Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [433]
“It’s all right,” he said at last. “We have a bit of time now; no one will find us here.”
He sat on the ground, his plaid wrapped around him for warmth. It had stopped raining for the moment, but the wind blew cold from the mountains nearby, where snow still capped the peaks and choked the passes. He let his head fall forward onto his knees, exhausted by the flight.
I sat close by him, huddled within my cloak, and felt his breathing gradually slow as the panic subsided. We sat in silence for a long time, afraid to move from what seemed a precarious perch above the chaos below. Chaos I felt I had somehow helped create.
“Jamie,” I said, at last. I reached out a hand to touch him, but then drew back and let it fall. “Jamie—I’m sorry.”
He continued to look out, into the darkening void of the moor below. For a moment, I thought he hadn’t heard me. He closed his eyes. Then he shook his head very slightly.
“No,” he said softly. “There is no need.”
“But there is.” Grief nearly choked me, but I felt as though I must say it; must tell him that I knew what I had done to him.
“I should have gone back. Jamie—if I had gone, then, when you brought me here from Cranesmuir…maybe then—”
“Aye, maybe,” he interrupted. He swung toward me abruptly, and I could see his eyes fixed on me. There was longing there, and a grief that matched mine, but no anger, no reproach.
He shook his head again.
“No,” he said once more. “I ken what ye mean, mo duinne. But it isna so. Had ye gone then, matters might still have happened as they have. Maybe so, maybe no. Perhaps it would have come sooner. Perhaps differently. Perhaps—just perhaps—not at all. But there are more folk have had a hand in this than we two, and I willna have ye take the guilt of it upon yourself.”
His hand touched my hair, smoothing it out of my eyes. A tear rolled down my cheek, and he caught it on his finger.
“Not that,” I said. I flung a hand out toward the dark, taking in the armies, and Charles, and the starved man in the wood, and the slaughter to come. “Not that. What I did to you.”
He smiled then, with great tenderness, and smoothed his palm across my cheek, warm on my spring-chilled skin.
“Aye? And what have I done to you, Sassenach? Taken ye from your own place, led ye into poverty and outlawry, taken ye through battlefields and risked your life. D’ye hold it against me?”
“You know I don’t.”
He smiled. “Aye, well; neither do I, my Sassenach.” The smile faded from his face as he glanced up at the crest of the hill above us. The stones were invisible, but I could feel the menace of them, close at hand.
“I won’t go, Jamie,” I repeated stubbornly. “I’m staying with you.”
“No.” He shook his head. He spoke gently, but his voice was firm, with no possibility of denial. “I must go back, Claire.”
“Jamie, you can’t!” I clutched his arm urgently. “Jamie, they will have found Dougal by now! Willie Coulter will have told someone.”
“Aye, he will.” He put a hand over my arm and patted it. He had reached his decision on the ride to the hill; I could see it in his shadowed face, resignation and determination mingled. There was grief there, and sadness, too, but those had been put aside; he had no time for mourning now.
“We could try to get away to France,” I said. “Jamie, we must!” But even as I spoke, I knew I could not turn him from the course he had decided on.
“No,” he said again, softly. He turned and lifted a hand, gesturing toward the darkening valley below, the shaded hills beyond. “The country is roused, Sassenach. The ports are closed; O’Brien has been trying for the last three months to bring a ship to rescue the Prince, to take him to safety in France—Dougal told me…before.” A tremor passed over his face, and a sudden spasm of grief knit his brows. He pushed it aside, though, and went on, explaining in a steady voice.
“It’s only the English who are hunting Charles Stuart. It will be the English,