A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [301]
He’d been working at the whisky clearing and, heading back to the cabin for dinner, had rounded a turn in the trail and surprised the two of them, Malva and Bobby Higgins, locked in an embrace. They’d sprung apart like a pair of startled deer, eyes wide, so alarmed as to be funny.
He’d smiled, but before he could either apologize or fade tactfully into the underbrush, Malva had stepped up to him, eyes still wide, but blazing with determination.
“Tell my father,” she’d said, “and I’ll tell everyone I’ve seen you kiss Amy McCallum.”
He’d been so taken aback by her words that he’d scarcely noticed Bobby, until the young soldier had put a hand on her arm, murmuring something to her, drawing her away. She’d turned reluctantly, with a last, wary, meaningful glance at Roger, and a parting shot that left him staggered.
“Everybody kens ye spend more time up at the notch wi’ the widow McCallum than ye do with your own wife. They’ll all believe me.”
God damn it, they would, too, and it was his own bloody fault. Bar one or two sarcastic remarks, Bree hadn’t protested his visits; she’d accepted—or seemed to—that someone had to go now and then to see the McCallums, make sure they had food and fire, provide a few moments’ company, a small respite in the monotony of loneliness and labor.
He’d done such things often, going with the Reverend to call on the aged, the widowed, the ill of the congregation; take them food, stop for a bit to talk—to listen. It was just what you did for a neighbor, he told himself; a normal kindness.
But he should have taken more notice. Now he recalled Jamie’s thoughtful glance over the supper table, the breath taken as though to say something, when Roger had asked Claire for a salve for wee Orrie McCallum’s rash—and then Claire’s glance at Brianna, and Jamie’s closing his mouth, whatever he’d thought of saying left unspoken.
“They’ll all believe me.” For the girl to have said that, there must have been talk already. Likely Jamie had heard it; he could only hope that Bree hadn’t.
The crooked chimney came in sight above the laurels, the smoke a nearly transparent wisp that made the clear air above the rooftree seem to quiver, as though the cabin were enchanted, might vanish with a blink.
The worst of it was that he knew precisely how it had happened. He had a weakness for young mothers, a terrible tenderness toward them, a desire to take care of them. The fact that he knew exactly why he harbored such an urge—the memory of his own young mother, who had died saving his life during the Blitz—didn’t help.
It was a tenderness that had nearly cost him his life at Alamance, when that bloody-minded fool William Buccleigh MacKenzie had mistaken Roger’s concern for Morag MacKenzie for . . . well, all right, he’d kissed her, but only on the forehead, and for God’s sake, she was his own many-times-great-grannie . . . and the thundering idiocy of nearly being killed by your own great-great-etc.-grandfather for molesting his wife . . . it had cost him his voice, and he should have learned his lesson, but he hadn’t, not well enough.
Suddenly furious with himself—and with Malva Christie, the malicious little chit—he picked up a stone from the trail and flung it down the mountain, into the stream. It struck another in the water, bounced twice, and vanished into the rushing gurgle.
His visits to the McCallums had to stop, at once. He saw that clearly. Another way would have to be found for them . . . but he had to come once more, to explain. Amy would understand, he thought—but how to explain to Aidan what reputation was, and why gossip was a deadly sin, and why Roger couldn’t come anymore to fish or show him how to build things. . . .
Cursing steadily under his breath, he made the last short, steep ascent and came into the ragged, overgrown little dooryard. Before he could call out to announce his presence, though, the door flew open.
“Roger Mac!” Amy McCallum half-fell down the step and into his arms, gasping and weeping. “Oh, you came, you came! I prayed for