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“No,” Claire huffed in exasperation as she stumbled over what she thought might have been a tree root. “I didn’t bring a flashlight. Jamie, honestly, why are we even out here?”
“Here” was the woods. The woods at night. Claire was fairly certain that Jamie hadn’t thought this through at all but was running instead on pure adrenaline. That wouldn’t have been entirely out of character for her husband though. He was nothing if not passionate. Sometimes that was a good thing while other times it was the thing that plunked you down in the middle of the woods at night.
“Jamie, love. Stop and look at me!” She tugged at his hand that was wrapped around hers and he came to an abrupt halt.
Turning to look her in the face, he spoke carefully, “I’m sorry Claire. I didna even stop to think. I just saw that Lallybroch, my great grandfather’s place, was for sale and I had to bring you here.” He had the grace to looked abashed. At least she thought he did but she couldn’t really see clearly in the dark.
“But why did we have to come see it now? Why not wait for day? Or,” she muttered, “for a real estate agent for that matter?”
“Aye, well, I was just so excited and was thinking that the babysitter would be watchin’ the lasses so we may as well…” he trailed off, sighed dramatically, the began again. “Claire, Sorcha, you and the girls mean the world to me and I want to give you the best. Always. We dinna have much room where we are now and we’ve been looking for a place of our own for so long. I thought this might be it.”
He always worked so hard to be certain that she, Faith, and Brianna had the best of everything. While she often feared that he was working too hard, she knew the joy it gave him to be able to provide for his family. Claire was well aware that it bothered Jamie that they were living in a duplex at the moment instead of a large home with space for the girls to run about. And he was right, they had been looking.
She would have laughed at the look of chagrin on his face if she hadn’t known how much this meant to him. “Jamie, you know that the girls and I don’t care if we have to sleep in a tent as long as we have you!”
“But a house is a wee bit better. Aye?” he shot back. This time Claire didn’t need to see him to know he was smiling.
“Well, yes. A place of our own would be nice.”
He gently took her other hand and led her out of the woods into the clearing to view Lallybroch in the moonlight.
She could feel the pull of it all around her—the house, the family, the place itself. She who couldn’t remember a childhood home, felt the urge to sit down right there and stay forever, enmeshed in the thousand strands of daily life, bound securely to that bit of earth.
“We’re going home, Sassenach. To Lallybroch.”