Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [71]
He saw the shadow drift across my face—I saw the reflection of it darken his—but I took his hand and smiled as I squeezed it.
“It’s a wonderful gift. However did you find it?”
He smiled then, in return. The sun blazed low, a brilliant orange ball glimpsed briefly through dark treetops.
“I’d seen the box when I went to the goldsmith’s shop—it was the goldsmith’s wife who’d kept it. Then I went back yesterday, meaning to buy ye a bit of jewelry—maybe a brooch—and whilst the goodwife was showing me the gauds, we happened to speak of this and that, and she told me of the Doctor, and—” He shrugged.
“Why did you want to buy me jewelry?” I looked at him, puzzled. The sale of the ruby had left us with a bit of money, but extravagance was not at all like him, and under the circumstances—
“Oh! To make up for sending all that money to Laoghaire? I didn’t mind; I said I didn’t.”
He had—with some reluctance—arranged to send the bulk of the proceeds from the sale of the stone to Scotland, in payment of a promise made to Laoghaire MacKenzie—damn her eyes—Fraser, whom he had married at his sister’s persuasion while under the rather logical impression that if I was not dead, I was at least not coming back. My apparent resurrection from the dead had caused any amount of complications, Laoghaire not least among them.
“Aye, ye said so,” he said, openly cynical.
“I meant it—more or less,” I said, and laughed. “You couldn’t very well let the beastly woman starve to death, appealing as the idea is.”
He smiled, faintly.
“No. I shouldna like to have that on my conscience; there’s enough without. But that’s not why I wished to buy ye a present.”
“Why, then?” The box was heavy; a gracious, substantial, satisfying weight across my legs, its wood a delight under my hands. He turned his head to look full at me, then, his hair fire-struck with the setting sun, face dark in silhouette.
“Twenty-four years ago today, I married ye, Sassenach,” he said softly. “I hope ye willna have cause yet to regret it.”
The river’s edge was settled, rimmed with plantations from Wilmington to Cross Creek. Still, the banks were thickly forested, with only the occasional glimpse of fields where a break in the trees showed plantings, or every so often, a wooden dock, half-hidden in the foliage.
We proceeded slowly upriver, following the tidal surge so long as it lasted, tying up for the night when it ran out. We ate dinner by a small fire on shore, but slept on the boat, Eutroclus having casually mentioned the prevalence of water moccasins, who—he said—inhabited dens beneath the riverbank but were much inclined to come and warm their cold blood next to the bodies of unwary sleepers.
I awoke soon before dawn, stiff and sore from sleeping on boards, hearing the soft rush of a vessel passing on the river nearby, feeling the push of its wake against our hull. Jamie stirred in his sleep when he felt me move, turned over, and clasped me to his bosom.
I could feel his body curled behind mine, in its paradoxical morning state of sleep and arousal. He made a drowsy noise and moved against me in inquiry, his hand fumbling at the hem of my rumpled shift.
“Stop,” I said under my breath, batting his hand away. “Remember where we are, for God’s sake!”
I could hear the shouts and barking of Ian and Rollo, galumphing to and fro on the shore, and small stirrings in the cabin, featuring hawking and spitting noises, indicating the imminent emergence of Captain Freeman.
“Oh,” said Jamie, coming to the surface of consciousness. “Oh, aye. A pity, that.” He reached up, squeezed my breasts with both hands, and stretched his body with voluptuous slowness against me, giving me a detailed idea of what I was missing.
“Ah, well,” he said, relaxing reluctantly, but not yet letting