“No, I didn’t. I said I’d love ye forever, and I will, but—”
“You can’t love somebody if you won’t bloody forgive them!”
“I forgive you,” he said.
“How fucking dare you?” I shouted, turning on him with clenched fists.
“What’s wrong wi’ you?” He made a grab for my arm, but I jerked away from him. “First ye’re angry because I didna say I forgave ye and now ye’re outraged because I did?”
“Because I didn’t do anything wrong to start with, you fatheaded arsehole, and you know it! How dare you try to forgive me for something I didn’t do?”
“Ye did do it!”
“I didn’t! You think I was unfaithful to you, and I. Bloody. Wasn’t!”
I was shrieking loudly enough to drown out the crickets, and shaking with rage.
There was a long moment of silence, in which the crickets cautiously tuned up again. Jamie turned to the fence and gripped the top rail and shook it violently, making the wood creak. He might be speaking Gaelic, but whatever he was saying sounded like an enraged wolf.
I stood still, panting. The night was warm and humid, and sweat was beginning to bloom on my body. I ripped off my shawl and threw it over the fence. I could hear Jamie breathing, too, fast and deep, but he was standing still now, gripping the fence rail with his shoulders stiff, head bent.
“Ye want to ken what’s wrong wi’ me?” he asked at last. His voice was pitched low, but it wasn’t calm. He straightened up, looming in the moonlight.
“I swear to myself I will put … this … thing … out o’ my head, and mostly I manage. But then that sodomite sends me a letter, out o’ the blue—just as though it never happened! And it’s all back again.” His voice shook and he stopped for a second, shaking his head violently, as though to clear it.
“And when I think of it, and then I see you … I want to have ye, then and there. Ye rouse me, whether ye’re slicing cucumbers or bathing naked in the creek wi’ your hair loose. I want ye bad, Sassenach. But he’s there in my head, and if—if—” Lost for words, he smashed a fist down on the fence rail and I felt the wood tremble by my shoulder.
“If I canna stand the notion that you and he were fucking me behind my back, how do ye think I can stand to think that you and I are sharing a bed wi’ him in it?”
I would have hammered the fence myself, save for knowing it would hurt. Instead, I rubbed my hands hard over my face and dug my fingers into my scalp, scattering hairpins. I stood there, huffing.
“We’re not,” I said, in a tone of complete certainty. “We’re not, because I’m not. I have never, not for one second, thought of anyone but you when I’ve been in your bed. And I ought to be really offended at the notion that you do, but—”
“I don’t.” He gulped air, and took me by the arms. “I don’t, Claire. It’s only that I’m afraid I might.”
I felt dizzy from hyperventilation and put my own hands flat on his chest to steady myself, and smelled the sudden pungent musk of his body, the waves of it an acrid hot ghost surrounding us. I did rouse him.
“I tell you what,” I said at last, and lifted my head to look at him. It was full dark now, but my eyes were well-enough adapted as to see his face, his eyes searching mine. “I tell you what,” I said again, and swallowed. “You—leave that to me.”
He trembled slightly; it might have been a buried laugh.
“Ye think highly of yourself, Sassenach,” he said, his voice husky. “Ye think a warm place to stick my cock’s enough to make me forget?”
I stared at him.
“What on earth do you mean by that, you—” Words failed me, and I jerked loose, flapping my arms in bewildered frustration. “Why would you say something like that? You know it isn’t true!”
He scratched his jaw; I could hear the whiskers rasp.
“No, it isn’t,” he agreed. “I was just tryin’ to think of something offensive enough to say as to make ye strike me.”
I actually did laugh, though more from surprise than real humor.
“Don’t tempt me. Why do you want me to hit you?”
He rocked back on his heels and looked me over, slowly, from undone hair to battered moccasins. And back.
“Well, in about ten seconds, I mean to lay ye on your back in the grass, lift your skirts, and address ye wi’ a certain amount of forcefulness. I thought I’d feel better about doing that if ye provoked me first.”