Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [179]
“Language? You can suggest such a thing, but I must not say the word? I have never been so offended, never!”
She was trembling, strands of hair sticking to her face with the damp.
“I didn’t mean to insult you. I thought you wanted to—to—”
He grabbed her arms and jerked her toward him.
“If all I wanted was to fuck you, I would have had ye on your back a dozen times last summer!”
“Like hell you would!” She wrenched loose one arm and slapped him hard across the jaw, surprising him.
He grabbed her hand, pulled her toward him and kissed her, a good deal harder and a good deal longer than he ever had before. She was tall and strong and angry—but he was taller, stronger, and much angrier. She kicked and struggled, and he kissed her until he was good and ready to stop.
“The hell I would,” he said, gasping for air as he let her go. He wiped his mouth and stood back, shaking. There was blood on his hand; she’d bitten him and he hadn’t felt a thing.
She was shaking, too. Her face was white, lips pressed so tight together that nothing showed in her face but dark eyes, blazing.
“But I didn’t,” he said, breathing slower. “That wasn’t what I wanted; it’s not what I want now.” He wiped his bloody hand against his shirt. “But if you don’t care enough to marry me, then I don’t care enough to have ye in my bed!”
“I do care!”
“Like hell.”
“I care too damn much to marry you, you bastard!”
“You what?”
“Because when I marry you—when I marry anybody—it’s going to last, do you hear me? If I make a vow like that, I’ll keep it, no matter what it costs me!”
Tears were running down her face. He groped in his pocket for a handkerchief and gave it to her.
“Blow your nose, wipe your face, and then tell me what the bloody hell ye think you’re talking about, aye?”
She did as he said, sniffing and brushing back her damp hair with one hand. Her foolish little veil had fallen off; it was hanging by its bobby pin. He plucked it off, crumpling it in his hand.
“Your Scottish accent comes out when you get upset,” she said, with a feeble attempt at a smile as she handed back the wadded hanky.
“I shouldn’t wonder,” Roger said in exasperation. “Now tell me what you mean, and do it plainly, before ye drive me all the way to the Gaelic.”
“You can speak Gaelic?” She was gradually getting possession of herself.
“I can,” he said, “and if you don’t want to learn a good many coarse expressions right swiftly … talk. What d’ye mean by making me such an offer—and you a nice Catholic girl, straight out of Mass! I thought ye were a virgin.”
“I am! What does that have to do with it?”
Before he could answer this piece of outrageousness, she followed it up with another.
“Don’t you tell me you haven’t had girls, I know you have!”
“Aye, I have! I didn’t want to marry them, and they didn’t want to marry me. I didn’t love them, they didn’t love me. I do love you, damn it!”
She leaned against the lamppost, hands behind her, and met his eyes directly. “I think I love you, too.”
He didn’t realize he had been holding his breath until he let it out.
“Ah. You do.” The water had condensed in his hair, and icy trickles were running down his neck. “Mmphm. Aye, and is the operative word there ‘think,’ then, or is it ‘love’?”
She relaxed, just a little, and swallowed.
“Both.”
She held up a hand as he started to speak.
“I do—I think. But—but I can’t help thinking what happened to my mother. I don’t want that to happen to me.”
“Your mother?” Simple astonishment was succeeded by a fresh burst of outrage. “What? You’re thinking of bloody Jamie Fraser? Ye think ye cannot be satisfied with a boring historian—ye must have a—a—great passion, as she did for him, and you think I’ll maybe not measure up?”
“No! I’m not thinking of Jamie Fraser! I’m thinking of my father!” She shoved her hands deep in the pockets of her jacket, and swallowed hard. She’d stopped crying, but there were tears on her lashes, clotting them in spikes.
“She meant it when she married him—I could see it, in those pictures you gave me. She said ‘better or worse, richer, poorer