Collecting rent turned out to be more exciting than Lise had expected. She had initially only decided to come along to protect Claire, afraid of what Dougal might do if Claire was left, unwarned, unprotected.
So far, he had merely behaved in his usual rough and gruff manner, abrupt but appreciative of the benefits of Claire, and still eternally mystified by Lise. Lise watched him with a careful eye, often lurking near Claire her fingers twitching to draw her knife and stab Dougal in the throat. A rational, but silenced, anger brewed underneath her surface. An anger which only grew when Lise realised to what extent these men were all props for Dougal to use. Dougal's status in Lise's estimation only sunk further. Not only was he a powerful highlander, used to getting his own way, by force if necessary, but also a heartless being. He seemed to be a man with no regard for other's pain, physical or emotional. And it made Lise burn with fury, her gut roiling at the indecency of it.
It was not until all of the rent party gathered in a tavern – for once, including the women – that this realisation hit home. Lise had been sat next to Jaime, making sly remarks to him as Dougal paraded around the small stone room, arms waving frantically about. The shadows danced opposite the fire as Dougal summoned them forth with his gesturing this way and that, trying to rile the local men to arms. Lise dryly noted that he would make a good politician to Jaime and glanced at his face to see his response. All she was gifted with was a small, weak smile, a single twitch of the corner of his lip upwards. His gaze never left the wall ahead of him, as he straight through and past it, lost in his mind's eye, not seeing. Lise leant back on the bench, the table Jaime leant over digging into her back painfully as she craned herself to look at him.
Across the room, where Claire was nursing a small flagon, Dougal's words were lost. She did not have the benefit of understanding the Gaelic words he was spewing like dragon fire, but she doubted that she could follow the stream of words even if she was fluent in the language. Instead, she enjoyed the show of rousing comradery that Dougal was displaying as he circled back towards Jaime and Lise.
Even from across the room, Claire could see Jaime's shoulders tense, his head lift slightly, and the eyes close against what he could see was coming. She could also see the hand that slipped from cradling the beer in front of him, on the table, to next to him, gripping Lise's hand on the bench.
Dougal ripped the shirt from Jaime's back, revealing the criss-cross of deep scars that tore into his flesh. Claire pressed a hand to her mouth, the reveal so horrifying unexpected that she couldn't stop the gasp from tumbling from her mouth. The scars somehow looked worse here, with the firelight glinting off the shining pink skin, shimmering as though they were decorations. Claire swallowed hard as she watched Jaime leave the tattered cloth around his waist, not attempting to cover himself. She watched as Lise's face turned to stone.
Lise herself was trying not to draw the knife that rested against her calf, the cool metal a comfort. Trying not to take it and draw it across Dougal's face for treating everyone and everything like his personal pawn, his shiny new toy to take out and parade around like a prized pony, whenever he had a point to make – and Dougal's point had certainly been made. He had got the ripple of shocked gasps around the room, including Claire's, and he had gotten the money he so clearly desired. Lise hated him more than she had hated anything in the world in that moment. But she swallowed it. She backed down from her instinct, and turned her hand to be palm up, wrapping her fingers around the coarse hand of Jaime. She squeezed his hand, a feeble comfort, but the gesture was there.
"I'm sorry," she breathed to him. The words were soft, light as the brush of dew against bare skin on a summer's morning.
Jaime squeezed her hand back.
Lise found it hard to sleep that night. When she closed her eyes Jaime's scars appeared before her, a pattern formed against her eyelids, unable to be escaped. She could almost feel the sting of a whip colliding with her own back, and yet couldn't. It was this inability to comprehend the sheer magnitude of pain that Jaime must have endured turned her stomach. It kept her from comfortably sinking into sleep.
She lay on her bed for a few hours, before flinging herself out of the door, and leaving behind the room she shared with Claire.
The inn was deserted now, the lingering ashes of the previously ferocious fire still smouldering in the fireplace. Lise glanced around, then wrapped the tartan blanket tighter around her, and stepped outside.
The sky was filled with more stars than she had ever seen.
It was a clear night – the first truly clear night she'd seen since arriving in the 18th Century – and in a world of limited pollution, that meant the sky was speckled with tiny blinks of light. No smog obscured their lights, and Lise felt her breath leave her, rising up to join the pinpricks of light in the dark curtain of space. She stared up, lost in her star-gazing, still standing on the porch-stone of the inn.
"Sleep escaping ye too?" Came a voice from the darkness. Lise couldn't conceal the jump before it flung her back a step, stumbling into the door. Jaime steadied her, a hand clasping her by the forearms, before releasing her just as quickly. Lise felt the absence of his warm palms so much more keenly than she had ever anticipated.
"What happened to ye?" Lise asked, not wishing to pry, but unable to stop herself. At least this time she had controlled the words, and they had been gentle, not the ugly blurting of a demand she was oh-so prone to doing. "And don't give me a smartarse answer. I may no be a healer like Claire, but I ken torture when I see it."
"Wasnae torture. It was punishment – the King's Justice." There was an undertone of cold laughter in Jaime's words – an irony that he just couldn't help. Lise reached out towards him and grasped his hand, tightly. He was her anchor as much as she was his. Lise looked up into Jaime's eyes, near impossible to see in the dark, but the pain was evident within them. She blinked back her own tears that rose, the pain and suffering and fear she had experienced, both recent and long gone, all demanding to be felt in this one moment. She lifted herself on to her toes, and wrapped her arms around his neck, clinging on tightly.
"Someone has really got out for you, huh?" She whispered, trying to sound light and failing. She loosened her grip and drew back. "Jaime… I am sorry. And I hope for your sake that the person that did that to you is dead and buried."