The chewing mouth groped and bit water. Most of the body was clear of the rock now, hanging weightless in the water, still in the shadow. I could see one eye, twitching to and fro in a blank, directionless stare.
An inch more would bring the flapping gill-covers right over the treacherous beckoning fingers. I found that I was gripping the rock with both hands, pressing my cheek hard against the granite, as though I could make myself still more inconspicuous.
There was a sudden explosion of motion. Everything happened so fast I couldn't see what actually did take place. There was a heavy splatter of water that sluiced across the rock an inch from my face, and a flurry of plaid as Jamie rolled across the rock above me, and a heavy splat as the fish's body sailed through the air and struck the leaf-strewn bank.
Jamie surged off the ledge and into the shallows of the side pool, splashing across to retrieve his prize before the stunned fish could succeed in flapping its way back to the sanctuary of the water. Seizing it by the tail, he slapped it expertly against a rock, killing it at once, then waded back to show it to me.
"A good size," he said proudly, holding out a solid fourteen-incher. "Do nicely for breakfast." He grinned up at me, wet to the thighs, hair hanging in his face, shirt splotched with water and dead leaves. "I told you I'd not let ye go hungry."
He wrapped the trout in layers of burdock leaves and cool mud. Then he rinsed his fingers in the cold water of the burn, and clambering up onto the rock, handed me the neatly wrapped parcel.
"An odd wedding present, maybe," he nodded at the trout, "but not without precedent, as Ned Gowan might say."
"There are precedents for giving a new wife a fish?" I asked, entertained.
He stripped off his stockings to dry and laid them on the rock to lie in the sun. His long, bare toes wiggled in enjoyment of the warmth.
"It's an old love song, from the Isles. D'ye want to hear it?"
"Yes, of course. Er, in English, if you can," I added.
"Oh, aye. I've no voice for music, but I'll give you the words." And fingering the hair back out of his eyes, he recited,
"Thou daughter of the King of bright-lit mansions
On the night that our wedding is on us,
If living man I be in Duntulm,
I will go bounding to thee with gifts.
Thou wilt get a hundred badgers, dwellers in banks,
A hundred brown otters, natives of streams,
A hundred silver trout, rising from their pools…"
And on through a remarkable list of the flora and fauna of the Isles. I had time, watching him declaim, to reflect on the oddity of sitting on a rock in a Scottish pool, listening to Gaelic love songs, with a large dead fish in my lap. And the greater oddity that I was enjoying myself very much indeed.
When he finished, I applauded, keeping hold of the trout by gripping it between my knees.
"Oh, I like that one! Especially the 'I will go bounding to thee with gifts.' He sounds a most enthusiastic lover."
Eyes closed against the sun, Jamie laughed. "I suppose I could add a line for myself—'I will leap into pools for thy sake.' "
We both laughed, and then were quiet for a time, basking in the warm sun of the early summer. It was very peaceful there, with no sound but the rushing of water beyond our still pool. Jamie's breathing had calmed. I was very conscious of the slow rise and fall of his breast, and the slow beat of the pulse in his neck. He had a small triangular scar, just there at the base of his throat.
I could feel the shyness and constraint beginning to creep back. I reached out a hand and grasped his tightly, hoping that the touch would reestablish the ease between us as it had before. He slid an arm about my shoulders, but it only made me aware of the hard lines of his body beneath the thin shirt. I pulled away, under the pretext of plucking a bunch of pink-flowered storksbill that grew from a crack in the rock.
"Good for headache," I explained, tucking them into my belt.
"It troubles you," he said, tilting his head to look at me intently. "Not headache, I don't mean. Frank. You're thinking of him, and so it troubles you when I touch you, because ye canna hold us both in your mind. Is that it?"
"You're very perceptive," I said, surprised. He smiled, but made no move to touch me again.
"No great task to puzzle that out, lass. I knew when we married that you couldna help but have him often in your mind, did ye want to or no."
I didn't, at the moment, but he was right; I couldn't help it.
"Am I much like him?" he asked suddenly.
"No."