The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [121]
Jamie found himself more in sympathy with the horse than not; eager to be home and working hard to get there, irritated by anything that threatened to hold him back. At the moment, the main impediment to progress was Claire, who had—blast the woman—halted her mare in front of him and slid off in order to gather yet another bit of herbage from the trailside. As though the entire house was not filled from doorstep to rooftree with plants already, and her saddlebags a-bulge with more!
Gideon, picking up his rider’s mood with alacrity, stretched out his neck and nipped the mare’s rump. The mare bucked, squealed, and shot off up the trail, loose reins dangling. Gideon made a deep rumbling noise of satisfaction and started off after her, only to be jerked unceremoniously to a halt.
Claire had whirled round at the noise, eyes wide. She looked up at Jamie, up the trail after her vanished horse, then back at him. She shrugged apologetically, hands full of tattered leaves and mangy roots.
“Sorry,” she said, but he saw the corner of her mouth tuck in and the flush rise in her skin, the smile glimmering in her eyes like morning light on trout water. Quite against his will, he felt the tension in his shoulders ease. He had had it in mind to rebuke her; in fact, he still did, but the words wouldn’t quite come to his tongue.
“Get up, then, woman,” he said instead, gruffly, with a nod behind him. “I want my supper.”
She laughed at him and scrambled up, kilting her skirts out of the way. Gideon, irascible at this additional burden, whipped round to take a nip of anything he could reach. Jamie was ready for that; he snapped the end of the rein sharply off the stallion’s nose, making him jerk back and snort in surprise.
“That’ll teach ye, ye wee bastard.” He pulled his hat over his brow and settled his errant wife securely, fluttering skirts tucked in beneath her thighs, arms round his waist. She rode without shoes or stockings, and her long calves were white and bare against the dark bay hide. He gathered up the reins and kicked the horse, a trifle harder than strictly necessary.
Gideon promptly reared, backed, twisted, and tried to scrape them both off under a hanging poplar bough. The kitten, rudely roused from its nap, sank all its claws into Jamie’s midsection and yowled in alarm, though its noise was quite lost in Jamie’s much louder screech. He yanked the horse’s head halfway round, swearing, and shoved at the hindquarters with his left leg.
No easy conquest, Gideon executed a hop like a corkscrew. There was a small “eek!” and a sudden feeling of emptiness behind him, as Claire was slung off into the brush like a bag of flour. The horse suddenly yielded to the pull on his mouth, and shot down the path in the wrong direction, hurtling through a screen of brambles and skidding to a halt that nearly threw him onto his hindquarters in a shower of mud and dead leaves. Then he straightened out like a snake, shook his head, and trotted nonchalantly over to exchange nuzzles with Roger’s horse, which was standing at the edge of the spring clearing, watching them with the same bemusement exhibited by its dismounted rider.
“All right there?” asked Roger, raising one eyebrow.
“Certainly,” Jamie replied, trying to gasp for breath while keeping his dignity. “And you?”
“Fine.”
“Good.” He was already swinging down from the saddle as he spoke. He flung the reins toward MacKenzie, not waiting to see whether he caught them, and ran back toward the trail, shouting, “Claire! Where are ye?”
“Just here!” she called cheerfully. She emerged from the shadow of the poplars, with leaves in her hair and limping slightly, but looking otherwise undamaged. “Are you all right?” she asked, cocking one eyebrow at him.
“Aye, fine. I’m going to shoot that horse.” He gathered her in briefly, wanting to assure himself that she was in fact whole. She was breathing heavily, but felt reassuringly