Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [496]
“Oh, aye,” he said, a little grudgingly. “A mistake. I’ve given Mr. Wakefield my apologies and told him I shall do my best to see it right. But we’ve other things to think of now. Have ye seen Ian, Sassenach?”
“No.” I became aware for the first time that Ian was not with them, and felt a small lurch of fear in the pit of my stomach. Jamie looked grim.
“Where have ye been all night, Sassenach?”
“I was with—oh, Jesus!”
I ignored his question for a moment, caught up in the sight of Roger’s foot. The flesh was swollen and reddened over half his foot, with a severe ulceration on the outer margin of the sole. I pressed firmly, a little way in, and felt the nasty give of small pockets of pus under the skin.
“What happened here?”
“I cut it, trying to get away. They bound it and put things on it, but it’s been infected on and off. It gets better, and then it gets worse.” He shrugged; his attention wasn’t on his foot, ugly as it was. He looked up at Jamie, evidently having come to a decision.
“Brianna didn’t send you to meet me, then? She didn’t ask you to—get rid of me?”
“No,” Jamie said, taken by surprise. He smiled briefly, his features suffused with sudden charm. “That was my own notion.”
Roger drew a deep breath and closed his eyes briefly.
“Thank God,” he said, and opened them. “I thought perhaps she’d—we’d had a terrible argument, just before I left her, and I thought maybe that was why she hadn’t told you about the handfasting; that she’d decided she didn’t want to be married to me.” There was sweat on his forehead, either from the news or from my handling of his foot. He smiled, a little painfully. “Having me beaten to death or sold into slavery seemed a trifle extreme, though, even for a woman with her temper.”
“Mmphm.” Jamie was slightly flushed. “I did say I was sorry for it.”
“I know.” Roger looked at him for a minute, evidently making up his mind about something. He took a deep breath, then bent down and put my hand gently away from his foot. He straightened up and met Jamie’s eyes, dead-on.
“I’ve something to tell you. What we fought over. Has she told you what brought her here—to find you?”
“The death notice? Aye, she’s told us. Ye dinna think I’d allow Claire to come with me otherwise?”
“What?” Puzzled wariness showed in Roger’s eyes.
“Ye canna have it both ways. If she and I are to die at Fraser’s Ridge six years from now, we canna very well be killed by the Iroquois any time before that, now can we?”
I stared at him; that particular implication had escaped me. Rather staggering; practical immortality—for a time. But that was assuming—
“That’s assuming that you can’t change the past—that we can’t, I mean. Do you believe that?” Roger leaned forward a little, intent.
“I will be damned if I know. Do you think so?”
“Yes,” Roger said flatly. “I do think the past can’t be changed. That’s why I did it.”
“Did what?”
He licked his lips, but went doggedly on.
“I found that death notice long before Brianna did. I thought, though, that it would be useless to try to change things. So I—I kept it from her.” He looked from me to Jamie. “So now you know. I didn’t want her to come; I did everything I could to keep her away from you. I thought it was too dangerous. And—I was afraid of losing her,” he ended simply.
To my surprise, Jamie was looking at Roger with sudden approval.
“Ye tried to keep her safe, then? To protect her?”
Roger nodded, a certain relief lessening the tension in his shoulders.
“So you understand?”
“Aye, I do. That’s the first thing I’ve heard that gives me a good opinion of ye, sir.”
It wasn’t an opinion I shared at the moment.
“You found that thing—and didn’t tell her?” I could feel the blood climbing into my cheeks.
Roger saw the look on my face, and looked away.
“No. She … um … she saw it your way, I’m afraid. She thought—well, she said I’d betrayed