The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [250]
A piercing whinny rose from the shelter, followed by another. Sounds of alarm came from below, scuffling and thuds as men rolled from their blankets or lunged for their weapons. Jamie had disappeared.
All at once, horses burst from the shelter, knocking down the wall and trampling the fallen branches. Snorting, whinnying, kicking, and jostling, they spilled out over the road in a chaos of flying manes and rolling eyes. The last of them sprang from the shelter and joined the runaway, tail whisking away from the switch that landed on its rump.
Jamie flung away the switch and ducked back into the shelter, just as the door below flung open, spilling pale gold light over the scene.
I seized the opportunity of the commotion to run downstairs without being seen. Everyone was outside; even Mrs. Brown had rushed out, nightcap and all, leaving the quilts pulled half off the bed. Hiram, smelling strongly of beer, swayed and mehed tipsily at me as I passed, yellow eyes moist and protuberant with conviviality.
Outside, the roadway was full of half-dressed men, surging to and fro and waving their arms in agitation. I caught sight of Jamie in the midst of the crowd, gesticulating with the best of them. Among the excited bits of question and comment, I heard scraps of speech—“spooked” . . . “panther?” . . . “goddamn!” and the like.
After a bit of milling around and incoherent argument, it was unanimously decided that the horses would likely come back by themselves. Snow was blowing off the trees in veils of whirling ice; the wind stuck freezing fingers through every crevice of clothing.
“Would you stay out on a night like this?” Roger demanded, reasonably enough. It being generally decided that no sane man would—and horses being, if not quite sane, certainly sensible creatures—the party began to trickle back into the house, shivering and grumbling as the heat of excitement began to die down.
Among the last stragglers, Jamie turned toward the house and saw me, still standing on the porch. His hair was loose and the light from the open door lit him like a torch. He caught my eye, rolled his own toward heaven, and raised his shoulders in the faintest of shrugs.
I put cold fingers to my lips and blew him a small frozen kiss.
PART FOUR
I Hear No Music
But the Sound of Drums
33
HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE?” Brianna asked. She turned over, moving carefully in the narrow confines of Mr. Wemyss’s bed, and parked her chin comfortably in the hollow of Roger’s shoulder.
“What would I have done about what?” Warm through for the first time in weeks, filled to bursting with one of Mrs. Bug’s dinners, and having finally achieved the nirvana of an hour’s privacy with his wife, Roger felt pleasantly drowsy and detached.
“About Isaiah Morton and Alicia Brown.”
Roger gave a jaw-cracking yawn and settled himself deeper, the corn-shuck mattress rustling loudly under them. He supposed the whole house had heard them at it earlier, and he didn’t really care. She’d washed her hair in honor of his homecoming; waves of it spread over his chest, a silky rich gleam in the dim glow of the hearth. It was only late afternoon, but the shutters were closed, giving the pleasant illusion that they were inside a small private cave.
“I don’t know. What your Da did, I suppose; what else? Your hair smells great.” He smoothed a lock of it around his finger, admiring the shimmer.
“Thanks. I used some of that stuff Mama makes with walnut oil and marigolds. What about Isaiah’s poor wife in Granite Falls, though?”
“What about her? Jamie couldn’t force Morton to go home to her—assuming that she wants him back,” he added logically. “And the girl—Alicia—was evidently more than willing; your father couldn’t very well have made a kerfuffle about Morton leaving with her, unless he wanted the man dead. If the Browns had found Morton there, they would have killed