𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐖𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐁𝐞 | 𝐉𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐞 𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐫 ✅

29 - A Final Farewell

One Week Later

The Fraser family cemetery was packed with people; tenants, mostly, though Ian, Jenny and I stood close together and Dougal did not attend. I remembered what Jamie had told me of how his parents had gotten together and I understood - Dougal and his brother, Colum, believed that their sister, Ellen, who had been Jamie and Jenny's mother, had been charmed away from them by Black Brian Fraser.

It wasn't true, of course. Jamie had told me that and I believed him.

The minister delivered the service and then the coffin - which had been made by two of the tenants whose names I did not know - lowered it into the hole. Everybody picked up a handful of dirt from the pile beside the grave and threw it onto the coffin. Jenny, Ian and I did it too, and then I pulled Jenny away. I did with her as Jamie had done with me on the day of my father's funeral; he had held me tightly and comforted me, made sure that I ate and drank something and just generally had been there for me.

Jenny needed that, now.

I wondered about Jamie as I held her sobbing body against my own. Was he in pain? Was he being well cared for at Fort William? I didn't let myself wonder if he was alive because he had to be.

We took the carriage back to the house and went inside, offering light refreshments for any of the tenants who wished to join us to mourn Brian. Several took up the offer.

"Mistress," it was Morag. She bobbed a polite curtsy at me and then reached into the pocket of her skirt, producing a dirty and crumpled piece of paper, "this came for ye while ye were out."

I took it from her and she bobbed a curtsy again before she rushed off to serve the guests that had begun to arrive.

I turned the paper over in my hands and saw that there were two words scribbled at the bottom in tiny writing.

Mo Chridhe.

My heart skipped a beat in my chest and I tore the paper open eagerly.

What he had written made no sense, and he had written it in Gaelic, which must mean that there was something in it which he did not want the English to be able to read.

I took it to Dougal, of course.

I knocked on the door of Brian Fraser's study, where Dougal had spent the last week or so. He had left the room only to sleep, preferring to relieve himself via the chamber pot - I knew this because I had heard one of the maids complaining about what he left in it.

"Aye!?" I went in.

"Dougal," I said, bobbing a curtsy.

"Mrs Fraser," he smirked.

"Not yet."

"Close enough," he gestured for me to come closer, "come in, my lady, I dinna bite!" I went and stood in front of the desk which he was seated behind. "Can I help ye with something?"
"This came today from Jamie." I held out the paper and he took it, quickly turning it over again and again in his hands and then scanning through it.

"Looks as though the lad's escaping -"
"Escaping?" I echoed in surprise and disbelief.

"Aye." Dougal read through the note again, "tonight..." he held it closely to his face to inspect it, "and needs a horse - three, actually."

"Well for God's sake, take them to him, Dougal!" I exclaimed.

Dougal's eyes widened and then he looked bemused.

"The state I reckon he's in, he won't be getting far on horse back. Nay, he'll need to be carted to the coast and then put on a ship -"
"But Jamie gets terribly seasick." I told his uncle, "if he's feverish, he won't survive the trip." I frowned, "ye have to go with him, Dougal."
"Go with him?" Dougal echoed, "across the sea?"
"Aye, to France." I paused, "there's family he could stay with - a cousin Jared in Paris -"

"There's a war going on in France." Dougal grinned, "could send the lad to fight in it -"
"Fight in a war?" I echoed in disbelief, "ye canna be talking sense! Jamie's just been flogged to within an inch of his life, he canna -"

"He can." Dougal paused, thinking for a few seconds before he asked, "that lad who's always with Jenny, wha's his name?"

"Ian Murray." I saw where Dougal was going with his enquiry, "ye canna send them both! What will Jenny and I do here without either of them? Ian does all of Jamie's chores as it is -"

"Ye'll have to find a way." Dougal stood up from the chair, the fire still roaring in its place behind him, and said, "ye'll excuse me, I have to talk to a lad about joining the army." He left to find Ian, and I didn't know whether to be pleased that Jamie was going to escape, or scared that he would be stopped before he could escape, or worried because if he did escape then he would be going to join a war in France.