A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [658]
Roger had given Jamie a murderous look, and got the same back, with interest. This is war, Fraser’s narrowed eyes had said. And I will use any weapon I can. But all he had said was, “Good night, then, a nighean,” and touched her hair with tenderness before departing.
Brianna had sat down with Mandy and nursed her, eyes closed, refusing to speak. After a time, her face eased from its white, strained lines, and she burped the baby and laid her sleeping in her basket. Then she came to bed, and made love to him with a silent fierceness that surprised him. But not as much as she surprised him now.
“And there’s one other thing,” she said, sober and slightly sad. “I’m the only person in the world for whom this isn’t murder.”
With that, she turned and walked away fast, toward the inn where Mandy waited to be fed. Out on the mudflats, he could still hear the sound of excited voices, raucous as gulls.
AT TWO O’CLOCK in the afternoon, Roger helped his wife into a small rowboat, tied to the quay near the row of warehouses. The tide had been coming in all day; the water was more than five feet deep. Out in the midst of the shining gray stood the cluster of mooring posts—and the small dark head of the pirate.
Brianna was remote as a pagan statue, her face expressionless. She lifted her skirts to step into the boat, and sat down, the weight in her pocket clunking against the wooden slat as she did so.
Roger took up the oars and rowed, heading toward the posts. They would arouse no particular interest; boats had been going out ever since noon, carrying sightseers who wished to look upon the condemned man’s face, shout taunts, or clip a strand of his hair for a souvenir.
He couldn’t see where he was going; Brianna directed him left or right with a silent tilt of her head. She could see; she sat straight and tall, her right hand hidden in her skirt.
Then she lifted her left hand suddenly, and Roger lay on the oars, digging with one to slew the tiny craft around.
Bonnet’s lips were cracked, his face chapped and crusted with salt, his lids so reddened that he could barely open his eyes. But his head lifted as they drew near, and Roger saw a man ravished, helpless and dreading a coming embrace—so much that he half welcomes its seductive touch, yielding his flesh to cold fingers and the overwhelming kiss that steals his breath.
“Ye’ve left it late enough, darlin’,” he said to Brianna, and the cracked lips parted in a grin that split them and left blood on his teeth. “I knew ye’d come, though.”
Roger paddled with one oar, working the boat close, then closer. He was looking over his shoulder when Brianna drew the gilt-handled pistol from her pocket, and put the barrel to Stephen Bonnet’s ear.
“Go with God, Stephen,” she said clearly, in Gaelic, and pulled the trigger. Then she dropped the gun into the water and turned round to face her husband.
“Take us home,” she said.
118
REGRET
LORD JOHN STEPPED INTO HIS ROOM at the inn, and was surprised—astonished, in fact—to discover that he had a visitor.
“John.” Jamie Fraser turned from the window, and gave him a small smile.
“Jamie.” He returned it, trying to control the sudden sense of elation he felt. He had used Jamie Fraser’s Christian name perhaps three times in the last twenty-five years; the intimacy of it was exhilarating, but he mustn’t let it show.
“Will I order us refreshment?” he asked politely. Jamie had not moved from the window; he glanced out, then back at John and shook his head, still smiling faintly.
“I thank ye, no. We are enemies, are we not?”
“We find ourselves regrettably upon opposing sides of what I trust will be a short-lived conflict,” Lord John corrected.