“And has she that small blue vein just there?” His hand touched my own face, thumb tender in the hollow of my temple. “And ears like tiny wings, Sassenach?”
“She always complained about her ears—said they stuck out,” I said, feeling the tears sting my eyes as Brianna came suddenly to life between us.
“They’re pierced. You don’t mind, do you?” I said, talking fast to keep the tears at bay. “Frank did; he said it looked cheap, and she shouldn’t, but she wanted to do it, and I let her, when she was sixteen. Mine were; it didn’t seem right to say she couldn’t when I did, and her friends all did, and I didn’t—didn’t want—”
“Ye were right,” he said, interrupting the flow of half-hysterical words. “Ye did fine,” he repeated, softly but firmly, holding me close. “Ye were a wonderful mother, I know it.”
I was crying again, quite soundlessly, shaking against him. He held me gently, stroking my back and murmuring. “Ye did well,” he kept saying. “Ye did right.” And after a little while, I stopped crying.
“Ye gave me a child, mo nighean donn,” he said softly, into the cloud of my hair. “We are together for always. She is safe; and we will live forever now, you and I.” He kissed me, very lightly, and laid his head upon the pillow next to me. “Brianna,” he whispered, in that odd Highland way that made her name his own. He sighed deeply, and in an instant, was asleep. In another, I fell asleep myself, my last sight his wide, sweet mouth, relaxed in sleep, half-smiling.
26
WHORE’S BRUNCH
From years of answering the twin calls of motherhood and medicine, I had developed the ability to wake from even the soundest sleep at once and completely. I woke so now, immediately aware of the worn linen sheets around me, the dripping of the eaves outside, and the warm scent of Jamie’s body mingling with the cold, sweet air that breathed through the crack of the shutters above me.
Jamie himself was not in bed; without reaching out or opening my eyes, I knew that the space beside me was empty. He was close by, though. There was a sound of stealthy movement, and a faint scraping noise nearby. I turned my head on the pillow and opened my eyes.
The room was filled with a gray light that washed the color from everything, but left the pale lines of his body clear in the dimness. He stood out against the darkness of the room, solid as ivory, vivid as though he were etched upon the air. He was naked, his back turned to me as he stood in front of the chamber pot he had just pulled from its resting place beneath the washstand.
I admired the squared roundness of his buttocks, the small muscular hollow that dented each one, and their pale vulnerability. The groove of his backbone, springing in a deep, smooth curve from hips to shoulders. As he moved slightly, the light caught the faint silver shine of the scars on his back, and the breath caught in my throat.
He turned around then, face calm and faintly abstracted. He saw me watching him, and looked slightly startled.
I smiled but stayed silent, unable to think of anything to say. I kept looking at him, though, and he at me, the same smile upon his lips. Without speaking, he moved toward me and sat on the bed, the mattress shifting under his weight. He laid his hand open on the quilt, and I put my own into it without hesitation.
“Sleep well?” I asked idiotically.
A grin broadened across his face. “No,” he said. “Did you?”
“No.” I could feel the heat of him, even at this distance, in spite of the chilly room. “Aren’t you cold?”
“No.”
We fell quiet again, but could not take our eyes away from each other. I looked him over carefully in the strengthening light, comparing memory to reality. A narrow blade of early sun knifed through the shutters’ crack, lighting a lock of hair like polished bronze, gilding the curve of his shoulder, the smooth flat slope of his belly. He seemed slightly larger than I had remembered, and one hell of a lot more immediate.
“You’re bigger than I remembered,” I ventured. He tilted his head, looking down at me in amusement.
“You’re a wee bit smaller, I think.”
His hand engulfed mine, fingers delicately circling the bones of my wrist. My mouth was dry; I swallowed and licked my lips.
“A long time ago, you asked me if I knew what it was between us,” I said.
His eyes rested on mine, so dark a blue as to be nearly black in a light like this.
“I remember,” he said softly. His fingers tightened briefly on mine. “What it is—when I touch you; when ye lie wi’ me.”
“I said I didn’t know.”
“I didna ken either.” The smile had faded a bit, but was still there, lurking in the corners of his mouth.
“I still don’t,” I said. “But—” and stopped to clear my throat.
“But it’s still there,” he finished for me, and the smile moved from his lips, lighting his eyes. “Aye?”
It was. I was still as aware of him as I might have been of a lighted stick of dynamite in my immediate vicinity, but the feeling between us had changed. We had fallen asleep as one flesh, linked by the love of the child we had made, and had waked as two people—bound by something different.
“Yes. Is it—I mean, it’s not just because of Brianna, do you think?”
The pressure on my fingers increased.
“Do I want ye because you’re the mother of my child?” He raised one ruddy eyebrow in incredulity. “Well, no. Not that I’m no grateful,” he added hastily. “But—no.” He bent his head to look down at me intently, and the sun lit the narrow bridge of his nose and sparked in his lashes.
“No,” he said. “I think I could watch ye for hours, Sassenach, to see how you have changed, or how ye’re the same. Just to see a wee thing, like the curve of your chin”—he touched my jaw gently, letting his hand slide up to cup my head, thumb stroking my earlobe—“or your ears, and the bittie holes for your earbobs. Those are all the same, just as they were. Your hair—I called ye mo nighean donn, d’ye recall? My brown one.” His voice was little more than a whisper, his fingers threading my curls between them.
“I expect that’s changed a bit,” I said. I hadn’t gone gray, but there were paler streaks where my normal light brown had faded to a softer gold, and here and there, the glint of a single silver strand.
“Like beechwood in the rain,” he said, smiling and smoothing a lock with one forefinger, “and the drops coming down from the leaves across the bark.”
I reached out and stroked his thigh, touching the long scar that ran down it.
“I wish I could have been there to take care of you,” I said softly. “It was the most horrible thing I ever did—leaving you, knowing…that you meant to be killed.” I could hardly bear to speak the word.
“Well, I tried hard enough,” he said, with a wry grimace that made me laugh, in spite of my emotion. “It wasna my fault I didna succeed.” He glanced dispassionately at the long, thick scar that ran down his thigh. “Not the fault of the Sassenach wi’ the bayonet, either.”
I heaved myself up on one elbow, squinting at the scar. “A bayonet did that?”