The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [393]
We had come into camp the night before, after a winding journey down from the mountains and across the piedmont, to arrive at the place of rendezvous, at Colonel Bryan’s plantation. We were in good time; Tryon had not yet arrived with his troops from New Bern, nor had the Craven and Carteret County detachments, who were bringing the artillery field pieces and swivel guns. Tryon’s troops were expected sometime today; or so Colonel Bryan had told us over supper the night before.
A grasshopper landed on the canvas above with an audible thump. I eyed it narrowly, but it didn’t seem disposed to come inside, thank goodness. Perhaps I should have accepted Mrs. Bryan’s offer to find me a bed in the house, along with a few other officers’ wives who had accompanied their husbands. Jamie had insisted upon sleeping in the field with his men, though, and I had gone with him, preferring a bed involving Jamie and bugs to one with neither.
I glanced sideways, careful not to move in case he was still asleep. He wasn’t. He was lying quite still, though, utterly relaxed, save for his right hand. He had this raised, and appeared to be examining it closely, turning it to and fro and slowly curling and uncurling his fingers—as well as he could. The fourth finger had a fused joint, and was permanently stiff; the middle finger was slightly twisted, a deep white scar spiraling round the middle joint.
His hand was callused and battered by work, and the tiny stigma of a nail-wound still showed, pale-pink, in the middle of his palm. The skin of his hand was deeply bronzed and weathered, freckled with sun-blots and scattered with bleached gold hairs. I thought it remarkably beautiful.
“Happy Birthday,” I said, softly. “Taking stock?”
He let the hand fall on his chest, and turned his head to look at me, smiling.
“Aye, something of the sort. Though I suppose I’ve a few hours left. I was born at half-six; I willna have lived a full half-century until suppertime.”
I laughed and rolled onto my side, kicking the blanket off. The air was still delightfully cool, but it wouldn’t last long.
“Do you expect to disintegrate much further before supper?” I asked, teasing.
“Oh, I dinna suppose anything is likely to fall off by then,” he said, consideringly. “As to the workings . . . aye, well . . .” He arched his back, stretching, and sank back with a gratified groan as my hand settled on him.
“It all seems to be in perfect working order,” I assured him. I gave a brief, experimental tug, making him yelp slightly. “Not loose at all.”
“Good,” he said, folding his hand firmly over mine to prevent further unauthorized experiments. “How did ye ken what I was doing? Taking stock, as ye say?”
I let him keep hold of the hand, but shifted to set my chin in the center of his chest, where a small depression seemed made for the purpose.
“I always do that, when I have a birthday—though I generally do it the night before. More looking back, I think, reflecting a bit on the year that’s just gone. But I do check things over; I think perhaps everyone does. Just to see if you’re the same person as the day before.”
“I’m reasonably certain that I am,” he assured me. “Ye dinna see any marked changes, do ye?”
I lifted my chin from its resting place and looked him over carefully. It was in fact rather hard to look at him objectively; I was both so used to his features and so fond of them that I tended to notice tiny, dear things about him—the freckle on his earlobe, the lower incisor pushing eagerly forward, just slightly out of line with its fellows—and to respond to the slightest change of his expression—but not really to look at him as an integrated whole.
He bore my examination tranquilly, eyelids half-lowered against the growing light. His hair had come loose while he slept and feathered over his shoulders, its ruddy waves framing a face strongly marked by both humor and passion—but which possessed a paradoxical and most remarkable