Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [480]
She wondered briefly if her father knew, but dismissed the possibility. After his experiences in Wentworth Prison, he couldn’t possibly hold a man with that preference in such warm regard as she knew he felt for Lord John.
She rolled onto her back. The polished cotton of the sheet slid across the bare skin of breasts and thighs, caressing. She half noticed the feeling, and as her nipple hardened she raised a hand to cup her breast in reflex, felt Roger’s large warm hand in memory, and a sudden surge of wanting. Then in memory she felt the sudden grasp of rougher hands, pinching and mauling, and wanting changed at once to sickened fury. She flipped onto her stomach, arms crossed beneath her breasts and face buried in her pillow, legs clenched and teeth gritted in futile defense.
The baby was a large, uncomfortable lump; impossible to lie that way now. With a small half-spoken curse, she rolled over and jerked out of bed, out from under the betraying, seductive sheets.
She walked naked through the half-lit room, and stood again by the window, looking out at the pounding rain. Her hair hung damp down her back, and cold was coming through the glass, pebbling the white flesh of arms and thighs and belly. She made no move either to cover herself or to go back to bed, but only stood there, one hand on the gently squirming bulge, looking out.
It would be too late soon. She had known when they left that it was already too late—so had her mother. Neither of them had wanted to admit it to the other, though; they had both pretended that Roger would come back in time, that he and she would sail to Hispaniola, and find their way back through the stones—together.
She laid her other hand against the glass; at once, a mist of condensation sprang up, outlining her fingers. It was early March; maybe three months left, maybe less. It would take a week, maybe two, to travel to the coast. No ship would risk the treacherous Outer Banks in March, though. Early April, at the soonest, before a journey could be undertaken. How long to the West Indies? Two weeks, three?
The end of April, then. And a few days to make their way inland, find the cave; it would be slow, fighting through the jungle, more than eight months pregnant. And dangerous, though that didn’t matter much, considering.
That would be if Roger were here now. But he wasn’t. He might never come, though that was a possibility she fought hard against envisioning. If she didn’t think about all the ways he could die, then he wouldn’t die; it was one article of her stubborn faith; the others were that he wasn’t dead yet, and that her mother would come back before the child was born. As to her father—rage boiled up again, as it did whenever she thought of him—him or Bonnet—so she tried to think of either of them as little as possible.
She prayed, of course, as hard as she could, but she wasn’t constituted for praying and waiting; she was made for action. If only she could have gone with them, to find Roger!
She hadn’t had a choice about that, though. Her jaw tightened, and her hand splayed flat against her belly. She hadn’t had a choice about a lot of things. But she had made one choice—to keep her child—and now she’d have to live with the consequences of it.
She was beginning to shiver. Abruptly she turned away from the storm, and went to the fire. A small tongue of flame played along the blackened back of a red-crackled log, the heart of the embers glowing gold and white.
She sank down on the hearth rug, closing her eyes as the heat of the fire sent waves of comfort over her cold skin, caressing as the stroke of a hand. This time she kept all thought of Bonnet at bay, refusing him entrance to her mind, concentrating fiercely instead on the few precious memories she had of Roger.
… put your hand on my heart. Tell me if it stops … She could hear him, half breathless, half choked between laughter and passion.
How the hell do you know that?