A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [465]
His hand went automatically to his waist, but he wasn’t wearing his dirk.
“No. There’s a penknife on my desk, though.”
He opened the door just as Mr. Wemyss reached the office. Mr. Wemyss’s exclamation of shock reached me simultaneously with the smell of blood.
Jamie pushed Mr. Wemyss unceremoniously aside, and I rushed in after him, heart in my throat.
The three of them were standing by the desk, close together. A spray of fresh blood stained the desk, and Kezzie was holding my bloodied handkerchief wrapped round his hand. He looked up at Jamie, his face ghostly in the guttering light. His teeth were gritted tight together, but he managed a smile.
A small movement caught my eye, and I saw Jo, carefully holding the blade of Jamie’s penknife over the candle flame. Acting as though no one was there, he took his brother’s hand, pulled off the handkerchief, and pressed the hot metal against the raw oval of the wound on Kezzie’s thumb.
Mr. Wemyss made a small choking noise, and the smell of seared flesh mixed with the scent of rain. Kezzie drew breath deeply, then let it out, and smiled crookedly at Jo.
“Godspeed, Brother,” he said, his voice a little loud and flat.
“Much happiness to you, Brother,” Jo said—in the same voice.
Lizzie stood between them, small and disheveled, her reddened eyes fixed on Jamie. And smiled.
74
SO ROMANTIC
BRIANNA DROVE THE LITTLE CAR slowly up the slope of the quilt over Roger’s leg, across his stomach, and into the center of his chest, where he captured both the car and her hand, giving her a wry grin.
“That’s a really good car,” she said, pulling her hand loose and rolling comfortably onto her side beside him. “All four wheels turn. What kind is it? A Morris Minor, like that little orange thing you had in Scotland? That was the cutest thing I ever saw, but I never understood how you managed to squeeze into it.”
“With talcum powder,” he assured her. He lifted the toy and set a front wheel spinning with a flick of his thumb. “Aye, it is a good one, isn’t it? It isn’t really meant to be a particular model, but I suppose I was remembering that Ford Mustang of yours. Remember driving down out of the mountains that time?” His eyes softened with memory, the green of them nearly black in the dim light of the banked fire.
“I do. I nearly drove off the road when you kissed me at eighty-five miles per hour.”
She moved closer to him by reflex, nudging him with a knee. He rolled obligingly to face her, and kissed her again, meanwhile running the car swiftly backward down the length of her spine and over the curve of her buttocks. She yelped and squirmed against him, trying to escape the tickling wheels, then punched him in the ribs.
“Cut that out!”
“I thought ye found speed erotic. Vroom,” he murmured, steering the toy up her arm—and suddenly down the neck of her shift. She grabbed for the car, but he snatched it away, then plunged his hand under the covers, running the wheels down her thigh—then madly up again.
A furious wrestling match for possession of the car ensued, which ended with both of them on the floor in a tangle of bedding and nightclothes, gasping for breath and helpless with giggling.
“Ssh! You’ll wake up Jemmy!” She heaved and wriggled, trying to get out from under Roger’s weight. Secure in his fifty pounds’ advantage, he merely relaxed on top of her, pinning her to the floor.
“You couldn’t wake him with cannon fire,” Roger said, with a certainty born of experience. It was true; once past the stage of waking to be fed every few hours, Jem had always slept like a particularly comatose log.
She subsided, puffing hair out of her eyes and biding her time.
“Do you think you’ll ever go anywhere at eighty-five miles per hour again?”
“Only if I fall off the edge of a very deep gorge. Ye’re naked, did ye know that?”
“Well, so are you!”
“Aye, but I started out that way. Where’s the car?”
“I have no idea,” she lied. It was, in fact, under the small of her back, and very uncomfortable, but she