Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [181]
“I understand,” she whispered.
The wind off the river was cold, and he reached to do up the zip of her jacket. In doing so, his hand brushed his own pocket, and he felt the small package lying there. He’d meant to give it to her over supper.
“Here,” he said, handing it to her. “Happy Christmas.”
“I bought it last summer,” he said, watching her cold fingers fumble at the holly-printed paper. “Looks like prescience, now, doesn’t it?”
She held a silver circle, a bracelet, a flat silver band, with words etched round it. He took it from her and slipped it over her hand, onto her wrist. She turned it slowly, reading the words.
“Je t’aime … un peu … beaucoup … passionnement … pas du tout. I love you … a little … a lot … passionately … not at all.”
He gave the band a quarter turn more, completing the circle.
“Je t’aime,” he said, and then with a twist of fingers, sent it spinning on her wrist. She laid a hand on it, stopping it.
“Moi aussi,” she said softly, looking not at the band but at him. “Joyeux Noël.”
PART SEVEN
On the Mountain
19
HEARTH BLESSING
September 1767
Sleeping under the moon and stars in the arms of a naked lover, the two of you cradled by furs and soft leaves, lulled by the gentle murmur of the chestnut trees and the far-off rumble of a waterfall, is terribly romantic. Sleeping under a crude lean-to, squashed into a soggy mass between a large, wet husband and an equally large, equally wet nephew, listening to rain thrump on the branches overhead while fending off the advances of a immense and thoroughly saturated dog, is slightly less so.
“Air,” I said, struggling feebly into a sitting position and brushing Rollo’s tail out of my face for the hundredth time. “I can’t breathe.” The smell of confined male animals was overpowering; a sort of musky, rancid smell, garnished with the scent of wet wool and fish.
I rolled onto my hands and knees and made my way out, trying not to step on anyone. Jamie grunted in his sleep, compensating for the loss of my body heat by curling himself neatly into a plaid-wrapped ball. Ian and Rollo were inextricably entangled in a mass of fur and cloth, their mingled exhalations forming a faint fog around them in the predawn chill.
It was chilly outside, but the air was fresh; so fresh I nearly coughed when I took a good lungful of it. The rain had stopped, but the trees were still dripping, and the air was composed of equal parts water vapor and pure oxygen, spiced with pungent green scents from every plant on the mountainside.
I had been sleeping in Jamie’s spare shirt, my buckskins put away in a saddlebag to avoid soaking. I was dappled with gooseflesh and shivering by the time I pulled them on, but the stiff leather warmed enough to shape itself to my body within a few minutes.
Barefooted and cold-toed, I made my way carefully down to the stream to wash, kettle under my arm. It wasn’t yet dawn, and the forest was filled with mist and gray-blue light; crepuscle, the mysterious half-light that comes at both ends of the day, when the small secret things come out to feed.
There was an occasional tentative chirp from the canopy overhead, but nothing like the usual raucous chorus. The birds were late in starting today because of the rain; the sky was still lowering, with clouds that ranged from black in the west to a pale slate-blue in the dawning east. I felt a small rush of pleasure at the thought that I knew already the normal hour when the birds should sing, and had noticed the difference.
Jamie had been right, I thought, when he had suggested that we stay on the mountain, instead of returning to Cross Creek. It was the beginning of September; by Myers’s estimation, we would have two months of good weather—relatively good weather, I amended, looking up at the clouds—before the cold made shelter imperative. Time enough—maybe—to build a small cabin, to hunt for meat, to supply ourselves for the winter ahead.
“It will be gey hard work,” Jamie had said. I stood between his knees as he sat perched high on a large rock,