Drums of Autumn (46 page)

“But you don’t want to marry me?”

She shook her head, white as a sheet. Something between sickness and fury stirred in his gut, and then erupted.

“So you’ll not marry me, but you’ll fuck me? How can ye say such a thing?”

“Don’t use that sort of language to me!”

“Language? You can suggest such a thing, but I must not say the word? I have never been so offended, never!”

She was trembling, strands of hair sticking to her face with the damp.

“I didn’t mean to insult you. I thought you wanted to—to—”

He grabbed her arms and jerked her toward him.

“If all I wanted was to fuck you, I would have had ye on your back a dozen times last summer!”

“Like hell you would!” She wrenched loose one arm and slapped him hard across the jaw, surprising him.

He grabbed her hand, pulled her toward him and kissed her, a good deal harder and a good deal longer than he ever had before. She was tall and strong and angry—but he was taller, stronger, and much angrier. She kicked and struggled, and he kissed her until he was good and ready to stop.

“The hell I would,” he said, gasping for air as he let her go. He wiped his mouth and stood back, shaking. There was blood on his hand; she’d bitten him and he hadn’t felt a thing.

She was shaking, too. Her face was white, lips pressed so tight together that nothing showed in her face but dark eyes, blazing.

“But I didn’t,” he said, breathing slower. “That wasn’t what I wanted; it’s not what I want now.” He wiped his bloody hand against his shirt. “But if you don’t care enough to marry me, then I don’t care enough to have ye in my bed!”

“I do care!”

“Like hell.”

“I care too damn much to marry you, you bastard!”

“You
what
?”

“Because when I marry you—when I marry anybody—it’s going to last, do you hear me? If I make a vow like that, I’ll keep it, no matter what it costs me!”

Tears were running down her face. He groped in his pocket for a handkerchief and gave it to her.

“Blow your nose, wipe your face, and then tell me what the bloody hell ye think you’re talking about, aye?”

She did as he said, sniffing and brushing back her damp hair with one hand. Her foolish little veil had fallen off; it was hanging by its bobby pin. He plucked it off, crumpling it in his hand.

“Your Scottish accent comes out when you get upset,” she said, with a feeble attempt at a smile as she handed back the wadded hanky.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” Roger said in exasperation. “Now tell me what you mean, and do it plainly, before ye drive me all the way to the Gaelic.”

“You can speak Gaelic?” She was gradually getting possession of herself.

“I can,” he said, “and if you don’t want to learn a good many coarse expressions right swiftly…talk. What d’ye mean by making me such an offer—and you a nice Catholic girl, straight out of Mass! I thought ye were a virgin.”

“I am! What does that have to do with it?”

Before he could answer this piece of outrageousness, she followed it up with another.

“Don’t you tell me you haven’t had girls, I know you have!”

“Aye, I have! I didn’t want to marry them, and they didn’t want to marry me. I didn’t love them, they didn’t love me. I do love you, damn it!”

She leaned against the lamppost, hands behind her, and met his eyes directly. “I think I love you, too.”

He didn’t realize he had been holding his breath until he let it out.

“Ah. You do.” The water had condensed in his hair, and icy trickles were running down his neck. “Mmphm. Aye, and is the operative word there ‘think,’ then, or is it ‘love’?”

She relaxed, just a little, and swallowed.

“Both.”

She held up a hand as he started to speak.

“I do—I think. But—but I can’t help thinking what happened to my mother. I don’t want that to happen to me.”

“Your mother?” Simple astonishment was succeeded by a fresh burst of outrage. “What? You’re thinking of bloody Jamie Fraser? Ye think ye cannot be satisfied with a boring historian—ye must have a—a—great passion, as she did for him, and you think I’ll maybe not measure up?”

“No! I’m not thinking of Jamie Fraser! I’m thinking of my father!” She shoved her hands deep in the pockets of her jacket, and swallowed hard. She’d stopped crying, but there were tears on her lashes, clotting them in spikes.

“She meant it when she married him—I could see it, in those pictures you gave me. She said ‘better or worse, richer, poorer’—and she
meant
it. And then…and then she met Jamie Fraser, and she didn’t mean it anymore.”

Her mouth worked silently for a moment, looking for words.

“I—I don’t blame her, not really, not after I thought about it. She couldn’t help it, and I—when she talked about him, I could see how much she loved him—but don’t you see, Roger? She loved my father, too—but then something happened. She didn’t expect it, and it wasn’t her fault—but it made her break her word. I won’t do that, not for anything.”

She wiped a hand under her nose, and he gave her back the handkerchief, silently. She blinked back the tears and looked at him, straight.

“It’s more than a year before we can be together. You can’t leave Oxford; I can’t leave Boston, not till I’ve got my degree.”

He wanted to say that he’d resign, that she should quit her schooling—but kept quiet. She was right; neither of them would be happy with such a solution.

“So what if I say yes now, and something happens? What if—if I met somebody else, or you did?” Tears welled again, and one ran down her cheek. “I won’t take the chance of hurting you. I won’t.”

“But you love me now?” He touched a finger gently to her cheek. “Bree, do ye love me?”

She took a step forward, and without speaking, reached to undo the fastenings of her coat.

“What the hell are you doing?” Blank astonishment was added to the mix of other emotions, succeeded by something else as her long pale fingers grasped the zip of his jacket and pulled it down.

The sudden whiff of cold was obliterated by the warmth of her body, pressed against his from throat to knees.

His arms went around her padded back by reflex; she was holding him tight, arms locked round him under his jacket. Her hair smelled cold and sweet, with the last traces of incense trapped in the heavy strands, blending with the fragrance of grass and jasmine flowers. He caught the gleam of a hairpin, bronze metal in the copper loops of her hair.

She didn’t say a thing, nor did he. He could feel her body through the thin layers of cloth between them, and a jolt of desire shot up the backs of his legs, as though he were standing on an electric grid. He tilted up her chin, and set his mouth on hers.

“…see that Jackie Martin, and her with a new fur collar to her coat?”

“Och, and where’s she found the money for such a thing, wi’ her husband oot o’ his work this six month past? I tell ye, Jessie, yon woman…ooh!”

The click of French-heeled shoes on the pavement halted, to be succeeded by the sound of a throat being cleared with sufficient resonance to wake the dead.

Roger tightened his grip on Brianna, and didn’t move. She tightened her arms around him in response, and he felt the curve of her mouth under his.

“MMPHM!”

“Ah, now, Chrissie,” came a hissed whisper from behind him. “Let them be, aye? Can ye not see they’re getting engaged?”

“Mmphm” came again, but in a lower tone. “Hmp. They’ll be getting something else, and they go on wi’ that much longer. Still…” A long sigh, tinged with nostalgia. “Ah, weel, it’s nice to be young, isn’t it?”

The twin tap of heels came on, much slower, passed them, and faded inaudibly into the fog.

He stood for a minute, willing himself to let go of her. But once a man has touched the mane of a water horse, it’s no simple matter to let go. An old kelpie-rhyme ran through his head,

And sit weel, Janetie
  And ride weel, Davie.
And your first stop will be
  The bottom of Loch Cavie.

“I’ll wait,” he said, and let her go. He held her hands and looked into her eyes, now soft and clear as rain pools.

“Hear me, though,” he said softly. “I will have you all—or not at all.”

Let me love her rightly,
he had said in wordless prayer. And hadn’t he been told often enough by Mrs. Graham—“Be careful what ye ask for, laddie, for ye just might get it?”

He cupped her breast, soft through her jumper.

“It’s not only your body that I want—though God knows, I want it badly. But I’ll have you as my wife…or I will not have you. Your choice.”

She reached up and touched him, brushed the hair off his brow with fingers so cold, they burned like dry ice.

“I understand,” she whispered.

The wind off the river was cold, and he reached to do up the zip of her jacket. In doing so, his hand brushed his own pocket, and he felt the small package lying there. He’d meant to give it to her over supper.

“Here,” he said, handing it to her. “Happy Christmas.”

“I bought it last summer,” he said, watching her cold fingers fumble at the holly-printed paper. “Looks like prescience, now, doesn’t it?”

She held a silver circle, a bracelet, a flat silver band, with words etched round it. He took it from her and slipped it over her hand, onto her wrist. She turned it slowly, reading the words.

“Je t’aime…un peu…beaucoup…passionnément…pas du tout.
I love you…a little…a lot…passionately…not at all.”

He gave the band a quarter turn more, completing the circle.

“Je t’aime,”
he said, and then with a twist of fingers, sent it spinning on her wrist. She laid a hand on it, stopping it.

“Moi aussi,”
she said softly, looking not at the band but at him.
“Joyeux Noël.”

P
ART
S
EVEN

On the Mountain

19

HEARTH BLESSING

September 1767

S
leeping under the moon and stars in the arms of a naked lover, the two of you cradled by furs and soft leaves, lulled by the gentle murmur of the chestnut trees and the far-off rumble of a waterfall, is terribly romantic. Sleeping under a crude lean-to, squashed into a soggy mass between a large, wet husband and an equally large, equally wet nephew, listening to rain thrump on the branches overhead while fending off the advances of a immense and thoroughly saturated dog, is slightly less so.

“Air,” I said, struggling feebly into a sitting position and brushing Rollo’s tail out of my face for the hundredth time. “I can’t breathe.” The smell of confined male animals was overpowering; a sort of musky, rancid smell, garnished with the scent of wet wool and fish.

I rolled onto my hands and knees and made my way out, trying not to step on anyone. Jamie grunted in his sleep, compensating for the loss of my body heat by curling himself neatly into a plaid-wrapped ball. Ian and Rollo were inextricably entangled in a mass of fur and cloth, their mingled exhalations forming a faint fog around them in the predawn chill.

It
was
chilly outside, but the air was fresh; so fresh I nearly coughed when I took a good lungful of it. The rain had stopped, but the trees were still dripping, and the air was composed of equal parts water vapor and pure oxygen, spiced with pungent green scents from every plant on the mountainside.

I had been sleeping in Jamie’s spare shirt, my buckskins put away in a saddlebag to avoid soaking. I was dappled with gooseflesh and shivering by the time I pulled them on, but the stiff leather warmed enough to shape itself to my body within a few minutes.

Barefooted and cold-toed, I made my way carefully down to the stream to wash, kettle under my arm. It wasn’t yet dawn, and the forest was filled with mist and gray-blue light; crepuscle, the mysterious half-light that comes at both ends of the day, when the small secret things come out to feed.

There was an occasional tentative chirp from the canopy overhead, but nothing like the usual raucous chorus. The birds were late in starting today because of the rain; the sky was still lowering, with clouds that ranged from black in the west to a pale slate-blue in the dawning east. I felt a small rush of pleasure at the thought that I knew already the normal hour when the birds should sing, and had noticed the difference.

Jamie had been right, I thought, when he had suggested that we stay on the mountain, instead of returning to Cross Creek. It was the beginning of September; by Myers’s estimation, we would have two months of good weather—relatively good weather, I amended, looking up at the clouds—before the cold made shelter imperative. Time enough—maybe—to build a small cabin, to hunt for meat, to supply ourselves for the winter ahead.

“It will be gey hard work,” Jamie had said. I stood between his knees as he sat perched high on a large rock, looking over the valley below. “And some danger to it; we may fail if the snow is early, or if I canna hunt meat enough. I willna do it, if ye say nay, Sassenach. Would ye be afraid?”

Afraid was putting it mildly. The thought made the bottom of my stomach drop alarmingly. When I had agreed to settle on the ridge, I had thought we would return to Cross Creek to spend the winter.

We could have gathered both supplies and settlers in a leisurely manner, and returned in the spring in caravan, to clear land and raise houses communally. Instead, we would be completely alone, several days travel from the nearest tiny settlement of Europeans. Alone in a wilderness, alone through the winter.

We had virtually nothing with us in the way of tools or supplies, save a felling ax, a couple of knives, a camp kettle and girdle, and my smaller medicine box. What if something happened, if Ian or Jamie fell ill or was hurt in an accident? If we starved or froze? And while Jamie was sure that our Indian acquaintances had no objection to our intent, I wasn’t so sanguine about any others who might happen along.

Yes, I bloody well
would
be afraid. On the other hand, I’d lived long enough to realize that fear wasn’t usually fatal—at least not by itself. Add in the odd bear or savage, and I wasn’t saying, mind.

For the first time, I looked back with some longing at River Run, at hot water and warm beds and regular food, at order, cleanliness…and safety.

I could see well enough why Jamie didn’t want to go back; living on Jocasta’s bounty for several months more would sink him that much further in obligation, make it that much harder to reject her blandishments.

He also knew—even better than I—that Jocasta Cameron was born a MacKenzie. I had seen enough of her brothers, Dougal and Colum, to have a decent wariness of that heritage; the MacKenzies of Leoch didn’t give up a purpose lightly, and were certainly not above plotting and manipulation to achieve their ends. And a blind spider might weave her webs that much more surely, for depending solely on a sense of touch.

There were also really excellent reasons for staying the hell away from the vicinity of Sergeant Murchison, who seemed definitely the type to bear a grudge. And then there was Farquard Campbell and the whole waiting web of planters and Regulators, slaves and politics…No, I could see quite well why Jamie mightn’t want to go back to such entanglement and complication, to say nothing of the looming fact of the coming war. At the same time, I was fairly sure that none of those reasons accounted for his decision.

“It’s not just that you don’t want to go back to River Run, is it?” I leaned back against him, feeling his warmth as a contrast to the coolness of the evening breeze. The season had not yet turned; it was still late summer, and the air was rich with the sun-roused scents of leaf and berry, but so high in the mountains, the nights turned cold.

I felt the small rumble of a laugh in his chest, and warm breath brushed my ear.

“Is it so plain, then?”

“Plain enough.” I turned in his arms, and rested my forehead against his, so our eyes were inches apart. His were a very deep blue, the same color as the evening sky in the notch of the mountains.

“Owl,” I said.

He laughed, startled, and blinked as he pulled back, long auburn lashes sweeping briefly down.

“What?”

“You lose,” I explained. “It’s a game called ‘owl.’ First person to blink loses.”

“Oh.” He took hold of my ears by the lobes and drew me gently back, forehead to forehead. “Owl, then. Ye do have eyes like an owl, have ye noticed?”

“No,” I said. “Can’t say I have.”

“All clear and gold—and verra wise.”

I didn’t blink.

“Tell me then—why we’re staying.”

He didn’t blink either, but I felt his chest rise under my hand, as he took a deep breath.

“How shall I tell ye what it is, to feel the need of a place?” he said softly. “The need of snow beneath my shoon. The breath of the mountains, breathing their own breath in my nostrils as God gave breath to Adam. The scrape of rock under my hand, climbing, and the sight of the lichens on it, enduring in the sun and the wind.”

His breath was gone and he breathed again, taking mine. His hands were linked behind my head, holding me, face-to-face.

“If I am to live as a man, I must have a mountain,” he said simply. His eyes were open wide, searching mine for understanding.

“Will ye trust me, Sassenach?” he said. His nose pressed against mine, but his eyes didn’t blink. Neither did mine.

“With my life,” I said.

I felt his lips smile, an inch from mine.

“And with your heart?”

“Always,” I whispered, closed my eyes, and kissed him.

And so it was arranged. Myers would go back to Cross Creek, deliver Jamie’s instructions to Duncan, assure Jocasta of our welfare, and procure as much in the way of stores as the remnants of our money would finance. If there was time before the first snowfall, he would return with supplies; if not, in the spring. Ian would stay; his help would be needed to build the cabin, and to help with the hunting.

Give us this day our daily bread,
I thought, pushing through the wet bushes that edged the creek,
and deliver us not into temptation.

We were reasonably safe from temptation, though; for good or ill, we wouldn’t see River Run again for at least a year. As for the daily bread, that had been coming through as dependably as manna, so far; at this time of year, there was an abundance of ripe nuts, fruits and berries, which I collected as industriously as any squirrel. In two months, though, when the trees grew bare and the streams froze, I hoped God might still hear us, above the howl of the winter wind.

The stream was noticeably swelled by the rain, the water maybe a foot higher than it had been yesterday. I knelt, groaning slightly as my back unkinked; sleeping on the ground exaggerated all the normal small morning stiffnesses. I splashed cold water on my face, swished it through my mouth, drank from cupped hands, and splashed again, blood tingling through my cheeks and fingers.

When I looked up, face dripping, I saw two deer drinking from a pool on the other side, a little way upstream from me. I stayed very still, not to disturb them, but they showed no alarm at my presence. In the shadow of the birches, they were the same soft blue as the rocks and trees, little more than shadows themselves, but each line of their bodies etched in perfect delicacy, like a Japanese painting done in ink.

Then all of a sudden, they were gone. I blinked, and blinked again. I hadn’t seen them turn or run—and in spite of their ethereal beauty, I was sure I hadn’t been imagining them; I could see the dark imprints of their hooves in the mud of the far bank. But they were gone.

I didn’t see or hear a thing, but the hair rose suddenly on my body, instinct rippling up arms and neck like electric current. I froze, nothing moving but my eyes. Where was it, what was it?

The sun was up; the tops of the trees were visibly green, and the rocks began to glow as their colors warmed to life. But the birds were silent; nothing moved, save the water.

It was no more than six feet away from me, half visible behind a bush. The sound of its lapping was lost in the noise of the stream. Then the broad head lifted, and a tufted ear swiveled toward me, though I had made no noise. Could it hear me breathing?

The sun had reached it, lit it into tawny life, glowed in gold eyes that stared into mine with a preternatural calm. The breeze had shifted; I could smell it now; a faint acrid cat-tang, and the stronger scent of blood. Ignoring me, it lifted a dark-blotched paw and licked fastidiously, eyes slitted in hygienic preoccupation.

It rubbed the paw several times over its ear, then stretched luxuriously in the patch of new sun—my God, it must be six feet long!—and sauntered off, full belly swaying.

I hadn’t consciously been afraid; pure instinct had frozen me in place, and sheer amazement—at the cat’s beauty, as well as its nearness—had kept me that way. With its going, though, my central nervous system thawed out at once, and promptly went to pieces. I didn’t gibber, but did shake considerably; it was several minutes before I managed to get off my knees and stand up.

My hands shook so that I dropped the kettle three times in filling it. Trust him, he’d said, did I trust him? Yes, I did—and a fat lot of good that would do, unless he happened to be standing directly in front of me next time.

But for this time—I was alive. I stood still, eyes closed, breathing in the pure morning air. I could feel every single atom of my body, blood racing to carry round the sweet fresh stuff to every cell and muscle fiber. The sun touched my face, and warmed the cold skin to a lovely glow.

I opened my eyes to a dazzle of green and yellow and blue; day had broken. All the birds were singing now.

I went up the path toward the clearing, resisting the impulse to look behind me.

Jamie and Ian had felled several tall, slender pines the day before, cut them into twelve-foot lengths, and rolled and wrestled and tumbled the logs downhill. Now they lay stacked at the edge of the small clearing, rough bark glistening black with wet.

Jamie was pacing out a line, stamping down the wet grass, when I came back with the kettle filled with water. Ian had a fire started on the top of a large flat stone—he having learned from Jamie the canny trick of keeping a handful of dry kindling always in one’s sporran, along with flint and steel.

“This will be a wee shed,” Jamie was saying, frowning at the ground in concentration. “We’ll build this first, for we can sleep in it, if it should rain again, but it needna be so well built as the cabin—it’ll give us something to practice on, eh, Ian?”

“What is it for—beyond practice?” I asked. He looked up and smiled at me.

“Good morning, Sassenach. Did ye sleep well?”

“Of course not,” I said. “What’s the shed for?”

“Meat,” he said. “We’ll dig a shallow pit at the back, and fill it wi’ embers, to smoke what we can for keeping. And make a rack for drying—Ian’s seen the Indians do it, to make what they call jerky. We must have a safe place where beasts canna get at our food.”

This seemed a sound idea; particularly in view of the sort of beasts in the area. My only doubts were regarding the smoking. I’d seen it done in Scotland, and knew that smoking meat required a certain amount of attention; someone had to be at hand to keep the fire from burning too high or going out altogether, had to turn the meat regularly, and baste it with fat to avoid scorching and drying.

I had no difficulty in seeing who was going to be nominated for this task. The only trouble was that if I didn’t manage to do it right, we’d all die of ptomaine poisoning.

“Right,” I said, without enthusiasm. Jamie caught my tone and grinned at me.

“That’s the first shed, Sassenach,” he said. “The second one’s yours.”

“Mine?” I perked up a bit at that.

“For your wee herbs and bits of plants. They do take up a bit of room, as I recall.” He pointed across the clearing, the light of builder’s mania in his eye. “And just there—that’s where the cabin will be; where we’ll live through the winter.”