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God knehat ed A faint cry drifted up froht have been a baby’s cry, or perhaps only a distant crow, but her head swiveled toward it, like a co to true north
It broke the o back?" he asked, sounding resigned
She pressed her lips together and shook her head
"No Let’s get a little farther away froh We don’t want to bother therinned, and she felt the blood rise hot in her face No, she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t realized there was more than one motive for this private expedition
"No, not that, either," he said He stooped for his shoes and stockings "Come on, then"
She declined to put on her own footwear, but took the opportunity to reappropriate the gun It wasn’t that she didn’t trust hiun before She just liked the feel of it, and felt secure with its weight balanced on her shoulder, even unloaded A Land pattern ood ten pounds or so, but the butt of the polished walnut stock fitted snugly into her hand and the weight of the steel barrel felt right, laid in the hollow of her shoulder, er cast a quizzical glance at her feet, then ahead, up the h blackberry brambles and fallen branches
"Just for a while," she assured hio barefoot all the time when I was little Daddy--Frank--took us to the mountains every summer, to the White Mountains or the Adirondacks After a week, the bottoms of my feet were like leather; I could have walked on hot coals and not felt a thing"
"Aye, I did, too," he said, s, and tucked his shoes away as well "Granted," he said, with a nod toward the faint path that wove its way through brush and half-buried granite outcrops, "the walking along the riverbank of the Ness or the shingle by the Firth was a bit easier going than this, stones notwithstanding"
"That’s a point," she said, frowning slightly at his feet "Have you had a tetanus shot recently? In case you step on so ahead of her, choosing his footing cautiously
"I had injections for everything one could possibly have injections for, before I cah the stones," he assured her, over one shoulder "Typhoid, cholera, dengue fever, the lot I’ht I’d had shots for everything, too, but not that one" Digging her toes into the coolstrides to catch him up
"Shouldn’t need it up here" The path a pa and vanished under the overhang of a clureen hemlock He held the heavy branches back for her and she ducked under theun held carefully crosswise
"I wasn’t sure where I o, see" His voice came from behind her, casual, damped by the darkened air under the trees "If it was the coastal towns, or the West Indiesthere werethere are," he corrected hi African diseases, brought in by the slave ships Thought I’d best be prepared"
She took advantage of the rough terrain not to answer, but was dismayed--and at the saths to which he’d been prepared to go in order to follow and find her
The ground was covered with the mottled brown of shed needles, but so damp that there was neither crackle nor prick beneath her feet It felt spongy, cool, and pleasant under her bare soles, with a give to it that made her think the mass of dead needles er, not so lucky in his passage, had set his foot on a rotten persi hold of a holly bush, which promptly stabbed hi the wounded thuree as they clian to walk, and clah of the s of Germain--to realize that small boys punctured, scraped, lacerated, and fractured theer were protected against things like diphtheria and typhoid--Jem the night before That murderous horse of her father’s had bitten him in the arm, and Claire had made Jamie sit down shirtless before the fire while she cleaned and dressed the bite Jerandfather, s, had scooped hiallopy trot," he’d chanted, bouncing a delighted Jeot!/Gallopy trot, gallopy trot/Let’s send hi scene of the two redheads giggling at each other that stuck in herin her son’s translucent, perfect, untouched skin--and shining silver on the webbed scars across her father’s back, black-red on the bloody gash in his arerous time for men
She couldn’t keep Jeht of hi injured or ill made her stomach knot and cold sweat coht?" She turned back toward Roger, who looked surprised, having forgotten all about his thumb