A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [370]
“Trying to think what on earth I might have said that Mr. MacNeill could possibly have thought was Latin, let alone a Catholic reference,” he replied, companionably making room for her.
“You didn’t start singing ‘Ave Maria’ or anything,” she assured him. “I would have noticed.”
“Mm,” he said, and coughed. “Don’t mention the singing, aye?”
“It’ll get better,” she said firmly, and turned, pushing and squirming, to make a nest for herself. The mattress was stuffed with wool, much more comfortable—and a hell of a lot quieter—than corn shucks, but very prone to lumps and odd hollows.
“Aye, maybe,” he said, though thinking, Maybe. But it will never be what it was. No point in thinking of that, though; he’d grieved as much as he meant to. It was time to make the best of things and get on.
Comfortable at last, she turned to him, sighing in contentment as her body seemed to melt momentarily and remold itself around him—one of her many small, miraculous talents. She had put her hair in a thick plait for sleeping, and he ran his hand down its length, recalling the snake with a brief shudder. He wondered what Claire had done with it. Likely set it free in her garden to eat mice, pragmatist that she was.
“Did you figure out which harlot story it was you left out?” Brianna murmured, moving her hips against his in a casual but definitely nonaccidental sort of way.
“No. There are a terrible lot of harlots in the Bible.” He took the tip of her ear very gently between his teeth and she drew a deep, sudden breath.
“Whassa harlot?” said a small, sleepy voice from the trundle.
“Go to sleep, mate—I’ll tell ye in the morning,” Roger called, and slid a hand down over Brianna’s very round, very solid, very warm hip.
Jemmy would almost certainly be asleep in seconds, but they contented themselves with small, secret touches beneath the bedclothes, waiting to be sure he was soundly asleep. He slept like the dead, once firmly in dreamland, but had more than once roused from the drowsy foreshore at very awkward moments, disturbed by his parents’ unseemly noises.
“Is it like you thought it would be?” Bree asked, putting a thoughtful thumb on his nipple and rotating it.
“Is what—oh, the preaching. Well, bar the snake . . .”
“Not just that—the whole thing. Do you think . . .” Her eyes searched his, and he tried to keep his mind on what she was saying, rather than what she was doing.
“Ah . . .” His hand clamped over hers, and he took a deep breath. “Yeah. Ye mean am I still sure? I am; I wouldna have done such a thing if I weren’t.”
“Dad—Daddy—always said it was a great blessing to have a calling, to know that you were meant to be something in particular. Do you think you’ve always had a—a calling?”
“Well, for a time, I had the fixed notion that I was meant to be a deep-sea diver,” he said. “Don’t laugh; I mean it. What about you?”
“Me?” She looked surprised, then pursed her lips, thinking. “Well, I went to a Catholic school, so we were all urged to think about becoming priests or nuns—but I was pretty sure I didn’t have a religious vocation.”
“Thank God,” he said, with a fervency that made her laugh.
“And then for quite a while, I thought I should be a historian—that I wanted to be one. And it was interesting,” she said slowly. “I could do it. But—what I really wanted was to build things. To make things.” She pulled her hand out from under his and waggled her fingers, long and graceful. “But I don’t know that that’s a calling, really.”
“Do ye not think motherhood is a calling, of sorts?” He was on delicate ground here. She was several days late, but neither of them had mentioned it—or was going to, yet.
She cast a quick glance over her shoulder at the trundle bed, and made a small grimace, whose import he couldn’t read.
“Can you call something that’s accidental for most people a calling?” she asked. “I don’t mean it isn’t important—but shouldn’t there be some choice involved?”
Choice. Well, Jem had been thoroughly an accident, but this one—if there was one—they’d chosen, all right.
“I