Diana Gabaldon - Outlander aka Cross Stitch

“Don’t worry,” he said. “The Senior Common Room will love you, no matter what stories you tell. Mmmm. Your hair smells wonderful.”

“Do you like it then?” His hands slid forward over my shoulders in answer, cupping my breasts in the thin nightdress. I could see his head above mine in the mirror, his chin resting on top of my head.

“I like everything about you,” he said huskily. “You look wonderful by candlelight, you know. Your eyes are like sherry in crystal, and your skin glows like ivory. A candlelight witch, you are. Perhaps I should disconnect the lamps permanently.”

“Make it hard to read in bed,” I said, my heart beginning to speed up.

“I could think of better things to do in bed,” he murmured.

“Could you, indeed?” I said, rising and turning to put my arms about his neck. “Like what?”

Sometime later, cuddled close behind bolted shutters, I lifted my head from his shoulder and said, “Why did you ask me that earlier? About whether I’d had to do with any Scots, I mean – you must know I had, there are all sorts of men through those hospitals.”

He stirred and ran a hand softly down my back.

“Mmm. Oh, nothing, really. Just, when I saw that chap outside, it occurred to me he might be” – he hesitated, tightening his hold a bit – “er, you know, that he might have been someone you’d nursed, perhaps… maybe heard you were staying here, and came along to see… something like that.”

“In that case,” I said practically, “why wouldn’t he come in and ask to see me?”

“Well,” Frank’s voice was very casual, “maybe he didn’t want particularly to run into me.”

I pushed up onto one elbow, staring at him. We had left one candle burning, and I could see him well enough. He had turned his head, and was looking oh-so-casually off toward the chromolithograph of Bonnie Prince Charlie with which Mrs. Baird had seen fit to decorate our wall.

I grabbed his chin and turned his head to face me. He widened his eyes in simulated surprise.

“Are you implying,” I demanded, “that the man you saw outside was some sort of, of…” I hesitated, looking for the proper word.

“Liaison?” he suggested helpfully.

“Romantic interest of mine?” I finished.

“No, no, certainly not,” he said unconvincingly. He took my hands away from his face, and tried to kiss me, but now it was my turn for head-turning. He settled for pressing me back down to lie beside him.

“It’s only…” he began. “Well, you know, Claire, it was six years. And we saw each other only three times, and only just for the day that last time. It wouldn’t be unusual if… I mean, everyone knows doctors and nurses are under tremendous stress during emergencies, and… well, I… it’s just that… well, I’d understand, you know, if anything, er, of a spontaneous nature…”

I interrupted this rambling by jerking free and exploding out of bed.

“Do you think I’ve been unfaithful to you?” I demanded. “Do you? Because if so, you can leave this room this instant. Leave the house altogether! How dare you imply such a thing?” I was seething, and Frank, sitting up, reached out to try to soothe me.

“Don’t you touch me!” I snapped. “Just tell me – do you think, on the evidence of a strange man happening to glance up at my window, that I’ve had some flaming affair with one of my patients?”

Frank got out of bed and wrapped his arms around me. I stayed stiff as Lot’s wife, but he persisted, caressing my hair and rubbing my shoulders in the way he knew I liked.

“No, I don’t think any such thing,” he said firmly. He pulled me closer, and I relaxed slightly, though not enough to put my arms around him.

After a long time, he murmured into my hair, “No, I know you’d never do such a thing. I only meant to say that even if you ever did… Claire, it would make no difference to me. I love you so. Nothing you ever did could stop my loving you.” He took my face between his hands – only four inches taller than I, he could look directly into my eyes without trouble – and said softly, “Forgive me?” His breath, barely scented with the tang of Glenfiddich, was warm on my face, and his lips, full and inviting, were disturbingly close.

Another flash from outside heralded the sudden breaking of the storm, and a thundering rain smashed down on the slates of the roof.

I slowly put my arms around his waist.

“ ‘The quality of mercy is not strained,’ ” I quoted. “ ‘It droppeth as the gentle dew from heaven…’ ”

Frank laughed and looked upward; the overlapping stains on the ceiling boded ill for the prospects of our sleeping dry all night.

“If that’s a sample of your mercy,” he said, “I’d hate to see your vengeance.” The thunder went off like a mortar attack, as though in answer to his words, and we both laughed, at ease again.

It was only later, listening to his regular deep breathing beside me, that I began to wonder. As I had said, there was no evidence whatsoever to imply unfaithfulness on my part. My part. But six years, as he’d said, was a long time.

Mr. Crook called for me, as arranged, promptly at seven the next morning.

“So as we’ll catch the dew on the buttercups, eh, lass?” he said, twinkling with elderly gallantry. He had brought a motorcycle of his own approximate vintage, on which to transport us into the countryside. The plant presses were tidily strapped to the sides of this enormous machine, like bumpers on a tugboat. It was a leisurely ramble through the quiet countryside, made all the more quiet by contrast with the thunderous roar of Mr. Crook’s cycle, suddenly throttled into silence. The old man did indeed know a lot about the local plants, I discovered. Not only where they were to be found but their medicinal uses, and how to prepare them. I wished I had brought a notebook to get it all down, but listened intently to the cracked old voice, and did my best to commit the information to memory as I stowed our specimens in the heavy plant presses.

We stopped for a packed luncheon near the base of a curious flat-topped hill. Green as most of its neighbors, with the same rocky juts and crags, it had something different: a well-worn path leading up one side and disappearing abruptly behind a granite outcrop.

“What’s up there?” I asked, gesturing with a ham sandwich. “It seems a difficult place for picnicking.”

“Ah.” Mr. Crook glanced at the hill. “That’s Craigh na Dun, lass. I’d meant to show ye after our meal.”

“Really? Is there something special about it?”

“Oh, aye,” he answered, but refused to elaborate further, merely saying that I’d see when I saw.

I had some fears about his ability to climb such a steep path, but these evaporated as I found myself panting in his wake. At last, Mr. Crook extended a gnarled hand and pulled me up over the rim of the hill.

“There ’tis.” He waved a hand with a sort of proprietorial gesture.

“Why, it’s a henge!” I said, delighted. “A miniature henge!”

Because of the war, it had been several years since I had last visited Salisbury Plain, but Frank and I had seen Stonehenge soon after we were married. Like the other tourists wandering awed among the huge standing stones, we had gaped at the Altar Stone (‘w’ere ancient Druid priests performed their dreadful ’uman sacrifices,’ announced the sonorous Cockney tour guide accompanying a busload of Italian tourists, who all dutifully took photographs of the rather ordinary-looking stone block).

Out of the same passion for exactness that made Frank adjust his ties on the hanger so that the ends hung precisely even, we had even trekked around the circumference of the circle, pacing off the distance between the Z holes and the Y holes, and counting the lintels in the Sarsen Circle, the outermost ring of monstrous uprights.