser said, very, very softly. “Or I will kill you.”

The hand under Grey’s did not move, nor did the face above, but he could feel the shiver of revulsion, a spasm of hatred and disgust that rose from the man’s core, radiating through his flesh.

Quite suddenly, he heard once more the memory of Quarry’s warning, as clearly as though the man spoke in his ear this moment.

If you dine with him alone—don’t turn your back on him.

There was no chance of that; he could not turn away. Could not even look away or blink, to break the dark blue gaze that held him frozen. Moving as slowly as though he stood atop an unexploded mine, he drew back his hand.

There was a moment’s silence, broken only by the rain’s patter and the hissing of the peat fire, when neither of them seemed to breathe. Then Fraser rose without a sound, and left the room.