Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [348]
She reached up and took hold of his wrist, but didn’t pull his hand away. He felt her swallow.
“Right,” he whispered. “Say it. I want to hear it.”
“I … love … you,” she said, between her teeth. “Got it?”
“Aye, I’ve got it.” He took her face between his hands, very gently, and drew her down. She came, arms trembling and giving way beneath her.
“You’re sure?” he said.
“Yes. What are we going to do?” she said, and began to cry.
“We.” She’d said we. She’d said she was sure.
Roger lay in the dust of the road, bruised, filthy, and starving, with a woman trembling and weeping against his chest, now and then giving him a small thump with her fist. He had never felt happier in his life.
“Hush,” he whispered, half rocking her. “It’s all right; there’s another way. We’ll get back; I know how. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.”
Finally, she wore herself out, and lay still in the crook of his arm, sniffling and hiccuping. There was a large wet spot on the front of his shirt. The crickets in the tree, startled into silence by the uproar, cautiously resumed their songs overhead.
She freed herself and sat up, fumbling in the dark.
“I have to blow my dose,” she said thickly. “Do you have a hadky?”
He gave her the damp rag he used to tie back his hair. She made whooshing noises, and he smiled in the dark.
“You sound like a can of shaving cream.”
“And when was the last time you saw one of those?” She lay down on him again, head tucked into the curve of his shoulder, and reached up to touch his jaw. He’d shaved two days ago; there had been neither time nor opportunity since.
Her hair still smelled faintly of grass, though no longer of artificial flowers. It must be her natural scent.
She sighed deeply, tightened her arm around him.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t want you to come after me. But … Roger, I’m awfully glad you’re here!”
He kissed her temple; she was damp and salty with sweat and tears.
“So am I,” he said, and for the moment all the trials and dangers of the past two months seemed insignificant. All but one.
“How long have you been planning this?” he asked. He thought he could have told her, to the day. Since her letters had begun to change.
“Oh … about six months,” she said, confirming his guess. “It was when I went to Jamaica during last Easter vacation.”
“Aye?” To Jamaica, instead of to Scotland. She’d asked him to join her, and he’d refused, foolishly hurt that she hadn’t planned to come to him automatically.
She took a deep breath and let it out, blotting the neck of her shirt against her skin.
“I kept dreaming,” she said. “About my father. Fathers. Both of them.”
The dreams were little more than fragments; vivid glimpses of Frank Randall’s face, longer stretches now and then, in which she saw her mother. And now and then a tall, red-haired man whom she knew to be the father she had never seen.
“There was one dream in particular …” It had been night in the dream, somewhere tropical, with fields of tall green plants that might have been sugarcane, and fires burning in the distance.
“There were drums beating, and I knew something was hiding, waiting in the canes; something horrible,” she said. “My mother was there, drinking tea with a crocodile.” Roger grunted, and her voice grew sharper.” It was a dream, all right?
“Then he stepped out of the canes. I couldn’t see his face very well, because it was dark, but I could see that he had red hair; there were copper glints when he turned his head.”
“Was he the dreadful thing in the canes?” Roger asked.
“No.” He could hear the susurrus of her hair as she shook her head. It had gone quite dark by now, and she was little more than a comforting weight on his chest, a soft voice beside him, speaking from the shadows.
“He was standing between my mother and the awful thing. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there, waiting.” She gave a small, involuntary shudder and Roger tightened his hold on her.
“Then I knew my mother was going to stand up and