A Breath of Snow and Ashes (47 page)

She looked at him oddly, but went out to the lean-to at the back and brought in a jug of milk. He drank it thirstily, aware of her eyes on him, watchful as a cat’s, as she undressed and changed into her night rail.

She sat down on the bed and began to brush out her hair, preparing to plait it for sleep. On impulse, he reached out and took the brush from her. Without speaking, he ran one hand through the thickness of her hair, lifting it, smoothing it back from her face.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispered, and felt tears come to his eyes again.

“So are you.” She lifted her hands to his shoulders and brought him slowly down to his knees before her. She looked searchingly into his eyes—he did his best to look back. She smiled a little, then, and reached to untie the thong that held his own hair back.

It fell around his shoulders in a dusty black tangle, smelling of burned things, stale sweat, and horses. He protested when she took up her hairbrush, but she ignored him, and made him bend his head over her lap, while she picked pine straw and sandburs from his head, slowly working out the snarls. His head bent lower, and lower still, and he found himself at last with his forehead pressed into her lap, breathing in the close scent of her.

He was reminded of medieval paintings, sinners kneeling, heads bowed in confession and remorse. Presbyterians did not confess on their knees—Catholics still did, he thought. In darkness, like this—in anonymity.

“Ye’ve not asked me what happened,” he whispered at last, to the shadows of her thighs. “Did your father tell ye?”

He heard her draw breath, but her voice was calm when she replied.

“No.”

She said no more, and the room was quiet, save for the sound of the brush through his hair, and the rising rush of the wind outside.

How would it be for Jamie? Roger wondered suddenly. Would he really do it? Try to . . . He shied away from the thought, unable to contemplate it. Seeing instead a picture of Claire, coming out of the dawn, her face a swollen mask. Still herself, but remote as a distant planet on an orbit departing for the outer reaches of deep space—when might it come in sight again? Stooping to touch the dead, at Jamie’s urging, to see for herself the price of her honor.

It wasn’t the possibility of a child, he thought suddenly. It was fear—but not of that. It was Jamie’s fear that he would lose her—that she would go, swing out into a dark and solitary space without him, unless he could somehow bind her to him, keep her with him. But, Christ, what a risk to take—with a woman so shocked and brutalized, how could he risk it?

How could he not?

Brianna laid down the brush, though she kept a hand gently on his head, stroking it. He knew that fear too well himself—remembered the gulf that once had lain between them, and the courage it had taken to leap over it. For both of them.

He was some kind of a coward, maybe—but not that kind.

“Brianna,” he said, and felt the lump in his throat, the scar of the rope. She heard the need in his voice and looked at him as he raised his head, hand lifting toward his face, and he seized it hard, pressing the palm of it against his cheek, rubbing against it.

“Brianna,” he said again.

“What? What is it?” Her voice was soft, not to wake the bairn, but full of urgency.

“Brianna, will ye hear me?”

“You know I will. What is it?” Her body was against him, wanting to tend him, and he desired the comfort of her so badly that he would have lain down there on the rug before the fire and buried his head between her breasts—but not yet.

“Only—listen to what I must say. And then—please God—tell me I have done right.”
Tell me that you love me, still,
he meant, but could not say it.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” she whispered. Her eyes were dark and soft, bottomless with forgiveness not yet earned. And somewhere beyond them, he saw another pair of eyes, staring up at him in drunken bewilderment, changing abruptly into fear as he raised his arm for the killing blow.

“Yes, I do,” he said softly. “Put out the candle, aye?”

NOT THE KITCHEN, still strewn with emotional wreckage. Not the surgery, with all its sharp-edged memories. Jamie hesitated, but then nodded toward the stair, raising one eyebrow. I nodded, and followed him up to our bedroom.

It seemed both familiar and strange, as places do when one is away for a time. Perhaps it was only my injured nose that made it smell strange, too; perhaps I only imagined that I could smell it—cold and somehow stale, though everything was swept and dusted. Jamie poked up the fire and light sprang up, wavering in bright swaths over the wooden walls, the scents of smoke and hot resin helping to fill the sense of emptiness in the room.

Neither of us glanced toward the bed. He lit the candlestick on the washstand, then set our two stools near the window, and opened the shutters to the restless night. He’d brought two pewter cups; he filled these and set them on the broad sill, along with the bottles.

I stood just inside the doorway, watching his preparations, feeling thoroughly peculiar.

I was suffering the oddest contradiction of feelings. On the one hand, I felt as though he were a complete stranger. I could not even imagine, let alone recall, a sense of ease in touching him. His body was no longer the comfortable extension of my own, but something foreign, unapproachable.

At the same time, alarming surges of lust ripped through me without warning. It had been happening all day. This was nothing like the slow burn of accustomed desire, nor yet the instant spark of passion. Not even that cyclic and mindless womb-yearning sense of a need to mate that belonged entirely to the body. This was frightening.

He stooped to put another stick on the fire, and I nearly staggered, as all the blood left my head. The light shone on the hair of his arms, the dark hollows of his face—

It was the sheer impersonal sense of a voracious
appetite
—something that possessed me, but was not part of me—that terrified me. It was fear of it that made me avoid his touch, more than the feeling of estrangement.

“Are ye all right, Sassenach?” He had caught sight of my face, and stepped toward me, frowning. I held up a hand to stop him.

“Fine,” I said, feeling breathless. I sat down hastily, my knees weak, and picked up one of the cups he had just filled. “Um . . . cheers.”

Both his brows went up, but he moved to take his own seat opposite me.

“Cheers,” he said quietly, and touched his cup to mine, the wine heavy and sweet-smelling in my hand.

My fingers were cold; so were my toes, and the tip of my nose. That changed, too, without warning. Another minute, and I might be suffused with heat, sweating and flushed. But for the moment, I was cold, and shivered in the rainy breeze from the window.

The wine’s aroma was strong enough to make an impact, even on my damaged membranes, and the sweetness was a comfort to nerves and stomach alike. I drank the first cup quickly, and poured another, urgently wanting a small layer of oblivion between reality and myself.

Jamie drank more slowly, but refilled his own cup when I did. The cedar blanket chest, warmed by the fire, was beginning to spread its own familiar fragrance through the room. He glanced at me now and then, but said nothing. The silence between us was not awkward, precisely, but it
was
charged.

I should say something, I thought. But what? I sipped the second cup, racking my brain.

At last, I reached out slowly and touched his nose, where the thin line of the long-healed break pressed white against the skin.

“Do you know,” I said, “you’ve never told me how you came to break your nose. Who set it for you?”

“Och, that? No one.” He smiled, touching his nose a little self-consciously. “’Twas only luck that the break was a clean one, for I didna pay it the slightest heed at the time.”

“I suppose not. You said—” I broke off, suddenly recalling what he
had
said. When I had found him again, in his printer’s shop in Edinburgh, I’d asked him when he’d broken it. He’d answered,
“About three minutes after I last saw ye, Sassenach.”
On the eve of Culloden, then—on that rocky Scottish hill, below the ring of standing stones.

“I’m sorry,” I said a little weakly. “You probably don’t want to think about that, do you?”

He seized my free hand, hard, and looked down at me.

“You may have it,” he said. His voice was very low, but he met my eyes straight on. “All of it. Anything that was ever done to me. If ye wish it, if it helps ye, I will live it through again.”

“Oh, God, Jamie,” I said softly. “No. I don’t need to know; all I need is to know that you
did
live through it. That you’re all right. But . . .” I hesitated. “Will I tell
you
?” What was done to me, I meant, and he knew it. He did glance away then, though he held my hand in both of his, cradling it and rubbing his palm gently over my bruised knuckles.

“Must you?”

“I think so. Sometime. But not now—not unless you . . . you need to hear.” I swallowed. “First.”

He shook his head, very slightly, but still didn’t look at me.

“Not now,” he whispered. “Not now.”

I took my hand away, and swallowed the rest of the wine in my cup, rough and warm and musky with the tang of grape skins. I had stopped going hot and cold by turns; now I was only warm throughout, and grateful for it.

“Your nose,” I said, and poured another cup. “Tell me, then. Please.”

He shrugged slightly.

“Aye, well. There were two English soldiers, come scouting up the hill. I think they didna expect to find anyone—neither had his musket loaded, or I should ha’ died there.”

He spoke quite casually. A small shiver went over me, but not from cold.

“They saw me, ken, and then one of them saw you, up above. He shouted, and made to go after ye, so I threw myself on him. I didna care at all what happened, so long as ye were safe away, so I went for him bald-heided; plunged my dirk into his side. But his bullet box swung into my way and the knife stuck in it, and—” He smiled, lopsided. “And while I was trying to get it free and keep from bein’ killed, his friend came up and swung the stock of his musket into my face.”

His free hand had curled up as he spoke, grasping the hilt of a remembered dirk.

I flinched, knowing now exactly what that had felt like. Just hearing about it made my own nose throb. I sniffed, dabbed cautiously at it with the back of my hand, and poured more wine.

“How did you get away?”

“I took the musket from him and clubbed them both to death with it.”

He spoke quietly, almost colorlessly, but there was an odd resonance to his voice that made my stomach shift uneasily. It was too fresh, that sight of the blood drops gleaming by dawn light in the hairs of his arm. Too fresh, that undertone of—what was it? satisfaction?—in his voice.

I was suddenly too restless to sit still. A moment before I had been so exhausted that my bones were melting; now I had to move. I stood up, leaning out over the sill. The storm was coming; the wind was freshening, blowing back my new-washed hair, and lightning flickered in the distance.

“I’m sorry, Sassenach,” Jamie said, sounding worried. “I shouldna have told ye. Are ye bothered by it?”

“Bothered? No, not by that.”

I spoke a little tersely. Why had I asked him about his nose, of all things? Why now, when I had been content to live in ignorance for the last several years?

“What bothers ye, then?” he asked quietly.

What was bothering me was that the wine had been doing its job of anesthetizing me nicely; now I had ruined it. All the images of the night before were back inside my head, thrown into vivid Technicolor by that simple statement, that oh-so-matter-of-fact,
“I took the musket from him and clubbed them both to death with it.”
And its unspoken echo,
It is myself who kills for her.

I wanted to throw up. Instead, I gulped more wine, not even tasting it, swallowing it down as fast as I could. I dimly heard Jamie ask again what bothered me, and swung round to glare at him.

“What bothers me—bothers! What a stupid word! What drives me absolutely
mad
is that I might have been anyone, anything—a convenient warm spot with spongy bits to squeeze—God, I was no more than a
hole
to them!”

I struck the sill with my fist, then, angered by the impotent little thump of it, picked up my cup, turned round, and hurled it against the wall.

“It wasn’t that way with Black Jack Randall, was it?” I demanded. “He knew you, didn’t he? He saw
you
when he used you; it wouldn’t have been the same if you were anyone—he wanted
you.
”

“My God, ye think that was better?” he blurted, and stared at me, eyes wide.

I stopped, panting for breath and feeling dizzy.

“No.” I dropped onto the stool and closed my eyes, feeling the room go round and round me, colored lights like a carousel behind my eyes. “No. I don’t. I think Jack Randall was a bloody sociopathic, grade-A pervert, and these—these”—I flipped a hand, unable to think of a suitable word—“they were just . . . men.”