Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [165]
“Where the hell else are you going to get settlers for this land? Of course you’re going to Scotland!”
He looked at me, exasperated in turn.
“How in the name of God d’ye think I should do that, Sassenach? I might have, when I had the gems, but now? I’ve maybe ten pound to my name, and that’s borrowed. Shall I fly to Scotland like a bird, then? And lead folk back behind me, walkin’ on the water?”
“You’ll think of something,” I said miserably. “You always do.”
He gave me a queer look, then looked away and paused for several moments before answering.
“I hadna realized ye thought I was God Almighty, Sassenach,” he said at last.
“I don’t,” I said. “Moses, maybe.” The words were facetious, but neither one of us was joking.
He walked away a bit, hands clasped behind his back.
“Watch out for the burs,” I called after him, seeing him heading for the location of my recent mishap. He altered his path in response, but said nothing. He walked to and fro across the clearing, head bent in thought. At last he came back, to stand in front of me.
“I canna do it alone,” he said quietly. “You’re right about that. But I dinna think I need go to Scotland for my settlers.”
“What else?”
“My men—the men who were wi’ me in Ardsmuir,” he said. “They’re here already.”
“But you haven’t any idea where they are,” I protested. “And besides, they were transported years ago! They’ll be settled; they won’t want to pull up stakes and come to the ends of the bloody earth with you!”
He smiled, a little wryly.
“You did, Sassenach.”
I took a deep breath. The nagging weight of fear that had burdened my heart for the last weeks had eased. With that concern lifted, though, there was now room in my mind to contemplate the staggering difficulty of the task he was setting himself. Track down men scattered over three colonies, persuade them to come with him, and simultaneously find sufficient capital to finance the clearing of land and planting of crops. To say nothing of the sheer enormity of labor involved in carving some small foothold out of this virgin wilderness …
“I’ll think of something,” he said, smiling slightly as he watched doubts and uncertainties flit across my face. “I always do, aye?”
All of my breath went out in a long sigh.
“You do,” I said. “Jamie—are you sure? Your aunt Jocasta—”
He dismissed that possibility with a flick of his hand.
“No,” he said. “Never.”
I still hesitated, feeling guilty.
“You wouldn’t—it’s not just because of me? What I said about keeping slaves?”
“No,” he said. He paused, and I saw the two twisted fingers of his right hand twitch. He saw it, too, and stopped the movement abruptly.
“I have lived as a slave, Claire,” he said quietly, head bent. “And I couldna live, knowing there was a man on earth who felt toward me as I have felt toward those who thought they owned me.”
I reached out and covered his crippled hand with my own. Tears ran down my cheeks, warm and soothing as summer rain.
“You won’t leave me?” I asked at last. “You won’t die?”
He shook his head, and squeezed my hand tight.
“You are my courage, as I am your conscience,” he whispered. “You are my heart—and I your compassion. We are neither of us whole, alone. Do ye not know that, Sassenach?”
“I do know that,” I said, and my voice shook. “That’s why I’m so afraid. I don’t want to be half a person again, I can’t bear it.”
He thumbed a lock of hair off my wet cheek, and pulled me into his arms, so close that I could feel the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. He was so solid, so alive, ruddy hair curling gold against bare skin. And yet I had held him so before—and lost him.
His hand touched my cheek, warm despite the dampness of my skin.
“But do ye not see how verra small a thing is the notion of death, between us two, Claire?” he whispered.
My hands curled into fists against his chest. No, I didn’t think it a small thing at all.
“All the time after ye left me, after Culloden—I was dead then, was I not?”
“I thought you were. That’s why I—oh.” I took a deep, tremulous breath,