The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [140]
He lifted one eyebrow, but obligingly set down the gun—he had taken it, when they left the house, and she had let him, despite a proprietorial urge to carry it herself—undid his own footgear, and cautiously slid one long-boned foot into the moss beside hers. His eyes closed involuntarily, and his mouth rounded into a soundless “ooh.”
Moved by impulse, she leaned over and kissed him. His eyes flew open in startlement, but he had fast reflexes. He wrapped a long arm around her waist and kissed her back, thoroughly. It was an unusually warm day for late autumn, and he wore no coat, only a hunting shirt. His chest felt startlingly immediate through the woolen cloth of his shirt; she could feel the tiny bump of his nipple rising under the palm of her hand.
God knew what might have happened next, but the wind changed. A faint cry drifted up from the sea of tossing yellow below. It might have been a baby’s cry, or perhaps only a distant crow, but her head swiveled toward it, like a compass needle pointing to true north.
It broke the mood, and he let go, stepping back.
“D’ye want to go back?” he asked, sounding resigned.
She pressed her lips together and shook her head.
“No. Let’s get a little farther away from the house, though. We don’t want to bother them with the noise. Of—of shooting, I mean.”
He grinned, and she felt the blood rise hot in her face. No, she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t realized there was more than one motive for this private expedition.
“No, not that, either,” he said. He stooped for his shoes and stockings. “Come on, then.”
She declined to put on her own footwear, but took the opportunity to reappropriate the gun. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him with it, though he admitted he hadn’t fired such a gun before. She just liked the feel of it, and felt secure with its weight balanced on her shoulder, even unloaded. A Land pattern musket, it was more than five feet long, and weighed a good ten pounds or so, but the butt of the polished walnut stock fitted snugly into her hand and the weight of the steel barrel felt right, laid in the hollow of her shoulder, muzzle to the sky.
“You’re going to go barefoot?” Roger cast a quizzical glance at her feet, then ahead, up the mountainside, where a faint path wove through blackberry brambles and fallen branches.
“Just for a while,” she assured him. “I used to go barefoot all the time when I was little. Daddy—Frank—took us to the mountains every summer, to the White Mountains or the Adirondacks. After a week, the bottoms of my feet were like leather; I could have walked on hot coals and not felt a thing.”
“Aye, I did, too,” he said, smiling, and tucked his shoes away as well. “Granted,” he said, with a nod toward the faint path that wove its way through brush and half-buried granite outcrops, “the walking along the riverbank of the Ness or the shingle by the Firth was a bit easier going than this, stones notwithstanding.”
“That’s a point,” she said, frowning slightly at his feet. “Have you had a tetanus shot recently? In case you step on something sharp and get punctured?”
He was already climbing ahead of her, choosing his footing cautiously.
“I had injections for everything one could possibly have injections for, before I came through the stones,” he assured her, over one shoulder. “Typhoid, cholera, dengue fever, the lot. I’m sure tetanus was in there.”
“Dengue fever? I thought I’d had shots for everything, too, but not that one.” Digging her toes into the cool mats of dead grass, she took a few long strides to catch him up.
“Shouldn’t need it up here.” The path ambled round the curve of a steep bank overgrown with yellowing pawpaw and vanished under the overhang of a clump of black-green hemlock. He held the heavy branches back for her and she ducked under them into the pungent gloom, gun held carefully crosswise.
“I wasn’t sure where I might have to go, see.” His voice came from behind her, casual, damped by the darkened air under the trees. “If it was the coastal towns, or the West Indies . . . there were . . . there are,” he corrected