Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [247]
But I had come back from the dead. Only Jamie’s hold on my body had been strong enough to pull me back from that final barrier, and Master Raymond had known it. I knew that only Jamie himself could pull me back the rest of the way, into the land of the living. That was why I had run from him, done all I could to keep him away, to make sure he would never come near me again. I had no wish to come back, no desire to feel again. I didn’t want to know love, only to have it ripped away once more.
But it was too late. I knew that, even as I fought to hold the gray shroud around me. Fighting only hastened its dissolution; it was like grasping shreds of cloud, that vanished in cold mist between my fingers. I could feel the light coming, blinding and searing.
He had risen, was standing over me. His shadow fell across my knees; surely that meant the cloud had broken; a shadow doesn’t fall without light.
“Claire,” he whispered. “Please. Let me give ye comfort.”
“Comfort?” I said. “And how will you do that? Can you give me back my child?”
He sank to his knees before me, but I kept my head down, staring into my upturned hands, laid empty on my lap. I felt his movement as he reached to touch me, hesitated, drew back, reached again.
“No,” he said, his voice scarcely audible. “No, I canna do that. But…with the grace of God…I might give ye another?”
His hand hovered over mine, close enough that I felt the warmth of his skin. I felt other things as well: the grief that he held tight under rein, the anger and the fear that choked him, and the courage that made him speak in spite of it. I gathered my own courage around me, a flimsy substitute for the thick gray shroud. Then I took his hand and lifted my head, and looked full into the face of the sun.
* * *
We sat, hands clasped and pressed together on the bench, unmoving, unspeaking, for what seemed like hours, with the cool rain-breeze whispering our thoughts in the grape leaves above. Water drops scattered over us with the passing of the wind, weeping for loss and separation.
“You’re cold,” Jamie murmured at last, and pulled a fold of his cloak around me, bringing with it the warmth of his skin. I came slowly against him under its shelter, shivering more at the startling solidness, the sudden heat of him, than from the cold.
I laid my hand on his chest, tentative as though the touch of him might burn me in truth, and so we sat for a good while longer, letting the grape leaves talk for us.
“Jamie,” I said softly, at last. “Oh, Jamie. Where were you?”
His arm tightened about me, but it was some time before he answered.
“I thought ye were dead, mo duinne,” he said, so softly I could hardly hear him above the rustling of the arbor.
“I saw ye there—on the ground, at the last. God! Ye were so white, and your skirts all soaked wi’ blood…I tried to go to ye, Claire, so soon as I saw—I ran to ye, but it was then the Guard took me.”
He swallowed hard; I could feel the tremor pass down him, through the long curve of his backbone.
“I fought them…I fought, and aye I pleaded…but they wouldna stay, and they carried me awa’ wi’ them. And they put me in a cell, and left me there…thinking ye were dead, Claire; knowing that I’d killed you.”
The fine tremor went on, and I knew he was weeping, though I could not see his face above me. How long had he sat alone in the dark of the Bastille, alone but for the scent of blood and the empty husk of vengeance?
“It’s all right,” I said, and pressed my hand harder against his chest, as though to still the hasty beating of his heart. “Jamie, it’s all right. It…it wasn’t your fault.”
“I tried to bash my head against the wall—only to stop thinking,” he said, nearly in a whisper. “So they tied me, hand and foot. And next day, de Rohan found me, and told me that ye lived, though likely not for long.”
He was silent then, but I could feel the pain inside him, sharp as crystal spears of ice.
“Claire,” he murmured at last. “I am sorry.”
I am sorry. The words were those of the note he had left me, before the world shattered. But now I understood them.