Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [102]
“Pushing?” He sounded stunned. “Are ye meaning to visit the place, or move into it?”
“Er, well,” I said. I took a deep breath. “I, er, thought perhaps I could work there regularly. Herr Gerstmann says that all the physicians and healers who go there donate their time. Most of them don’t turn up every day, but I have plenty of time, and I could—”
“Plenty of time?”
“Stop repeating everything I say,” I said. “Yes, plenty of time. I know it’s important to go to salons and supper parties and all that, but it doesn’t take all day—at least it needn’t. I could—”
“Sassenach, you’re with child! Ye dinna mean to go out to nurse beggars and criminals?” He sounded rather helpless now, as though wondering how to deal with someone who had suddenly gone mad in front of him.
“I hadn’t forgotten,” I assured him. I pressed my hands against my belly, squinting down.
“It isn’t really noticeable yet; with a loose gown I can get away with it for a time. And there’s nothing wrong with me except the morning sickness; no reason why I shouldn’t work for some months yet.”
“No reason, except I wilna have ye doing it!” Expecting no company this evening, he had taken off his stock and opened his collar when he came home. I could see the tide of dusky red advancing up his throat.
“Jamie,” I said, striving for reasonableness. “You know what I am.”
“You’re my wife!”
“Well, that, too.” I flicked the idea aside with my fingers. “I’m a nurse, Jamie. A healer. You have reason to know it.”
He flushed hotly. “Aye, I do. And because ye’ve mended me when I’m wounded, I should think it right for ye to tend beggars and prostitutes? Sassenach, do ye no ken the sort of people that L’Hôpital des Anges takes in?” He looked pleadingly at me, as though expecting me to return to my senses any minute.
“What difference does that make?”
He looked wildly around the room, imploring witness from the portrait over the mantelpiece as to my unreasonableness.
“You could catch a filthy disease, for God’s sake! D’ye have no regard for your child, even if ye have none for me?”
Reasonableness was seeming a less desirable goal by the moment.
“Of course I have! What kind of careless, irresponsible person do you think I am?”
“The kind who would abandon her husband to go and play with scum in the gutter!” he snapped. “Since you ask.” He ran a big hand through his hair, making it stick up at the crown.
“Abandon you? Since when is it abandoning you to suggest really doing something, instead of rotting away in the d’Arbanvilles’ salon, watching Louise de Rohan stuff herself with pastry, and listening to bad poetry and worse music? I want to be useful!”
“Taking care of your own household isna useful? Being married to me isna useful?” The lacing round his hair broke under the stress, and the thick locks fluffed out like a flaming halo. He glared down his nose at me like an avenging angel.
“Sauce for the gander,” I retorted coldly. “Is being married to me sufficient occupation for you? I don’t notice you hanging round the house all day, adoring me. And as for the household, bosh.”
“Bosh? What’s bosh?” he demanded.
“Stuff and nonsense. Rot. Horsefeathers. In other words, don’t be ridiculous. Madame Vionnet does everything, and does it several dozen times better than I could.”
This was so patently true that it stopped him for a moment. He glared down at me, jaw working.
“Oh, aye? And if I forbid ye to go?”
This stopped me for a moment. I drew myself up and looked him up and down. His eyes were the color of rain-dark slate, the wide, generous mouth clamped in a straight line. Shoulders broad and back erect, arms folded across his chest like a cast-iron statue, “forbidding” was precisely the word that best described him.
“Do you forbid me?” The tension crackled between us. I wanted to blink, but wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of breaking off my own steely gaze. What would I do if he forbade me to go? Alternatives raced