Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [495]
Without waiting for an answer he turned and walked away, sitting down heavily near the broken bed frame. I gave Roger a brief pat and went after him, wondering what the hell. Jamie wouldn’t admit to being in pain in front of Roger Wakefield, if splintered raw bone were sticking out of his flesh.
“What are you up to?” I muttered, kneeling beside him. I felt the arm gingerly through his shirt—no compound fractures. I rolled it carefully up for a better look.
“I havena told him about Brianna,” he said, very softly. “And I think it better you do not.”
I stared at him.
“We can’t do that! He has to know.”
“Keep your voice down. Aye, he maybe should know about the bairn—but not the other, not Bonnet.”
I bit my lip, feeling gingerly down the swell of his biceps. He had one of the worst bruises I had ever seen; a huge mottled splotch of purple-blue—but I was fairly sure the arm wasn’t broken.
I wasn’t so sure about his suggestion.
He could see the doubt on my face; he squeezed my hand hard.
“Not yet; not here. Let it wait, at least until we’re safe away.”
I thought for a moment, as I ripped the sleeve of his shirt and used it to make a rough sling. Learning that Brianna was pregnant was going to be a shock by itself. Perhaps Jamie was right; there was no telling how Roger would react to the news of the rape, and we were a long way from being home free yet. Better he should have his head clear. At last I nodded, reluctantly.
“All right,” I said aloud, getting up. “I don’t think it’s broken, but the sling will help.”
I left Jamie sitting on the ground and went to Roger, feeling like a Ping-Pong ball.
“How’s the foot?” I knelt to unwrap the unsanitary-looking rag around it, but he stopped me with an urgent hand on my shoulder.
“Brianna. I know there’s something wrong. Is she—”
“She’s pregnant.”
Whatever possibilities he had been turning over in his mind, that hadn’t been among them. It isn’t possible to mistake sheer amazement. He blinked, looking as though I’d hit him on the head with an ax.
“Are you sure?”
“She’ll be seven months gone by now; it’s noticeable.” Jamie had come up so quietly that neither of us had heard him. He spoke coldly, and looked even colder, but Roger was well beyond noticing subtleties.
Excitement brightened his eyes, and his shocked face came alive beneath the black whiskers.
“Pregnant. My God, but how?”
Jamie made a derisive noise in the back of his throat. Roger glanced at him, then quickly away.
“That is, I never thought—”
“How? Aye, ye didna think, and it’s my daughter left to pay the price of your pleasure!”
Roger’s head snapped round at that, and he glared at Jamie.
“She is not left, in any way! I told you she is my wife!”
“She is?” I said, startled in the midst of my unwrapping.
“They’re handfast,” Jamie said, very grudgingly. “Why could the lass not have told us, though?”
I thought I could answer that one—in more than one way. The second answer wasn’t one I could suggest in front of Roger, though.
She hadn’t said, because she was with child, and thought it was Bonnet’s. Believing that, she might have thought it better not to reveal their handfasting, so as to leave Roger an escape—if he wanted it.
“Most likely because she thought you wouldn’t see that as a true marriage,” I said. “I’d told her about our wedding; about the contract and how you insisted on marrying me in church, with a priest. She wouldn’t want to tell you anything she thought you might not approve of—she wanted so badly to please you.”
Jamie had the grace to look abashed at this, but Roger ignored the argument.
“Is she well?” he asked, leaning forward and grasping my arm.
“Yes, she’s fine,” I assured him, hoping it was still true. “She wanted to come with us, but of course we couldn’t let her do that.”
“She wanted to come?” His face lighted up, joy and relief plain to see, even through the hair and filth. “Then she didn’t—” He stopped abruptly, and glanced from me to Jamie and back. “When I met … Mr. Fraser on the mountainside, he seemed to think that she—er—had said—”
“A terrible misunderstanding,