Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [416]
“Mother told me about him.”
A muscle twitched near the corner of his mouth, the only outward indication of shock.
“Did she.”
It wasn’t a question, but she answered it anyway.
“She told me what—what happened. What he d-did to you. At Wentworth.”
Her small spurt of courage was exhausted, but it didn’t matter; she was in too deep to go back now. He simply sat and looked at her, the gourd cup forgotten in his hand. She longed to take it and drain it herself, but didn’t dare.
It occurred to her, much too late, that he might think it a betrayal that Claire had told anyone, let alone her. She rushed ahead, babbling in her nervousness.
“It wasn’t now; it was before—I didn’t know you—she thought I’d never meet you. I mean—I don’t think—I know she didn’t mean to—” He raised one eyebrow at her.
“Be still, aye?”
She was only too glad to stop talking. She couldn’t look at him, but sat staring down at her lap, her fingers pleating the russet cloth of her skirt. The silence lengthened, broken only by the shiftings and muffled squeals of the piglets, and an occasional digestive rumbling from Magdalen.
Why hadn’t she found some other way? she wondered, in an agony of embarrassment. Thou shalt not uncover they father’s nakedness. To invoke Jack Randall’s name was to invoke the images of what he had done—and that was not something she could bear even to think about. She should have asked her mother, let Claire ask him … but no. There hadn’t been any choice, not really. She had to find out from him …
Her racing thoughts were interrupted by his words, calmly spoken.
“Why are ye asking, lass?”
She jerked her head up, to find him watching her over his undrunk cider. He didn’t look upset, and the jelly in her backbone stiffened a little. She clenched her fists on her knees to steady herself, and met his eyes, straight on.
“I need to know whether it will help. I want to kill … him. The man who—” She made a vague gesture at her belly, and swallowed hard. “But if I do, and it doesn’t help—” She couldn’t go on.
He didn’t seem shocked; abstracted, rather. He raised the cup to his mouth and took a sip, slowly.
“Mmphm. And will ye have killed a man before?” He phrased it as a question, but she knew it wasn’t. The muscle quivered near his mouth again—with amusement, she thought, not shock—and she felt a quick spurt of anger.
“You think I can’t, don’t you? I can. You’d better believe me, I can!” Her hands spread out, gripping her knees, broad and capable. She thought she could do it; though her image of how it might happen wavered. In cold blood, shooting seemed the best, perhaps the only certain way. But trying to imagine this, she had realized vividly the truth of the old saying “Shooting’s too good for him.”
It might be too good for Bonnet; it wouldn’t be nearly good enough for her. In the night when she flung off her blankets, unable to bear even this slight weight and its reminder of restraint, she didn’t just want him dead—she wanted to kill him, purely and passionately—kill him with her hands, taking back by the flesh what had been taken from her by that means.
And yet … what good would it be to murder him, if he would still haunt her? There was no way to know—unless her father could tell her.
“Will you tell me?” she blurted. “Did you kill him, finally—and did it help?”
He seemed to be thinking it over, his eyes traveling slowly over her, narrowed in assessment.
“And what would be helped by your doing murder?” he asked. “It willna take the child from your belly—or give ye back your maidenheid.”
“I know that!” She felt her face flush hot, and turned away, irritated both with him and herself. They spoke of rape and murder, and she was embarrassed to have him mention her lost virginity? She forced herself to look back at him.
“Mama said you tried to kill Jack Randall in Paris, in a duel. What did you think you’d get back?”
He rubbed his chin hard, then drew in his breath through his nose and let it out slowly, eyes fixed on the stained rock of the ceiling.
“I meant to take back