Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [419]
He was there, and I saw Mary’s knees give way as she entered the room and collapsed by his bed. Startled from a doze, he opened his eyes and blinked once, then Alex Randall’s face blazed as though he had received a heavenly visitation.
“Oh, God!” he kept muttering brokenly into her hair. “Oh, God. I thought…oh, Lord, I had prayed…one more sight of you. Just one. Oh, Lord!”
Simply averting my gaze seemed insufficient; I went out onto the landing, and sat on the stairs for half an hour, resting my weary head on my knees.
When it seemed decent to return, I went back into the small room, grown grimy and cheerless again in the weeks of Mary’s absence. I examined him, my hands gentle on the wasted flesh. I was surprised that he had lasted so long; it couldn’t be much longer.
He saw the truth in my face, and nodded, unsurprised.
“I waited,” he said softly, lying back in exhaustion on his pillows. “I hoped…she would come once more. I had no reason…but I prayed. And now it is answered. I shall die in peace now.”
“Alex!” Mary’s cry of anguish burst out of her as though his words had struck her a physical blow, but he smiled and pressed her hand.
“We have known it for a long time, my love,” he whispered to her. “Don’t despair. I will be with you always, watching you, loving you. Don’t cry, my dearest.” She brushed obediently at her pink-washed cheeks, but could do nothing to stem the tears that came streaming down them. Despite her obvious despair, she had never looked so blooming.
“Mrs. Fraser,” Alex said, clearly mustering his strength to ask one more favor. “I must ask…tomorrow…will you come again, and bring your husband? It is important.”
I hesitated for a moment. Whatever Jamie found out, he was going to want to leave Edinburgh immediately, to join the army and find the rest of his men. But surely one more day could make no difference to the outcome of the war—and I could not deny the appeal in the two pairs of eyes that looked at me so hopefully.
“We’ll come,” I said.
* * *
“I am a fool,” Jamie grumbled, climbing the steep, cobbled streets to the wynd where Alex Randall had his lodgings. “We should have left yesterday, at once, as soon as we got back your pearls from the pawnbroker! D’ye no ken how far it is to Inverness? And we wi’ little more than nags to get us there?”
“I know,” I said impatiently. “But I promised. And if you’d seen him…well, you will see him in a moment, and then you’ll understand.”
“Mphm.” But he held the street door for me and followed me up the winding stair of the decrepit building without further complaint.
Mary was half-sitting, half-lying on the bed. Still dressed in her tattered traveling clothes, she was holding Alex, cradling him fiercely against her bosom. She must have stayed with him so all night.
Seeing me, he gently freed himself from her grasp, patting her hands as he laid them aside. He propped himself on one elbow, face paler than the linen sheets on which he lay.
“Mrs. Fraser,” he said. He smiled faintly, despite the sheen of unhealthy sweat and the gray pallor that betokened a bad attack.
“It was good of you to come,” he said, gasping a little. He glanced beyond me. “Your husband…he is with you?”
As though in answer, Jamie stepped into the room behind me. Mary, stirred from her misery by the noise of our entry, glanced from me to Jamie, then rose to her feet, laying a hand timidly on his arm.
“I…we…n-need you, Lord Tuarach.” I thought it was the stammer, more than the use of his title, that touched him. Though he was still grim-faced, some of the tension went out of him. He inclined his head courteously toward her.
“I asked your wife to bring you, my lord. I am dying, as you see.” Alex Randall had pushed himself upright, sitting on the edge of the bed. His slender shins gleamed white as bone beneath the frayed hem of his nightshirt. The toes, long, slim, and bloodless, were shadowed with the bluing of poor circulation.
I had seen death often enough before,