The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [142]
She showed him, hesitant at first, reluctant to correct him. He bit his own tongue, though, and imitated her carefully, following the smooth flow of the steps from ripping the cartridge open with his teeth to priming, loading, ramming, and checking, annoyed at his own novice awkwardness, but secretly fascinated—and more than slightly aroused—by the casual ferocity of her movements.
Her hands were nearly as large as his own, though finely boned; she handled the long gun with the familiarity other women showed with needle and broom. She wore breeks of homespun, and the long muscle of her thigh rose up tight and round against the cloth when she squatted beside him, head bent as she groped in her leather bag.
“What, you packed a lunch?” he joked. “I thought we’d just shoot something and eat it.”
She ignored him. She pulled out a ragged white kerchief to use as a target, and shook it out, frowning critically. Once he had thought of her scent as jasmine and grass; now she smelled of gunpowder, leather, and sweat. He breathed it, his fingers unobtrusively stroking the wood of the gunstock.
“Ready?” she said, glancing at him with a smile.
“Oh, aye,” he said.
“Check your flint and priming,” she said, rising. “I’ll pin up the target.”
Seen from the back, her ruddy hair clubbed tightly back, and clad in a loose buckskin hunting shirt that covered her from shoulder to thigh, her resemblance to her father was intensified to a startling degree. No mistaking the two, though, he thought. Breeks or no, Jamie Fraser had never in life had an arse like that. He watched her walk, congratulating himself on his choice of instructor.
His father-in-law would have given him a lesson, willingly. Jamie was a fine shot, and a patient teacher; Roger had seen him taking the Chisholm boys out after supper, to practice blasting away at rocks and trees in the empty cornfield. It was one thing for Jamie to know that Roger was inexperienced with guns; it was another to suffer the humiliation of demonstrating just how inexperienced, under that dispassionate blue gaze.
Beyond the matter of pride, though, he had an ulterior motive in asking Brianna to come out shooting with him. Not that he thought said motive was in any way hidden; Claire had glanced from him to her daughter when he had suggested it, and looked amused in a particularly knowing way that had made Brianna frown and say, “Mother!” in an accusatory tone of voice.
Beyond the all-too-brief hours of their wedding night at the Gathering, this was the first—and only—time he’d had Brianna to himself, free from the insatiable demands of her offspring.
He caught the gleam of sun off metal as she lowered her arm. She was wearing his bracelet, he realized with a deep feeling of pleasure. He had given it to her when he’d asked her to marry him—a lifetime ago, in the freezing mists of a winter night in Inverness. It was a simple circlet of silver, engraved with a series of phrases in French. Je t’aime, it said: I love you. Un peu, beaucoup, passionnément, pas du tout: A little, a lot, passionately—not at all.
“Passionnément,” he murmured, envisioning her wearing nothing but his bracelet and her wedding ring.
First things first, though, he told himself, and picked up a fresh cartridge. After all, they had time.
SATISFIED THAT HIS loading habits were on the way to being well established, if not yet rapid, Brianna finally allowed him to practice sighting, and at last, to shoot.
It took a dozen tries before he could hit the white square of the kerchief, but the sense of exultation he felt when a dark spot appeared suddenly near the edge of it had him reaching for a fresh cartridge before the smoke of the shot had dissipated. The sense of excited accomplishment took him through another dozen cartridges, scarcely noticing anything beyond the jerk and boom of the gun, the flash of