“Hush,” I said to him, though he hadn’t spoken again. “Be still. Jamie, have you ever done something for yourself alone—not with any thought of anyone else?”
His hand rested gently on my back, tracing the seam of my bodice, and his breathing held the hint of a smile.
“Oh, many and many a time,” he whispered. “When I saw you. When I took ye, not caring did ye want me or no, did ye have somewhere else to be, someone else to love.”
“Bloody man,” I whispered in his ear, rocking him as best I could. “You’re an awful fool, Jamie Fraser. And what about Brianna? That wasn’t wrong, was it?”
“No.” He swallowed; I could hear the sound of it clearly, and feel the pulse beat in his neck where I held him. “But now I have taken ye back from her, as well. I love you—and I love Ian, like he was my own. And I am thinking maybe I cannot have ye both.”
“Jamie Fraser,” I said again, with as much conviction as I could put into my voice, “you’re a terrible fool.” I smoothed the hair back from his forehead and twisted my fist in the thick tail at his nape, pulling his head back to make him look at me.
I thought my face must look to him as his did to me; the bleached bones of a skull, with the lips and eyes dark as blood.
“You didn’t force me to come to you, or snatch me away from Brianna. I came, because I wanted to—because I wanted
“Neptune?” he said, sounding a little stunned.
“Be quiet,” I said. “We’re married, I say, and it isn’t wicked for you to want me, or to have me, and no God worth his salt would take your nephew away from you because you wanted to be happy. So there!
“Besides,” I added, pulling back and looking up at him a moment later, “I’m not bloody going back, so what could you do about it, anyway?”
The small vibration in his chest this time was laughter, not cold.
“Take ye and be damned for it, I expect,” he said. He kissed my forehead gently. “Loving you has put me through hell more than once, Sassenach; I’ll risk it again, if need be.”
“Bah,” I said. “And you think loving
This time he laughed out loud.
“No,” he said, “but you’ll maybe keep doing it?”
“Maybe I will, at that.”
“You’re a verra stubborn woman,” he said, the smile clear in his voice.
“It bloody takes one to know one,” I said, and then we were both quiet for quite some time.
It was very late—perhaps four o’clock in the morning. The half-moon was low in the sky, seen only now and then through the moving clouds. The clouds themselves were moving faster; the wind was shifting and the mist breaking up, in the turning hour between dark and dawn. Somewhere below, one of the seals barked loudly, once.
“Do ye think perhaps ye could stand to go now?” Jamie said suddenly. “Not wait for the daylight? Once off the headland, the going’s none so bad that the horses canna manage in the dark.”
My whole body ached from weariness, and I was starving, but I stood up at once, and brushed the hair out of my face.
“Let’s go,” I said.
PART EIGHT
40
I SHALL GO DOWN TO THE SEA
“It will have to be the
“She’s no more than a midsized sloop, with a crew of forty or so,” he remarked. “But it’s late in the season, and we’ll not likely do better—all of the Indiamen will have gone a month since.
“I’d sooner have a ship of yours—and one of your captains,” Jamie assured him. “The size doesna matter.”
Jared cocked a skeptical eyebrow at his cousin. “Oh? Well, and ye may find it matter more than ye think, out at sea. It’s like to be squally, this late in the season, and a sloop will be bobbin’ like a cork. Might I ask how ye weathered the Channel crossing in the packet boat, cousin?”
Jamie’s face, already drawn and grim, grew somewhat grimmer at this question. The completest of landlubbers, he was not just prone to seasickness, but prostrated by it. He had been violently ill all the way from Inverness to Le Havre, though sea and weather had been quite calm. Now, some six hours later, safe ashore in Jared’s warehouse by the quay, there was still a pale tinge to his lips and dark circles beneath his eyes.
“I’ll manage,” he said shortly.
