Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [123]
There was an increasing lump in my throat as I sought for words. I couldn’t, I thought. I couldn’t manage it. But I couldn’t face the alternative, either; I couldn’t urge him to reject Jocasta’s offer, knowing it would send him to Scotland, to meet an unknown death.
“I can’t say what you should do,” I finally said, my voice barely audible above the regular lap of the oars.
There was an eddy pool, where a large tree had fallen into the water, its branches forming a trap for all the debris that drifted downstream. Jamie made for this, backing the rowboat neatly into quiet water. He let down the oars, and wiped a sleeve across his forehead, breathing heavily from exertion.
The night was quiet around us, with little sound but the lapping of water, and the occasional scrape of submerged tree branches against the hull. At last he reached out and touched my chin.
“Your face is my heart, Sassenach,” he said softly, “and love of you is my soul. But you’re right; ye canna be my conscience.”
In spite of everything, I felt a lightening of spirit, as though some indefinable burden had dropped away.
“Oh, I’m glad,” I said, adding impulsively, “it would be a terrible strain.”
“Oh, aye?” He looked mildly startled. “Ye think me verra wicked, then?”
“You’re the best man I’ve ever met,” I said. “I only meant … it’s such a strain, to try to live for two people. To try to make them fit your ideas of what’s right … you do it for a child, of course, you have to, but even then, it’s dreadfully hard work. I couldn’t do it for you—it would be wrong even to try.”
I’d taken him back more than a little. He sat for some moments, his face half turned away.
“Do ye really think me a good man?” he said at last. There was a queer note in his voice, that I couldn’t quite decipher.
“Yes,” I said, with no hesitation. Then added, half jokingly, “Don’t you?”
After a long pause, he said, quite seriously, “No, I shouldna think so.”
I looked at him, speechless, no doubt with my mouth hanging open.
“I am a violent man, and I ken it well,” he said quietly. He spread his hands out on his knees; big hands, which could wield sword and dagger with ease, or choke the life from a man. “So do you—or ye should.”
“You’ve never done anything you weren’t forced to do!”
“No?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, but even as I spoke, a shadow of doubt clouded my words. Even when done from the most urgent necessity, did such things not leave a mark on the soul?
“Ye wouldna hold me in the same estimation as, say, a man like Stephen Bonnet? He might well say he acted from necessity.”
“If you think you have the slightest thing in common with Stephen Bonnet, you’re dead wrong,” I said firmly.
He shrugged, half impatient, and shifted restlessly on the narrow bench.
“There’s nay much to choose between Bonnet and me, save that I have a sense of honor that he lacks. What else keeps me from turning thief?” he demanded. “From plundering those whom I might? It is in me to do it—my one grandsire built Leoch on the gold of those he robbed in the Highland passes; the other built his fortune on the bodies of women whom he forced for their wealth and titles.”
He stretched himself, powerful shoulders rising dark against the shimmer of the water behind him. Then he suddenly took hold of the oars across his knees and flung them into the bottom of the boat, with a crash that made me jump.
“I am more than five-and-forty!” he said. “A man should be settled at that age, no? He should have a house, and some land to grow his food, and a bit of money put away to see him through his auld age, at the least.”
He took a deep breath; I could see the white bosom of his shirt rise with his swelling chest.
“Well, I dinna have a house.