Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [124]
He slammed his fist down on the thwart, making the wooden seat vibrate under me.
“I dinna own the clothes I stand up in!”
There was a long silence, broken only by the thin song of crickets.
“You have me,” I said, in a small voice. It didn’t seem a lot.
He made a small sound in his throat that might have been either a laugh or a sob.
“Aye, I have,” he said. His voice was quivering a bit, though whether with passion or amusement, I couldn’t tell. “That’s the hell of it, aye?”
“It is?”
He threw up his hand in a gesture of profound impatience.
“If it was only me, what would it matter? I could live like Myers; go to the woods, hunt and fish for my living, and when I was too old, lie down under a peaceful tree and die, and let the foxes gnaw my bones. Who would care?”
He shrugged his shoulders with irritable violence, as though his shirt was too tight.
“But it’s not only me,” he said. “It’s you, and it’s Ian and it’s Duncan and it’s Fergus and it’s Marsali—God help me, there’s even Laoghaire to think of!”
“Oh, let’s don’t,” I said.
“Do ye not understand?” he said, in near desperation. “I would lay the world at your feet, Claire—and I have nothing to give ye!”
He honestly thought it mattered.
I sat looking at him, searching for words. He was half turned away, shoulders slumped in despair.
Within an hour, I had gone from anguish at the thought of losing him in Scotland, to a strong desire to bed him in the herbaceous borders, and from that to a pronounced urge to hit him on the head with an oar. Now I was back to tenderness.
At last I took one big, callused hand and slid forward so I knelt on the boards between his knees. I laid my head against his chest, and felt his breath stir my hair. I had no words, but I had made my choice.
“ ‘Whither thou goest,’ ” I said, “ ‘I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried.’ ” Be it Scottish hill or southern forest. “You do what you have to; I’ll be there.”
The water ran fast and shallow near the middle of the creek; I could see the boulders black just beneath the glinting surface. Jamie saw them, too, and pulled strongly for the far side, bringing us to rest against a shelving gravel bank, in a pool formed by the roots of a weeping willow. I leaned out and caught a branch of the willow, and wrapped the painter round it.
I had thought we would return to River Run, but evidently this expedition had some point beyond respite. We had continued upriver instead, Jamie pulling strongly against the slow current.
Left alone with my thoughts, I could only listen to the faint hiss of his breath, and wonder what he would do. If he chose to stay … well, it might not be as difficult as he thought. I didn’t underrate Jocasta Cameron, but neither did I underestimate Jamie Fraser. Both Colum and Dougal MacKenzie had tried to bend him to their will—and both had failed.
I had a moment’s qualm at the memory of my last sight of Dougal MacKenzie, mouthing soundless curses as he drowned in his own blood, Jamie’s dirk socketed at the base of his throat. I am a violent man, he’d said, you know it.
But he was still wrong; there was a difference between this man and Stephen Bonnet, I thought, watching the flex of his body on the oars, the grace and power of the sweep of his arms. He had several things beyond the honor that he claimed: kindness, courage … and a conscience.
I realized where we were going, as he backed with one oar, steering across the current toward the mouth of a wide creek, overhung with aspens. I had never approached by water before, but Jocasta had said it was not far.
I should not have been surprised; if he had come out tonight to confront his demons, it was a most appropriate place.
A little way above the creek mouth, the mill loomed dark and silent. There was a dim glow behind its bulk; light from the slave