I was feeling slightly singed around the edges myself, and was determined to extinguish the smoldering embers we were presently walking on.
So when we rose from supper, I left the dishes on the table and invited Jamie to come for a stroll with me—ostensibly in search of a night-blooming begonia I’d found. Fanny, who had some idea of what a begonia was, glanced sharply at me, then Jamie, then down at her empty plate with her face studiously blank.
“Are begonias the stuff ye plant around the privy?” he asked, breaking the silence in which we’d come from the house. We were passing the main house privy at the moment, and the bitter scent of tomatoes had begun to overwhelm the heady smell of jasmine. “Is that what I smell?”
“No, that’s jasmine; the flowers don’t bloom past August, though, so I have tomato plants coming up under the vines. Tomato plants have a strong scent and it comes from the leaves, so you have that almost up until the truly cold weather—when nothing smells anyway, because it’s all frozen.”
“So is anyone who spends more than thirty seconds in a privy in January,” Jamie said. “Ye wouldna linger to smell flowers when ye think your shit might turn to ice before ye’ve got it all the way out.”
I laughed, and felt the tension between us ease, feeble as the joke was. He wanted to resolve it, too, then.
“One of the unappreciated aspects of female clothes,” I said. “Insulation. When the temperature goes down, you just add another petticoat. Or two. Of course,” I added, looking back at the house to be sure we hadn’t picked up any outriders, “not having private parts that can be exposed to the elements is rather a help, too.”
A sliver of moon gleamed briefly on the top rail of the paddock, the wood polished by long use. Beyond, the house was huge against the half-dark sky, only a few of the lower windows lit. Solid and handsome, like the man who’d made it.
I stopped by the paddock fence and turned to face him.
“I could have lied, you know.”
“No, ye couldn’t. Ye canna lie to anybody, Sassenach, let alone me. And given that his lordship had already told me the truth—”
“You wouldn’t have been sure it was the truth,” I said. “Given what both parties told me about that fight. I could have told you John was talking out his backside because he wanted to annoy you, and you would have believed me.”
“Ye could choose your words wi’ a bit more care, Sassenach,” he said, a hint of grimness in his voice. “I dinna want to hear anything about his lordship’s backside. Why d’ye think I would have believed ye, though? I never believe anything ye tell me that I havena seen with my own eyes.”
“Now who’s being annoying?” I said, rather coldly. “And you would have believed me because you would have wanted to—and don’t tell me otherwise, because I won’t believe that.”
He made a huh sort of sound under his breath. We were leaning back against the paddock rails, and the smells of jasmine, tomatoes, and human excrement had been replaced with the sweeter odor of manure and the slow, heavy exhalations of the forest beyond: the spiciness of dying leaves overlaid by the sharp, clean resins of the firs and pines.
“Why didn’t ye lie, then?” he asked, after a long silence. “If ye thought I’d believe it.”
I paused, choosing my words. The air was still and warm and filled with cricket songs. Find me, come to me, love me … stridulations of the heart? Or merely grasshopper lust?
“Because I promised you honesty a long time ago,” I said. “And if honesty turns out to be a double-edged sword, I think the wounds are usually worth it.”
“Did Frank think that?”
I inhaled, very slowly, and held the breath until I saw spots at the corners of my eyes.
“You’d have to ask him that,” I said, very precisely. “This is about you and me.”
“And his lordship.”
I lost the temper I’d been holding.
“What the bloody hell do you want me to say? That I wish I hadn’t slept with John?”
“Do ye?”
“Actually,” I said, through my teeth, “given the situation, or what I thought the situation was …”
He was no more than a tall black shape against the night, but I saw him turn sharply toward me.
“If ye say no, Sassenach, I may do something I’ll regret, so dinna say it, aye?”
“What’s wrong with you? You forgave me, you said so—”