Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [149]
“You—” Jamie started, then broke off. He gave his nephew a long, hard look across the fire. I could see the thoughts racing through his mind.
Ian hadn’t asked permission to go; he’d announced he was going. If Jamie forbade him, he must give grounds—and he could scarcely say that it was too dangerous, as this would mean admitting both that he was willing to send the slave woman into danger and that he didn’t trust Myers and his relations with the local Indians. Jamie was trapped, and very neatly too.
He breathed in strongly through his nose. Ian grinned.
I looked back across the fire. Pollyanne was still sitting as she had been, not moving. Her eyes were still fixed on Myers, but a slight smile curved her lips in invitation. One hand rose slowly, cupping a massive breast, almost absently.
Myers was staring back, dazed as a deer with a hunter’s light in its eyes.
And would I do differently? I thought later, listening to the discreet rustling noises and small groans from the direction of Myers’s blankets. If I knew that my life depended on a man? Would I not do anything I could to ensure he would protect me, in the face of unknown danger?
There was a snapping and crackling in the bushes, not far away. It was loud, and I stiffened. So did Jamie. He slid his hand out from under my shirt, reaching for his dirk, then relaxing, as the reassuring scent of skunk reached our nostrils.
He put his hand back under my shirt, squeezed my breast and fell back asleep, his breath warm on my neck.
No great difference at all, perhaps. Was my future any more certain than hers? And did I not depend for my life upon a man bound to me—at least in part—by desire of my body?
A faint wind breathed through the trees, and I hitched the blanket higher on my shoulder. The fire had burned to embers, and so high in the mountains, it was cool at night. The moon had set, but it was very clear; the stars blazed close, a net of light cast over the mountains’ peaks.
No, there were differences. However unknown my future, it would be shared, and the bond between my man and me went much deeper than the flesh. Beyond all this was the one great difference, though—I had chosen to be there.
15
NOBLE SAVAGES
We took our leave of the others in the morning, Jamie and Myers taking pains over the arrangement for a rendezvous in ten days time. Looking around me at the bewildering immensity of forest and mountain, I couldn’t imagine how anyone could be sure of finding a specific place again; I could only trust in Jamie’s sense of navigation.
They turned to the north, we to the southwest, making our way along the course of the stream we had camped by. It seemed very quiet at first, and strangely lonely, with only the two of us. Within a short time, though, I had grown accustomed to the solitude and began to relax, taking a keen interest in our surroundings. This might, after all, be our home.
The thought was a rather daunting one; it was a place of amazing beauty and richness, but so wild, it hardly seemed that people could live in it. I didn’t voice this thought, however; only followed Jamie’s horse as he led us deeper and deeper into the mountains, stopping finally in the late afternoon to make a small camp and catch fish for dinner.
The light faded slowly, retreating through the trees. The thick mossy trunks grew dense with shadow, edges still rimmed with a fugitive light that hid among the leaves, green shadows shifting with the sunset breeze.
A tiny glow lit suddenly in the grass a few feet away, cool and bright. I saw another, and another, and then the edge of the wood was full of them, lazily falling, then blinking out, cold sparks drifting in the growing dark.
“You know, I never saw fireflies until I came to live in Boston,” I said, filled with pleasure at sight of them, glowing emerald and topaz in the grass. “They don’t have fireflies in Scotland, do they?”
Jamie shook his head, reclining lazily on the grass, one arm hooked behind his head.
“Bonny wee things,” he observed, and sighed with content.