A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [41]
“I need, too,” I said, just as softly. “Come here.”
He leaned close, and pulled the drawstring neatly from the neck of my shift, so the worn linen wilted off my shoulders. I made a grab for the fabric, but he caught my hand, and held it down by my side. One-fingered, he brushed the shift lower, then put out the candle, and in a dark that smelled of wax and honey and the sweat of horses, kissed my forehead, eyes, the corners of my cheeks, my lips and chin, and so continued, slow and soft-lipped, to the arches of my feet.
He raised himself then, and suckled my breasts for a long time, and I ran my hand up his back and cupped his buttocks, naked and vulnerable in the dark.
Afterward, we lay in a pleasantly vermiform tangle, the only light in the room a faint glow from the banked hearth. I was so tired that I could feel my body sinking into the mattress, and desired nothing more than to keep going down, down, into the welcoming dark of oblivion.
“Sassenach?”
“Um?”
A moment’s hesitation, then his hand found mine, curling round it.
“Ye wouldna do what she did, would ye?”
“Who?”
“Her. The Dutchwoman.”
Snatched back from the edge of sleep, I was muzzy and confused, sufficiently so that even the image of the dead woman, shrouded in her apron, seemed unreal, no more disturbing than the random fragments of reality my brain tossed overboard in a vain effort to keep afloat as I sank down into the depths of sleep.
“What? Fall into the fire? I’ll try not,” I assured him, yawning. “Good night.”
“No. Wake up.” He shook my arm gently. “Talk to me, Sassenach.”
“Ng.” It was a considerable effort, but I pushed away the enticing arms of Morpheus, and flounced over onto my side, facing him. “Mm. Talk to you. About . . . ?”
“The Dutchwoman,” he repeated patiently. “If I were to be killed, ye wouldna go and kill your whole family, would ye?”
“What?” I rubbed my free hand over my face, trying to make some sense of this, amid the drifting shreds of sleep. “Whose whole—oh. You think she did it on purpose? Poisoned them?”
“I think maybe so.”
His words were no more than a whisper, but they brought me back to full consciousness. I lay silent for a moment, then reached out, wanting to be sure he was really there.
He was; a large, solid object, the smooth bone of his hip warm and live under my hand.
“It might as well have been an accident,” I said, voice pitched low. “You can’t know for sure.”
“No,” he admitted. “But I canna keep from seeing it.” He turned restlessly onto his back.
“The men came,” he said softly, to the beams overhead. “He fought them, and they killed him there, on his own threshold. And when she saw her man was gone I think she told the men she must feed the weans first, before . . . and then she put toadstools into the stew, and fed it to the bairns and her mother. She took the two men with them, but I think it was that that was the accident. She only meant to follow him. She wouldna leave him there, alone.”
I wanted to tell him that this was a rather dramatic interpretation of what we had seen. But I couldn’t very well tell him he was wrong. Hearing him describe what he saw in thought, I saw it, too, all too clearly.
“You don’t know,” I said at last, softly. “You can’t know.” Unless you find the other men, I thought suddenly, and ask them. I didn’t say that, though.
Neither of us spoke for a bit. I could tell that he was still thinking, but the quicksand of sleep was once more pulling me down, clinging and seductive.
“What if I canna keep ye safe?” he whispered at last. His head moved suddenly on the pillow, turning toward me. “You and the rest of them? I shall try wi’ all my strength, Sassenach, and I dinna mind if I die doing it, but what if