The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [49]
“You know what Ronnie Sinclair said to me last night? He was watching you bend down to pick up a stick of wood for the fire, and he sighed and said, ‘Ye ken how to pick a good lass, MacKenzie? Start at the bottom and work your way up!’ Oof!” He recoiled, laughing, as she slugged him.
Then he bent and kissed her, very gently. The rain was still falling, pattering on the layer of dead leaves. Her fingers were sticky with the blood from his wound.
“You want a baby, don’t you?” she asked softly. “One you know is yours?”
He kept his head bent for a moment, but at last looked up at her, letting her see the answer in his face; a great yearning, mingled with anxious concern.
“I don’t mean—” he began, but she put a hand across his mouth to stop him.
“I know,” she said. “I understand.” She did—almost. She was an only child, as he was; she knew the yearning for connection and closeness—but hers had been gratified. She had had not one loving father but two. A mother who had loved her beyond the bounds of space and time. The Murrays of Lallybroch, that unexpected gift of family. And most of all, her son, her flesh, her blood, a small and trusting weight that anchored her firmly to the universe.
But Roger was an orphan, alone in the world for such a long time. His parents gone before he knew them, his old uncle dead—he had no one to claim him, no one to love him for the sake only of his flesh and bone—no one save her. Little wonder if he hungered for the certainty she held in her arms when she nursed her child.
He cleared his throat suddenly.
“I—ah—I was going to give ye this tonight. But maybe . . . well.” He reached into the inner pocket of his coat and handed her a soft bundle, wrapped in cloth.
“Sort of a wedding present, aye?” He was smiling, but she could see the uncertainty in his eyes.
She opened the cloth, and a pair of black button eyes looked up at her. The doll wore a shapeless smock of green calico, and red-yarn hair exploded from its head. Her heart beat heavily in her chest, and her throat tightened.
“I thought the wean might like it—to chew on, perhaps.”
She moved, and the pressure of the sodden fabric on her breasts made them tingle. She was afraid, all right; but there were things stronger than fear.
“There’ll be a next time,” she said, and laid a hand on his arm. “I can’t say when—but there will.”
He laid his hand on hers and squeezed it tight, not looking at her.
“Thanks, Jugbutt,” he said at last, very softly.
THE RAIN WAS HEAVIER; it was pissing down now. Roger thumbed the wet hair out of his eyes and shook himself like a dog, scattering drops from the tight-woven wool of coat and plaid. There was a smear of mud down the front of the gray wool; he brushed at it, to no effect.
“Christ, I can’t be getting married like this,” he said, trying to lighten the mood between them. “I look like a beggar.”
“It’s not too late, you know,” she said. She smiled, teasing a little tremulously. “You could still back out.”
“It’s been too late for me since the day I saw you,” he said gruffly. “Besides,” he added, lifting one brow, “your father would gut me like a hog if I said I’d had second thoughts on the matter.”
“Ha,” she said, but the hidden smile popped out, dimpling one cheek.
“Bloody woman! You like the idea!”
“Yes. No, I mean.” She was laughing again now; that’s what he’d wanted. “I don’t want him to gut you. It’s just nice to know he would. A father ought to be protective.”
She smiled at him, touched him lightly. “Like you, Mr. MacKenzie.”
That gave him an odd, tight feeling in the chest, as though his waistcoat had shrunk. Then a tinge of cold, as he recalled what he had to tell her. Fathers and their notions of protection varied, after all, and he wasn’t sure how she would see this one.
He took her arm and drew her away, out of the rain and into the shelter