Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [178]
“ ‘We Three Kings of Orient Are,’ ” Brianna sang quietly as they made their way down River Walk, ‘Going to smoke a rubber cigar … It was loaded, and explo-oo-ded’—you did turn out the gas, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he assured her. “Not to worry; between the cooker and the bathroom geyser, if the manse hasn’t gone up in flames yet, it must be proof of divine protection.”
She laughed.
“Do Presbyterians believe in guardian angels?”
“Certainly not. Popish superstition, aye?”
“Well, I hope I haven’t damned you to perdition by making you go to Mass with me. Or do Presbyterians believe in hell?”
“Oh, that we do,” he assured her. “As much as heaven, if not more.”
It was even foggier, here by the river. Roger was glad they hadn’t driven; you couldn’t see more than five feet or so in the thick white murk.
They walked arm in arm beside the River Ness, footsteps muffled. Swaddled by the fog, the unseen city around them might not have existed. They had left the other churchgoers behind; they were alone.
Roger felt strangely exposed, chilled and vulnerable, stripped of the warmth and assurance he had felt in the church. Only nerves, he thought, and took a firmer grip of Brianna’s arm. It was time. He took a deep breath, cool fog filling his chest.
“Brianna.” He had her by the arm, turned to face him before she had stopped walking, so her hair swung heavy through the dim arc from the streetlamp overhead.
Water droplets gleamed in a fine mist on her skin, glowed like pearls and diamonds in her hair, and through the padding of her jacket, he felt in memory her bare skin, cool as fog to his fingers, flesh-hot in his hand.
Her eyes were wide and dark as a loch, with secrets moving, half seen, half sensed, under rippling water. A kelpie for sure. Each urisge, a water horse, mane flowing, skin glowing. And the man who touches such a creature is lost, bound to it forever, taken down and drowned in the loch that gives it home.
He felt suddenly afraid, not for himself but for her; as though something might materialize from that water world to snatch her back, away from him. He grasped her by the hand, as if to prevent her. Her fingers were cold and damp, a shock against the warmth of his palm.
“I want you, Brianna,” he said softly. “I cannot be saying it plainer than that. I love you. Will you marry me?”
She didn’t say anything, but her face changed, like water when a stone is thrown into it. He could see it plainly as his own reflection in the bleakness of a tarn.
“You didn’t want me to say that.” The fog had settled in his chest; he was breathing ice, crystal needles piercing heart and lungs. “You didn’t want to hear it, did you?”
She shook her head, wordless.
“Aye. Well.” With an effort, he let go her hand. “That’s all right,” he said, surprised at the calmness in his voice. “You’ll not be worried about it, aye?”
He was turning to walk on when she stopped him, hand on his sleeve.
“Roger.”
It was a great effort to turn and face her; he had no wish for empty comfort, no desire to hear a feeble offer to “be friends.” He didn’t think he could bear even to look at her, so crushing was his sense of loss. But he turned nonetheless and then she was against him, her hands cold on his ears as she gripped his head and pushed her mouth hard onto his, not so much a kiss as blind frenzy, awkward with desperation.
He gripped her hands and pulled them down, pushing her away.
“What in God’s name are you playing at?” Anger was better than emptiness, and he shouted at her in the empty street.
“I’m not playing! You said you wanted me.” She gulped air. “I want you, too, don’t you know that? Didn’t I say so in the hall this afternoon?”
“I thought you did.” He stared at her. “What in hell do you mean?”
“I mean—I mean I want to go to bed with you,” she blurted.
“But you don’t want to marry me?”
She shook her head, white as a sheet. Something between sickness and fury stirred in his gut, and then erupted.
“So you’ll not marry me, but you’ll fuck me? How can ye say such a thing?”
“Don’t use that