Diana Gabaldon - Written in My Own Heart’s Blood

“Oh, I don’t think so,” I said at last. “They do that as much because of the summer heat as for the danger of fire, and that’s not a problem here. We’ll have to have hearths in the house, after all. The danger of fire can’t be that much greater if we’re cooking on one of them.”

“Surely that depends who’s doin’ the cooking,” Jamie said, cocking an eyebrow at me.

“If you mean anything personal by that remark, you may retract it,” I said coolly. “I may not be the world’s best cook, but I’ve never served you cinders.”

“Well, ye are the only member o’ the family who’s ever burnt the house down, Sassenach. Ye’ve got to admit that much.” He was laughing and put up a casual hand to intercept the mock blow I aimed at him. His hand completely enclosed my fist, and he pulled me effortlessly off my perch and onto his knee.

He put an arm round me and his chin on my shoulder, brushing my hair out of his face with his free hand. He was barefoot and wearing only a shirt and his threadbare green-and-brown working plaid, the one he’d bought from a rag dealer in Savannah. It was rucked up over his thigh; I pulled the fold out from under my bottom and smoothed it down over the long muscle of his leg.

“Amy says there’s a Scottish weaver in Cross Creek,” I said. “When you next go down, maybe you should commission a new plaid—maybe one in your own tartan, if the weaver’s up to a Fraser red.”

“Aye, well. There’re plenty other things to spend money on, Sassenach. I dinna need to be grand to hunt or fish—and I work the fields in my shirt.”

“I could go round day in and day out in a gray flannel petticoat with holes in it and it wouldn’t make any difference to my work—but you wouldn’t want me to do that, would you?”

He made a low Scottish noise of amusement and shifted his weight, settling me more firmly.

“I would not. I like to look at ye now and then in a fine gown, lass, wi’ your hair put up and your sweet breasts showin’. Besides,” he added, “a man’s judged by how well he provides for his family. If I let ye go around in rags, folk would think I was either mean or improvident.” It was clear from his tone which of these conditions would be the more frightful sin.

“Oh, they would not,” I said, mostly teasing for the sake of argument. “Everyone on the Ridge knows perfectly well that you’re neither one. Besides, don’t you think I like to look at you in all your glory?”

“Why, that’s verra frivolous of ye, Sassenach; I should never have expected something like that from Dr. C.E.B.R. Fraser.” He was laughing again but stopped abruptly as he turned a little.

“Look,” he said into my ear, and pointed down the side of the cove. “Just there, on the right, where the creek comes out o’ the trees. See her?”

“Oh, no!” I said, spotting the smudge of white moving slowly among the green mats of cress and duckweed. “It can’t be, surely?” I couldn’t make out details at that distance without my glasses, but from the way it moved, the object in question was almost certainly a pig. A big pig. A big white pig.

“Well, if it’s no the white sow, it’s a daughter just like her. But my guess is that it’s the auld besom herself. I’d know that proud rump anywhere.”

“Well, then.” I leaned back against him with a little sigh of satisfaction. “Now I know we’re home.”

“Ye’ll sleep under your own roof within a month, a nighean,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “Mind, it may not be more than the roof of a lean-to, to start—but it’ll be our own. By the winter, though, I’ll have the chimneys built, the walls all up, and the roof on; I can be puttin’ in the floors and the doors while there’s snow on the ground.”

I put a hand up to cup his cheek, warm and lightly stubbled. I didn’t fool myself that this was paradise or even a refuge from the war—wars tended not to stay in one place but moved around, much in the manner of cyclones and even more destructive where they touched down. But for however long it lasted, this was home, and now was peace.

We sat in silence for a while, watching hawks circle over the open ground below and the machinations of the white sow—if indeed it was she—who had now been joined in her foraging by a number of smaller porcine blobs, doubtless this spring’s litter. At the foot of the cove, two men on horseback came into sight from the wagon road, and I felt Jamie’s attention sharpen, then relax.

“Hiram Crombie and the new circuit rider,” he said. “Hiram said he meant to go down to the crossroads and fetch the man up, so he’d not lose his way.”

“You mean so Hiram can make sure he’s dour enough for the job,” I said, laughing. “You realize they’ll have got out of the habit of thinking you’re human, don’t you?” Hiram Crombie was head man of the little group of settlers that Jamie had acquired six years before. All of them were Presbyterians of a particularly rock-ribbed disposition and inclined to regard Papists as being deeply perverse, if not actually the spawn of Satan.

Jamie made a small noise, but it was one of tolerant dismissal.

“They’ll get used to me again,” he said. “And I’d pay money to watch Hiram talk to Rachel. Here, Sassenach, my leg’s gone asleep.” He helped me off his lap and stood up, shaking his kilt into place. Faded or not, it suited him, and my heart rose to see him looking so much as he should: tall and broad-shouldered, head of his household, once more master of his own land.

He looked out over the cove again, sighed deeply, and turned to me.

“Speakin’ of hideous emergencies,” he said thoughtfully, “ye do want to see them coming. So ye can be fettled against them, aye?” His eyes met mine directly. “Would now be a good time to tell me what’s coming, d’ye think?”

“THERE’S NOTHING wrong,” I said, for probably the tenth time. I picked at a scab of bark still clinging to the timber I sat on. “It’s perfectly all right. Really.”

Jamie was standing in front of me, the cove and the clouded sky bright behind him, his face shadowed.

“Sassenach,” he said mildly. “I’m a great deal more stubborn than you are, and ye ken that fine. Now, I know something upset ye when ye went to Beardsley’s place, and I know ye dinna want to tell me about it. Sometimes I ken ye need to fettle your mind about a matter before ye speak, but you’ve had time and more to do that—and I see that whatever it is is worse than I thought, or ye’d have said by now.”

I hesitated, trying to think of something to tell him that perhaps wasn’t quite . . . I looked up at him and decided that, no, I couldn’t lie to him—and not only because he’d be able to tell immediately that I was lying.

“Do you remember,” I said slowly, looking up at him, “on our wedding night? You told me you wouldn’t ask me to tell you things that I couldn’t. You said that love had room for secrets, but not for lies. I won’t lie to you, Jamie—but I really don’t want to tell you.”

He shifted his weight from one leg to the other and sighed.

“If ye think that’s going to relieve my mind, Sassenach . . .” he said, and shook his head. “I didna say that, anyway. I do remember the occasion—vividly”—and he smiled a little at me—“and what I said was that there was nothing between us then but respect—and that I thought respect maybe had room for secrets, but not for lies.”

He paused for a moment, then said very gently, “D’ye no think there’s more than respect between us now, mo chridhe?”

I took a very deep breath. My heart was thumping against my stays, but it was just normal agitation, not panic.

“I do,” I said, looking up at him. “Jamie . . . please don’t ask me just now. I truly think it’s all right; I’ve been praying about it, and—and—I think it will be all right,” I ended, rather lamely. I stood up, though, and took his hands. “I’ll tell you when I think I can,” I said. “Can you live with that?”

His lips tightened as he thought. He wasn’t a man for facile answers. If he couldn’t live with it, he’d tell me.

“Is it a matter that I might need to make preparation for?” he asked seriously. “If it might cause a fight of some kind, I mean, I should need to be ready.”

“Oh.” I let out the breath I’d been holding, somewhat relieved. “No. No, it isn’t anything like that. More of a moral question kind of thing.”

I could see that he wasn’t happy about that; his eyes searched my face, and I saw the troubled look in them, but at last he nodded, slowly.

“I’ll live with it, a nighean,” he said softly, and kissed my forehead. “For now.”

THE OTHER MAJOR THINGS requiring a healer’s attention in summer were pregnancy and birth. I prayed every day that Marsali had safely delivered her child. Even though it was already June 1, it would likely be months before we had any news, but I had examined her before we parted company—with tears—in Charleston, and all seemed normal.

“Do ye think this one might be . . . like Henri-Christian?” She spoke the name with difficulty and pressed a hand to her swelling belly.

“Probably not,” I said, and saw the emotions ripple across her face like wind passing over water. Fear, regret . . . relief.

I crossed myself, with another quick prayer, and walked up the path to the MacDonald cottage, where Rachel and Ian were staying until Ian could build them a place of their own. Rachel was sitting on the bench out front, shelling peas into a basin, the basin sitting comfortably atop her stomach.