The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle (163 page)

The silence between us grew and deepened. The small buzz of an insect calling in the rocks vibrated in the air.

Jamie was still as a rock, his face blank as he stared down at the ground below him. I couldn’t bear that blank face, and the thought of what must lie concealed behind it. I had seen a hint of his despairing fury in the arbor, and my heart felt hollow at the thought of that rage, mastered at such fearful cost, now held under an iron control that kept in not only rage, but trust and joy.

I wished desperately for some way to break the silence that parted us; some act that could restore the lost truth between us. Jamie sat up then, arms folded tight about his thighs, and turned away as he gazed out over the peaceful valley.

Better violence, I thought, than silence. I reached across the chasm between us and laid a hand on his arm. It was warm from the sun, live to my touch.

“Jamie,” I whispered. “Please.”

His head turned slowly toward me. His face seemed still calm, though the cat-eyes narrowed further as he looked at me in silence. He reached out, finally, and one hand gripped me by the wrist.

“Do ye wish me to beat you, then?” he said softly. His grasp tightened hard, so that I jerked unconsciously, trying to pull away from him. He pulled back, yanking me across the rough grass, bringing my body against him.

I felt myself trembling, and gooseflesh lifted the hairs on my forearms, but I managed to speak.

“Yes,” I said.

His expression was unfathomable. Still holding my eyes with his own, he reached out his free hand, fumbling over the rocks until he touched a bunch of nettles. He drew in his breath as his fingers touched the prickly stems, but his jaw clenched; he closed his fist and ripped the plants up by the roots.

“The peasants of Gascony beat a faithless wife wi’ nettles,” he said. He lowered the spiky bunch of leaves and brushed the flower heads lightly across one breast. I gasped from the sudden sting, and a faint red blotch appeared as though by magic on my skin.

“Will ye have me do so?” he asked. “Shall I punish you that way?”

“If you … if you like.” My lips were trembling so hard I could barely get out the words. A few crumbs of earth from the nettles’ roots had fallen between my breasts; one rolled down the slope of my ribs, dislodged by my pounding heart, I imagined. The welt on my breast burned like fire. I closed my eyes, imagining in vivid detail exactly what being thrashed with a bunch of nettles would feel like.

Suddenly the viselike grip on my wrist relaxed. I opened my eyes to find Jamie sitting cross-legged by me, the plants thrown aside and scattered on the ground. He had a faint, rueful smile on his lips.

“I beat you once in justice, Sassenach, and ye threatened to disembowel me with my own dirk. Now you’ll ask me to whip ye wi’ nettles?” He shook his head slowly, wondering, and his hand reached as though by its own volition to cup my cheek. “Is my pride worth so much to you, then?”

“Yes! Yes, it bloody is!” I sat up myself, and grasped him by the shoulders, taking both of us by surprise as I kissed him hard and awkwardly.

I felt his first involuntary start, and then he pulled me to him, arm tight around my back, mouth answering mine. Then he had me pressed flat to the earth, his weight holding me immobile beneath him. His shoulders darkened the bright sky above, and his hands held my arms against my sides, keeping me prisoner.

“All right,” he whispered. His eyes bored into mine, daring me to close them, forcing me to hold his gaze. “All right. And ye wish it, I shall punish you.” He moved his hips against me in imperious command, and I felt my legs open for him, my gates thrown wide to welcome ravishment.

“Never,” he whispered to me. “
Never
. Never another but me! Look at me! Tell me!
Look at me, Claire!
” He moved in me, strongly, and I moaned and would have turned my head, but he held my face between his hands, forcing me to meet his eyes, to see his wide, sweet mouth, twisted in pain.

“Never,” he said, more softly. “For you are mine. My wife, my heart, my soul.” The weight of him held me still, like a boulder on my chest, but the friction of our flesh made me thrust against him, wanting more. And more.

“My body,” he said, gasping for breath as he gave me what I sought. I bucked beneath him as though I wanted to escape, my back arching like a bow, pressing me into him. He lay then at full length on me, scarcely moving, so that our most intimate connection seemed barely closer than the marriage of our skins.

The grass was harsh and prickly under me, the pungence of crushed stems sharp as the smell of the man who took me. My breasts were flattened under him, and I felt the small tickle of the hairs on his chest as we rubbed together, back and forth. I squirmed, urging him to violence, feeling the swell of his thighs as he pressed me down.

“Never,” he whispered to me, face only inches from mine.

“Never,” I said, and turned my head, closing my eyes to escape the intensity of his gaze.

A gentle, inexorable pressure turned me back to face him, as the small, rhythmic movements went on.

“No, my Sassenach,” he said softly. “Open your eyes. Look at me. For that is your punishment, as it is mine. See what you have done to me, as I know what I have done to you. Look at me.”

And I looked, held prisoner, bound to him. Looked, as he dropped the last of his masks, and showed me the depths of himself, and the wounds of his soul. I would have wept for his hurt, and for mine, had I been able. But his eyes held mine, tearless and open, boundless as the salt sea. His body held mine captive, driving me before his strength, like the west wind in the sails of a bark.

And I voyaged into him, as he into me, so that when the last small storms of love began to shake me, he cried out, and we rode the waves together as one flesh, and saw ourselves in each other’s eyes.

The afternoon sun was hot on the white limestone rocks, casting deep shadows into the clefts and hollows. I found what I was looking for at last, growing from a narrow crack in a giant boulder, in gay defiance of the lack of soil. I broke a stalk of aloe from its clump, split the fleshy leaf, and spread the cool green gel inside across the welts on Jamie’s palm.

“Better?” I said.

“Much.” Jamie flexed his hand, grimacing. “Christ, those nettles sting!”

“They do.” I pulled down the neck of my bodice and spread a little aloe juice on my breast with a gingerly touch. The coolness brought relief at once.

“I’m rather glad you didn’t take me up on my offer,” I said wryly, with a glance at a nearby bunch of blooming nettle.

He grinned and patted me on the bottom with his good hand.

“Well, it was a near thing, Sassenach. Ye shouldna tempt me like that.” Then, sobering, he bent and kissed me gently.

“No,
mo duinne
. I swore to ye the once, and I was meaning it. I shallna raise a hand to you in anger, ever. After all,” he added softly, turning away, “I have done enough to hurt you.”

I shrank from the pain of memory, but I owed him justice as well.

“Jamie,” I said, lips trembling a bit. “The … baby. It wasn’t your fault. I felt as though it was, but it wasn’t. I think … I think it would have happened anyway, whether you’d fought Jack Randall or not.”

“Aye? Ah … well.” His arm was warm and comforting about me, and he pressed my head into the curve of his shoulder. “It eases me a bit to hear ye say so. It wasna the child so much as Frank that I meant, though. D’ye think you can forgive me for that?” The blue eyes were troubled as he looked down at me.

“Frank?” I felt a shock of surprise. “But … there’s nothing to forgive.” Then a thought struck me; perhaps he really didn’t know that Jack Randall was still alive—after all, he had been arrested immediately after the duel. But if he didn’t know.… I took a deep breath. He would have to find it out in any case; perhaps better from me.

“You didn’t kill Jack Randall, Jamie,” I said.

To my puzzlement, he didn’t seem shocked or surprised. He shook his head, the afternoon sun striking sparks from his hair. Not yet long enough to lace back again, it had grown considerably in prison, and he had to brush it out of his eyes continuously.

“I know that, Sassenach,” he said.

“You do? But … what …” I was at a loss.

“You … dinna know about it?” he said hesitantly.

A cold feeling crept up my arms, despite the heat of the sun.

“Know what?”

He chewed his lower lip, eyeing me reluctantly. At last he took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh.

“No, I didna kill him. But I wounded him.”

“Yes, Louise said you wounded him badly. But she said he was recovering.” Suddenly, I saw again in memory that last scene in the Bois de Boulogne; the last thing I had seen before the blackness took me. The sharp tip of Jamie’s sword, slicing through the rain-spattered doeskin. The sudden red stain that darkened the fabric … and the angle of the blade, glinting with the force that drove it downward.

“Jamie!” I said, eyes widening with horror. “You didn’t … Jamie, what have you done!”

He looked down, rubbing his welted palm against the side of his kilt. He shook his head, wondering at himself.

“I was such a fool, Sassenach. I couldna think myself a man and let him go unpunished for what he’d done to the wee lad, and yet … all the time, I kept thinking to myself, ‘Ye canna kill the bastard outright, you’ve promised. Ye canna kill him.’ ” He smiled faintly, without humor, looking down at the marks on his palm.

“My mind was boiling over like a pot of parritch on the flame, yet I held to that thought. ‘Ye canna kill him.’ And I didn’t. But I was half-mad wi’ the fury of the fighting, and the blood singing in my ears—and I didna stop a moment to remember why it was I must not kill him, beyond that I had promised you. And when I had him there on the ground before me, and the memory of Wentworth and Fergus, and the blade live in my hand—” He broke off suddenly.

I felt the blood draining from my head and sat down heavily on a rock outcropping.

“Jamie,” I said. He shrugged helplessly.

“Well, Sassenach,” he said, still avoiding my gaze, “all I can say is, it’s a hell of a place to be wounded.”

“Jesus.” I sat still, stunned by this revelation. Jamie sat quiet beside me, studying the broad backs of his hands. There was still a small pink mark on the back of the right one. Jack Randall had driven a nail through it, in Wentworth.

“D’ye hate me for it, Claire?” His voice was soft, almost tentative.

I shook my head, eyes closed.

“No.” I opened them, and saw his face close by, wearing a troubled frown. “I don’t know
what
I think now, Jamie. I really don’t. But I don’t hate you.” I put a hand on his, and squeezed it gently. “Just … let me be by myself for a minute, all right?”

Clad once more in my now-dry gown, I spread my hands flat on my thighs. One silver, one gold. Both my wedding rings were still there, and I had no idea what that meant.

Jack Randall would never father a child. Jamie seemed sure of it, and I wasn’t inclined to question him. And yet I still wore Frank’s ring, I still remembered the man who had been my first husband, could summon at will thoughts and memories of who he had been, what he would do. How was it possible, then, that he would not exist?

I shook my head, thrusting back the wind-dried curls behind my ears. I didn’t know. Chances were, I never
would
know. But whether one could change the future or not—and it seemed we had—I was certain that I couldn’t change the immediate past. What had been done had been done, and nothing I could do now would alter it. Jack Randall would sire no children.

A stone rolled down the slope behind me, bouncing and setting off small slides of gravel. I turned and glanced up, to where Jamie, dressed once more, was exploring.

The rockfall above was recent. Fresh white surfaces showed where the stained brown of the weathered limestone had fractured, and only the smallest of plants had yet gained a foothold in this tumbled pile of rock, unlike the thick growth of shrubs that blanketed the rest of the hillside.

Jamie inched to one side, absorbed in finding handholds through the intricacies of the fall. I saw him edge around a giant boulder, hugging the rock, and the faint scrape of his dirk against the stone came to me through the still afternoon air.

Then he disappeared. Expecting him to reappear round the other side of the rock, I waited, enjoying the sun on my shoulders. But he didn’t come back into sight, and after a few moments, I grew worried. He might have slipped and fallen or banged his head on a rock.

I took what seemed forever to undo the fastenings of my heeled boots again, and still he had not come back. I rucked up my skirts, and started up the hill, bare toes cautious on the rough warm rocks.

“Jamie!”

“Here, Sassenach.” He spoke behind me, startling me, and I nearly lost my balance. He caught me by the arm and lifted me down to a small clear space between the jagged fallen stones.

He turned me toward the limestone wall, stained with water rust, and smoke. And something more.

“Look,” he said softly.

I looked where he pointed, up across the smooth expanse of the cave wall, and gasped at the sight.

Painted beasts galloped across the rock face above me, hooves spurning the air as they leaped toward the light above. There were bison, and deer, grouped together in tail-raised flight, and at the end of the rock shelf, a tracing of delicate birds, wings spread as they hovered above the charge of the earthbound beasts.

Done in red and black and ochre with a delicate grace that used the lines of the rock itself for emphasis, they thundered soundlessly, haunches rounded with effort, wings taking flight through the crevices of stone. They had lived once in the dark of a cave, lit only by the flames of those who made them. Exposed to the sun by the fall of their sheltering roof, they seemed alive as anything that walked upon the earth.

Lost in contemplation of the massive shoulders that thrust their way from the rock, I didn’t miss Jamie until he called me.

“Sassenach! Come here, will ye?” There was something odd about his voice, and I hurried toward him. He stood at the entrance of a small side-cave, looking down.