The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [471]
“Aye. But the lad?” He looked up at me, one eyebrow raised, the candlelight clear in his eyes, blue as sapphires cut and polished.
“He wouldn’t,” I said. “He wouldn’t leave Bree and Jemmy.” I spoke stoutly, but there was a thread of doubt in my heart, and it was reflected in my voice.
“Not yet,” Jamie said quietly.
I took a deep breath, but did not reply. I knew very well what he meant. Wrapped in silence, Roger seemed to withdraw further day by day.
His fingers had healed; I had suggested to Brianna that perhaps he would find solace in his bodhran. She had nodded, doubtfully. I didn’t know whether she had mentioned it to him or not—but the bodhran hung on the wall of their cabin, silent as its owner.
He did still smile and play with Jemmy, and was unfailingly attentive to Brianna—but the shadow in his eyes never lessened, and when he was not required for some chore, he would disappear for hours, sometimes all day, to walk the mountains, returning after dark, exhausted, dirt-stained—and silent.
“He hasna slept with her, has he? Since it happened?”
I sighed, brushing a strand of hair off my forehead.
“A few times. I asked. My guess would be that it hasn’t happened lately, though.”
Bree was doing her best to keep him close, to draw him out of the depths of his gathering depression—but it was clear to me, as well as to Jamie, that she was losing the battle, and knew it. She too was growing silent, and had shadows in her eyes.
“If he went . . . back . . . might there be a cure for his voice? There in your own time?” Jamie ran a finger over the opal as he spoke, eyes following the spiral as his finger traced it.
I sighed again, and sat down.
“I don’t know. There would be help—perhaps surgery, certainly speech therapy. I can’t say how much it would help; no one can. The thing is . . . he might recover a good deal of his voice naturally, if he’d only work at it. But he isn’t going to do that. And of course,” honesty compelled me to add, “he might not get it back, no matter how hard he worked.”
Jamie nodded, silent. Regardless of the possibilities of medical help, the fact was that if the marriage between Roger and Brianna failed, there was nothing whatever to keep him here. Whether he would choose to go back then . . .
Jamie sat up in his chair, and blew the candle out.
“Not yet,” he said in the darkness, his voice firm. “We’ve a few weeks yet before I must send money to Scotland; I’ll see what else we might contrive. For now, we’ll keep the stones.”
Last night I dreamed that I was making bread. Or at least I was trying to make bread. I’d be mixing dough and suddenly realize that I didn’t have any flour. Then I’d put the bread in pans and put it in the oven and realize that it hadn’t risen, and take it back out. I’d knead it and knead it and then I’d be carrying it around in a bowl under a cloth, looking for a warm place to put it, because you have to keep it warm or the yeast dies, and I was getting frantic because I couldn’t find a warm place; there was a cold wind blowing and the bowl was heavy and slippery and I thought I was going to drop it; my hands and feet were freezing and going numb.
Then I woke up and I really was cold. Roger had pulled all the covers off and rolled himself up in them, and there was a terrible draft blowing in under the door. I nudged him and yanked on the blankets, but I couldn’t get them loose and I didn’t want to make a lot of noise and wake Jemmy up. Finally, I got up and got my cloak off the peg and went back to sleep under that.
Roger got up before me this morning and went out; I don’t think he noticed that he’d left me in the cold.
77
A PACKAGE FROM LONDON
THE PACKAGE ARRIVED in August, by the good offices of Jethro Wainwright, one of the few itinerant peddlers with sufficient enterprise to ascend the steep and winding paths that led to the Ridge. Red-faced and wheezing from the climb and the work of unloading