Outlander - Diana Gabaldon [177]
Randall slowly drew the knife in a semicircle under one breast. The homespun came free and fell away with a flutter of white chemise, and my breast sprang out. Randall seemed to have been holding his breath; he exhaled slowly now, his eyes fixed on mine.
I sidled away from him, but there was very little room to maneuver. I ended up pressed against the desk, bound hands gripping the edge. If he came close enough, I thought, I might be able to rock backward on my hands and kick the knife out of his hand. I doubted that he meant to kill me; certainly not until he had found out just what I knew about his relations with the Duke. Somehow that conclusion was of relatively little comfort.
He smiled, with that unnerving resemblance to Frank’s smile; that lovely smile which I had seen charm students and melt the stoniest college administrator. Possibly under other circumstances, I would have found this man charming, but just at present…no.
He moved in fast, thrusting a knee between my thighs and pushing my shoulders back. Unable to keep my balance, I fell heavily backward on the desk, crying out as I landed painfully on my bound wrists. He pressed himself between my legs, scrabbling with one hand to raise my skirts while the other fastened on my bared breast, rolling and pinching. I kicked frantically, but my skirts got in the way. He grasped my foot and ran a hand up my leg, pushing damp petticoats, skirt, and chemise out of the way, tossing them up above my waist. His hand dropped to his breeches.
Shades of Harry the deserter, I thought furiously. What in God’s name is the British army coming to? Glorious traditions, my aunt Fanny.
In the midst of an English garrison, screaming was unlikely to attract any helpful attention, but I filled my lungs and had a try, more as a pro forma protest than anything else. I had expected a slap or shake in return, to shut me up. Instead, unexpectedly, he appeared to like it.
“Go ahead and scream, sweeting,” he murmured, busy with his flies. “I’ll enjoy it much more if you scream.”
I looked him straight in the eye and snapped “Get stuffed!” with perfect clarity and terrible inaptness.
A lock of dark hair came loose and fell across his forehead in rakish disarray. He looked so like his six-times-great grandson that I was seized by a horrible impulse to open my legs and respond to him. He twisted my breast savagely and the impulse disappeared at once.
I was furiously angry, disgusted, humiliated, and revolted, but curiously not very frightened. I felt a heavy, flopping movement against my leg and suddenly realized why. He wasn’t going to enjoy it unless I screamed—and possibly not then.
“Oh, like that, is it?” I said, and was rewarded at once with a sharp slap across the face. I shut my mouth grimly and turned my head away lest I be tempted into any more injudicious remarks. I realized that rape or not, I was in considerable danger from his unstable temper. Looking away from the sight of Randall, I caught a sudden flicker of movement at the window.
“I’ll thank ye,” said a cool, level voice, “to take your hands off my wife.” Randall froze with a hand still on my breast. Jamie was crouched in the window frame, a large, brass-handled pistol braced across one forearm.
Randall stood frozen for a second, as though unable to believe his ears. As his head turned slowly toward the window, his right hand, shielded from Jamie’s view, left my breast, sliding stealthily toward the knife, which he had laid on the desk next to my head.
“What did you say?” he said, incredulously. As his hand fastened on the knife, he turned far enough to see who had spoken. He stopped again for a moment, staring, then began to laugh.
“Lord help us, it’s the young Scottish wildcat! I thought I’d dealt with you once and for all! Back healed after all, did it? And this is your wife, you say? Quite