Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [417]
“You think my honor isn’t worth taking back? Or do you figure it’s the same thing as my maidenheid?” She mocked his accent nastily.
Sharp blue eyes swung back to hers.
“Is it the same thing to you?”
“No, it is not,” she said, through clenched teeth.
“Good,” he said, shortly.
“Then answer me, damn it!” She struck a fist on the straw, finding no satisfaction in the soundless blow. “Did killing him give you back your honor? Did it help? Tell me the truth!”
She stopped, breathing heavily. She glared at him, and he met her eyes with a cold stare. Then he raised the cup abruptly to his mouth, swallowed the cider in one gulp, and set the cup down on the hay beside him.
“The truth? The truth is that I dinna ken whether I killed him or no.”
Her mouth dropped open in surprise.
“You don’t know whether you killed him?”
“I said so.” A slight jerk of the shoulders betrayed his impatience. He stood up abruptly, as if unable to sit any longer.
“He died at Culloden, and I was there. I woke on the moor after the battle, with Randall’s corpse on top of me. I ken that much—and not much more.” He paused as though thinking, then, mind made up, he thrust one knee forward, pulled up his kilt and nodded downward. “Look.”
It was an old scar, but no less impressive for its age. It ran up the inner side of his thigh, nearly a foot in length, its lower end starred and knotted like the head of a mace, the rest of it a cleaner line, though thick and twisted.
“A bayonet, I expect,” he said, looking at it dispassionately. He dropped the kilt, hiding the scar once more.
“I remember the feel of the blade strikin’ bone, and no more. Not what came after—or before.”
He took a deep, audible breath, and for the first time she realized that his apparent calmness was taking a good deal of effort to maintain.
“I thought it a blessing—that I couldna remember,” he said at last. He wasn’t looking at her, but into the shadows at the end of the stable. “There were gallant men who died there; men I loved well. If I didna know their deaths; if I couldna recall them or see them in my mind—then I didna have to think of them as dead. Maybe that was cowardice, maybe not. Perhaps I chose not to remember that day; perhaps I cannot if I would.” He looked down at her, his eyes gone softer, but then turned away, plaid swinging, not waiting for an answer.
“Afterward—aye, well. Vengeance didna seem important, then. There were a thousand dead men on that field, and I thought I should be one of them in hours. Jack Randall …” He made an odd, impatient gesture, brushing aside the thought of Jack Randall as he might a biting deerfly. “He was one of them. I thought I could leave him to God. Then.”
She took a deep breath, trying to keep her feelings under control. Curiosity and sympathy struggled with an overwhelming feeling of frustration.
“You’re … all right, though. I mean—in spite of what he—did to you?”
He gave her a look of exasperation, understanding mingled with half-angry amusement.
“Not many die of it, lass. Not me. And not you.”
“Not yet.” Involuntarily, she put a hand over her belly. She stared up at him. “I guess we’ll see in six months if I die of it.”
That rattled him; she could see it. He blew out his breath and scowled at her.
“Ye’ll do fine,” he said curtly. “Ye’re wider through the hip than yon wee heifer.”
“Like your mother? Everybody says how much I’m like her. I guess she was wide through the hip, too, but it didn’t save her, did it?”
He flinched. Quick and sharp as though she’d slapped him across the face with a stinging nettle. Perversely, seeing it filled her with panic, rather than the satisfaction she’d expected.
She understood then that his promise of protection was in good part illusion. He would kill for her, yes. Or willingly die himself, she had no doubt. He would—if she let him—avenge her honor, destroy her enemies. But he could not defend her from her own child; he was as powerless to save her from that threat as if she had never found him.
“I’ll die,” she said, cold certainty filling