Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)(47)

He didn’t much want to, but there was nothing else he could think of doing, and within a few moments he found himself in front of a fragrant applewood fire, with a glass of his father’s whisky in hand, the warmth of both easing the tightness of chest and throat. It wouldn’t cure his grief, he knew, but it made it possible to breathe.

“Good stuff,” Jared said, sniffing cautiously but approvingly. “Even raw as it is. It’ll be wonderful aged a few years.”

“Aye. Uncle Jamie kens what he’s about; he said he’d made whisky a good many times in America.”

Jared chuckled.

“Your uncle Jamie usually kens what he’s about,” he said. “Not that knowing it keeps him out o’ trouble.” He shifted, making himself more comfortable in his worn leather chair. “Had it not been for the Rising, he’d likely have stayed here wi’ me. Aye, well…” The old man sighed with regret and lifted his glass, examining the spirit. It was still nearly as pale as water—it hadn’t been casked above a few months—but had the slightly viscous look of a fine strong spirit, as if it might climb out of the glass if you took your eye off it.

“And if he had, I suppose I’d not be here myself,” Michael said dryly.

Jared glanced at him, surprised.

“Och! I didna mean to say ye were but a poor substitute for Jamie, lad.” He smiled crookedly, and his hooded eyes grew moist. “Not at all. Ye’ve been the best thing ever to come to me. You and dear wee Lillie, and…” He cleared his throat. “I…well, I canna say anything that will help, I ken that. But…it won’t always be like this.”

“Won’t it?” Michael said bleakly. “Aye, I’ll take your word for it.” A silence fell between them, broken only by the hissing and snap of the fire. The mention of Lillie was like an awl digging into his breastbone, and he took a deeper sip of the whisky to quell the ache. Maybe Jared was right to mention the drink to him. It helped, but not enough. And the help didn’t last. He was tired of waking to grief and headache both.

Shying away from thoughts of Lillie, his mind fastened on Uncle Jamie instead. He’d lost his wife, too, and from what Michael had seen of the aftermath, it had torn his soul in two. Then she’d come back to him, and he was a man transformed. But in between…he’d managed. He’d found a way to be.

Thinking of Auntie Claire gave him a slight feeling of comfort: as long as he didn’t think too much about what she’d told the family, who—or what—she was, and where she’d been while she was gone those twenty years. The brothers and sisters had talked among themselves about it afterward; Young Jamie and Kitty didn’t believe a word of it, Maggie and Janet weren’t sure—but Young Ian believed it, and that counted for a lot with Michael. And she’d looked at him—right at him—when she said what was going to happen in Paris. He felt the same small thrill of horror now, remembering. The Terror. That’s what it will be called, and that’s what it will be. People will be arrested for no cause and beheaded in the Place de la Concorde. The streets will run with blood, and no one—no one—will be safe.

He looked at his cousin; Jared was an old man, though still hale enough. Michael knew there was no way he could persuade Jared to leave Paris and his wine business. But it would be some time yet—if Auntie Claire was right. No need to think about it now. But she’d seemed so sure, like a seer, talking from a vantage point after everything had happened, from a safer time.

And yet she’d come back from that safe time, to be with Uncle Jamie again.

For a moment, he entertained the wild fantasy that Lillie wasn’t dead but only swept away into a distant time. He couldn’t see or touch her, but the knowledge that she was doing things, was alive…maybe it was knowing that, thinking that, that had kept Uncle Jamie whole. He swallowed, hard.

“Jared,” he said, clearing his own throat. “What did ye think of Auntie Claire? When she lived here?”

Jared looked surprised but lowered his glass to his knee, pursing his lips in thought.

“She was a bonny lass, I’ll tell ye that,” he said. “Verra bonny. A tongue like the rough side of a rasp, if she took against something, though—and decided opinions.” He nodded, twice, as though recalling a few, and grinned suddenly. “Verra decided indeed!”

“Aye? The goldsmith—Rosenwald, ye ken?—mentioned her when I went to commission the chalice and he saw her name on the list. He called her La Dame Blanche.” This last was not phrased as a question, but he gave it a slight rising inflection, and Jared nodded, his smile widening into a grin.

“Oh, aye, I mind that! ’Twas Jamie’s notion. She’d find herself now and then in dangerous places without him—ken how some folk are just the sort as things happen to—so he put it about that she was La Dame Blanche. Ken what a White Lady is, do ye?”

Michael crossed himself, and Jared followed suit, nodding.

“Aye, just so. Make any wicked sod with villainy in mind think twice. A White Lady can strike ye blind or shrivel a man’s balls, and likely a few more things than that, should she take the notion. And I’d be the last to say that Claire Fraser couldn’t, if she’d a mind to.” Jared raised the glass absently to his lips, took a bigger sip of the raw spirit than he’d meant to, and coughed, spraying droplets of memorial whisky halfway across the room.