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“And in the last month or so, the milk begins to come in. You feel yourself filling, just a wee bit at a time, a little each time the child moves. And then suddenly, everything comes up hard and round.” She cupped her stomach again. “There’s no pain, then, just a breathless feeling, and then your breasts tingle as though they’ll explode if they’re not suckled.” She closed her eyes and leaned back, stroking her massive belly, over and over, with a rhythm like the invocation of a spell. It came to me, watching her, that if ever there were such a thing as a witch, then Janet Fraser was one.
The smoky air was filled with the trance over the room; the feeling that lies at the root of lust, the terrible yearning need to join, and create. I could have counted every hair on Jamie’s body without looking at him, and knew each one stood erect.
Je
“And late in bearing, when the child moves a lot, sometimes there’s a feeling like when you’ve your man inside ye, when he comes to ye deep and pours himself into you. Then, then when that throbbing starts deep inside ye along with him, it’s like that, but it’s much bigger; it ripples all through the walls of your womb and fills all of you. The child’s quiet then, and it’s as though it’s him you’ve taken inside you instead.”
Suddenly she turned to me, and the spell was broken. “That’s what they want sometimes, ye know,” she said quietly, smiling into my eyes. “They want to come back.”
Some time later, Je
“You’ll see to the fire, Jamie?” She stretched, arching her back, and the curve of her spine echoed the strangely sinuous curve of her belly. Ian’s knuckles pressed hard along the length of her back, and ground into the base of her spine, making her groan. And then they were gone.
I stretched too, arms upward, feeling the pleasant pull of tired muscles. Jamie’s hands ran down my sides and rested on the swell of my hips. I leaned back into him, drawing his hands forward, imagining them cupping the gentle curve of an unborn child.
As I turned my head to kiss him, I noticed the small form curled in the corner of the settle.
“Look. They’ve forgotten small Jamie.” The little boy customarily slept on a trundle in his parents’ room. Tonight he had fallen asleep by the fire while we sat talking over the wine, but no one had remembered to carry him up to his bed. My own Jamie turned me to face him, smoothing my hair away from his nose.
“Je
“But what if he wakes up?”
The roving hands came up under the now-loose edge of the bodice. Jamie cocked an eyebrow at the recumbent form of his small nephew.
“Aye well. He’ll have to learn his job sometime, won’t he? Ye don’t want him to be as ignorant as his uncle was.” He tossed several cushions to the floor before the fire and lowered himself, carrying me with him.
The firelight gleamed on the silvery scars on his back, as though he were in fact the iron man I had once accused him of being, the metal core showing through rents in the fragile skin. I traced the lashmarks one by one, and he shivered under my touch.
“Do you think Je
“Well, it’s no usually the first thing in my mind when I take ye to bed, Sassenach. Far from it. But then…” His hands cupped my breasts softly, and his lips closed on one nipple. “I’d no just say she was completely wrong either. Sometimes… aye, sometimes it would be good, to be inside again, safe and… one. Knowing we ca
“Pay me no mind, Sassenach,” he murmured. “I get verra maudlin, drinking elderberry wine.”
Chapter 31. QUARTER DAY
There was a light knock on the door, and Je
“Aye, the shirt’s well enough. And I’ve let out your best coat for ye; you’ve grown a bit through the shoulders since I saw ye last.” She cocked her head to one side, considering. “Ye’ve done a braw job of it today – up to the neck, at least. Sit ye down over there, and I’ll tend to your hair.” She pointed to the stool by the window.
“My hair? What’s wrong wi’ my hair?” Jamie demanded, putting a hand up to check. Grown nearly to shoulder-length, he had as usual laced it back with a leather thong to keep it out of his face.
Wasting no time on chat, his sister pushed him down onto the stool, yanked the thong loose and began to brush him vigorously with the tortoiseshell brushes.
“What’s wrong wi’ your hair?” she asked rhetorically. “Weel, now. There’s cockleburs in it, for one thing.” She plucked a small brown object delicately from his head and dropped it on the dresser. “And bits of oak leaf. Where were ye yesterday – rootling under the trees like a hog? And more tangles than a skein of washed yarn-”
“Ouch!”
“Be still, roy.” Frowning with concentration, she picked up a comb and teased out the tangles, leaving a smooth, shining mass of auburn, copper, ci
“I ca
“It is wonderful isn’t it?” I agreed. “Look, where the sun’s bleached it on top, he’s got those lovely blond streaks.” The object of our admiration glowered up at us.
“If ye both di
“Keep still,” she ordered. She began to separate the hair into three thick strands. “I’ll make ye a proper cockerno
Jamie muttered something rebellious under his breath, but subsided under his sister’s ministrations. Dexterously tucking in stray bits here and there, she plaited the hair into a thick formal queue, tucking the ends under and binding them securely with thread. Then she reached into her pocket, pulled out a blue silk ribbon and triumphantly tied it in a bow.
“There!” she said. “Bo
“Especially the ribbon,” I said, suppressing an urge to laugh. “The same color as his eyes.”
Jamie glared at his sister.
“No,” he said shortly. “No ribbons. This isna France, nor yet King Geordie’s court! I di
“Oh, all right, then, fusspot. There.” She pulled the ribbon loose and stood back.
“Aye, ye’ll do,” she said, with satisfaction. Then she turned her penetrating blue eyes on me.