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We have nothing now between us, save—respect, perhaps. And I think that respect has maybe room for secrets, but not for lies.
Pregnancy, divorce, here and there the odd case of venereal disease. Dangerous thing, infatuation.
I raised a hand self-consciously to my locks, which as usual, could be politely described as higgledy-piggledy.
If I were marooned here ’til it suited my overbearing, domineering, pig-headed jackass of a husband to finish risking his stupid neck, I’d use the time to see what I could spot.
At this, I made a determined effort to kick him in the balls. He dodged, and jammed his own knee between my legs, effectively preventing any further attempts.
I would have killed a dozen men to get to you, Claire.”
“You’re tearin’ my guts out, Claire.”
but the worst of it was that I had to piss something awful.
“I will be damned if I’ll have you, you bullying swine! You think you can order me to your bed? Use me like a whore when you feel like it? Well, you can’t you fucking bastard! Do that, and you’re no better than your precious Captain Randall!”
“And if your life is a suitable exchange for my honor, tell me why my honor is not a suitable exchange for your life?”
“Or are you telling me that I may not love you as much as you love me? Because if ye are, Jamie Fraser, I’ll tell ye right now, it’s not true!”
“Did you cry?” His fists clenched involuntarily at his sides. “Yes!” Jenny walked back around to face him, pointed chin lifted and slanted eyes wide and bright. “So did I,” she said softly. “Every day since they took ye away.”
“Reason?” I said stupidly. “Why I married you.” “Which was?” I don’t know what I expected him to say, perhaps some further revelation of his family’s contorted affairs. What he did say was more of a shock, in its way. “Because I wanted you.”
“Ye werena the first lass I kissed,” he said softly. “But I swear you’ll be the last.”
“It’s a damn thin line between justice and brutality, Sassenach.
“You first.” “No, you.” “Why?” “I’m afraid.”
This is too cute<3
“I love you.”
She straightened her legs against the mattress and pushed once more, and Margaret Ellen Murray shot into the world like a greased pig.
There comes a turning point in intense physical struggle where one abandons oneself to a profligate usage of strength and bodily resource, ignoring the costs until the struggle is over. Women find this point in childbirth; men in battle.
“Will you stop being such a goddamned frigging hero!” I blazed at Jamie. “We all know what you’ve done, you don’t have to prove how much you can stand! Or do you think we’ll all fall apart if you’re not in charge, telling everyone what to do every minute? Who in bloody hell do you think you are, frigging John Wayne!?”
“Sassenach,” he said, “if you apologize each time ye hurt me, it’s going to be a verra long night—and it’s lasted some time already.”
“I want to hold you hard to me and kiss you, and never let you go. I want to take you to my bed and use you like a whore, ’til I forget that I exist. And I want to put my head in your lap and weep like a child.”
His eyes widened in surprise as he saw me, then relaxed. I was a woman. He wasn’t afraid of me.
“Well, he was everything and nothing, I suppose, in terms of faith,” I concluded. “Knew them all, believed in none.
I had loved Frank; I still did. And I loved Jamie, more than my own life. But bound in the limits of time and flesh, I could not keep them both.
The voice of my thoughts seemed to be Uncle Lamb’s. My family, and all I knew of love as a child. A man who had never spoken love to me, who had never needed to, for I knew he loved me, as surely as I knew I lived. For where all love is, the speaking is unnecessary. It is all. It is undying. And it is enough.
I had no reason to live, but I was not brave enough to die.”
Claire, my love … oh, my love.”
“Claire.” “Yes?” “I love you.” “Oh.” I was mildly surprised, but undeniably pleased. “I love you too.”
“And thanking God that I have two hands. That I have two hands to hold you with. To serve you with, to love you with. Thanking God that I am a whole man still, because of you.”
