He looked at me, eyes dark with shock.
“How could ye think of doing such a thing, knowing that?” His voice was soft with disbelief.
I drew a deep, trembling breath, and felt despair wash over me. There was no way to make him understand, no way.
“Because I know other things,” I said at last, very softly, not looking at him. “I know what it is to bear a child. I know what it is to have your body and your mind and your soul taken from you and changed without your will. I know what it is to be ripped out of the place you thought was yours, to have choice taken from you. I know what it is, do you hear me? and it isn’t something anyone should do without being willing.” I looked up at him, and my fist clenched hard on my wounded thumb.
“And you—for God’s sake—you know what I don’t; what it’s like to live with the knowledge of violation. Do you mean to tell me that if I could have cut that from you after Wentworth, that you wouldn’t have had me do it, no matter what the risks? Jamie, that may be a rapist’s child!”
“Aye, I know,” he began, and had to stop, too choked to finish. “I know,” he began again, and his jaw muscles bulged as he forced the words. “But I know the one thing else—if I dinna ken his father, I ken his grandsire well enough. Claire, that is a child of my blood!”
“Your blood?” I echoed. I stared at him, the truth dawning on me. “You want a grandchild badly enough to sacrifice your daughter?”
“Sacrifice? It isna me that’s meaning to commit slaughter in cold blood!”
“You didn’t mind the angel-makers at the Hôpital des Anges; you had pity for the women they helped, you said so.”
“Those women had nay choice!” Too agitated to sit, he got up and paced restlessly back and forth in front of me. “They had no one to protect them, no way to feed a child—what else could they do, poor creatures? But it isna so, for Brianna! I will never let her be hungry or cold, never let aught harm her or the bairn, never!”
“That isn’t all there is to it!”
He stared at me, brows drawn down in stubborn incomprehension.
“If she bears a child here, she won’t leave,” I said unsteadily. “She can’t—not without tearing herself apart.”
“So you mean to tear her apart?” I flinched, as though he’d struck me.
“You want her to stay,” I said, striking back. “You don’t care that she has a life somewhere else, that she wants to go back. If she’ll stay—and better yet, if she’ll give you a grandchild—then you bloody don’t care what it does to her, do you?”
It was his turn to flinch, but he turned on me squarely.
“Aye, I care! That doesna mean I think it right for you to force her into—”
“What do you mean, force her?” The blood was burning hot in my cheeks. “For God’s sake, you think I want to do this? No! But, by God, she’ll have the choice if she wants it!”
I had to press my hands together to stop them shaking. The apron had fallen to the floor, stained with blood, reminding me much too vividly of operating theaters and battlefields—and of the terrible limits of my own skill.
I could feel his eyes on me, narrowed and burning. I knew that he was as torn in the matter as I was. He did indeed care desperately for Bree—but now I had spoken the truth, we both recognized it; deprived of his own children, living for so long as an exile, there was nothing he wanted more in life than a child of his blood.
But he couldn’t stop me, and he knew it. He wasn’t used to feeling helpless, and he didn’t like it. He turned abruptly and went to the sideboard, where he stood, fists resting on top of it.
I had never felt so desolate, so in need of his understanding. Did he not realize how horrible the prospect was for me, as well as him? Worse, because it was my hand that must do the damage.
I came up behind him, and laid a hand on his back. He stood unmoving, and I stroked him lightly, taking some comfort from the simple fact of his presence, of the solid strength of him.
“Jamie.” My thumb left a slight smear of red on the linen of his shirt. “It will be all right. I’m sure it will.” I was talking to convince myself, as much as him. He didn’t move, and I ventured to put my arm around his waist, laying my cheek against the curve of his back. I wanted him to turn and take me in his arms, to assure me that it would indeed somehow be all right—or at the least, that he would not blame me for whatever happened.
He moved abruptly, dislodging my hand.
“Ye’ve a high opinion of your power, have ye no?” He spoke coldly, turning to face me.
“What do you mean by that?”
He grasped my wrist in one hand, pinning it to the wall above my head. I could feel the tickle of blood down my wrist, flowing from my wounded thumb. His fingers wrapped around my hand, squeezing tight.
“Ye think it’s yours alone to say? That life and death is yours?” I could feel the small bones of my hand grind together, and I stiffened, trying to pull free.
“It’s not mine to say! But if she says—then yes, it’s my power. And yes, I’ll use it. Just like you would—like you have, when you’ve had to.” I shut my eyes, fighting down fear. He wouldn’t hurt me…surely? It occurred to me with a small shock that he could indeed stop me. If he broke my hand…
Very slowly, he bent his head and rested his forehead against mine.
“Look at me, Claire,” he said, very quietly.
Slowly, I opened my eyes and looked. His eyes were no more than an inch away; I could see the tiny gold flecks near the center of his iris, the black ring surrounding it. My fingers in his were slippery with blood.
He let go of my hand, and touched my breast lightly, cupping it for a moment.
“Please,” he whispered, and then was gone.
I stood quite still against the wall, and then slowly slid to the floor in a bloom of skirts, the cut on my thumb throbbing with my heartbeat.
* * *
I was so shaken by the quarrel with Jamie that I couldn’t settle to anything. At last, I put on my cloak and went out, walking up the ridge. I avoided the path that led across the Ridge toward Fergus’s cabin, and down toward the road. I didn’t want to risk meeting anyone at all.
It was cold and cloudy, with a light rain sputtering intermittently among the leaf-bare branches. The air was heavy with cold moisture; let the temperature drop a few degrees more, and it would snow. If not tonight, tomorrow—or next week. Within a month at the most, the Ridge would be cut off from the lowlands.
Ought I to take Brianna to Cross Creek? Whether she decided to bear the child or not, might she be safer there?
I shuffled through layers of wet, yellow leaves. No. My impulse was to think that civilization must offer some advantage, but not in this case. There was nothing Cross Creek could offer that would truly be of help in case of any obstetrical emergency; in fact, she might well be in active danger from the medical practitioners of the time.
No, whatever she decided, she was better off here, with me. I wrapped my arms about myself under my cloak, and flexed my fingers, trying to work some warmth and suppleness into them, to feel some sense of surety in touch.
Please, he’d said. Please what? Please don’t ask her, please don’t do it if she asks? But I had to. I swear by Apollo the physician…not to cut for the stone, nor to procure abortion…Well, and Hippocrates was neither a surgeon, a woman…nor a mother. As I’d told Jamie, I’d sworn by something a lot older than Apollo the physician—and that oath was in blood.