A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [489]
“Oh, sir,” she said, but then stopped dead.
Jamie was by now looking nearly as uncomfortable as the Christies, but did his best to keep his air of kindness.
“Will ye not tell me, then, lass?” he said, as gently as possible. “I promise ye’ll not suffer for it.”
Tom Christie made an irritable noise, like some beast of prey disturbed at its meal, and Malva went very pale indeed, but her eyes stayed fixed on Jamie.
“Oh, sir,” she said, and her voice was small but clear as a bell, ringing with reproach. “Oh, sir, how can ye say that to me, when ye ken the truth as well as I do?” Before anyone could react to that, she turned to her father, and lifting a hand, pointed directly at Jamie.
“It was him,” she said.
I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO grateful for anything in life as for the fact that I was looking at Jamie’s face when she said it. He had no warning, no chance to control his features—and he didn’t. His face showed neither anger nor fear, denial or surprise; nothing save the open-mouthed blankness of absolute incomprehension.
“What?” he said, and blinked, once. Then realization flooded into his face.
“WHAT?” he said, in a tone that should have knocked the little trollop flat on her lying little bottom.
She blinked then, and cast down her eyes, the very picture of virtue shamed. She turned, as though unable to bear his gaze, and stretched out a tremulous hand toward me.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Fraser,” she whispered, tears trembling becomingly on her lashes. “He—we—we didna mean to hurt ye.”
I watched with interest from somewhere outside my body, as my arm lifted and drew back, and felt a sense of vague approval as my hand struck her cheek with enough force that she stumbled backward, tripped over a stool, and fell, her petticoats tumbled up to her waist in a froth of linen, wool-stockinged legs sticking absurdly up in the air.
“Can’t say the same, I’m afraid.” I hadn’t even thought of saying anything, and was surprised to feel the words in my mouth, cool and round as river stones.
Suddenly, I was back in my body. I felt as though my stays had tightened during my temporary absence; my ribs ached with the effort to breathe. Liquid surged in every direction; blood and lymph, sweat and tears—if I did draw breath, my skin would give way and let it all spurt out, like the contents of a ripe tomato, thrown against a wall.
I had no bones. But I had will. That alone held me upright and saw me out the door. I didn’t see the corridor or realize that I had pushed open the front door of the house; all I saw was a sudden blaze of light and a blur of green in the dooryard and then I was running, running as though all the demons of hell coursed at my heels.
In fact, no one pursued me. And yet I ran, plunging off the trail and into the wood, feet sliding in the layers of slippery needles down the runnels between stones, half-falling down the slope of the hill, caroming painfully off fallen logs, wrenching free of thorns and brush.
I arrived breathless at the bottom of a hill and found myself in a dark, small hollow walled by the towering black-green of rhododendrons. I paused, gasping for breath, then sat down abruptly. I felt myself wobble, and let go, ending on my back among the dusty layers of leathery mountain laurel leaves.
A faint thought echoed in my mind, under the sound of my gasping breath. The guilty flee, where no man pursues. But I surely wasn’t guilty. Nor was Jamie; I knew that. Knew it.
But Malva was certainly pregnant. Someone was guilty.
My eyes were blurred from running and the sunlight starred into fractured slabs and streaks of color—dark blue, light blue, white and gray, pinwheels of green and gold as the cloudy sky and the mountainside spun round and round above me.
I blinked hard, unshed tears sliding down my temples.
“Bloody, bloody, fucking hell,” I said very softly. “Now what?”
JAMIE STOOPED WITHOUT thought, seized the girl by the elbows, and hauled her unceremoniously to her feet. Her one cheek bore a crimson patch where Claire had struck her, and for