Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [412]
At last I let my arms drop from around him and stepped back.
“We’d better go back to the house,” I said, trying for a normal tone. “It’s getting awfully late.”
“Aye, I suppose so.” He offered me his arm, and I took it. We passed in an easier silence down the path to the edge of the gorge above the stream. It was cold enough that tiny ice crystals glinted among the rocks where the starlight struck them, but the creek was far from frozen. Its gurgle and rush filled the air, and kept us from being too quiet.
“Aye, well,” he said, as we turned up the path past the pigsty. “I hope Roger Wakefield is a better man than the two of us—Frank and I.” He glanced at me. “Mind ye, if he’s not, I shall beat him to a pudding.”
Despite myself I laughed.
“That will be a great help to the situation, I’m sure.”
He snorted briefly and walked on. At the bottom of the hill, we turned without speaking, and came back in the direction of the house. Just short of the path that led to the door, I stopped him.
“Jamie,” I said hesitantly. “Do you believe I love you?”
He turned his head and looked down at me for a long moment before replying. The moon shone on his face, picking out his features as though they had been chiseled in marble.
“Well, if ye don’t, Sassenach,” he said at last, “ye’ve picked a verra poor time to tell me so.”
I let out my breath in the ghost of a laugh.
“No, it’s not that,” I assured him. “But—” My throat tightened, and I swallowed hastily, needing to get the words out.
“I—I don’t say it often. Perhaps it’s only that I wasn’t raised to say such things; I lived with my uncle, and he was affectionate, but not—well, I didn’t know how married people—”
He put his hand lightly over my mouth, a faint smile touching his lips. After a moment, he took it away.
I took a deep breath, steadying my voice.
“Look, what I mean to say is—if I don’t say it, how do you know I love you?”
He stood still, looking at me, then nodded in acknowledgment.
“I know because ye’re here, Sassenach,” he said quietly. “And that’s what ye mean, aye? That he came after her—this Roger. And so perhaps he will love her enough?”
“It’s not a thing you’d do, just for friendship’s sake.”
He nodded again, but I hesitated, wanting to tell him more, to impress him with the significance of it.
“I haven’t told you a great deal about it, because—there aren’t words for it. But one thing about it I could tell you. Jamie—” I shivered involuntarily, and not from the cold. “Not everyone who goes through the stones comes out again.”
His look sharpened.
“How d’ye ken that, Sassenach?”
“I can—I could—hear them. Screaming.”
I was shaking outright by this time, from a mixture of cold and memory, and he caught my hands between his own and drew me close. The autumn wind rattled the branches of the willows by the stream, a sound like dry, bare bones. He held me until the shivering stopped, then let me go.
“It’s cold, Sassenach. Come inside.” He turned toward the house, but I laid my hand on his shoulder to stop him again.
“Jamie?”
“Aye?”
“Should I—would you—do you need me to say it?”
He turned around and looked down at me. With the light behind him, he was haloed in moonlight, but his features were once more dark.
“I dinna need it, no.” His voice was soft. “But I wouldna mind if ye wanted to say it. Now and again. Not too often, mind; I wouldna want to lose the novelty of it.” I could hear the smile in his voice, and couldn’t help smiling in return, whether he could see it or not.
“Once in a while wouldn’t hurt, though?”
“No.”
I stepped close to him and put my hands on his shoulders.
“I love you.”
He looked down at me for a long moment.
“I’m glad of it, Claire,” he said quietly, and touched my face. “Verra glad. Come to bed now; I’ll warm ye.”
48
AWAY IN A MANGER
The tiny stable was in a shallow cave under a rocky overhang, walled in along the front with a stockade of unpeeled cedar logs, sunk two feet