Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [253]
A muscle contracted near the corner of his mouth, but he went on staring downward at his clasped hands. The chasm between us, so perilously bridged, gaped yawning and impassable once more.
“Aye. Well, you did.”
His mouth clamped shut in a tight line, and he didn’t speak for some time. Finally he turned his head and looked directly at me. I would have liked to avoid his eyes, but couldn’t.
“Claire,” he said softly. “What did ye feel—when I gave my body to Jack Randall? When I let him take me, at Wentworth?”
A tiny shock ran through me, from scalp to toenails. It was the last question I had expected to hear. I opened and closed my mouth several times before finding an answer.
“I…don’t know,” I said weakly. “I hadn’t thought. Angry, of course. I was furious—outraged. And sick. And frightened for you. And…sorry for you.”
“Were ye jealous? When I told you about it later—that he’d roused me, though I didna want it?”
I drew a deep breath, feeling the grass tickle my breasts.
“No. At least I don’t think so; I didn’t think so then. After all, it wasn’t as though you’d…wanted to do it.” I bit my lip, looking down. His voice was quiet and matter-of-fact at my shoulder.
“I dinna think you wanted to bed Louis—did you?”
“No!”
“Aye, well,” he said. He put his thumbs together on either side of a blade of grass, and concentrated on pulling it up slowly by the roots. “I was angry, too. And sick and sorry.” The grass blade came free of its sheath with a tiny squeaking sound.
“When it was me,” he went on, almost whispering, “I thought you could not bear the thought of it, and I would not have blamed you. I knew ye must turn from me, and I tried to send you away, so I wouldna have to see the disgust and the hurt in your face.” He closed his eyes and raised the grass blade between his thumbs, barely brushing his lips.
“But you wouldna go. You took me to your breast and cherished me. You healed me, instead. You loved me, in spite of it.” He took a deep, unsteady breath and turned his head to me again. His eyes were bright with tears, but no wetness escaped to slide down his cheeks.
“I thought, maybe, that I could bring myself to do that for you, as you did it for me. And that is why I came to Fontainebleau, at last.”
He blinked once, hard, and his eyes cleared.
“Then when ye told me that nothing had happened—for a bit, I believed you, because I wanted to so much. But then…I could tell, Claire. I couldna hide it from myself, and I knew you had lied to me. I thought you wouldna trust me to love you, or…that you had wanted him, and were afraid to let me see it.”
He dropped the grass, and his head sank forward to rest on his knuckles.
“Ye said you wanted to hurt me. Well, the thought of you lying with the King hurt worse than the brand on my breast, or the cut of the lash on my naked back. But the knowledge that ye thought ye couldna trust me to love you is like waking from the hangman’s noose to feel the gutting knife sunk in my belly. Claire—” His mouth opened soundlessly, then closed tight for a moment, until he found the strength to go on.
“I do not know if the wound is mortal, but Claire—I do feel my heart’s blood leave me, when I look at you.”
The silence between us grew and deepened. The small buzz of an insect calling in the rocks vibrated in the air.
Jamie was still as a rock, his face blank as he stared down at the ground below him. I couldn’t bear that blank face, and the thought of what must lie concealed behind it. I had seen a hint of his despairing fury in the arbor, and my heart felt hollow at the thought of that rage, mastered at such fearful cost, now held under an iron control that kept in not only rage, but trust and joy.
I wished desperately for some way to break the silence that parted us; some act that could restore the lost truth between us. Jamie sat up then, arms folded tight about his thighs, and turned away as he gazed out over the peaceful valley.
Better violence, I thought,