Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [359]
“Wait,” he pleaded. “Bree—let me explain—”
“Yeah, explain! I want to hear you explain!” Her voice was ragged with fury, but she did stop her rummaging for a moment, waiting to hear.
“Look.” He was up himself by now. “I did find it. Last spring. But I—” He took a deep breath, searching desperately for words that might make her understand.
“I knew it would hurt you. I didn’t want to show it to you because I knew there was nothing you could do—there was no point in you breaking your heart for the sake of—”
“What do you mean there’s nothing I could do?” She jerked a shirt over her head, and glared toward him, fists clenched.
“You can’t change things, Bree! Don’t you know that? Your parents tried—they knew about Culloden, and they did everything they possibly could have, to stop Charles Stuart—but they couldn’t, could they? They failed! Geillis Duncan tried to make Stuart a king. She failed! They all failed!” He risked a hand on her arm; she was stiff as a statue.
“You can’t help them, Bree,” he said, more quietly. “It’s part of history, it’s part of the past—you’re not from this time; you can’t change what’s going to happen.”
“You don’t know that.” She was still rigid, but he thought he heard a hint of doubt in her voice.
“I do!” He wiped a bead of sweat from his jaw. “Listen—if I’d thought there was the slightest chance—but I didn’t. I—God, Bree, I couldn’t stand the thought of you being hurt!”
She stood still, breathing heavily through her nose. If she’d had the choice, he was sure it would have been fire and brimstone rather than air.
“It wasn’t your business to make up my mind for me,” she said, speaking through clenched teeth. “No matter what you thought. And about something so important—Roger, how could you do something like that!?”
The tone of betrayal in her voice was too much.
“Damn it, I was afraid if I told you, ye’d do just what you did!” he burst out. “You’d leave me! You’d try to go through the stones by yourself. And now look what you’ve done—here’s the both of us in this godforsaken—”
“You’re trying to blame me for you being here? When I did everything I possibly could to keep you from being such an idiot as to follow me?”
Months of toil and terror, days of worry and fruitless searching caught up with Roger in a scorching blast.
“An idiot? That’s the thanks I get for killing myself to find you? For risking my fucking life to try to protect you?” He rose from the straw, meaning to get hold of her, not sure if he meant to shake her or bed her again. He had the chance to do neither; a hard shove caught him off balance, square in the chest, and he went sprawling into the hay.
She was hopping on one foot, cursing incoherently as she struggled into her breeches.
“You—bloody—arrogant—damn you, Roger!—damn you!” She jerked up the breeches and, leaning down, snatched up her shoes and stockings.
“Go!” she said. “Damn you, go! Go and get hanged if you want to! I’m going to find my parents! And I’m going to save them, too!”
She whirled away, reached the door and jerked it open before he could reach her. She stood for a moment, silhouetted in the paler square of the doorway, dark strands of hair afloat in the wind, live as the strands of Medusa’s mane.
“I’m going. Come, or don’t come, I don’t care. Go back to Scotland—go back through the stones by yourself, for all I care! But by God, you can’t stop me!”
And then she was gone.
Lizzie’s eyes shot wide as the door banged open against the wall. She hadn’t been asleep—how could she sleep?—but had been lying with her eyes closed. She struggled up out of the bedclothes and fumbled for the tinderbox.
“Are ye all right, Miss Bree?”
It didn’t sound like it; Brianna was stamping to and fro, hissing through her teeth like a snake, stopping to kick the wardrobe with a resounding thud. There were two more thuds in succession; by the wavering light of the newly lit candle, Lizzie could see that these were caused by Brianna’s shoes, which had hit