Her Royal Highness (H.R.H.), Part XXVII (A Tale’s End)
I would have walked away from this story (forever) a very long time ago if it weren’t for the constant and unwavering support of @notevenjokingfic and @balfeheughlywed. They have held my hand through this – through my tantrums, through my protestations that I didn’t know what I was doing, and through the times I begrudgingly admitted that I actually like the end of product. This story is dedicated to them and to their friendship. This has been a ride, and writing it has been an endurance contest. My gratitude to everyone who has read this, liked it, reblogged it, favorited it, or sent me a message. This is the end. I hope you enjoy. xx.
Part I: The Crown Equerry | Part II: An Accidental Queen | Part III: Just Claire | Part IV: Foal | Part V: A Deal | Part VI: Vibrations | Part VII: Magnolias | Part VIII: Schoolmates | Part IX: A Queen’s Speech | Part X: Rare | Part XI: Watched | Part XII: A Day’s Anticipation | Part XIII: The Location | Part XV: Motorcycle | Part XV: Cabin | Part XVI: Market | Part XVII: Stables | Part XVIII: Alarms | Part XIX: Visitor | Part XX: Cuffed | Part XXI: A Woman’s Speech | Part XXII: The Harlot Queen | Part XXIII: Rarer | Part XXIV: Balmoral & London | Part XXV: The Ring | Part XXVI: Baile na Coille
Her Royal Highness (H.R.H.)
Part XXVII: A Tale’s End
Claire’s limbs were leaden, and yet she rose from the bed.
Fraser’s sleepy noises (ones she teased sounded Scottish) were missing, and his long, even breaths had risen from bed with him.
In the absence of his noises, it was quiet, too quiet.
The scent of him (sage and clove) was like a mislaid memory (an empty space where it had been tucked against her nape), and the duvet was cool when she flopped one arm over into the bedding.
She already knew that Jamie was gone.
She rose and slipped into her dressing gown before making her way down the hall. Her feed had carried her down the halls on many nights, her arms clutching their colicky bairn and tracing a path that she had hoped (usually in vain) would soothe her.
She did not bother to flick on a single light switch.
In London, the underbelly of their home was always in motion. The clamor of it all made her mind whir, her eyes rebel in the night to focus on the ceiling, and her fingers clutch to insomnia.
At Balmoral, the quiet was like another layer of skin, and the stillness went to the center of her bones.
It was here that Claire had demanded they spend their one-week honeymoon before setting off on a tour of the Commonwealth’s various holdings.
It had been in Fraser’s cabin that they spent their one-week honeymoon, her body feeling like the crescendo of a symphony under his hands and lips. Idly tracing the conch-shaped curve of his bared hip bone, Claire wondered aloud whether the walls of the cabin would keep their secrets. Turning his new wife gently onto her back (“my Queen” – a breathless, almost-whimper on his lips) and rising over her, Fraser had touched her belly and kissed the space between the clotheslines of her clavicles. Breathlessly, he asked her to commit that when they spoke, it would only be truth.
There was room for secrets, but no lies.
She had agreed, just as breathlessly, and he held her hand as he kissed down her body, glancing up her sternum before closing his mouth over her.
It was here that Claire had demanded they spend their first months as a family of three.
On the same bed from which she had just risen, she had given birth to an heir.
It had been the last thing on her mind.
They had been married for six months.
With Jamie’s hand crushed in hers, and his sister mopping sweat from her forehead (a bond she quietly conceded once reminded her of her own sister), their baby came into the world.
With a final push, an immense feeling of relief flooded her. She felt light, like her body was no longer being twisted in opposite directions by a molten-hot vice, as though the weight of an entire kingdom was not bearing down on her pelvis.
The relief was short lived.
Claire’s arms quaked under the effort of pulling herself fully upright. She breathed for a moment, trying to keep her inhalations even.
The part of her that was relieved was rapidly giving way to a gnawing panic.
Brows furrowing as the umbilical cord was clipped, her eyes darted from Jamie to the doctor who had attended the birth and back again.
“One final push,” the midwife who had been there throughout her labor said, stepping in as the doctor turned away.
“Ye did it,” her husband breathed, only tearing his eyes from his wife’s face to look at the silent bundle in the midwife’s hands.
“No…” Claire breathed, the weight that had been bearing down on her lower half suddenly in her chest, expanding and contracting, wheedling its way into the space between her bones and her organs. “No.”
“A nighean–” Jamie started, but she shook her head.
“Tell me it’s okay. That the baby…”
He said nothing, his hand closing over the cap of her shoulder as he craned his neck.
His breaths were short, dry, shallow.
Her voice was imploring as she snapped, “Jamie. I can’t… if the baby is… tell me that-”
And then the wailing came.
A desperate, fevered, cold yowl that sounded almost inhuman. It would not stop, and she prayed that it never would as long as it meant that their baby (mysterious, puckered, purple, blood-covered) would suck in breath after life-sustaining breath.
“The bairn…” Jamie started, immediately fading away as his voice cut.
“She’s just fine, mam,” Jenny laughed, gently moving a soft cloth over the birth-slicked baby. Claire had nodded, still feeling the nagging tug of uncertainty in her belly until she saw the bundle move from Jenny’s arms to Jamie’s.
She lowered herself back to the pillows stacked behind her back, sighing and thanking God.
Julianna Alexandra Elizabeth Faith, the heir apparent and tiniest member of the royal House of Beauchamp, was perfect – ten fingers, ten toes, button nose, cap of jet-black hair, earlobes with skin as soft as velvet, and the smallest bow of a mouth.
She barely heard the words that followed.
She has to be okay. Ye dinna ken, she’s everything.
Their perfect daughter had torn her spectacularly, and just twenty minutes after giving birth in their bedroom, Claire was transported to the hospital, where she went into surgery for hours and stayed for six nights.
It was behind her now, left in some small hospital retrofit to make way for a postpartum queen. What remained was Balmoral – the place where she could ensconce herself in the history of her lineage as she wrote the history of her own family.
She could live here in Scotland.
As a woman, above all else.
Try as she did, she never felt that way in London.
The easiness of this place. The way that it felt like home, even though her accent was a reminder that it had not always been her home.
On this night, a little over six months after the birth of Julianna, she heard Jamie before she saw him.
His voice was low, a mix of Gaelic and English. All of his words blurred together.
As carefully as possible, she toed the door open another inch and leaned against the doorframe.
“She’s a braw one, yer mam.” He was shirtless, but shrouded in a plaid on the chaise at the center of the sitting room just outside their suite. Flames popped and crackled in the hearth, small bursts of sparks spiraling up and up as the fattest log broke in two. “Ye should’ve seen her, laborin’ wi’ ye. She’s a fearsome thing, ye ken. Ye didna make it easy on her, refusin’ to come out… she was so set on meetin’ ye.”
Claire mopped away the stinging in her eyes with the hem of her robe.
“I didna ken if I could love something as much as I love ye, mo chridhe, but seein’ ye, it’s as if a piece of my own heart, my brain, and my wame lives outside me. I felt it the moment yer mam told me that ye were in her belly. Above all, I kent I must protect ye both, and I will. Until the day I no longer draw breath.”
Claire’s own breath was coming ragged now, listening to him. She had not expected to feel so different in the aftermath of the easy pregnancy and long labor.
To feel as though her emotions were like a balloon on the end of a long string, floating high above her head at all times. As though the slightest breeze could shift them, change her entire existence.
“And someday, when ye’re no’ a bairn, we’ll share wi’ ye how ye surprised us, a leannan.”
Julianna let out the quietest coo that made Claire’s thighs and fingertips tremble. She wanted to take her baby in her arms, to have her close, to take comfort from the fact that her soft limbs were still warm, that her heavy head was held firmly in place by an increasingly-strong neck.
Out of hand, the doctor had dismissed the ebbs and flows of these moods as baby blues. Jamie, in turn, dismissed the doctor with no slight amount of outrage, demanding that someone with “the sense the good lord gave a turnip” help his wife.
That the fog was not imagined. The sense of isolation she felt, even when surrounded by people, was not a matter of someone just being around for her more. The feeling of disconnection from their baby was not a function of being Queen.
Sticking a finger into the doctor’s paunch, Jamie had hissed that the Queen (“my fucking wife”) would not be so dismissed, that if he refused to help, they would find someone who could, who would.
Jamie was a hands-on father, and she was grateful for it. Even with all of the help her status (their shared status) could bring, he made himself present. He rose with her in the night, brought her warm compresses when she shed tears over engorged breasts and cracking nipples. He changed diapers with little more protest than a wrinkled nose at the spectacular streaks of shit that would somehow paint themselves up their daughter’s spine. And he did what he could in the darker days just to be near, even if it meant holding Claire’s hand in the dark and wiping away her seemingly sourceless tears.
But the fog had started to lift, the haze in Claire’s eyes becoming less impenetrable.
Just weeks earlier, she said she was ready to ride again.
They picnicked at night, after dark when the baby nurse had assured them she was quite alright.
He plucked roses from the garden to tuck behind her ears.
They stole kisses with her back gently pressed against trees or with his on a picnic blanket, her rounded hips cupped by his hands as she tentatively reintroduced the friction of her body to his.
And one evening a few nights later, when he had looked away for only a minute before turning back, his wife was slipping free of her blouse, her curls wild and her smile wide as she unclasped her bra.
That night, with the sounds of summer as the backdrop and the late-night-Scottish-dusk just descending into dark, they made love in the stables, their bodies joining for the first time in months. He took his time, asked her again and again if she was sure, if she was ready. When she winced, he stopped. She shook her head, then nodded with a sigh as he began to move inside of her with an almost-exquisite tenderness. They were cautious with each other, circumspect, as though either might be broken by a hurried touch or indelicate mouths. Utterly besotted by one another’s bodies and the way intimacy felt familiar, comfortable, and lived in.
At the scene in front of her, just days after their reconnection, Claire swallowed hard, silently begging her eyes to dry out. She had shed enough tears in the last six months to last a lifetime.
“Ye wanted to be in our wedding, so ye nested yerself early in yer mam’s belly, ye fierce wee thing. We’ll show ye the pictures. The day I married yer mam is the happiest day of my life… second only to the day that I met her…” At that, Julianna let out the lowest little whimper of a cry, and Jamie tut-tutted for a moment, then continued, “Her fat arse was leanin’ over the gate in the stable, and I couldna stop smiling.”
“Hey,” Claire breathed in feigned exasperation, stepping fully into the room. “My arse was not that fat, and I quite enjoyed our wedding day. Also, I’ll thank you not to teach the heir to the throne such things.”
“I kent ye were there,” Jamie said as he looked over, humming. “I have a hunter’s senses for yer presence, a nighean.”
Claire pursed her lips, rolling her eyes as she strode the rest of the way across the sitting room. Carefully, she took the bundle from his arms. “I think this wee girl’s nighttime garbling, and our resultant insomnia, are enough to dull even the most astute tracker’s senses.”
Jamie lifted the edge of his plaid, allowing Claire to slip in beneath its warm folds. She centered herself between his legs, leaning against his bare chest as she carefully slipped one bare breast through the neckline of her robe. Jamie’s hand rested loosely on her waist, his fingers flexing for just a moment as Julianna’s lips parted then closed around Claire’s nipple. Claire stiffened for a moment, then relaxed backwards into his chest. Julianna left one soft palm to rest just above Claire’s heart.
Closing her eyes, one hand cupped behind Julianna’s head and one on the baby’s soft bum, Claire whispered, “Tell me about the wedding. What would you tell her?”
Claire opened her eyes and craned her head back just enough that he could see her roll her eyes. “Whose wedding do you think I want to hear about?”
“Jenny’s maybe?” he posited, eyes crinkling at the corners as her shoulders bounced with hardly-contained laughter.
The baby’s mouth slipped free and an impressive stream of milk sprayed her cheeks. Jamie and Claire’s laughter was cut short by the soft, threatened grumble of their bairn. It was a precursor to a cry from the suddenly quite-crabby Julianna. With the baby gently mopped up, and returned to her middle-of-the-night suckling, Jamie began to recount the wedding day. By then, Julianna had one eye half-closed, the other lazily roving around in an utterly useless attempt to focus on something as she fed.
“I didna expect ye to look the way ye did. I kent ye’d be beautiful, of course, but I thought somehow ye’d be someone else’s bride, ye ken? That ye’d be dolled up for a ceremony. A queen prepared for a royal wedding – no’ for our wedding – but there ye were. Ye were as bonnie as I’d ever seen ye… as bonnie as I thought I’d ever see ye. At least until I saw ye like this… wi’ our bairn at yer breast, and Christ, I dinna ken what I did to have such a rare woman love me.”
She felt warmth flood her cheeks, the tears leaking out of the corners of her eyes. Bloody Scot. “You looked pretty handsome yourself in that uniform that I knew you did not want to wear.”
A long hum came from him, the vibration beginning low in his chest and making her own body vibrate.
The wedding was not the ordinary royal nuptials in ways that went even further than the fact that she was carrying the heir to the throne.
The dress she wore was light, modern, and cut just right to conceal their secret. Together, they had carefully wrapped it in tissue and tucked it away at his cabin. So it wouldn’t end up in some stuffy museum with a bland placard, she explained as she rose on tiptoes to push it to the back of a closet.
They married in candlelight, with a bouquet of wildflowers picked from the gardens at Balmoral in her hand.
She wore Jamie’s ring, and for some reason she was not at all surprised when her hand did not tremble as he slid it over her knuckle and let his fingers linger on the band for a moment. Her own voice was low as she slipped a band of gold down his finger, whispering the words back to him that he had said to her.
I give you this ring, James Fraser, as a sign of our marriage and mutual trust, our love and our promise to care for one another over all others.
The papers could scoff all they wanted, muse over what a slap in the face it was to the Commonwealth she headed. To give away power, a piece of her divine right.
Nevertheless, she gave herself to him, just as he gave himself to her. She had done it long before that moment, long before the promise concluded.
This day. All of the days we have remaining.
Julianna grunted, released, and whimpered the start of a gut-wrenching, milky cry before latching on again with only the slightest encouragement. This time, both of her eyes closed and her hand fell to a tiny, balled fist above her brows.
“She has a tooth coming in,” Jamie whispered, his hand slipping up Claire’s arm and coming to rest on her shoulder.
“Trust me,” Claire murmured. “I can feel the bloody thing.”
Claire allowed her eyes to close, her attention somehow equally split between her husband’s even breathing and the gentle suckling at her breast. She felt Jamie tuck her hair behind her ear and kiss her temple.
“Ye’re a braw queen, mo nighean donn, but ye’re more than that. Sae much more.”
She wet her lips and turned her head, slowly shifting the now-sleeping bundle in her arms. “Is this what you thought it would be, Fraser?” There was no tentativeness in her voice – it was as though she already knew the answer, but just wanted to hear him say it. “Your life here… with me?”
Humming, his hand skimmed down her upper arm, cupped her elbow, and then found its way to her fingers. His palm covered her hand, and his fingers brushed the narrow expanse of their baby’s lower back.
“Ye helped me come back to life, Sassenach. All that time after the war, I was dead. I didn’t ken it then, but I loved ye then. Before I met ye.”
Running a finger along Julianna’s cheek and tucking her breast back into her robe, Claire whispered, “I loved you both before I met you. You brought me to life, Fraser. I always will love you.”
Fraser shifted, his stubbled cheek against hers as he wound an arm around his queen’s waist and drew her closer.
“So long as my body lives, and yours—we are one flesh,” he whispered. The magnolias at Balmoral smelled like zested citrus and honey. The scent was in the air along with the smoke from the fire Jamie started. Julianna cooed quietly and nestled her face against Claire’s breast, her lips having gone slack. “And when my body shall cease, my soul will still be yours. Claire—I swear by my hope of heaven, I will not be parted from you.”
Claire closed her eyes, the feeling of his rising and falling chest against her back and that of their baby on her own chest.
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