“YE MIGHT HAVE TOLD ME, Sassenach.” Jamie glowered at the table near the bedroom window, where I’d set his bouquet in a cup of water. The bright, blotchy red of the poison ivy glowed, even in the dimness of the firelight. “And ye might get rid of it, too. D’ye mean to mock me?”
“No, I don’t,” I said, smiling as I hung my apron from the peg and reached for the laces of my gown. “But if I’d told you when you gave it to me, you’d have snatched it back. That’s the only posy you’ve ever given me, and I don’t imagine I’ll get another; I mean to keep it.”
He snorted, and sat down on the bed to take off his stockings. He’d already stripped off coat, stock, and shirt, and the firelight gleamed on the slope of his shoulders. He scratched at the underside of one wrist, though I’d told him it was psychosomatic; he hadn’t any signs of rash.
“You’ve never come home with poison ivy rash,” I remarked. “And you’re bound to have run into it now and again, so much time as you spend in the woods and the fields. I think you must be immune to it. Some people are, you know.”
“Oh, aye?” He looked interested at that, though he went on scratching. “Is that like you and Brianna not catching illness?”
“Something like, but for different reasons.” I peeled off the gown of pale green homespun—more than a little grubby, after a week’s travel—and stripped off my stays with a sigh of relief.
I got up to check the pan of water I had set to heat in the embers. Some of the newcomers had been sent off to spend the night with Fergus and Marsali, or with Roger and Bree, but the kitchen, the surgery, and Jamie’s study below were full of guests, all sleeping on the floor. I wasn’t going to bed without washing off the stains of travel, but I didn’t care to provide a public spectacle while doing it, either.
The water shimmered with heat, tiny bubbles clinging to the sides of the pot. I put a finger in, just to check—lovely and hot. I poured some into the basin and put the rest back to keep warm.
“We aren’t completely immune, you know,” I warned him. “Some things—like smallpox—we can’t ever catch, Roger and Bree and I, because we’ve been vaccinated against them, and it’s permanent. Other things, like cholera and typhoid, we aren’t likely to catch, but the injections don’t give permanent immunity; it wears off after a time.”
I bent to rummage in the saddlebags he had brought up and dumped by the door. Someone at the Gathering had given me a sponge—a real one, imported from the Indies—in payment for my extracting an abscessed tooth. Just the thing for a quick bath.
“Things like malaria—what Lizzie has—”
“I thought ye’d cured her of that,” Jamie interrupted, frowning.
I shook my head, regretful.
“No, she’ll always have it, poor thing. All I can do is try to lessen the severity of the attacks, and keep them from coming too often. It’s in her blood, you see.”
He pulled off the thong that bound back his hair, and shook out the ruddy locks, leaving them ruffled round his head like a mane.
“That doesna make any sense,” he objected, rising to unfasten his breeks. “Ye told me that when a person had the measles, if he lived, he’d not get it again, because it stayed in the blood. And so I couldna catch pox or measles now, because I’d had them both as a child—they’re in my blood.”
“Well, it’s not quite the same thing,” I said, rather lamely. The thought of trying to explain the differences among active immunity, passive immunity, acquired immunity, antibodies, and parasitic infection was more of a challenge than I felt up to, after a long day’s ride.
I dipped the sponge into the basin, let it take up water, then squeezed it out, enjoying the oddly silky, fibrous texture. A fine mist of sand floated out of the pores and settled to the bottom of the china basin. The sponge was softening as it took up water, but I could still feel a hard spot at one edge.
“Speaking of riding—”
Jamie looked mildly startled.
“Were we speaking of riding?”
“Well, no, but I was thinking of it.” I waved a hand, dismissing the inconsequent distinction. “In any case, what do you mean to do about Gideon?”
“Oh.” Jamie dropped his breeks in a puddle on the floor and stretched himself, considering. “Well, I canna afford just to shoot him, I suppose. And he’s a braw enough fellow. I’ll cut him, to start. That may settle his mind a bit.”
“Cut him? Oh, castrate him, you mean. Yes, I suppose that would get his attention, though it seems a bit drastic.” I hesitated a moment, reluctant. “Do you want me to do it?”
He stared at me in amazement, then burst out laughing.
“Nay, Sassenach, I dinna think cutting an eighteen-hand stallion is a job for a woman, surgeon or no. It doesna really require the delicate touch, aye?”
I was just as pleased to hear this. I had been working at the sponge with my thumb; it loosened a bit, and a tiny shell popped suddenly out of a large pore. It floated down through the water, a perfect miniature spiral, tinted pink and purple.
“Oh, look,” I said, delighted.
“What a bonnie wee thing.” Jamie leaned over my shoulder, a big forefinger gently touching the shell at the bottom of the basin. “How did it get into your sponge, I wonder?”
“I expect the sponge ate it by mistake.”
“Ate it?” One ruddy eyebrow shot up at that.
“Sponges are animals,” I explained. “Or to be more exact, stomachs. They suck in water, and just absorb everything edible as it passes through.”
“Ah, so that’s why Bree called the bairn a wee sponge. They do that.” He smiled at the thought of Jemmy.
“Indeed they do.” I sat down and slipped the shift off my shoulders, letting the garment fall to my waist. The fire had taken the chill off the room, but it was still cold enough that the skin of my breasts and arms bloomed into gooseflesh.
Jamie picked up his belt and carefully removed the assorted impedimenta it held, laying out pistol, cartridge box, dirk, and pewter flask on top of the small bureau. He lifted the flask and raised an inquiring eyebrow in my direction.
I nodded enthusiastically, and he turned to find a cup amid the rubble of oddments. With so many people and their belongings stuffed into the house, all of our own saddlebags, plus the bundles and bits acquired at the Gathering, had been carried up and dumped in our room; the humped shadows of the luggage flickering on the wall gave the chamber the odd look of a grotto, lined with lumpy boulders.
Jamie was as much a sponge as his grandson, I reflected, watching him rootle about, completely naked and totally unconcerned about it. He took in everything, and seemed able to deal with whatever came his way, no matter how familiar or foreign to his experience. Maniac stallions, kidnapped priests, marriageable maidservants, headstrong daughters, and heathen sons-in-law . . . Anything he could not defeat, outwit, or alter, he simply accepted—rather like the sponge and its embedded shell.
Pursuing the analogy further, I supposed I was the shell. Snatched out of my own small niche by an unexpected strong current, taken in and surrounded by Jamie and his life. Caught forever among the strange currents that pulsed through this outlandish environment.
The thought gave me a sudden queer feeling. The shell lay still at the bottom of the basin—delicate, beautiful . . . but empty. Rather slowly, I raised the sponge to the back of my neck and squeezed, feeling the tickle of warm water down my back.
For the most part, I felt no regrets. I had chosen to be here; I wanted to be here. And yet now and then small things like our conversation about immunity made me realize just how much had been lost—of what I had had, of what I had been. It was undeniable that some of my soft parts had been digested away, and the thought did make me feel a trifle hollow now and then.
Jamie bent to dig in one of the saddlebags, and the sight of his bare buttocks, turned toward me in all innocence, did much to dispel the momentary sense of disquiet. They were gracefully shaped, rounded with muscle—and pleasingly dusted with a red-gold fuzz that caught the light of fire and candle. The long, pale columns of his thighs framed the shadow of his scrotum, dark and barely visible between them.
He had found a cup at last, and poured it half full. He turned and handed it to me, lifting his eyes from the surface of the dark liquid, startled to find me staring at him.
“What is it?” he said. “Is there something the matter, Sassenach?”
“No,” I said, but I must have sounded rather doubtful, for his brows drew momentarily together.
“No,” I said, more positively. I took the cup from him and smiled, lifting it slightly in acknowledgment. “Only thinking.”
An answering smile touched his lips.
“Aye? Well, ye dinna want to do too much of that late at night, Sassenach. It will give ye the nightmare.”
“Daresay you’re right about that.” I sipped from the cup; rather to my surprise, it was wine—and very good wine. “Where did you get this?”
“From Father Kenneth. It’s sacramental wine—but not consecrated, aye? He said the Sheriff’s men would take it; he would as soon it went with me.”
A slight shadow crossed his face at mention of the priest.
“Do you think he’ll be all right?” I asked. The Sheriff’s men had not struck me as civilized enforcers of an abstruse regulation, but rather as thugs whose prejudice was momentarily constrained by fear—of Jamie.
“I hope so.” Jamie turned aside, restless. “I told the Sheriff that if the Father were misused, he and his men would answer for it.”
I nodded silently, sipping. If Jamie learned of any harm done to Father Donahue, he would indeed make the Sheriff answer for it. The thought made me a trifle uneasy; this wasn’t a good time to make enemies, and the Sheriff of Orange County wasn’t a good enemy to have.
I looked up to find Jamie’s eyes still fixed on me, though now with a look of deep appreciation.
“You’re in good flesh these days, Sassenach,” he observed, tilting his head to one side.
“Flatterer,” I said, giving him a cold look as I picked up the sponge again.
“Ye must have gained a stone, at least, since the spring,” he said with approval, disregarding the look and circling round me to inspect. “It’s been a good fat summer, aye?”
I turned round and flung the wet sponge at his head.
He caught it neatly, grinning.
“I didna realize how well ye’d filled out, Sassenach, so bundled as ye’ve been these last weeks. I havena seen ye naked in a month, at least.” He was still eyeing me with an air of appraisal, as though I were a prime entrant in the Silver Medalist Round at the Shropshire Fat Pigs Show.
“Enjoy it,” I advised him, my cheeks flushed with annoyance. “You may not see it again for quite some time!” I snatched the top of the chemise up again, covering my—undeniably rather full—breasts.
His eyebrows rose in surprise at my tone.
“You’re never angry wi’ me, Sassenach?”
“Certainly not,” I said. “Whatever gives you an idea like that?”
He smiled, rubbing the sponge absently over his chest as his eyes traveled over me. His nipples puckered at the chill, dark and stiff among the ruddy, curling hairs, and the damp gleamed on his skin.
“I like ye fat, Sassenach,” he said softly. “Fat and juicy as a plump wee hen. I like it fine.”
I might have considered this a simple attempt to remove his foot from his mouth, were it not for the fact that naked men are conveniently equipped with sexual lie detectors. He did like it fine.
“Oh,” I said. Rather slowly, I lowered the chemise. “Well, then.”
He lifted his chin, gesturing. I hesitated for a moment, then stood up and let the chemise fall on the floor, joining his breeks. I reached across and took the sponge from his hand.
“I’ll . . . um . . . just finish washing, shall I?” I murmured. I turned my back, put a foot on the stool to wash, and heard an encouraging rumble of appreciation behind me. I smiled to myself, and took my time. The room was getting warmer; by the time I had finished my ablutions, my skin was pink and smooth, with only a slight chill in fingers and toes.
I turned round at last, to see Jamie still watching me, though he still rubbed at his wrist, frowning slightly.
“Did you wash?” I asked. “Even if it doesn’t trouble you, if you have oil from the poison ivy on your skin, it can get on things you touch—and I’m not immune to the stuff.”
“I scrubbed my hands with lye soap,” he assured me, putting them on my shoulders in illustration. Sure enough, he smelled strongly of the acrid soft soap we made from suet and wood-ash—it wasn’t perfumed toilet soap, but it did get things clean. Things like floorboards and iron pots. No wonder he’d been scratching; it wasn’t easy on the skin, and his hands were rough and cracked.
I bent my head and kissed his knuckles, then reached across to the small box where I kept my personal bits and pieces, and took out the jar of skin balm. Made of walnut oil, beeswax, and purified lanolin from boiled sheep’s wool, it was pleasantly soothing, green-scented with the essences of chamomile, comfrey, yarrow, and elderflowers.
I scooped out a bit with my thumbnail, and rubbed it between my hands; it was nearly solid to begin with, but liquefied nicely when warmed.
“Here,” I said, and took one of his hands between my own, rubbing the ointment into the creases of his knuckles, massaging his callused palms. Slowly, he relaxed, letting me stretch each finger as I worked my way down the joints and rubbed more ointment into the tiny scrapes and cuts. There were still marks on his hands where he had kept the leather reins wrapped tightly.
“The posy’s lovely, Jamie,” I said, nodding at the little bouquet in its cup. “Whatever made you do it, though?” While in his own way quite romantic, Jamie was thoroughly practical as well; I didn’t think he had ever given me a completely frivolous present, and he was not a man to see value in any vegetation that could not be eaten, taken medicinally, or brewed into beer.
He shifted a bit, clearly uncomfortable.
“Aye, well,” he said, looking away. “I just—I mean—well, I had a wee thing I meant to give ye, only I lost it, but then you seemed to think it a sweet thing that wee Roger had plucked a few gowans for Brianna, and I—” He broke off, muttering something that sounded like “Ifrinn!” under his breath.
I wanted very much to laugh. Instead, I lifted his hand and kissed his knuckles, lightly. He looked embarrassed, but pleased. His thumb traced the edge of a half-healed blister on my palm, left by a hot kettle.
“Here, Sassenach, ye need a bit of this, too. Let me,” he said, and leaned to take a dab of the green ointment. He engulfed my hand in his, warm and still slippery with the oil and beeswax mixture.
I resisted for a moment, but then let him take my hand, making deep slow circles on my palm that made me want to close my eyes and melt quietly. I gave a small sigh of pleasure, and must have closed my eyes after all, because I didn’t see him move in close to kiss me; just felt the brief soft touch of his mouth.
I raised my other hand, lazily, and he took it, too, his fingers smoothing mine. I let my fingers twine with his, thumbs jousting gently, the heels of our hands lightly rubbing. He stood close enough that I felt the warmth of him, and the delicate brush of the sun-bleached hairs on his arm as he reached past my hip for more of the ointment.
He paused, kissing me lightly once more in passing. Flames hissed on the hearth like shifting tides, and the firelight flickered dimly on the whitewashed walls, like light dancing on the surface of water far above. We might have been alone together at the bottom of the sea.
“Roger wasn’t being strictly romantic, you know,” I said. “Or maybe he was—depending how one wants to look at it.”
Jamie looked quizzical, as he took my hand again. Our fingers locked and twined, moving slowly, and I sighed with pleasure.
“Aye?”
“Bree asked me about birth control, and I told her what methods there are now—which are frankly not all that good, though better than nothing. But old Grannie Bacon gave me some seeds that she says the Indians use for contraception; supposed to be very effective.”
Jamie’s face underwent the most comical change, from drowsy pleasure to wide-eyed astonishment.
“Birth con—what? She—ye mean he—those clatty weeds—”
“Well, yes. Or at least I think they may help prevent pregnancy.”
“Mmphm.” The movement of his fingers slowed, and his brows drew together—more in concern than disapproval, I thought. Then he returned to the job of massaging my hands, enveloping them in his much larger grasp with a decided movement that obliged me to yield to him.
He was quiet for a few moments, working the ointment into my fingers more in the businesslike way of a man rubbing saddle soap into harness than one making tender love to his wife’s devoted hands. I shifted slightly, and he seemed to realize what he was doing, for he stopped, frowning, then squeezed my hands lightly and let his face relax. He lifted my hand to his lips, kissed it, then resumed his massage, much more slowly.
“Do ye think—” he began, and stopped.
“What?”
“Mmphm. It’s only—does it not seem a bit strange to ye, Sassenach? That a young woman newly wed should be thinking of such a thing?”
“No, it doesn’t,” I said, rather sharply. “It seems entirely sensible to me. And they aren’t all that newly wed—they’ve been . . . I mean, they have got a child already.”
His nostrils flared in soundless disagreement.
“She has a child,” he said. “That’s what I mean, Sassenach. It seems to me that a young woman well-suited with her man wouldna be thinking first thing how not to bear his child. Are ye sure all is well between them?”
I paused, frowning as I considered the notion.
“I think so,” I said at last, slowly. “Remember, Jamie—Bree comes from a time where women can decide whether or when to have babies, with a fair amount of certainty. She’d feel that such a thing was her right.”
The wide mouth moved, pursed in thought; I could see him struggling with the notion—one entirely contrary to his own experience.
“That’s the way of it, then?” he asked, finally. “A woman can say, I will, or I won’t—and the man has no say in it?” His voice was filled with astonishment—and disapproval.
I laughed a little.
“Well, it’s not exactly like that. Or not all the time. I mean, there are accidents. And ignorance and foolishness; a lot of women just let things happen. And most women would certainly care what their men thought about it. But yes . . . I suppose if you come right down to it, that’s right.”
He grunted slightly.
“But MacKenzie’s from that time, too. So he’ll think nothing odd of it?”
“He picked the weeds for her,” I pointed out.
“So he did.” The line stayed between his brows, but the frown eased somewhat.
It was growing late, and the muffled rumble of talk and laughter was dying down in the house below. The growing quiet of the house was pierced suddenly by a baby’s wail. Both of us stood still, listening—then relaxed as the murmur of the mother’s voice reached us through the closed door.
“Besides, it’s not so unusual for a young woman to think of such a thing—Marsali came and asked me about it, before she married Fergus.”
“Oh, did she?” One eyebrow went up. “Did ye not tell her, then?”
“Of course I did!”
“Whatever ye told her didna work all that well, did it?” One corner of his mouth curled up in a cynic smile; Germain had been born approximately ten months following his parents’ marriage, and Marsali had become pregnant with Joan within days of weaning him.
I felt a flush rising in my cheeks.
“Nothing works all the time—not even modern methods. And for that matter—nothing works at all if you don’t use it.” In fact, Marsali had wanted contraception not because she didn’t want a baby—but only because she had feared that pregnancy would interfere with the intimacy of her relationship with Fergus. When we get to the prick part, I want to like it had been her words on that memorable occasion, and my own mouth curled at the memory.
My equally cynical guess was that she had liked it fine, and had decided that pregnancy was unlikely to diminish her appreciation of Fergus’s finer points. But that rather came back to Jamie’s fears about Brianna—for surely her intimacy with Roger was well established. Still, that was hardly . . .
One of Jamie’s hands remained entwined with mine; the other left my fingers and reached elsewhere—very lightly.
“Oh,” I said, beginning to lose my train of thought.
“Pills, ye said.” His face was quite close, eyes hooded in thought as he worked. “That’s how it’s done—then?”
“Um . . . oh. Yes.”
“Ye didna bring any with you,” he said. “When ye came back.”
I breathed deep and let it out, feeling as though I were beginning to dissolve.
“No,” I said, a little faintly.
He paused a moment, hand cupped lightly.
“Why not?” he asked quietly.
“I . . . well, I . . . I actually—I thought—you have to keep taking them. I couldn’t have brought enough. There’s a permanent way, a small operation. It’s fairly simple, and it makes one permanently . . . barren.” I swallowed. Viewing the prospect of coming back to the past, I had in fact thought seriously about the possibilities of pregnancy—and the risks. I thought the possibility very low indeed, given both my age and previous history, but the risk . . .
Jamie stood stock-still, looking down.
“For God’s sake, Claire,” he said at last, low-voiced. “Tell me that ye did it.”
I took a deep breath, and squeezed his hand, my fingers slipping a little.
“Jamie,” I said softly, “if I’d done it, I would have told you.” I swallowed again. “You . . . would have wanted me to?”
He was still holding my hand. His other hand left me, touched my back, pressed me—very gently—to him. His skin was warm on mine.
We stood close together, touching, not moving, for several minutes. He sighed then, chest rising under my ear.
“I’ve bairns enough,” he said quietly. “I’ve only the one life—and that’s you, mo chridhe.”
I reached up and touched his face. It was furrowed with tiredness, rough with whiskers; he hadn’t shaved in days.
I had thought about it. And had come very close indeed to asking a surgeon friend to perform the sterilization for me. Cold blood and clear head had argued for it; no sense in taking chances. And yet . . . there was no guarantee that I would survive the journey, would reach the right time or place, would find him again. Still less, a chance that I might conceive again at my age.
And yet, gone from him for so long, not knowing if I might find him—I could not bring myself to destroy any possibility between us. I did not want another child. But if I found him, and he should want it . . . then I would risk it for him.
I touched him, lightly, and he made a small sound in his throat and laid his face against my hair, holding me tight. Our lovemaking was always risk and promise—for if he held my life in his hands when he lay with me, I held his soul, and knew it.
“I thought . . . I thought you’d never see Brianna. And I didn’t know about Willie. It wasn’t right for me to take away any chance of your having another child—not without telling you.”
You are Blood of my blood, I had said to him, Bone of my bone. That was true, and always would be, whether children came of it or not.
“I dinna want another child,” he whispered. “I want you.”
His hand rose, as though by itself, touched my breast with a fingertip, left a shimmer of the scented ointment on my skin. I wrapped my hand, slippery and green-scented, round him, and stepped backward, bringing him with me toward the bed. I had just enough presence of mind left to extinguish the candle.
“Don’t worry for Bree,” I said, reaching up to touch him as he rose over me, looming black against the firelight. “Roger picked the weeds for her. He knows what she wants.”
He gave a deep sigh, the breath of a laugh, that caught in his throat as he came to me, and ended in a small groan of pleasure and completion as he slid between my legs, well-oiled and ready.
“I ken what I want, too,” he said, voice muffled in my hair. “I shall pick ye another posy, tomorrow.”