Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [531]
Ten minutes later he had circled the house twice more, and was standing in the grass at the back, looking at the faint glow of the window.
“What the hell do you think you are?” he muttered to himself. “A bloody moth?”
The creak of boards prevented his answering himself. He shot around the end of the house in time to see a white-gowned figure float ghostlike down the path toward the privy.
“Brianna?”
The figure whirled, with a small yelp of fright.
“It’s me,” he said, and saw the dark blotch of her hand press against the white of her nightdress, over her heart.
“What’s the matter with you, sneaking up on me like that?” she demanded furiously.
“I want to talk to you.”
She didn’t answer, but whipped round and made off down the path.
“I said, I want to talk to you,” he repeated more loudly, following.
“I want to go to the bathroom,” she said. “Go away.” She shut the door of the privy with a decisive slam.
He retreated a short distance up the path and waited for her to emerge. Her step slowed when she saw him, but there was no way around him without stepping into the long, wet grass.
“You shouldn’t be up walking on that foot,” she said.
“The foot’s fine.”
“I think you should go back to bed.”
“All right,” he said, and moved solidly into the center of the path in front of her. “Where?”
“Where?” She froze, but made no pretense of not understanding.
“Up there?” He jerked a thumb at the ridge. “Or here?”
“I—ah—”
Be careful, her mother said, and my daughter doesna need a coward, said her father. He could flip a bloody coin, but for the moment he was taking Jamie Fraser’s advice, and damn the torpedoes.
“You said you’d seen a marriage of obligation and one of love. And do you think the one cuts out the other? Look—I spent three days in that godforsaken circle, thinking. And by God, I thought. I thought of staying, and I thought of going. And I stayed.”
“So far. You don’t know what you’d be giving up, if you stay for good.”
“I do! And even if I did not, I know bloody well what I’d be giving up by going.” He gripped her shoulder, the light gauze of her shift coarse under his hand. She was very warm.
“I could not go, and live with myself, thinking I’d left behind a child who might be mine—who is mine.” His voice dropped a little. “And I could not go, and live without you.”
She hesitated, drawing back, trying to escape his hand.
“My father—my fathers—”
“Look, I’m neither one of your bloody fathers! Give me credit for my own sins, at least!”
“You haven’t committed any sins,” she said, her voice sounding choked.
“No, and neither have you.”
She looked up at him, and he caught the gleam of a dark, slanted eye.
“If I hadn’t—” she began.
“And if I hadn’t,” he interrupted roughly. “Drop it, aye? It doesn’t matter what you’ve done—or I. I said I was neither of your fathers, and I meant it. But there they are, the two of them, and you know them well—far better than I.
“Did Frank Randall not love you as his own? Take you as the child of his heart, knowing you were the blood of another man, and one he’d good reason to hate?”
He took her other shoulder and gave her a little shake.
“Did that redheaded bastard not love your mother more than life? And love you enough to sacrifice even that love to save you?”
She made a small, choked noise, and a pang went through him at the sound, but he would not release her.
“If you believe it of them,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper, “then by God you must believe it of me. For I am a man like them, and by all I hold holy, I do love you.”
Slowly her head rose, and her breath was warm on his face.
“We have time,” he said softly, and knew suddenly why it had been so important to talk to her now, here in the dark. He reached for her hand, clasped it flat against his breast.
“Do you feel it? Do you feel my heart beat?”
“Yes,” she whispered, and