He gripped her hands and pulled them down, pushing her away.
“What in God’s name are you playing at?” Anger was better than emptiness, and he shouted at her in the empty street.
“I’m not playing! You said you wanted me.” She gulped air. “I want you, too, don’t you know that? Didn’t I say so in the hall this afternoon?”
“I thought you did.” He stared at her. “What in hell do you mean?”
“I mean—I mean I want to go to bed with you,” she blurted.
“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.