Jean Genie
Copyright© 2026 by Rachael Jane
Chapter 64: The Flight
Scotland & England, Early summer 1746*
The moor behind us is a graveyard. The Duke of Cumberland’s soldiers scour it without mercy ... killing the wounded, dragging survivors to the gallows, burning tartans in piles that choke the air with smoke. Elizabeth doesn’t look back. She grips Hamish’s arm, half‑carrying him into the hills, her breath ragged, her skirts heavy with mud.
“Jeannia,” she whispers, “are they close?”
I reach outward, sensing the tremor of boots on wet earth. “Yes. Move north. Keep to the rocks.”
She obeys instantly. Hamish stumbles beside her, barely conscious, his wound opening and bleeding through every bandage she tries. The man who once guided her through the Highlands now leans on her like a child. Elizabeth becomes his strength and his shield.
They hide wherever they can.
Elizabeth finds temporary refuge in a peat hut abandoned after Culloden. Later a barn whose owner pretends not to see them. Then a cave where Elizabeth holds Hamish through the night, whispering to keep him awake. A croft where a widow gives them broth and a blanket, before sending them away before soldiers arrive.
The clan is gone. Scattered. Some killed, some captured and hanged. The tartan that once meant pride now marks death. Elizabeth has no idea how many of the clan survived.
Elizabeth feels the loss like a stone in her chest, but she doesn’t falter. She moves through the Highlands with a fierceness I have never felt in her before. She listens to every warning I give ... turn here, hide now, silence ... trusting me without hesitation.
Hamish tries to speak sometimes. “Elizabeth ... you shouldn’t ... carry me...”
She hushes him. “I carried you out of Culloden. I’ll carry you to safety.”
He believes me to be a nameless camp follower who vanished into the smoke. He never questions my arrival or disappearance. Pain clouds his memory too heavily for questions.
Soldiers hunt them for weeks. Once, they come so close Elizabeth can hear their breath. She presses herself and Hamish into a cleft of rock, her hand over his mouth, her heart pounding so loudly she fears it will give them away. There are too many soldiers for me to befuddle their minds, so I bend the air around Elizabeth and Hamish, blurring sound, shifting shadow. The soldiers pass without seeing them.
Elizabeth exhales only when they are gone. “Thank you,” she whispers.
“You saved him,” I say. “I only helped.”
She keeps moving. Through rain. Through hunger. Through grief. Through the ruins of everything she once knew.
And slowly Hamish begins to heal ... enough to walk with her help, enough to speak without gasping, enough to understand that she has become his protector now.
One night, as they shelter in a croft near the coast, Hamish touches her cheek with trembling fingers. “You’re stronger than I ever knew.”
Elizabeth holds his hand. “I had to be.”
I feel her resolve ... hard, bright, and unbreakable.
Hamish walks without leaning on her for the first time in weeks. His steps are slow, careful, but steady. Elizabeth watches him cross the small clearing outside the croft, the morning light catching the faint scar beneath his ribs. Relief softens her shoulders. She has carried him through rain, mud, fear, and silence. Now, at last, he can carry himself.
“Jeannia,” she whispers, “is it time?”
“Yes,” I say. “The soldiers have turned their attention north. The roads south are safer.”
She nods, determination settling over her like a cloak. The disguise is Elizabeth’s idea.
She stands before Hamish in the croft’s dim light, holding out a neatly folded set of English clothes, plain but respectable. A servant’s coat. Breeches. A cap to hide his hair.
Hamish frowns. “Elizabeth ... I don’t...”
“You’ll be my manservant,” she says firmly. “No one will question an English lady travelling with her injured attendant.”
He hesitates. “I don’t know how to act like...”
She steps closer, touching his cheek. “You acted like a chief for your clan. You can act like a manservant for me.”
He exhales, defeated by her certainty. “Aye. I’ll try.”
Elizabeth dresses herself in similar clothes to those she wore before the Highlands, an English riding habit, a cloak, gloves. She looks transformed. Not the woman who fled Culloden. Not the Highland wife who carried her husband through the hills.
An English gentlewoman.
Hamish stares at her, awe flickering in his eyes. “You look ... different.”
She lifts her chin, her resolve plain to see. “That’s the point.”