“Bree’s a very strong person,” I said quietly. “Like you.”
“Like me?” He gave a small snort. “God help her, then.”
He sighed, then turned and began to walk slowly along the line of the fence. I followed, hurrying a little to catch up.
“This man, this Roger she speaks of. Will he stand by her?” he asked abruptly.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, not knowing how to answer. I’d known Roger only a few months. I liked him; was very fond of him, in fact. From everything I knew of him, he was a thoroughly decent, honorable young man—but how could I even pretend to know what he might think, do, or feel, upon finding that Brianna had been raped? Even worse, that she might well carry the rapist’s child?
The best of men might not be able to deal with such a situation; in my years as a doctor, I had seen even well-established marriages shatter under the strain of smaller things. And those that did not shatter, but were crippled by mistrust…involuntarily, I pressed a hand against my leg, feeling the tiny hardness of the gold circle in my pocket. From F. to C. with love. Always.
“Would you do it?” I said at last. “If it were me?”
He glanced at me sharply, and opened his mouth as though to speak. Then he closed it and looked at me, searching my face, his brows knotted with troubled thought.
“I meant to say ‘Aye, of course!’ ” he said slowly, at last. “But I did promise ye honesty once, did I not?”
“You did,” I said, and felt my heart sink beneath its guilty burden. How could I force him to honesty when I couldn’t give it him back? And yet he had asked.
He struck the fencepost a light blow with his fist.
“Ifrinn! Yes, damn it—I would. You would be mine, even if the child was not. And if you—yes. I would,” he repeated firmly. “I should take you, and the child with ye, and damn the whole world!”
“And never think about it afterward?” I asked. “Never let it come into your mind when you came to my bed? Never see the father when you looked at the child? Never throw it back at me or let it make a difference between us?”
He opened his mouth to reply, but closed it without speaking. Then I saw a change come over his features, a sudden shock of sick realization.
“Oh, Christ,” he said. “Frank. Not me. It’s Frank ye mean.”
I nodded, and he gripped my shoulders.
“What did he do to ye?” he demanded. “What? Tell me, Claire!”
“He stood by me,” I said, sounding choked even to my own ears. “I tried to make him go, but he wouldn’t. And when the baby—when Brianna came—he loved her, Jamie. He wasn’t sure, he didn’t think he could—neither did I—but he truly did. I’m sorry,” I added.
He took a deep breath and let go of my shoulders.
“Dinna be sorry for that, Sassenach,” he said gruffly. “Never.” He rubbed a hand across his face, and I could hear the faint rasp of his evening stubble.
“And what about you, Sassenach?” he said. “What ye said—when he came to your bed. Did he think—” He broke off abruptly, leaving all the questions hanging in the air between us, unstated, but asked nonetheless.
“It might have been me—my fault, I mean,” I said at last, into the silence. “I couldn’t forget, you see. If I could…it might have been different.” I should have stopped there, but I couldn’t; the words that had been dammed up all evening rushed out in a flood.
“It might have been easier—better—for him if it had been rape. That’s what they told him, you know—the doctors; that I had been raped and abused, and was having delusions. That’s what everyone believed, but I kept saying to him, no it wasn’t that way, I insisted on telling him the truth. And after a time—he believed me, at least halfway. And that was the trouble; not that I’d had another man’s child—but that I’d loved you. And I wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t,” I added, in a softer tone. “He was better than me, Frank was. He could put the past away, at least for Bree’s sake. But for me—” The words caught in my throat and I stopped.
He turned then, and looked at me for a long time, his face quite expressionless, eyes hidden by the shadows of his brows.
“And so ye lived twenty years with a man who couldna forgive ye for what was never your fault? I did that to ye, no?” he said. “I am sorry, too, Sassenach.”
A small breath escaped me, not quite a sob.
“You said you could tear me limb from limb without touching me,” I said. “You were right, damn you.”
“I am sorry,” he whispered again, but this time he reached for me, and held me tight against him.
“That I loved you? Don’t be sorry for that,” I said, my voice half muffled in his shirt. “Not ever.”
He didn’t answer, but bent his head and pressed his cheek against my hair. It was quiet; I could hear his heart beating, over and under the wind in the trees. My skin was cold; the tears on my cheeks chilled instantly.
At last I let my arms drop from around him and stepped back.
“We’d better go back to the house,” I said, trying for a normal tone. “It’s getting awfully late.”
“Aye, I suppose so.” He offered me his arm, and I took it. We passed in an easier silence down the path to the edge of the gorge above the stream. It was cold enough that tiny ice crystals glinted among the rocks where the starlight struck them, but the creek was far from frozen. Its gurgle and rush filled the air, and kept us from being too quiet.
“Aye, well,” he said, as we turned up the path past the pigsty. “I hope Roger Wakefield is a better man than the two of us—Frank and I.” He glanced at me. “Mind ye, if he’s not, I shall beat him to a pudding.”
Despite myself I laughed.
“That will be a great help to the situation, I’m sure.”
He snorted briefly and walked on. At the bottom of the hill, we turned without speaking, and came back in the direction of the house. Just short of the path that led to the door, I stopped him.
“Jamie,” I said hesitantly. “Do you believe I love you?”
He turned his head and looked down at me for a long moment before replying. The moon shone on his face, picking out his features as though they had been chiseled in marble.
“Well, if ye don’t, Sassenach,” he said at last, “ye’ve picked a verra poor time to tell me so.”
I let out my breath in the ghost of a laugh.
“No, it’s not that,” I assured him. “But—” My throat tightened, and I swallowed hastily, needing to get the words out.
“I—I don’t say it often. Perhaps it’s only that I wasn’t raised to say such things; I lived with my uncle, and he was affectionate, but not—well, I didn’t know how married people—”
He put his hand lightly over my mouth, a faint smile touching his lips. After a moment, he took it away.
I took a deep breath, steadying my voice.
“Look, what I mean to say is—if I don’t say it, how do you know I love you?”
He stood still, looking at me, then nodded in acknowledgment.