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won’t be on my head, at least.”
    The door shut firmly behind the Englishmen, leaving Jamie Fraser quite alone—and still alive.
     

2
The Hunt Begins
    Inverness
May 2, 1968
     
    “Of course he’s dead!” Claire’s voice was sharp with agitation; it rang loudly in the half-empty study, echoing among the rifled bookshelves. She stood against the cork-lined wall like a prisoner awaiting a firing squad, staring from her daughter to Roger Wakefield and back again.
    “I don’t think so.” Roger felt terribly tired. He rubbed a hand over his face, then picked up the folder from the desk; the one containing all the research he’d done since Claire and her daughter had first come to him, three weeks before, and asked his help.
    He opened the folder and thumbed slowly through the contents. The Jacobites of Culloden. The Rising of the ’45. The gallant Scots who had rallied to the banner of Bonnie Prince Charlie, and cut through Scotland like a blazing sword—only to come to ruin and defeat against the Duke of Cumberland on the gray moor at Culloden.
    “Here,” he said, plucking out several sheets clipped together. The archaic writing looked odd, rendered in the black crispness of a photocopy. “This is the muster roll of the Master of Lovat’s regiment.”
    He thrust the thin sheaf of papers at Claire, but it was her daughter, Brianna, who took the sheets from him and began to turn the pages, a slight frown between her reddish brows.
    “Read the top sheet,” Roger said. “Where it says ‘Officers.’”
    “All right.‘Officers,’” she read aloud, “‘Simon, Master of Lovat’…”
    “The Young Fox,” Roger interrupted. “Lovat’s son. And five more names, right?”
    Brianna cocked one brow at him, but went on reading.
    “‘William Chisholm Fraser, Lieutenant; George D’Amerd Fraser Shaw, Captain; Duncan Joseph Fraser, Lieutenant; Bayard Murray Fraser, Major,” she paused, swallowing, before reading the last name, “‘…James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser. Captain.’” She lowered the papers, looking a little pale. “My father.”
    Claire moved quickly to her daughter’s side, squeezing the girl’s arm. She was pale, too.
    “Yes,” she said to Roger. “I know he went to Culloden. When he left me…there at the stone circle…he meant to go back to Culloden Field, to rescue his men who were with Charles Stuart. And we know he did”—she nodded at the folder on the desk, its manila surface blank and innocent in the lamplight—“you found their names. But…but…Jamie…” Speaking the name aloud seemed to rattle her, and she clamped her lips tight.
    Now it was Brianna’s turn to support her mother.
    “He meant to go back, you said.” Her eyes, dark blue and encouraging, were intent on her mother’s face. “He meant to take his men away from the field, and then go back to the battle.”
    Claire nodded, recovering herself slightly.
    “He knew he hadn’t much chance of getting away; if the English caught him…he said he’d rather die in battle. That’s what he meant to do.” She turned to Roger, her gaze an unsettling amber. Her eyes always reminded him of hawk’s eyes, as though she could see a good deal farther than most people. “I can’t believe he didn’t die there—so many men did, and he meant to!”
    Almost half the Highland army had died at Culloden, cut down in a blast of cannonfire and searing musketry. But not Jamie Fraser.
    “No,” Roger said doggedly. “That bit I read you from Linklater’s book—” He reached to pick it up, a white volume, entitled The Prince in the Heather.
    “Following the battle,” he read, “eighteen wounded Jacobite officers took refuge in the farmhouse near the moor. Here they lay in pain, their wounds untended, for two days. At the end of that time, they were taken out and shot. One man, a Fraser of the Master of Lovat’s regiment, escaped the slaughter. The rest are buried at the edge of the domestic