Jack Randall, so like and so horribly unlike Frank. His touch on my breasts had suddenly forged a link between my old life and this one, bringing my separate realities together with a bang like a thunderclap. And then there was Jamie: his face, stark with fear in the window of Randall's room, contorted with rage by the roadside, tight with pain at my insults.
Jamie. Jamie was real, all right, more real than anything had ever been to me, even Frank and my life in 1945. Jamie, tender lover and perfidious blackguard.
Perhaps that was part of the problem. Jamie filled my senses so completely that his surroundings seemed almost irrelevant. But I could no longer afford to ignore them. My recklessness had almost killed him this afternoon, and my stomach turned over at the thought of losing him. I sat up suddenly, intending to go and wake him to tell him to come to bed with me. As my weight fell full on the results of his handiwork, I just as suddenly changed my mind and flounced angrily back onto my stomach.
A night spent thus torn between fits of rage and philosophy had left me worn out. I slept all afternoon, and stumbled blearily down for a light supper when Rupert roused me just before dark.
Dougal, no doubt writhing at the expense, had procured another horse for me. A sound beast, if inelegantly built, with a kindly eye and a short, bristly mane; at once I named it Thistle.
I had not reckoned on the effects of a long horseback ride following a severe beating. I eyed Thistle's hard saddle dubiously, suddenly realizing what I was in for. A thick cloak plopped across the saddle, and Murtagh's shiny black rat-eye winked conspiratorially at me from the opposite side. I determined that I would at least suffer in dignified silence, and grimly set my jaw as I hoisted myself into the saddle.
There seemed to be an unspoken conspiracy of gallantry among the men; they took turns stopping at frequent intervals to relieve themselves, allowing me to dismount for a few minutes and surreptitiously rub my aching fundament. Now and again, one would suggest stopping for a drink, which necessitated my stopping as well, since Thistle carried the water bottles.
We jolted along for a couple of hours in this manner, but the pain grew steadily worse, keeping me shifting in the saddle incessantly. Finally I decided to hell with dignified suffering, I simply must get off for a while.
"Whoa!" I said to Thistle, and swung down. I pretended to examine her front left foot, as the other horses came to a milling stop around us.
"I'm afraid she's had a stone in her shoe," I lied. "I've got it out, but I'd better walk her a bit; don't want her to go lame."
"No, we can't have that," said Dougal. "All right, walk for a bit, then, but someone must stay wi' ye. 'Tis a quiet enough road, but I canna have ye walkin' alone." Jamie immediately swung down.
"I'll walk with her," he said quietly.
"Good. Dinna tarry too long; we must be in Bargrennan before dawn. The sign of the Red Boar; landlord's a friend." With a wave, he gathered the others and they set off at a brisk trot, leaving us in the dust.
Several hours of torture by saddle had not improved my temper. Let him walk with me. I was damned if I'd speak to him, the sadistic, violent brute.
He didn't look particularly brutish in the light of the half-moon rising, but I hardened my heart and limped along, carefully not looking at him.
My abused muscles at first protested the unaccustomed exercise, but after a half hour or so I began to move much more easily.
"You'll feel much better by tomorrow," Jamie observed casually. "Though you won't sit easy 'til the next day."
"And what makes you such an expert?" I flared at him. "Do you beat people all that frequently?"
"Well, no," he said, undisturbed by my attitude. "This is the first time I've tried it. I've considerable experience on the other end, though."
"You?" I gaped at him. The thought of anyone taking a strap to this towering mass of muscle and sinew was completely untenable.
He laughed at my expression. "When I was a bit smaller, Sassenach. I've had my backside leathered more times than I could count, between the ages of eight and thirteen. That's when I got taller than my father, and it got unhandy for him to bend me over a fence rail."
"Your father beat you?"
"Aye, mostly. The schoolmaster, too, of course, and Dougal or one of the other uncles now and then, depending on where I was and what I'd been doing."
I was growing interested, in spite of my determination to ignore him.
"What did you do?"
He laughed again, a quiet but infectious sound in the still night air.