Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [255]
“Never,” he whispered to me, face only inches from mine.
“Never,” I said, and turned my head, closing my eyes to escape the intensity of his gaze.
A gentle, inexorable pressure turned me back to face him, as the small, rhythmic movements went on.
“No, my Sassenach,” he said softly. “Open your eyes. Look at me. For that is your punishment, as it is mine. See what you have done to me, as I know what I have done to you. Look at me.”
And I looked, held prisoner, bound to him. Looked, as he dropped the last of his masks, and showed me the depths of himself, and the wounds of his soul. I would have wept for his hurt, and for mine, had I been able. But his eyes held mine, tearless and open, boundless as the salt sea. His body held mine captive, driving me before his strength, like the west wind in the sails of a bark.
And I voyaged into him, as he into me, so that when the last small storms of love began to shake me, he cried out, and we rode the waves together as one flesh, and saw ourselves in each other’s eyes.
* * *
The afternoon sun was hot on the white limestone rocks, casting deep shadows into the clefts and hollows. I found what I was looking for at last, growing from a narrow crack in a giant boulder, in gay defiance of the lack of soil. I broke a stalk of aloe from its clump, split the fleshy leaf, and spread the cool green gel inside across the welts on Jamie’s palm.
“Better?” I said.
“Much.” Jamie flexed his hand, grimacing. “Christ, those nettles sting!”
“They do.” I pulled down the neck of my bodice and spread a little aloe juice on my breast with a gingerly touch. The coolness brought relief at once.
“I’m rather glad you didn’t take me up on my offer,” I said wryly, with a glance at a nearby bunch of blooming nettle.
He grinned and patted me on the bottom with his good hand.
“Well, it was a near thing, Sassenach. Ye shouldna tempt me like that.” Then, sobering, he bent and kissed me gently.
“No, mo duinne. I swore to ye the once, and I was meaning it. I shallna raise a hand to you in anger, ever. After all,” he added softly, turning away, “I have done enough to hurt you.”
I shrank from the pain of memory, but I owed him justice as well.
“Jamie,” I said, lips trembling a bit. “The…baby. It wasn’t your fault. I felt as though it was, but it wasn’t. I think…I think it would have happened anyway, whether you’d fought Jack Randall or not.”
“Aye? Ah…well.” His arm was warm and comforting about me, and he pressed my head into the curve of his shoulder. “It eases me a bit to hear ye say so. It wasna the child so much as Frank that I meant, though. D’ye think you can forgive me for that?” The blue eyes were troubled as he looked down at me.
“Frank?” I felt a shock of surprise. “But…there’s nothing to forgive.” Then a thought struck me; perhaps he really didn’t know that Jack Randall was still alive—after all, he had been arrested immediately after the duel. But if he didn’t know.…I took a deep breath. He would have to find it out in any case; perhaps better from me.
“You didn’t kill Jack Randall, Jamie,” I said.
To my puzzlement, he didn’t seem shocked or surprised. He shook his head, the afternoon sun striking sparks from his hair. Not yet long enough to lace back again, it had grown considerably in prison, and he had to brush it out of his eyes continuously.
“I know that, Sassenach,” he said.
“You do? But…what…” I was at a loss.
“You…dinna know about it?” he said hesitantly.
A cold feeling crept up my arms, despite the heat of the sun.
“Know what?”
He chewed his lower lip, eyeing me reluctantly. At last he took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh.
“No, I didna kill him. But I wounded him.”
“Yes, Louise said you wounded him badly. But she said he was recovering.” Suddenly, I saw again in memory that last scene in the Bois de Boulogne; the last thing I had seen before the blackness took me. The sharp tip of Jamie’s sword, slicing through the rain-spattered doeskin. The sudden red stain that darkened the fabric…and the angle of the blade, glinting with the force that drove it downward.