"Come down," he said softly.

I hesitated, looking back over my shoulder. A ladylike medley of snores came from the room I had just left. Two slaves were sleeping on the floor in the hall, curled under blankets, but neither moved.

I looked back. He didn't speak again, but lifted two fingers, beckoning. The scent of smoke and whisky filled the stairwell.

The blood was thrumming in my ears-and elsewhere. My face was flushed, my hair damp at the temples and on my neck; cool air rose up under my shift, touched the patch of dampness at the base of my spine, the film of slickness where my thighs brushed together.

I came down slowly, cautiously, trying not to let the stairs creak under my bare feet. It occurred to me belatedly that this was ridiculous; the slaves thundered up and down these stairs hundreds of times a day. Even so, I felt the need for secrecy; the house was still asleep, and the stairwell was filled with a gray light that seemed as fragile as smoked glass. A sudden sound, a move too quick, and something might explode under my feet, with a flash like a lightbulb popping.

His eyes stayed fixed on me, dark triangles in the paler dark of his face. He stared at me with a fierce intensity, as though to drag me down the stairs by the force of his gaze alone.

I stopped, one step from the bottom. There was no blood on his clothes; thank God for that.

It wasn't that I'd never seen Jamie drunk before. No wonder he hadn't come up the stairs to me. I thought he was very drunk now, and yet there was something quite different in this. He stood rock-solid, legs set wide, betrayed only by a certain deliberation in the way he moved his head to look at me.

"What-" I began, whispering.

"Come here," he said. His voice was low, rough with sleeplessness and whisky.

I hadn't time either to reply or to acquiesce; he seized my arm and pulled me toward him, then swept me off the last step, crushed me to him, and kissed me. It was a most disconcerting kiss-as though his mouth knew mine all too well, and would compel my pleasure, regardless of my desires.

His hair smelled of a long night's smoke-tobacco and woodsmoke and the smoke of beeswax candles. He tasted so strongly of whisky that I felt light-headed, as though the alcohol in his blood were seeping into mine through our skins where they touched, through the sealed membranes of our mouths. Something else was seeping into me from him, as well-a sense of overpowering lust, as blind as it was dangerous.

I wanted to remonstrate with him, to push him away. Then I decided that I didn't, but it wouldn't have made any difference if I had. He didn't mean to let go.

One big hand was gripping the back of my neck, warm and hard on my skin, and I thought of a stallion's teeth closing on the neck of the mare he mounts, and shivered from scalp to sole. His thumb accidentally pressed the great artery under my jaw; darkness swam behind my eyes and my knees began to buckle. He felt it and let go, easing me back so that I was almost lying prone upon the stairs, his weight half on me and his hands seeking.

I was naked under my shift, and the thin muslin might as well not have been there.

The hard edge of a stair pressed into my back, and it occurred to me, in the dim way that things do when you're drunk, that he was just about to take me right there on the stairs, and devil take anyone who might see.

I got my mouth free of his long enough to gasp, "Not here!" in his ear. That seemed to bring him momentarily to his senses; he lifted his head, blinking like one roused from a nightmare, eyes wide and blind. Then he nodded once, jerkily, and rose, pulling me to my feet with him.

The maids' cloaks were hanging by the door; he seized one and wrapped it round me, then picked me up bodily and shouldered his way through the door, past a staring housemaid with a slop jar in her hands.

He set me down when he reached the brick path outside; the bricks were cold under my feet. Then we were moving together through the gray light across a landscape of shadow and wind, still entangled with each other, stumbling, jostling, and yet somehow almost flying, clothes fluttering round us and cold air brushing our skins with the rude touch of spring, bound for some vaguely sensed and yet inevitable destination.

The stables. He hit the door and pulled me through with him into the warm dark, thrust me hard against a wall.

"I must have ye now, or die," he said, breathless, and then his mouth was on mine again, his face cold from the air outside, and his breath steaming with mine.

Then he drew abruptly away, and I staggered, pressing my hands against the rough bricks of the wall to keep my balance.

"Hold up your hands," he said.

"What?" I said stupidly.

"Your hands. Put them up."

In complete bewilderment, I held them up, and felt him take hold of the left one, fumbling. Pressure and warmth, and the faint light from the open door shone on my gold wedding ring. Then he seized my right hand, shoved my silver ring onto my finger, the metal warm from the heat of his body. He raised my hand to his mouth, and bit my knuckles, hard.

Then his hand was on my breast, cold air brushed my thighs, and I felt the scratch of the bricks on my bare backside.

I made a noise, and he clapped a hand over my mouth. Speared as neatly as a landed trout, I was just as helpless, pinned flapping against the wall.

He took his hand away and replaced it with his mouth, engulfing mine. I could feel the small urgent growls he was making in his throat, and felt another one, much louder, rising in mine.

My shift was wadded high around my waist, and my bare buttocks smacked rhythmically against the roughened brick, but I felt no pain at all. I gripped him by the shoulders and held on.

His hand skimmed my thigh, pushing at the drifts of linen that threatened to come between us. I remembered, vividly, those hands in the darkness, and bucked convulsively.

"Look." His breath came hot in my ear. "Look down. Watch while I take ye. Watch, damn you!"

His hand pressed my neck, bending my head forward to look down in the dimness, past the folds of sheltering fabric to the naked fact of my possession.

I arched my back and then collapsed, biting the shoulder of his coat to make no noise. His mouth was on my neck, and fastened tight as he shuddered against me.

WE LAY TANGLED together in the straw, watching daylight creep through the half-open door across the red-brick floor of the stable. My heart was still thumping in my ears, blood tingling through skin and temples, thighs and fingers, but I felt somehow detached from such sensations, as though they were happening to someone else. I felt unreal-and slightly shocked.

My cheek lay flat against his chest. Moving my eyes slightly, I could see the fading red flush of his skin in the open neck of his shirt, and the coarse curly hairs, so deep an auburn that they looked nearly black in the shadowed light.

A pulse was throbbing in the hollow of his throat, no more than an inch from my hand. I wanted to lay my fingers on it, feel his heartbeat echo in my blood. I felt oddly shy, though, as though such a gesture were too intimate to contemplate. Which was completely ridiculous, in view of what we had just done with-and to-each another.

I did move my index finger, just a bit, so that my fingertip brushed the tiny three-cornered scar on his throat; a faded white knot, pale against his bronzed skin.

There was a slight catch in the rhythm of his breathing, but he didn't move. His arm was round me, his hand splayed on the small of my back. Two breaths, three ... and then the faint pressure of a fingertip against my spine.

We lay silent, breathing lightly, both concentrated on the delicate acknowledgment of our connection, but didn't speak or move; slightly embarrassed, with the return of reason, at what we had just done.

The sound of voices coming toward the stable galvanized me into motion, though. I sat up abruptly, yanked my shift up over my shoulders, and began to brush straw from my hair. Jamie rolled up onto his knees, his back to me, and began hastily to tuck in his shirttail.

The voices outside stopped abruptly, and we both froze. There was a brief, charged silence, and then the sound of footsteps, delicately retreating. I let out the breath I had been holding, feeling my racing heart begin to slow. The stable was filled with the rustlings and whickers of the horses, who had heard the voices and footsteps, too. They were getting hungry.

"So you won," I said to Jamie's back. My voice sounded strange to me, as though I hadn't used it in a long time.

"I promised ye I would." He spoke softly, head bent as he rearranged the folds of his plaid.

I stood up, feeling mildly dizzy, and leaned against the wall to keep my balance as I brushed sand and straw from my feet. The rough feel of the bricks behind me was a vivid reminder, and I spread my hands out against them, bracing myself against the rush of recalled sensation.

"Are ye all right, Sassenach?" He turned his head sharply to look up at me, sensing my movement.

"Yes. Yes," I repeated. "Fine. Just ... I'm fine. And you?"

He looked pale and scruffy, his face stubbled and hollow with strain, eyes smudged black from a long and sleepless night. He met my eyes for a moment, then glanced away. A hint of color showed on his cheekbones, and he swallowed audibly.

"I-" he began, then stopped. He got to his feet and stood before me. His formal queue had come undone, and the tails of his hair splayed over his shoulder, glimmering redly as the bar of light from the door lit him.

"Ye dinna hate me?" he asked abruptly. Taken by surprise, I laughed.

"No," I said. "Do you think I should?"

His mouth twitched a little, and he rubbed his knuckles across it, scraping on the stubble of his beard.

"Well, maybe so," he said, "but I'm glad if ye don't."

He took my hands gently in his own, his thumb rubbing lightly across the interlaced pattern of my silver ring. His hands were cold, chilled by the dawn.

"Whyever do you think I might hate you?" I asked. "Because of the rings, do you mean?" Granted, I would have been upset and furious with him, had he lost either one. Since he hadn't ... Of course, he had had caused me to worry all night about where he was and what he was doing, to say nothing of sneaking into my room and making improper advances to my feet. Perhaps I ought to be annoyed with him, after all. caused me to worry all night about where he was and what he was doing, to say nothing of sneaking into my room and making improper advances to my feet. Perhaps I ought to be annoyed with him, after all.

"Well, starting wi' that," he said dryly. "I havena let my pride get the better of me in some time, but I couldna seem to stop myself, what with wee Phillip Wylie preenin' about, smirkin' at your breasts, and-"

"He was?" I hadn't noticed that part.

"He was," Jamie said, glowering momentarily at the thought. Then he dismissed Phillip Wylie, returning to the catalogue of his own sins.

"And then, draggin' ye out of the house in your shift and going after ye like a ravening beast-" He gently touched my neck, where I could still feel the tingling soreness of a bite mark.

"Oh. Well, I quite liked that part, actually."

"You did?" His eyes flicked wide and blue in momentary startlement.

"Yes. Though I rather think I have bruises on my bottom."

"Oh." He looked down, apparently abashed, though the corner of his mouth twitched slightly. "I'm sorry for that. When I'd finished-at the whist, I mean-I couldna think of anything but finding ye, Sassenach. I went up and down that stair a dozen times, going to your door, and back away again."

"Oh, you did?" I was pleased to hear this, as it seemed to increase the odds that he had in fact been my midnight visitor.

He picked up a hank of my rumpled hair and ran his fingers gently through it.

"I kent I couldna sleep, and thought, well, I shall go out and walk in the night for a time, and I would, but then I should find myself again outside your room, not knowing how I'd come there, but only trying to think how I might get to ye-trying to will ye to come out to me, I suppose."

Well, that explained my dreams of wild stallions, I thought. The place where he had bitten my neck throbbed slightly. And where had he brought me? A stable. King of Ireland, forsooth.

He squeezed my hands lightly.

"I thought the force of my wanting must wake ye, surely. And then ye did did come... ." He stopped, looking at me with eyes gone soft and dark. "Christ, Claire, ye were so beautiful, there on the stair, wi' your hair down and the shadow of your body with the light behind ye... ." He shook his head slowly. come... ." He stopped, looking at me with eyes gone soft and dark. "Christ, Claire, ye were so beautiful, there on the stair, wi' your hair down and the shadow of your body with the light behind ye... ." He shook his head slowly.

"I did think I should die, if I didna have ye," he said softly. "Just then."

I reached up to stroke his face, his beard a soft bristle on my palm.

"Wouldn't want you to die," I whispered, tucking back a lock of hair behind his ear.

We smiled at each other then, but whatever else we might have said was interrupted by a loud whinny from one of the horses, followed by stamping noises. We were interfering with their breakfast.

I dropped my hand and Jamie bent to pick up his coat, which lay half-buried in the straw. He didn't lose his balance as he bent, but I saw him wince as the blood went suddenly to his head.

"Did you have a terrible lot to drink last night?" I asked, recognizing the symptoms.

He straightened up with a small grunt of amusement.

"Aye, quarts," he said, ruefully. "Ye can tell?"

A person with much less experience than I had could have told at a distance of roughly half a mile; putting aside the more obvious indications of recent intoxication, he smelled like a distillery.

"It didn't impair your card playing, evidently," I said, being tactful. "Or was Phillip Wylie similarly affected?"

He looked surprised, and slightly affronted.

"Ye dinna think I'd get besotted whilst I was playing, do ye? And with your rings at stake? No, that was after-MacDonald fetched a bottle of champagne and another of whisky, and insisted that we must celebrate our winnings in proper style."

"MacDonald? Donald MacDonald? He was playing with you?"

"Aye, he and I were partnered against Wylie and Stanhope." He shook the coat, sending bits of straw flying. "I couldna say what sort of soldier he was, but the man's a fine hand at the whist, to be sure."

Mention of the words "fine hand" reminded me. He'd come to the door of my room, he said; he hadn't mentioned coming in. Had he, and been too far gone between liquor and longing to recall doing it? Had I, dazed with dreams of equine lust, imagined the whole thing? Surely not, I thought, but shook off the sense of vague disquiet engendered by the memory, in favor of another word from his remark.

"You said winnings?" In the stress of the moment, it had only seemed important that he had kept my rings, but it occurred to me belatedly that those were only his stake. "What did you take off Phillip Wylie?" I asked, laughing. "His embroidered coat buttons? Or his silver shoe buckles?"

His face had an odd expression as he glanced at me.

"Well, no," he said. "I took his horse."

HE SWUNG HIS COAT round my shoulders, put an arm round my waist, and led me down the main aisle of the stable block, past the loose-boxes and stalls.

Joshua had come in quietly, through the other door, and was working at the far end of the stable, silhouetted against the light from the open double-doors as he pitchforked hay into the end stall. As we reached him, he glanced at us and nodded in greeting, his face carefully neutral at the sight of us, bedraggled, barefoot, and prickled with straw. Even in a household with a blind mistress, a slave knew what not to see.

No business of his, his downcast countenance said clearly. He looked nearly as tired as I felt, eyes heavy and bloodshot.

"How is he?" Jamie asked, lifting his chin toward the stall. Josh perked up a bit at the inquiry, putting down his pitchfork.

"Oh, he's bonnie," he said, with an air of satisfaction. "A bonnie lad, Mr. Wylie's Lucas."

"Indeed he is," Jamie agreed. "Only he's mine now."

"He's what?" Josh goggled at him, openmouthed.

"He's mine." Jamie went to the railing and reached out a hand to scratch the ears of the big stallion, busily engaged in eating hay from his manger.

"Seas," he murmured to the horse. he murmured to the horse. "Ciamar a tha thu, a ghille mhoir?" "Ciamar a tha thu, a ghille mhoir?"

I followed him, peering over his arm at the horse, who lifted his head for a moment, regarded us with a genial eye, snorted, tossed his veil-like mane out of his face, and went back to his breakfast with single-minded intent.

"A lovely creature, is he no?" Jamie was admiring Lucas, a look of distant speculation in his eyes.