The sounds of the mountain were all around us, birds calling, water rushing in the distance—and there were voices, too, speaking in the murmured traffic of daily rounds, a word by the pigpen, a call from the privy. And under and over everything, the sound of children, faint shrieks and giggles borne on the restless air.
“I suppose you’re right,” I said, after a moment. He was; there was no choice about it now, and the knowledge gave me a sort of peace. What was coming, would come. We would meet it as best we might, and hope to survive; that was all. If we didn’t—perhaps they would. I gathered the tail of his hair in my hand and twined my fingers through it, holding tight, like an anchor’s rope.
“What about the other choices, though?” I asked him, looking out with him over the empty dooryard, and into the shades of the forest beyond. “All the ones you made that brought you here? Those were real—and bloody well brave, if you ask me.”
Beneath the tip of my index finger, I could feel the hair-thin line of his ancient scar, buried deep beneath the ruddy waves.
He leaned back against the pull of my hand, and swiveled round to look up at me, so my hand now cupped the bone of his jaw.
“Oh. Well,” he said, smiling slightly. His hand touched mine, and drew my fingers into his. “Ye’d know about that, now, wouldn’t ye, Sassenach?” I sat down beside him, close, my hand on his leg, and his hand on mine. We sat thus for a bit, side by side, watching the rain clouds roll in over the river, like a threat of distant war. And I thought that whether it was choice or no choice, it might be that it came to the same thing in the end. Jamie’s hand still lay on mine. It tightened a little, and I glanced at him, but his eyes were still fixed somewhere past the dooryard; past the mountains, and the distant clouds. His grip tightened further, and I felt the edges of my ring press into my flesh.
“When the day shall come, that we do part,”
he said softly, and turned to look at me,
“if my last words are not ‘I love you’—ye’ll ken it was because I didna have time.”
From THE FIERY CROSS by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 111, "And Yet Go Out To Meet It".
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Wednesday 100: Perpetually
Jamie only had one move left in this game and he did not relish it. He’d done his best to outwit Governor Tryon and his lieutenant, but when the Ardsmuir prisoner roll arrived, he knew the time for strategy had passed. Knox had told him to go home to his family and he would, no matter the cost.
When Jamie rode up to the Big House, there was no weight on his soul as his wife welcomed him home. He would ask the Lord’s forgiveness for Knox, but it is Claire to whom he is faithful above all else, perpetually.
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