A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [497]
“It was—I mean, it wasna . . .” He stopped, and made that odd shrugging motion of his, as though his shirt were tight across his shoulders. He bowed his head for a moment on his knees, hands linked round them.
“She gave me tenderness,” he said finally, so softly that I barely heard him. “I—I hope I gave her the same.”
My throat and chest were too tight to speak, and tears prickled behind my eyes. I remembered, quite suddenly, what he had said to me the night I mended Tom Christie’s hand, about the Sacred Heart—“so wanting—and no one to touch him.” And he had lived in a cave for seven years, alone.
There was no more than a foot of space between us, but it seemed an unbridgeable gulf.
I reached across it and laid my hand on his, the tips of my fingers on his big, weathered knuckles. I took a breath, then two, trying to steady my voice, but it cracked and broke, nonetheless.
“You gave her . . . tenderness. I know you did.”
He turned to me, suddenly, and my face was pressed into his coat, the cloth of it damp and rough on my skin, my tears blooming in tiny warm patches that vanished at once into the chill of the fabric.
“Oh, Claire,” he whispered into my hair. I reached up, and could feel wetness on his cheeks. “She said—she wished to keep ye alive for me. And she meant it; she didna mean to take anything for herself.”
I cried then, holding nothing back. For empty years, yearning for the touch of a hand. Hollow years, lying beside a man I had betrayed, for whom I had no tenderness. For the terrors and doubts and griefs of the day. Cried for him and me and for Mary MacNab, who knew what loneliness was—and what love was, as well.
“I would have told ye, before,” he whispered, patting my back as though I were a small child. “But it was . . . it was the once.” He shrugged a little, helpless. “And I couldna think how. How to say it, that ye’d understand.”
I sobbed, gulped air, and finally sat up, wiping my face carelessly on a fold of my skirt.
“I understand,” I said. My voice was thick and clogged, but fairly steady now. “I do.”
And I did. Not only about Mary MacNab and what she had done—but why he’d told me now. There was no need; I would never have known. No need but the need for absolute honesty between us—and that I must know it was there.
I had believed him, about Malva. But now I had not only certainty of mind—but peace of heart.
We sat close together, the folds of my cloak and skirts flowing over his legs, his simple presence a comfort. Somewhere nearby, a very early cricket began to chirp.
“The rain’s past, then,” I said, hearing it. He nodded, with a small sound of assent.
“What shall we do?” I said at last. My voice sounded calm.
“Find out the truth—if I can.”
Neither of us mentioned the possibility that he might not. I shifted, gathering the folds of my cloak.
“Will we go home, then?”
It was too dark to see now, but I felt him nod as he got to his feet, putting down a hand to help me.
“Aye, we will.”
THE HOUSE WAS EMPTY when we returned, though Mrs. Bug had left a covered dish of shepherd’s pie on the table, the floor swept, and the fire neatly smoored. I took off my wet cloak and hung it on the peg, but then stood, unsure quite what to do next, as though I stood in a stranger’s house, in a country where I did not know the custom.
Jamie seemed to feel the same way—though after a moment, he stirred, fetched down the candlestick from the shelf over the hearth, and lit it with a spill from the fire. The wavering glow seemed only to emphasize the odd, echoing quality of the room, and he stood holding it for a minute, at a loss, before finally setting it down with a thump in the middle of the table.
“Are ye hungry, S . . . Sassenach?” He had begun to speak by habit, but then interrupted