An echo in the bone

“Aye, well, it’s a wise man who kens what he doesna know—and I learn fast, a nighean.”

He drew me gently close then, and kissed me—with thought and tenderness, with knowing—and with my full consent. It didn’t obliterate my memory of Tom Christie’s impassioned, blundering embrace, and I thought it wasn’t meant to; it was meant to show me the difference.

“You can’t be jealous,” I said, a moment later.

“I can,” he said, not joking.

“You can’t possibly think—”

“I don’t.”

“Well, then—”

“Well, then.” His eyes were dark as seawater in the dimness, but the expression in them was entirely readable, and my heart beat faster. “I ken what ye feel for Tom Christie—and he told me plain what he feels for you. Surely ye ken that love’s nothing to do wi’ logic, Sassenach?”

Knowing a rhetorical question when I heard one, I didn’t bother answering that, but instead reached out and tidily unbuttoned his shirt. There was nothing I could reasonably say about Tom Christie’s feelings, but I had another language in which to express my own. His heart was beating fast; I could feel it as though I held it in my hand. Mine was, too, but I breathed deep and took comfort in the warm familiarity of his body, the soft crispness of the ci

“It’s not gone white yet. I suppose I’ve a little time, then, before ye get too dangerous for me to bed.”

“Dangerous, forsooth,” I said, setting to work on the buttons of his breeks. I wished he had on his kilt. “Exactly what do you think I might do to you in bed?”

He scratched his chest consideringly, and rubbed absently at the tiny knot of scar tissue where he’d cut Jack Randall’s brand from his flesh.

“Well, so far, ye’ve clawed me, bitten me, stabbed me—more than once—and—”

“I have not stabbed you!”

“Ye did, too,” he informed me. “Ye stabbed me in the backside wi’ your nasty wee needle spikes—fifteen times! I counted—and then a dozen times or more in the leg with a rattlesnake’s fang.”

“I was saving your bloody life!”

“I didna say otherwise, did I? Ye’re no going to deny ye enjoyed it, though, are ye?”

“Well … not the rattlesnake fang, so much. As for the hypodermic …” My mouth twitched, despite myself. “You deserved it.”

He gave me a look of profound cynicism.

“Do nay harm, is it?”

“Besides, you were counting what I’d done to you in bed,” I said, neatly returning to the point. “You can’t count the shots.”

“I was in bed!”

“I wasn’t!”

“Aye, ye took unfair advantage,” he said, nodding. “I wouldna hold that against ye, though.”

He’d got my jacket off and was busily untying my laces, head bent in absorption.

“How’d you like it if I were jealous?” I asked the crown of his head.

“I’d like that fine,” he replied, breath warm on my exposed flesh. “And ye were. Of Laoghaire.” He looked up, gri

I slapped him again, and this time I meant it. He could have stopped me but didn’t.

“Aye, that’s what I thought,” he said, wiping a watering eye. “Will ye come to bed wi’ me, then? It’ll be just us,” he added.

IT WAS LATE WHEN I woke; the room was dark, though a slice of fading sky showed at the top of the curtain. The fire hadn’t yet been lit and the room was chilly, but it was warm and cozy under the quilts, snug against Jamie’s body. He had turned onto his side, and I curled spoonlike against his back and put my arm over him, feeling the gentle rise and fall of his breath.

It had been just us. I’d worried, at the start, that the memory of Tom Christie and his awkward passion might fall between us—but Jamie, evidently thinking the same thing and determined to avoid any echo of Tom’s embrace that might remind me, had started at the other end, kissing my toes.

Given the size of the room and the fact that the bed was jammed tightly into one end of it, he had been obliged to straddle me in order to do this, and the combination of having my feet nibbled and the view from directly behind and beneath a naked Scotsman had been sufficient to remove anything else from my head.

Warm, safe, and calm now, I could think about the earlier encounter without feeling threatened, though. And I had felt threatened. Jamie had seen that. D’ye want me to tell you why ye slapped me? … I touched ye against your will.

He was right; it was one of the minor aftereffects of what had happened to me when I had been abducted. Crowds of men made me nervous with no cause, and being grabbed unexpectedly made me recoil and jerk away in panic. Why hadn’t I seen that?

Because I didn’t want to think about it, that’s why. I still didn’t. What good would thinking do? Let things heal on their own, if they would.

But even things that heal leave scars. The evidence of that was literally in front of my face—pressed against it, in fact.

The scars on Jamie’s back had faded into a pale spiderweb, with only a slight raised bit here or there, ridged under my fingers when we made love, like barbed wire beneath his skin. I remembered Tom Christie taunting him about them once, and my jaw tightened.

I laid a hand softly on his back, tracing one pale loop with my thumb. He twitched in his sleep and I stilled, hand flat.

What might be coming? I wondered. For him. For me. I heard Tom Christie’s sarcastic voice: I have had enough of war. I am surprised that your husband has not.

“Well enough for you,” I muttered under my breath. “Coward.” Tom Christie had been imprisoned as a Jacobite—which he was, but not a soldier. He’d been a commissary supply officer in Charles Stuart’s army. He’d risked his wealth and his position—and lost both—but not his life or body.

Still, Jamie did respect him—which meant something, Jamie being no mean judge of character. And I knew enough from watching Roger to realize that becoming a clergyman was not the easy path that some people thought it. Roger was not a coward, either, and I wondered how he would find his path in the future?

I turned over, restless. Supper was being prepared; I could smell the rich, saltwater smell of fried oysters from the kitchen below, borne on a wave of woodsmoke and roasting potatoes.

Jamie stirred a little and rolled onto his back, but didn’t wake. Time enough. He was dreaming; I could see the movement of his eyes, twitching beneath sealed lids, and the momentary tightening of his lips.

His body tightened, too, suddenly hard beside me, and I jerked back, startled. He growled low in his throat, and his body arched with effort. He was making strangled noises, whether shouting or screaming in his dream I didn’t know, and didn’t wait to find out.

“Jamie—wake up!” I said sharply. I didn’t touch him—I knew better than to do that while he was in the grip of a violent dream; he’d nearly broken my nose once or twice. “Wake up!”

He gasped, caught his breath, and opened unfocused eyes. Plainly he didn’t know where he was, and I spoke to him more gently, repeating his name, reassuring him that he was all right. He blinked, swallowed heavily, then turned his head and saw me.

“Claire,” I said helpfully, seeing him groping for my name.

“Good,” he said hoarsely. He closed his eyes, shook his head, and then opened them again. “All right, Sassenach?”

“Yes. You?”

He nodded, closing his eyes again briefly.

“Aye, fine. I was dreaming about the house burning. Fighting.” He sniffed. “Is something burning?”

“Supper, at a guess.” The savory smells from below had in fact been interrupted by the acrid stench of smoke and scorched food. “I think the stewpot boiled over.”

“Perhaps we’ll eat elsewhere tonight.”