A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [394]
“Oh. Well,” I said, and lifted one hand, heavy as lead. “Do. Get something. Won’t you?”
“Yes,” he said. “I will.” Instead of leaving, though, he hesitated, then took several rapid strides back, bent over the bed, and seizing my face between his palms, kissed me on the forehead.
“You’re beautiful,” he said fiercely, and with a final squeeze of my cheeks, left.
“What?” I said faintly, but the only answer was the bellying of the curtain as the breeze came in, scented with apples.
IN POINT OF FACT, I looked like a skeleton with a particularly unflattering crew cut, as I learned when I finally gained sufficient strength as to force Jamie to bring me a looking glass.
“I dinna suppose ye’d think of wearing a cap?” he suggested, diffidently fingering a muslin specimen that Marsali had brought me. “Only until it grows out a bit?”
“I don’t suppose I bloody would.”
I had some difficulty in saying this, shocked as I was by the horrifying vision in the glass. In fact, I had a strong impulse to seize the cap from his hands, put it on and pull it down to my shoulders.
I had rejected earlier offers of a cap from Mrs. Bug—who had been volubly congratulating herself on my survival as the obvious result of her fever treatment—and from Marsali, Malva, and every other woman who’d come to visit me.
This was simple contrariness on my part; the sight of my unrestrained hair outraged their Scottish sense of what was proper in a woman, and they’d been trying—with varying degrees of subtlety—to force me into a cap for years. I was damned if I’d let circumstance accomplish it for them.
Having now seen myself in a mirror, I felt somewhat less adamant about it. And my scalped head did feel a bit chilly. On the other hand, I realized that if I were to give in, Jamie would be terribly alarmed—and I thought I’d frightened him quite enough, judging by the hollow look of his face and the deep smudges under his eyes.
As it was, his face had lightened considerably when I rejected the cap he was holding, and he tossed it aside.
I carefully turned the looking glass over and set it on the counterpane, repressing a sigh.
“Always good for a laugh, I suppose, seeing the expressions on people’s faces when they catch sight of me.”
Jamie glanced at me, the corner of his mouth twitching.
“Ye’re verra beautiful, Sassenach,” he said gently. Then he burst out laughing, snorting through his nose and wheezing. I raised one eyebrow at him, picked up the glass and looked again—which made him laugh harder.
I leaned back against the pillows, feeling a bit better. The fever had quite gone, but I still felt wraithlike and weak, barely able to sit up unassisted, and I fell asleep almost without warning, after the least exertion.
Jamie, still snorting, took my hand, raised it to his mouth, and kissed it. The sudden warm immediacy of the touch rippled the fair hairs of my forearm, and my fingers closed involuntarily on his.
“I love you,” he said very softly, his shoulders still trembling with laughter.
“Oh,” I said, suddenly feeling quite a lot better. “Well, then. I love you, too. And it will grow, after all.”
“So it will.” He kissed my hand again, and set it gently on the quilt. “Have ye eaten?”
“A bit,” I said, with what forbearance I could muster. “I’ll have more later.”
I had realized many years before why “patients” are called that; it’s because a sick person is generally incapacitated, and thus obliged to put up with any amount of harassment and annoyance from persons who are not sick.
The fever had broken and I had regained consciousness two days before; since then, the invariable response of everyone who saw me was to gasp at my appearance, urge me to wear a cap—and then try to force food down my throat. Jamie, more sensitive to my tones of voice than were Mrs. Bug, Malva, Brianna, or Marsali, wisely desisted after a quick glance at the tray by the bed to see that I actually had eaten something.
“Tell me what’s happened,” I said, settling and bracing myself. “Who’s been ill? How are they? And