* * *
“I’m very bad at dates,” I said to the star-thick sky sometime later. “Has Miguel de Cervantes been born yet?”
Jamie was lying—perforce—on his stomach next to me, head and shoulders protruding from the tent’s shelter. One eye slowly opened, and swiveled toward the eastern horizon. Finding no trace of dawn, it traveled slowly back and rested on my face, with an expression of jaundiced resignation.
“You’ve a sudden urge to discuss Spanish novels?” he said, a little hoarsely.
“Not particularly,” I said. “I just wondered whether perhaps you were familiar with the term ‘quixotic.’ ”
He heaved himself onto his elbows, scrubbed at his scalp with both hands to wake himself fully, then turned toward me, blinking but alert.
“Cervantes was born almost two hundred years ago, Sassenach, and, me having had the benefit of a thorough education, aye, I’m familiar with the gentleman. Ye wouldna be implying anything personal by that last remark, would ye?”
“Does your back hurt?”
He hunched his shoulders experimentally. “Not much. A wee bit bruised, I expect.”
“Jamie, why, for God’s sake?” I burst out.
He rested his chin on his folded forearms, the sidelong turn of his head emphasizing the slant of his eyes. The one I could see narrowed still further with his smile.
“Well, Murtagh enjoyed it. He’s owed me a hiding since I was nine and put pieces of honeycomb in his boots while he had them off to cool his feet. He couldna catch me at the time, but I learned a good many interesting new words whilst he was chasing me barefoot. He—”
I put a stop to this by punching him as hard as I could on the point of the shoulder. Surprised, he let the arm collapse under him with a sharp “Oof!” and rolled onto his side, back toward me.
I brought my knees up behind him and wrapped an arm around his waist. His back blotted out the stars, wide and smoothly muscled, still gleaming faintly with the moisture of exertion. I kissed him between the shoulder blades, then drew back and blew gently, for the pleasure of feeling his skin shiver under my fingertips and the tiny fine hairs stand up in goose bumps down the furrow of his spine.
“Why?” I said again. I rested my face against his warm, damp back. Shadowed by the darkness, the scars were invisible, but I could feel them, faint tough lines hard under my cheek.
He was quiet for a moment, his ribs rising and falling under my arm with each deep, slow breath.
“Aye, well,” he said, then fell silent again, thinking.
“I dinna ken exactly, Sassenach,” he said finally. “Could be I thought I owed it to you. Or maybe to myself.”
I laid a light palm across the width of one shoulder blade, broad and flat, the edges of the bone clear-drawn beneath the skin.
“Not to me.”
“Aye? Is it the act of a gentleman to unclothe his wife in the presence of thirty men?” His tone was suddenly bitter, and my hands stilled, pressing against him. “Is it the act of a gallant man to use violence against a captive enemy, and a child to boot? To consider doing worse?”
“Would it have been better to spare me—or him—and lose half your men in two days’ time? You had to know. You couldn’t—you can’t afford to let notions of gentlemanly conduct sway you.”
“No,” he said softly, “I can’t. And so I must ride wi’ a man—with the son of my King—whom duty and honor call me to follow—and seek meanwhiles to pervert his cause that I am sworn to uphold. I am forsworn for the lives of those I love—I betray the name of honor that those I honor may survive.”
“Honor has killed one bloody hell of a lot of men,” I said to the dark groove of his bruised back. “Honor without sense is…foolishness. A gallant foolishness, but foolishness nonetheless.”
“Aye, it is. And it will change—you’ve told me. But if I shall be among the first who sacrifice honor for expedience…shall I feel nay shame in the doing of it?” He rolled suddenly to face me, eyes troubled in the starlight.
“I willna turn back—I cannot, now—but Sassenach, sometimes I do sorrow for that bit of myself I have left behind.”
“It’s my fault,” I said softly. I touched his face, the thick brows, wide mouth, and the sprouting stubble along the clean, long jaw. “Mine. If I hadn’t come…and told you what would happen…” I felt a true sorrow for his corruption, and shared a sense of loss for the naive, gallant lad he had been. And yet…what choice had either of us truly had, being who we were? I had had to tell him, and he had had to act on it. An Old Testament line drifted through my mind: “When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long.”
As though he had picked up this biblical strain of thought, he smiled faintly.
“Aye, well,” he said. “I dinna recall Adam’s asking God to take back Eve—and look what she did to him.” He leaned forward and kissed my forehead as I laughed, then drew the blanket up over my bare shoulders. “Go to sleep, my wee rib. I shall be needin’ a helpmeet in the morning.”