A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [121]
I pulled the quilt up a bit and tugged it straight, then blew out the candle. He was no more than a dark shape against the pillows, his breathing slow and hoarse.
“You did very well,” I whispered, and patted his shoulder. “Good night, Mr. Christie.”
MY PERSONAL BARBARIAN was asleep, but woke, catlike, when I crawled into bed. He stretched out an arm and gathered me into himself with a sleepily interrogative “mmmm?”
I nestled against him, tight muscles beginning to relax automatically into his warmth.
“Mmmm.”
“Ah. And how’s our wee Tom, then?” He leaned back a little and his big hands came down on my trapezius, kneading the knots from my neck and shoulders.
“Oh. Oh. Obnoxious, prickly, censorious, and very drunk. Otherwise, fine. Oh, yes. More, please—up a bit, oh, yes. Oooh.”
“Aye, well, that sounds like Tom at his best—bar the drunkenness. If ye groan like that, Sassenach, he’ll think I’m rubbing something other than your neck.”
“I do not care,” I said, eyes closed, the better to appreciate the exquisite sensations vibrating through my spinal column. “I’ve had quite enough of Tom Christie for the moment. Besides, he’s likely passed out by now, with as much as he’s had to drink.”
Still, I tempered my vocal response, in the interests of my patient’s rest.
“Where did that Bible come from?” I asked, though the answer was obvious. Jenny must have sent it from Lallybroch; her last parcel had arrived a few days before, while I was visiting Salem.
Jamie answered the question I’d really asked, sighing so his breath stirred my hair.
“It gave me a queer turn to see it, when I came to it among the books my sister sent. I couldna quite decide what to do with it, aye?”
Little wonder if it had given him a turn.
“Why did she send it, did she say?” My shoulders were beginning to relax, the ache between them dulling. I felt him shrug behind me.
“She sent it with some other books; said she was turning out the attic and found a box of them, so decided to send them to me. But she did mention hearing that the village of Kildennie had decided to emigrate to North Carolina; they’re all MacGregors up near there, ken?”
“Oh, I see.” Jamie had once told me that his intention was one day to find the mother of Alex MacGregor, and give her his Bible, with the information that her son had been avenged. He had made inquiries after Culloden, but discovered that both of the MacGregor parents were dead. Only a sister remained alive, and she had married and left her home; no one knew quite where she was, or even whether she was still in Scotland.
“Do you think Jenny—or Ian, rather—found the sister at last? And she lived in that village?”
He shrugged again, and with a final squeeze of my shoulders, left off.
“It may be. Ye ken Jenny; she’d leave it to me whether to search for the woman.”
“And will you?” I rolled over to face him. Alex MacGregor had hanged himself, rather than live as prey to Black Jack Randall. Jack Randall was dead, had died at Culloden. But Jamie’s memories of Culloden were no more than fragments, driven from him by the trauma of the battle and the fever he had suffered afterward. He had waked, wounded, with Jack Randall’s body lying on top of him—but had no recollection of what had happened.
And yet, I supposed, Alex MacGregor had been avenged—whether or not by Jamie’s hand.
He thought about that for a moment, and I felt the small stirring as he tapped the two stiff fingers of his right hand against his thigh.
“I’ll ask,” he said finally. “Her name was Mairi.”
“I see,” I said. “Well, there can’t be more than, oh . . . three or four hundred women named Mairi in North Carolina.”
That made him laugh, and we drifted off to sleep, to the accompaniment of Tom Christie’s stertorous snores across the hall.
IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN minutes or hours later that I woke suddenly, listening. The room was dark, the fire cold on the hearth, and the shutters rattling faintly. I tensed a little, trying to wake enough to rise and go to my patient—but then heard him, a long wheezing inspiration, followed by a rumbling snore.
It