Диана Гэблдон - A Breath of Snow and Ashes 6

Roger was, of all things, singing now, if one could call it that. Or chanting, at least, the words to a very bawdy Scottish song, about a miller who is pestered by a young woman wanting him to grind her corn. Whereupon he does.

“He flung her down upon the sacks, and there she got her corn ground, her corn ground. . . .” Roger was chanting hotly in her ear, his full weight pinning her to the ground and the stars spinning madly far above.

She’d thought his description of Ronnie as “reeking wi’ lust” merely a figure of speech, but evidently not. Bare flesh met bare flesh, and then some. She gasped. So did Roger.

“Oh, God,” he said. He paused, frozen for an instant against the sky above her, then sighed in an ecstasy of whisky fumes and began to move with her, humming. It was dark, thank God, though not nearly dark enough. The remnants of the fire cast an eerie glow over his face, and he looked for an instant the bonny big, black devil Inga had called him.

Lie back and enjoy it, she thought. The hay made a tremendous rustling—but there were other rustlings nearby, and the sound of the wind soughing through the trees in the cove was nearly enough to drown them all in sibilance.

She had managed to suppress her embarrassment and was indeed beginning to enjoy it, when Roger got his hands under her, lifting.

“Wrap your legs round me,” he whispered, and nipped her earlobe with his teeth. “Wrap them round my back and hammer my arse wi’ your heels.”

Moved partly by an answering wantonness, and partly by a desire to squeeze the breath out of him like an accordion, she flung her legs apart and swung them high, scissoring them tight across his heaving back. He gave an ecstatic groan and redoubled his efforts. Wantonness was winning; she had nearly forgotten where they were.

Hanging on for dear life and thrilled by the ride, she arched her back and jerked, shuddering against the heat of him, the night wind’s touch cool and electric on thighs and buttocks, bared to the dark. Trembling and moaning, she melted back against the hay, her legs still locked around his hips. Boneless and nerveless, she let her head roll to the side, and slowly, languidly, opened her eyes.

Someone was there; she saw movement in the dark, and froze. It was Fergus, come to fetch his son. She heard the murmur of his voice, speaking French to Germain, and the quiet rustle of his footsteps in the hay, moving off.

She lay still, heart pounding, legs still locked in place. Roger, meanwhile, had reached his own quietus. Head hanging so that his long hair brushed her face like cobwebs in the dark, he murmured, “Love you . . . God, I love you,” and lowered himself, slowly and gently. Whereupon he breathed, “Thank you,” in her ear and lapsed into warm half-consciousness on top of her, breathing heavily.

“Oh,” she said, looking up to the peaceful stars. “Don’t mention it.” She unlocked her stiff legs, and with some difficulty, got herself and Roger disentangled, more or less covered, and restored to blessed anonymity in their hay-lined nest, Jemmy safely stowed between them.

“Hey,” she said suddenly, and Roger stirred.

“Mm?”

“What sort of monster was Eigger?”

He laughed, and the sound was low and clear.

“Oh, Eigger was a giant sponge cake. With chocolate icing. He’d fall on the other monsters, and smother them wi’ sweetness.” He laughed again, hiccuped, and subsided in the hay.

“Roger?” she said softly, a moment later. There was no answer, and she stretched a hand across the slumbering body of her son, to rest light on Roger’s arm.

“Sing to me,” she whispered, though she knew that he already was asleep.

7

JAMES FRASER, INDIAN AGENT

JAMES FRASER, Indian Agent,” I said, closing one eye as though reading it off a screen. “It sounds like a Wild West television show.”

Jamie paused in the act of pulling off his stockings, and eyed me warily.

“It does? Is that good?”

“Insofar as the hero of a television show never dies, yes.”

“In that case, I’m in favor of it,” he said, examining the stocking he’d just pulled off. He sniffed it suspiciously, rubbed a thumb over a thin patch on the heel, shook his head, and tossed it into the laundry basket. “Must I sing?”

“Si—oh,” I said, recollecting that the last time I had tried to explain television to him, my descriptions had focused largely on The Ed Sullivan Show. “No, I don’t think so. Nor yet swing from a trapeze.”

“Well, that’s a comfort. I’m none sae young as I was, ken.” He stood up and stretched himself, groaning. The house had been built with eight-foot ceilings, to accommodate him, but his fists brushed the pine beams, even so. “Christ, but it’s been a long day!”

“Well, it’s nearly over,” I said, sniffing in turn at the bodice of the gown I’d just shed. It smelled strongly, though not disagreeably, of horse and woodsmoke. Air it a bit, I decided, and see whether it could go another little while without washing. “I couldn’t have swung on a trapeze even when I was young.”

“I’d pay money to see ye try,” he said, grinning.

“What is an Indian agent?” I inquired. “MacDonald seemed to think he was doing you a signal favor by suggesting you for the job.”

He shrugged, unbuckling his kilt.

“Nay doubt he thinks he is.” He shook the garment experimentally, and a fine sifting of dust and horsehair bloomed on the floor beneath it. He went to the window, opened the shutters, and, thrusting the kilt outside, shook it harder.

“He would be”—his voice came faintly from the night outside, then more strongly, as he turned round again—“were it not for this war of yours.”

“Of mine ?” I said, indignant. “You sound as though you think I’m proposing to start it, single-handed.”

He made a small gesture of dismissal.

“Ye ken what I mean. An Indian agent, Sassenach, is what it sounds like—a fellow who goes out and parleys wi’ the local Indians, giving them gifts and talking them round, in hopes that they’ll be inclined to ally themselves with the Crown’s interests, whatever those might happen to be.”

“Oh? And what’s this Southern Department that MacDonald mentioned?” I glanced involuntarily toward the closed door of our room, but muffled snoring from across the hall indicated that our guest had already collapsed into the arms of Morpheus.

“Mmphm. There’s a Southern Department and a Northern Department that deal wi’ Indian affairs in the colonies. The Southern Department is under John Stuart, who’s an Inverness man. Turn round, I’ll do it.”

I turned my back gratefully to him. With expertise born of long experience, he had the lacing of my stays undone in seconds. I sighed deeply as they loosened and fell. He plucked the shift away from my body, massaging my ribs where the boning had pressed the damp fabric into my skin.

“Thank you.” I sighed in bliss and leaned back against him. “And being an Inverness man, MacDonald thinks this Stuart will have a natural predisposition to employ other Highlanders?”

“That might depend upon whether Stuart’s ever met any of my kin,” Jamie said dryly. “But MacDonald thinks so, aye.” He kissed the top of my head in absent affection, then withdrew his hands and began untying the lace that bound his hair.

“Sit,” I said, stepping out of my fallen stays. “I’ll do it.”

He sat on the stool in his shirt, closing his eyes in momentary relaxation as I unbraided his hair. He’d worn it clubbed in a tight queue for riding, bound up for the last three days; I ran my hands up into the warm fiery mass as it unraveled from its plait, and the loosened waves of it spilled cinnamon and gold and silver in the firelight as I rubbed the pads of my fingers gently into his scalp.