Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [378]
Jamie had smiled, too; in fact, he had scarcely stopped smiling in several days. He wasn’t smiling now, though his face bore a tender, inward look. There was a half-full moon riding the sky, and enough light came through the window for me to see him clearly as he lay on his back beside me.
I was surprised that he wasn’t asleep yet. He had risen well before dawn and spent the day with Brianna on the mountain, returning long after dark with a plaid full of smoke-stunned bees, who were likely to be more than irritated when they woke in the morning and discovered the trick perpetrated on them. I made a mental note to keep away from the end of the garden where the row of bee gums sat; newly moved bees were inclined to sting first and ask questions afterward.
Jamie gave a massive sigh, and I rolled toward him, curving myself to fit against him. The night wasn’t cold, but he wore a shirt to bed, in deference to Brianna’s modesty.
“Can’t sleep?” I asked softly. “Does the moonlight bother you?”
“No.” He was looking out at the moon, though; it rode high above the ridge, not yet full, but a luminous white that flooded the sky.
“If it’s not the moon, it’s something.” I rubbed his stomach lightly, and let my fingers curve around the wide arch of his ribs.
He sighed again, and squeezed my hand.
“Och, it’s no more than a foolish regret, Sassenach.” He turned his head toward the trundle bed, where the dark spill of Brianna’s hair fell in a moon-polished mass across the pillow. “I am only sorry that we must lose her.”
“Mm.” I let my hand rest flat on his chest. I had known it would come—both the realization and the parting itself—but I hadn’t wanted to speak of it, and break the temporary spell that had bound the three of us so closely.
“You can’t really lose a child,” I said softly, one finger tracing the small, smooth hollow in the center of his chest.
“She must go back, Sassenach—ye know it as well as I do.” He stirred impatiently but didn’t move away. “Look at her. She’s like Louis’s camel, no?”
Despite my own regrets, I smiled at the thought. Louis of France kept a fine menagerie at Versailles, and on good days the keepers would exercise certain of the animals, leading them through the spreading gardens, to the edification of startled passersby.
We had been walking in the gardens one day, and turned a corner to find the Bactrian camel advancing toward us down the path, splendid and stately in its gold and silver harness, towering in calm disdain above a crowd of gawking spectators—strikingly exotic, and utterly out of place among the formalized white statues.
“Yes,” I said, though with a reluctance that squeezed my heart. “Yes, of course she’ll have to go back. She belongs there.”
“I ken that well enough.” He put his own hand over mine, but kept his face turned away, looking at Brianna. “I shouldna grieve for it—but I do.”
“So do I.” I put my forehead against his shoulder, breathing in the clean male scent of him. “It’s true, though—what I said. You can’t truly lose a child. Do you—do you remember Faith?”
My voice trembled slightly as I asked it; we had not spoken in years of our first daughter, stillborn in France.
His arm curled around me, pulling me against him.
“Of course I do,” he said softly. “D’ye think I would ever forget?”
“No.” The tears were flowing down my face, but I was not truly weeping; it was no more than the overflow of feeling. “That’s what I mean. I never told you—when we were in Paris, to see Jared—I went to the Hôpital des Anges; I saw her grave there. I—I brought her a pink tulip.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“I took her violets,” he said, so softly I almost didn’t hear him.
I was quite still for a moment, tears forgotten.
“You didn’t tell me.”
“Neither did you.” His fingers traced the bumps of my spine, brushing softly