Outlander aka Cross Stitch, стр. 207

“You can, for I love ye.” His voice was half-muffled in my soaking hair. “And you will, for I want ye. But this time, I go wi’ you.”

He held my hips firm against him, carrying me beyond myself with the force of an undertow. I crashed formless against him, like breakers on a rock, and he met me with the brutal force of granite, my anchor in the pounding chaos.

Boneless and liquid as the water around us, contained only by the frame of his hands, I cried out, the soft, bubbling half-choked cry of a sailor sucked beneath the waves. And heard his own cry, helpless in return, and knew I had served him well.

We struggled upward, out of the womb of the world, damp and steaming, rubber-limbed with wine and heat. I fell to my knees at the first landing, and Jamie, trying to help me, fell down next to me in an untidy heap of robes and bare legs. Giggling helplessly, drunk more with love than with wine, we made our way side by side, on hands and knees up the second flight of steps, hindering each other more than helping, jostling and caroming softly off each other in the narrow space, until we collapsed at last in each other’s arms on the second landing.

Here an ancient oriel window opened glassless to the sky, and the light of the hunter’s moon washed us in silver. We lay clasped together, damp skins cooling in the winter air, waiting for our racing hearts to slow and breath to return to our heaving bodies.

The moon above was a Christmas moon, so large as almost to fill the empty window. It seemed no wonder that the tides of sea and woman should be subject to the pull of that stately orb, so close and so commanding.

But my own tides moved no longer to that chaste and sterile summons, and the knowledge of my freedom raced like danger through my blood.

“I have a gift for you too,” I said suddenly to Jamie. He turned toward me and his hand slid, large and sure, over the plane of my still-flat stomach.

“Have you, now?” he said.

And the world was all around us, new with possibility.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank:

Jackie Cantor, Editor par excellence, whose consistent enthusiasm had so much to do with getting this story between covers; Perry Knowlton, Agent of impeccable judgment, who said, “Go ahead and tell the story the way it should be told; we’ll worry about cutting it later;” my husband, Doug Watkins, who, despite occasionally standing behind my chair, saying, “If it’s set in Scotland, why doesn’t anybody say ‘Hoot, mon?’ ” also spent a good deal of time chasing children and saying “Mommy is writing! Leave her alone!”; my daughter Laura, for loftily informing a friend, “My mother writes books!”; my son Samuel, who, when asked what Mommy does for a living, replied cautiously, “Well, she watches her computer a lot;” my daughter Jennifer, who says, “Move over, Mommy; it’s my turn to type!”; Jerry O’Neill, First Reader and Head Cheerleader, and the rest of my personal Gang of Four – Janet McConnaughey, Margaret J. Campbell, and John L. Myers – who read everything I write, and thereby keep me writing; Dr. Gary Hoff, for verifying the medical details and kindly explaining the proper way to reset a dislocated shoulder; T. Lawrence Tuohy, for details of military history and costuming; Robert Riffle, for explaining the difference between betony and bryony, listing every kind of forget-me-not known to man, and verifying that aspens really do grow in Scotland; Virginia Kidd, for reading early parts of the manuscript and encouraging me to go on with it; Alex Krislov, for co-hosting with other systems operators the most extraordinary electronic literary cocktail-party-cum-writer’s-incubator in the world, the CompuServe Literary Forum; and the many members of LitForum – John Stith, John Simpson, John L. Myers, Judson Jerome, Angelia Dorman, Zilgia Quafay, and the rest – for Scottish folk songs, Latin love poetry, and for laughing (and crying) in the right places.

Diana Gabaldon

Diana Gabaldon is the author of the international bestsellers CROSS STITCH, DRAGONFLY IN AMBER, VOYAGER, DRUMS OF AUTUMN and THE FIERY CROSS – all featuring Claire and Jamie Fraser. Although American by birth, Diana has become fascinated by the history of Scotland, England, France and the USA in the mid-18th century when the struggles that would determine the shape of the modern world were taking place. She lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, with her husband and their children.