Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [354]
My teeth were clenched tight, but I forced the words through them.
“He told me. Everything.”
He made a small sound, half a sigh.
“Whether the idea pleases you or not, my dear, we are linked, you and I. I cannot say it pleases me, but I admit the truth of it. You know, as I do, the touch of his skin—so warm, is he not? Almost as though he burned from within. You know the smell of his sweat and the roughness of the hairs on his thighs. You know the sound that he makes at the last, when he has lost himself. So do I.”
“Be quiet,” I said. “Be still!” He ignored me, leaning back, speaking thoughtfully, as though to himself. I recognized, with a fresh burst of rage, the impulse that led him to this—not the intention, as I had thought, to upset me, but an overwhelming urge to talk of a beloved; to rehearse aloud and live again vanished details. For after all, to whom might he speak of Jamie in this way, but to me?
“I am leaving!” I said loudly, and whirled on my heel.
“Will you leave?” said the calm voice behind me. “I can deliver General Hawley into your hands. Or you can let him take the Scottish army. Your choice, Madam.”
I had the strong urge to reply that General Hawley wasn’t worth it. But I thought of the Scottish chieftains now quartered in Holyroodhouse—Kilmarnock and Balmerino and Lochiel, only a few feet away on the other side of the abbey wall. Of Jamie himself. Of the thousands of clansmen they led. Was the chance of victory worth the sacrifice of my feelings? And was this the turning point, again a place of choice? If I didn’t listen, if I didn’t accept the bargain Randall proposed, what then?
I turned, slowly. “Talk, then,” I said. “If you must.” He seemed unmoved by my anger, and unworried by the possibility that I would refuse him. The voice in the dark church was even, controlled as a lecturer’s.
“I wonder, you know,” he said. “Whether you have had from him as much as I?” He tilted his head to one side, sharp features coming into focus as he moved out of the shadow. The fugitive light caught him momentarily from the side, lighting the pale hazel of his eyes and making them shine, like those of a beast glimpsed hiding in the bushes.
The note of triumph in his voice was faint, but unmistakable.
“I,” he said softly, “I have had him as you could never have him. You are a woman; you cannot understand, even witch as you are. I have held the soul of his manhood, have taken from him what he has taken from me. I know him, as he now knows me. We are bound, he and I, by blood.”
I give ye my Body, that we Two may be One…
“You choose a very odd way of seeking my help,” I said, my voice shaking. My hands were clenched in the folds of my skirt, the fabric cold and bunched between my fingers.
“Do I? I think it best you understand, Madam. I do not beseech your pity, do not call upon your power as a man might seek mercy from a woman, depending upon what people call womanly sympathy. For that cause, you might come to my brother on his own account.” A lock of dark hair fell loose across his forehead; he brushed it back with one hand.
“I prefer that it be a straight bargain made between us, Madam; of service rendered and price paid—for realize, Madam, that my feelings toward you are much as yours toward me must be.”
That was a shock; while I struggled to find an answer, he went on.
“We are linked, you and I, through the body of one man—through him. I would have no such link formed through the body of my brother; I seek your help to heal his body, but I take no risk that his soul shall fall prey to you. Tell me, then; is the price I offer acceptable to you?”
I turned away from him and walked down the center of the echoing nave. I was shaking so hard that my steps felt uncertain, and the shock of the hard stone beneath my soles jolted me. The tracery of the great window over the disused altar stood black against the white of racing clouds, and dim shafts of moonlight lit