Outlander Novella [01] The Space Between Read Online Free PDF

devil—
    “Ow!” She’d bitten her tongue fiercely as penance for the inadvertent blasphemy, and clapped a hand to her mouth.
    “What is it?” said a concerned voice behind her. “Are ye hurt, Miss MacKimmie? Er … Sister Gregory, I mean?”
    “Mm! No. No, I jutht … bit my tongue.” She turned to Michael Murray, gingerly touching the injured tongue to the roof of her mouth.
    “Well, that happens when ye talk to yourself.” He took the cork from a bottle he was carrying and held the bottle out to her. “Here, wash your mouth wi’ that; it’ll help.”
    She took a large mouthful and swirled it round; it burned the bitten place, but not badly, and she swallowed, as slowly as possible, to make it last.
    “Jesus, Mary, and Bride,” she breathed. “Is that
wine
?” The taste in her mouth bore some faint kinship with the liquid she knew as wine—just as apples bore some resemblance to horse turds.
    “Aye, it
is
pretty good,” he said modestly. “German. Umm … have a wee nip more?”
    She didn’t argue and sipped happily, barely listening to his talk, telling about the wine, what it was called, how they made it in Germany, where he got it … on and on. Finally she came to herself enough to remember her manners, though, and reluctantly handed back the bottle, now half empty.
    “I thank ye, sir,” she said primly. “ ’Twas kind of ye. Ye needna waste your time in bearing me company, though; I shall be well enough alone.”
    “Aye, well … it’s no really for your sake,” he said, and took a reasonable swallow himself. “It’s for mine.”
    She blinked against the wind. He was flushed, but not from drink or wind, she thought.
    She managed a faint interrogative “Ah …?”
    “Well, what I want to ask,” he blurted, and looked away, cheekbones burning red. “Will ye pray for me? Sister? And my—my wife. The repose of—of—”
    “Oh!” she said, mortified that she’d been so taken up with her own worries as not to have seen his distress.
Think you’re a seer, dear Lord, ye dinna see what’s under your neb; you’re no but a fool, and a selfish fool at that
. She put her hand over his where it lay on the rail and squeezed tight, trying to channel some sense of God’s goodness into his flesh. “To be sure Iwill!” she said. “I’ll remember ye at every Mass, I swear it!” She wondered briefly whether it was proper to swear to something like that, but after all … “And your poor wife’s soul, of course I will! What … er … what was her name? So as I’ll know what to say when I pray for her,” she explained hurriedly, seeing his eyes narrow with pain.
    “Lilliane,” he said, so softly that she barely heard him over the wind. “I called her Lillie.”
    “Lilliane,” she repeated carefully, trying to form the syllables like he did. It was a soft, lovely name, she thought, slipping like water over the rocks at the top of a burn.
You’ll never see a burn again
, she thought with a pang, but dismissed this, turning her face toward the growing shore of France. “I’ll remember.”
    He nodded in mute thanks, and they stood for some little while, until she realized that her hand was still resting on his and drew it back with a jerk. He looked startled, and she blurted—because it was the thing on the top of her mind—“What was she like? Your wife?”
    The most extraordinary mix of emotions flooded over his face. She couldn’t have said what was uppermost—grief, laughter, or sheer bewilderment—and she realized suddenly just how little of his true mind she’d seen before.
    “She was …” He shrugged and swallowed. “She was my wife,” he said, very softly. “She was my life.”
    She should know something comforting to say to him, but she didn’t.
    She’s with God?
That was the truth, she hoped, and yet clearly to this young man, the only thing that mattered was that his wife was not with
him
.
    “What happened to her?” she asked instead,