Текст книги "An echo in the bone"
Автор книги: Diana Gabaldon
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 55 (всего у книги 75 страниц)
“Dear me,” murmured Dr. Rawlings, shaking his head at the sight. “I am afraid this process could take some time.”
IT DID. A week later, we were all still sitting there, as letters made their stately way once or twice a day between the two camps. There was a general air of relaxation in the American camp; I thought things were probably still a little tense across the way, but Dr. Rawlings had not come back, so general gossip was the only way of judging the progress—or lack of it—of the surrender negotiations. Evidently General Gates had been bluffing, and Burgoyne had been astute enough to realize it.
I was pleased to be in one place long enough to wash my clothes without risk of being shot, scalped, or otherwise molested. Beyond that, there were a good many casualties from the two battles who still required nursing.
I had been aware, in a vague sort of way, of a man lurking round the edges of our encampment. I’d seen him several times, but he had never come close enough to speak to me, and I’d put him down as likely suffering from some embarrassing ailment like clap or piles. It often took such men a good while to muster either the courage or the desperation to ask for help, and once they did, they’d still wait to speak to me privately.
The third or fourth time I noticed him, I tried to catch his eye, to induce him to come close enough so that I could arrange to examine him privately, but each time he slid away, eyes downcast, and disappeared into the anthill of seething militia, Continentals, and camp followers.
He reappeared quite suddenly toward sunset of the next day, while I was making a sort of pottage, using a bone—unidentifiable as to animal, but reasonably fresh, and with shreds of meat still clinging to it—given me by a patient, two wizened yams, a handful of grain, another handful of beans, and some stale bread.
“You are Mrs. Fraser?” he asked, in a surprisingly educated Lowland Scottish accent. Edinburgh, I thought, and had a faint pang at the memory of Tom Christie’s similar speech. He had always insisted upon calling me “Mrs. Fraser,” spoken in just that clipped, formal way.
Thoughts of Tom Christie vanished in the next instant, though.
“They call you the White Witch, do they not?” the man said, and smiled. It wasn’t in any way a pleasant expression.
“Some do. What of it?” I said, taking a good grip on my spurtle and staring him down. He was tall and thin, narrow-faced and dark, dressed in the uniform of a Continental. Why had he not gone to his regimental surgeon, in preference to a witch? I wondered. Did he want a love philter? He scarcely seemed the type.
He laughed a little, and bowed.
“I wished only to be sure I had come to the right place, madam,” he said. “I intended no offense.”
“None taken.” He was not doing anything noticeably threatening, other than perhaps standing too close to me, but I didn’t like him. And my heart was beating faster than it ought.
“You evidently know my name,” I said, striving for coolness. “What’s yours, then?”
He smiled again, looking me over with a careful air that struck me as one inch short of insolence—and a short inch, at that.
“My name doesn’t matter. Your husband is James Fraser?”
I had a sudden strong urge to dot him one with the spurtle but didn’t; it might annoy him but wouldn’t get rid of him. I didn’t want to admit to Jamie’s name and didn’t bother asking myself why not. I simply said, “Excuse me,” and, taking the camp kettle off the fire, set it on the ground and walked off.
He hadn’t expected that and didn’t follow me at once. I walked away fast, whisked round behind a small tent belonging to the New Hampshire militia and into a group of people gathered round another fire—militiamen, some with their wives. One or two looked surprised by my abrupt appearance, but all of them knew me and cordially made room, nodding and murmuring greetings.
I looked back from this refuge and could see the man, silhouetted by the sinking sun, standing by my own abandoned fire, the evening wind lifting wisps of his hair. It was no doubt my imagination that made me think he looked sinister.
“Who’s that, Auntie? One of your rejected suitors?” Young Ian spoke by my ear, a grin in his voice.
“Certainly rejected,” I said, keeping an eye on the man. I’d thought he might follow me, but he remained where he was, face turned in my direction. His face was a black oval, but I knew he was staring at me. “Where’s your uncle, do you know?”
“Oh, aye. He and Cousin Hamish are takin’ Colonel Martin’s money at loo, over there.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the Vermont militia encampment, where Colonel Martin’s tent rose, recognizable by a large tear in the top, which had been patched with a piece of yellow calico.
“Is Hamish good at cards?” I asked curiously, glancing toward the tent.
“No, but Uncle Jamie is, and he kens when Hamish will do the wrong thing, which is almost as good as him doing the right thing, aye?”
“I’ll take your word for it. Do you know who that man is? The one standing by my fire?”
Ian squinted against the low sun, then suddenly frowned.
“No, but he’s just spat in your soup.”
“He what?!” I spun on my heel, in time to see the anonymous gentleman stalk away, back stiff. “Why, that bloody filthy arsehole!”
Ian cleared his throat and nudged me, indicating one of the militia wives, who was viewing me with considerable disapproval. I cleared my own throat, swallowed my further remarks on the subject, and gave her what I hoped was an apologetic smile. We were, after all, probably going to be obliged to beg her hospitality, if we were to get any supper now.
When I looked back at our own fire, the man was gone.
“Shall I tell ye something, Auntie?” Ian said, frowning thoughtfully at the empty shadows lengthening beneath the trees. “He’ll be back.”
JAMIE AND HAMISH did not return for supper, leading me to suppose that the loo must be going well for them. Things were going reasonably well for me, too; Mrs. Kebbits, the militia wife, did feed Ian and myself, and very hospitably, with fresh corn dodgers and rabbit stew with onions. Best of all, my sinister visitor didn’t return.
Ian had gone off about his own business, Rollo at heel, so I banked the fire and prepared to set off for the hospital tents for evening rounds. Most of the severely injured had died within the first two or three days after the battle; of the rest, those who had wives, friends, or relatives to care for them had been taken off to their own camps. There were three dozen or so left, men on their own, with lingering but not immediately life-threatening injuries or illnesses.
I put on a second pair of stockings, wrapped my thick wool cloak around myself, and thanked God for the cold weather. A chill had struck in late September, setting the woods afire with a glory of red and gold, but also helpfully killing off the insects. The relief of camp life without flies was marvelous in itself—no surprise to me that flies had been one of the Ten Plagues of Egypt. The lice, alas, were still with us, but without flies, fleas, and mosquitoes, the threat of epidemic illness was tremendously decreased.
Still, every time I came near the hospital tent, I found myself sniffing the air, alert for the telltale fecal stench that might portend a sudden irruption of cholera, typhus, or the lesser evils of a salmonella outbreak. Tonight, though, I smelled nothing beyond the usual cesspit smell of the latrines, overlaid by the funk of unwashed bodies, filthy linens, and a lingering tang of old blood. Reassuringly familiar.
Three orderlies were playing cards under a canvas lean-to next to the biggest tent, their game lit by a rush dip whose flame rose and flickered in the evening wind. Their shadows swelled and shrank on the pale canvas, and I caught the sound of their laughter as I passed. That meant none of the regimental surgeons was about; just as well.
Most of them were simply grateful for whatever help was offered and thus left me to do what I would. There were always one or two who’d stand on their dignity and insist on their authority, though. Usually no more than a nuisance, but very dangerous in case of emergency.
No emergencies tonight, thank God. There were a number of tin candlesticks and stubs of varying lengths in a bowl outside the tent; I lit a candle from the fire and, ducking inside, made my way through the two large tents, checking vital signs, chatting with the men who were awake, and evaluating their condition.
Nothing very bad, but I had some concern for Corporal Jebediah Shoreditch, who had suffered three separate bayonet wounds during the storming of the great redoubt. By some miracle, none had hit any vital organs, and while the corporal was rather uncomfortable—one thrust having plowed upward through his left buttock—he wasn’t displaying any major signs of fever. There was some sign of infection in the buttock wound, though.
“I’m going to irrigate this,” I told him, eyeing my half-full bottle of tincture of gentian. This was nearly the last of it, but with luck, there shouldn’t be great need again until I was in a position to make more. “Wash it out, I mean, to rid you of the pus. How did it happen?” The irrigation wasn’t going to be comfortable; better if he could be distracted a little by telling me the details.
“Wasn’t retreatin’, ma’am, and don’t you think it,” he assured me, taking a good grip on the edge of his pallet as I turned back the blanket and peeled away the crusty bits of a tar-and-turpentine dressing. “One o’ them sneaky Hessian sons of bitches was a-playin’ dead, and when I went to step over him, he come to life and reared up like a copperhead, bay’net in hand.”
“Bayonet in your hand, you mean, Jeb,” joked a friend who lay nearby.
“Nah, that was another un.” Shoreditch shrugged off the joke with a casual glance at his right hand, wrapped in bandages. One of the Hessians had pinned his hand to the ground with a bayonet blade, he told me—whereupon Shoreditch had snatched up his fallen knife with his left hand and swiped it murderously across the Hessian’s calves, felling him, and then had cut the Hessian’s throat—disregarding a third attacker, whose thrust had removed the top part of his left ear.
“Somebody shot that un, Lord be praised, afore he could improve his aim. Speak of hands, Ma’am, is the colonel’s hand a-doing well?” His forehead shone with sweat in the lantern light, and the tendons stood out in his forearms, but he spoke courteously.
“I think it must be,” I said, pressing slowly on the plunger of my irrigating syringe. “He’s been at cards with Colonel Martin since this afternoon—and if his hand was poor, he’d have come back by now.”
Shoreditch and his friend both chuckled at this feeble pun, but he let go a long sigh when I took my hands away from the new dressing, and rested his forehead on the pallet for a moment before rolling painfully onto his good side.
“Thank you kindly, ma’am,” he said. His eyes passed with apparent casualness over the figures that moved to and fro in the darkness. “If you was to see Friend Hunter or Doc Tolliver, might you ask ’em to stop a moment?”
I raised a brow at this, but nodded and poured him a cup of ale; there was plenty now that the supply lines from the south had caught up, and it would do him no harm.
I did the same for his friend, a man from Pennsylvania named Neph Brewster, who was suffering from dysentery, though I added a small handful of Dr. Rawling’s Bowel-Bind mixture before handing over the cup.
“Jeb ain’t meanin’ no disrespect to you, ma’am,” Neph whispered, leaning confidentially close as he took the drink. “It’s only as he can’t shit ’thout help, and that ain’t somethin’ he wants to ask a lady. Mr. Denzell or the Doc don’t come by soon, I’ll help him, though.”
“Shall I fetch one of the orderlies?” I asked, surprised. “They’re just outside.”
“Oh, no, ma’am. Once the sun goes down, they figure as how they’re off duty. Won’t come in, save there’s a fight or the tent catches fire.”
“Hmm,” I said. Plainly attitudes among medical orderlies weren’t that different from one time to another.
“I’ll find one of the surgeons,” I assured him; Mr. Brewster was thin and yellow, and his hand shook so badly that I had to put my own fingers round his to help him drink. I doubted he could stand long enough to manage his own necessities, let alone help Corporal Shoreditch with his. Mr. Brewster was game, though.
“Shittin’ is somethin’ I can claim to have some skill at by now,” he said, grinning at me. He wiped his face with a trembling hand and paused between swallows to breathe heavily. “Ah … might you have a bit o’ cooking grease to hand, ma’am? My arsehole’s raw as a fresh-skinned rabbit. I can put it on myself—unless you’d like to help, o’ course.”
“I’ll mention it to Dr. Hunter,” I replied dryly. “I’m sure he’d be delighted.”
I finished my rounds quickly—most of the men were asleep—and went in search of Denny Hunter, who I found outside his own tent, bundled up against the cold with a muffler round his neck, dreamily listening to a ballad being sung at a nearby campfire.
“Who?” He came out of his trance at my appearance, though it took him a moment to return fully to earth. “Oh, Friend Jebediah, to be sure. Of course—I’ll go at once.”
“Have you got any goose or bear grease?”
Denny settled his spectacles more firmly on his nose, giving me a quizzical look.
“Friend Jebediah is not constipated, is he? I understood his difficulty to be more one of engineering than of physiology.”
I laughed, and explained.
“Oh. Well. I do have some ointment,” he said doubtfully. “But it is mentholated—for the treatment of grippe and pleurisy, thee knows. I fear that will do Friend Brewster’s arse no favors.”
“I fear not,” I agreed. “Why don’t you go and help Mr. Shoreditch, and I’ll find a bit of plain grease and bring it along?”
Grease—any kind of grease—was a staple of cooking, and it took only two inquiries at campfires to procure a cup of it. It was, the donor informed me, rendered possum fat. “Greasier than grease,” the lady assured me. “Tasty, too.” This last characteristic was unlikely to be of much interest to Mr. Brewster—or at least I hoped not—but I thanked her effusively and set off through the darkness, back toward the small hospital tent.
At least I intended to head in that direction. The moon had not yet risen, though, and within a few minutes I found myself on a thickly wooded hillside that I didn’t remember, stumbling over roots and fallen branches.
Muttering to myself, I turned left—surely that was… No, it wasn’t. I stopped, cursing silently. I couldn’t be lost; I was in the middle of a campground containing at least half the Continental army, to say nothing of dozens of militia companies. Exactly where I was on said campground, though… I could see the glimmer of several fires through the trees, but the configuration of them seemed unfamiliar. Disoriented, I turned the other way, straining my eyes in search of the patched roof of Colonel Martin’s large tent, that being the biggest landmark likely to be visible in the darkness.
Something ran over my foot, and I jerked in reflex, slopping liquefied possum fat over my hand. I gritted my teeth and wiped it gingerly on my apron. Possum fat is extremely greasy, its major drawback as a general-purpose lubricant being that it smells like dead possum.
My heart was beating fast from the shock and gave a convulsive leap when an owl came out of the copse to my right, a piece of the night taking sudden silent flight a few feet from my face. Then a branch cracked suddenly, and I heard the movements of several men, murmuring together as they pushed through the undergrowth nearby.
I stood quite still, teeth set in my lower lip, and felt a wave of sudden, irrational terror.
It’s all right! I told myself, furious. It’s only soldiers looking for a shortcut. No threat, no threat at all!
Tell that to the Marines, my nervous system replied, at the sound of a muffled curse, the scuffle and crunch of dry leaves and breaking branches, and the sudden kicked-melon thump of a solid object meeting someone’s head. A cry, the crash of a falling body, and hurried rustling as the thieves rifled their victim’s pockets.
I couldn’t move. I wanted desperately to run but was rooted to the spot; my legs simply wouldn’t respond. It was exactly like a nightmare, with something terrible coming my way but no ability to move.
My mouth was open, and I was exerting all my strength to keep from screaming, while at the same time terrified that I couldn’t scream. My own breathing was loud, echoing inside my head, and all of a sudden I felt my throat harsh with swallowed blood, my breath labored, nostrils blocked. And the weight on me, heavy, amorphous, crushing me into ground rough with stones and fallen pinecones. I felt hot breath in my ear.
There, now. I’m sorry, Martha, but you got to take it. I got to give it to you. Yeah, there… oh, Christ, there… there…
I didn’t remember falling to the ground. I was curled into a ball, face pressed to my knees, shaking with rage and terror. Crashing in the brush nearby, several men passed within a few feet of me, laughing and joking.
And then some small fragment of my sanity spoke up in the recesses of my brain, cool as dammit, dispassionately remarking, Oh, so that’s a flashback. How interesting.
“I’ll show you interesting,” I whispered—or thought I did. I don’t believe I made a sound. I was fully dressed—swaddled against the cold—I could feel the cold on my face, but it made no difference. I was naked, felt cool air on my breasts, my thighs—between my thighs …
I clamped my legs together as tightly as I could and bit my lip as hard as I could. Now I really did taste blood. But the next thing didn’t happen. I remembered it vividly. But it was a memory. It didn’t happen again.
Very slowly, I came back. My lip hurt, and I was drooling blood; I could feel the gouge, a loose flap of flesh in my inner lip, and taste silver and copper, as though my mouth was filled with pennies.
I was breathing as though I’d run a mile, but I could breathe; my nose was clear, my throat soft and open, not bruised, not abraded. I was drenched in sweat, and my muscles hurt from being clenched so hard.
I could hear moaning in the brush to my left. They didn’t kill him, then, I thought dimly. I supposed I should go and see, help him. I didn’t want to, didn’t want to touch a man, see a man, be anywhere near one. It didn’t matter, though; I couldn’t move.
I was no longer frozen in the grip of terror; I knew where I was, that I was safe—safe enough. But I couldn’t move. I stayed crouched, sweating and trembling, and listened.
The man groaned a few times, then rolled slowly over, branches rustling.
“Oh, shit,” he mumbled. He lay still, breathing heavily, then sat up abruptly, exclaiming, “Oh, shit!”—whether at the pain of the movement or the memory of the robbery, I didn’t know. There was mumbled cursing, a sigh, silence… then a shriek of pure terror that hit my spinal cord like a jolt of electricity.
Mad scrambling sounds as the man scuffled to his feet—why, why, what was going on? Crashing and rattling of flight. Terror was infectious; I wanted to run, too, was on my feet, my heart in my mouth, but didn’t know where to go. I couldn’t hear anything above that idiot’s crashing. What was bloody out there?
A faint rustle of dry leaves made me jerk my head round—and saved me by a split second from having a heart attack when Rollo thrust his wet nose into my hand.
“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!” I exclaimed, relieved at the sound of my own voice. The sound of rustling footsteps came toward me through the leaves.
“Oh, there ye are, Auntie.” A tall presence loomed up, no more than a shadow in the dark, and Young Ian touched my arm. “Are ye all right, Auntie?” There was an anxious tone in his voice, bless him.
“Yes,” I said rather faintly, then with more conviction, “Yes. I am. I got turned about, in the dark.”
“Oh.” The tall figure relaxed. “I thought ye must have lost your way. Denny Hunter came and said ye’d gone off to find some grease but ye’d no come back, and he was worrit for ye. So Rollo and I came to find ye. Who was yon fellow that Rollo scared the bejesus out of?”
“I don’t know.” The mention of grease made me look for the cup of possum grease. It was on the ground, empty and clean. From the lapping noises, I deduced that Rollo, having finished off what was in the cup, was now tidily licking the dead leaves on which grease had spilled when I dropped it. Under the circumstances, I didn’t feel I could really complain.
Ian bent and scooped up the cup.
“Come back to the fire, Auntie. I’ll find some more grease.”
I made no demur at this and followed him down off the hillside, paying no real attention to my surroundings. I was too occupied in rearranging my mental state, settling my feelings, and trying to regain some kind of equilibrium.
I’d heard the word “flashback” only briefly, in Boston in the sixties. We didn’t call it flashback earlier, but I’d heard about it. And I’d seen it. Shell shock, they said in the First World War. Battle fatigue, in the Second. It’s what happens when you live through things you shouldn’t have been able to live through and can’t reconcile that knowledge with the fact that you did.
Well, I did, I said defiantly to myself. So you can just get used to it. I wondered for an instant who I was talking to and—quite seriously—whether I was losing my mind.
I certainly remembered what had happened to me during my abduction years before. I’d have strongly preferred not to but knew enough about psychology not to try to suppress the memories. When they showed up, I looked carefully at them, doing deep-breathing exercises, then stuffed them back where they’d come from and went to find Jamie. After a time, I found that only certain details showed up vividly: the cup of a dead ear, purple in the dawn light, looking like an exotic fungus; the brilliant burst of light I’d seen when Harley Boble had broken my nose; the smell of corn on the breath of the teenaged idiot who’d tried to rape me. The soft, heavy weight of the man who did. The rest was a merciful blur.
I had nightmares, too, though Jamie generally woke at once when I began to make whimpering noises and grabbed me hard enough to shatter the dream, holding me against him and stroking my hair, my back, humming to me, half asleep himself, until I sank back into his peace and slept again. This was different.
IAN WENT FROM fire to fire in search of grease and at length obtained a small tin containing half an inch of goose grease mixed with comfrey. It was more than a bit rancid, but Denny Hunter had told him what it was for, and he didn’t suppose the state of it mattered so much.
The state of his aunt concerned him somewhat more. He knew fine well why she sometimes twitched like a wee cricket or moaned in her sleep. He’d seen the state of her when they’d got her back from the bastards, and he knew the sort of things they’d done to her. Blood rose in him and the vessels at his temples swelled at memory of the fight when they’d taken her back.
She hadn’t wished to take her own revenge, when they’d rescued her; he thought perhaps that had been a mistake, though he understood the part about her being a healer and sworn not to kill. The thing was, some men needed killing. The Church didn’t admit that, save it was war. The Mohawk understood it fine. So did Uncle Jamie.
And the Quakers…
He groaned.
Out of the frying pan, into the fire. The instant he’d got the grease, his steps had turned, not toward the hospital tent where Denny almost surely was—but toward the Hunters’ tent. He could pretend he was going to the hospital tent; the two were near enough together. But he’d never seen any point in lying to himself.
Not for the first time, he missed Brianna. He could say anything to her, and she to him—more, he thought, than she could sometimes say to Roger Mac.
Mechanically, he crossed himself, muttering, “Gum biodh iad sabhailte, a Dhìa.” That they might be safe, O God.
For that matter, he wondered what Roger Mac might have counseled were he here. He was a quiet man, and a godly one, if a Presbyterian. But he’d been on that night’s ride and joined in the work, and not a word said about it after.
Ian spared a moment’s contemplation of Roger Mac’s future congregation and what they’d think of that picture of their minister, but shook his head and went on. All these wonderings were only means to keep him from thinking what he’d say when he saw her, and that was pointless. He wanted only to say one thing to her, and that was the one thing he couldn’t say, ever.
The tent flap was closed, but there was a candle burning within. He coughed politely outside, and Rollo, seeing where they were, wagged his tail and uttered a cordial woof !
The flap was thrust back at once, and Rachel stood there, mending in one hand, squinting into the dark but already smiling; she’d heard the dog. She’d taken off her cap, and her hair was messed, coming down from its pins.
“Rollo!” she said, bending down to scratch his ears. “And I see thee’ve brought thy friend along, too.”
Ian smiled, lifting the little tin.
“I brought some grease. My aunt said your brother needed it for his arsehole.” An instant too late, he recollected himself. “I mean—for an arsehole.” Mortification flamed up his chest, but he was speaking to perhaps the only woman in camp who might take arseholes as a common topic of conversation. Well, the only one save his auntie, he amended. Or the whores, maybe.
“Oh, he’ll be pleased; I thank thee.”
She reached to take the tin from him, and her fingers brushed his. The tin box was smeared with the grease and slippery; it fell and both of them bent to retrieve it. She straightened first; her hair brushed his cheek, warm and smelling of her.
Without even thinking, he put both hands on her face and bent to her. Saw the flash and darkening of her eyes, and had one heartbeat, two, of perfect warm happiness, as his lips rested on hers, as his heart rested in her hands.
Then one of those hands cracked against his cheek, and he staggered back like a drunkard startled out of sleep.
“What does thee do?” she whispered. Her eyes wide as saucers, she had backed away, was pressed against the wall of the tent as though to fall through it. “Thee must not!”
He couldn’t find the words to say. His languages boiled in his mind like stew, and he was mute. The first word to surface through the moil in his mind was the Gàidhlig, though.
“Mo chridhe,” he said, and breathed for the first time since he’d touched her. Mohawk came next, deep and visceral. I need you. And tagging belatedly, English, the one best suited to apology. “I—I’m sorry.”
She nodded, jerky as a puppet.
“Yes. I—yes.”
He should leave; she was afraid. He knew that. But he knew something else, too. It wasn’t him she was afraid of. Slowly, slowly, he put out a hand to her, the fingers moving without his will, slowly, as though to guddle a trout.
And by an expected miracle, but miracle nonetheless, her hand stole out toward his, trembling. He touched the tips of her fingers, found them cold. His own were warm, he would warm her…. In his mind, he felt the chill of her flesh against his own, noted the nipples hard against the cloth of her dress and felt the small round weight of her breasts, cold in his hands, the press of her thighs, chill and hard against his heat.
He was gripping her hand, drawing her back. And she was coming, boneless, helpless, drawn to his heat.
“Thee must not,” she whispered, barely audible. “We must not.”
It came to him dimly that of course he could not simply draw her to him, sink to the earth, push her garments out of the way, and have her, though every fiber of his being demanded that he do just that. Some faint memory of civilization asserted itself, though, and he grabbed for it. At the same time, with a terrible reluctance, he released her hand.
“No, of course,” he said, in perfect English. “Of course we mustn’t.”
“I—thee—” She swallowed and ran the back of her hand across her lips. Not as though to wipe away his kiss, but in astonishment, he thought. “Does thee know—” She stopped dead, helpless, and stared at him.
“I’m not worried about whether ye love me,” he said, and knew he spoke the truth. “Not now. I’m worried about whether ye might die because ye do.”
“Thee has a cheek! I didn’t say I loved thee.”
He looked at her then, and something moved in his chest. It might have been laughter. It might not.
“A great deal better ye don’t,” he said softly. “I’m no a fool, and neither are you.”
She made an impulsive gesture toward him, and he drew back, just a hair.
“I think ye’d best not touch me, lass,” he said, still staring intently into her eyes, the color of cress under rushing water. “Because if ye do, I’ll take ye, here and now. And then it’s too late for us both, isn’t it?”
Her hand hung in the air, and while he could see her willing it, she could not draw it back.
He turned from her then and went out into the night, his skin so hot that the night air turned to steam as it touched him.
RACHEL STOOD stock-still for a moment, listening to the pounding of her heart. Another regular sound began to intrude, a soft lapping noise, and she looked down, blinking, to see that Rollo had tidily polished off the last of the goose grease from the tin she had dropped and was now licking the empty tin.
“Oh, Lord,” she said, and put a hand over her mouth, afraid that if she laughed, it would erupt into hysterics. The dog looked up at her, his eyes yellow in the candlelight. He licked his lips, long tail waving gently.
“What am I to do?” she asked him. “Well enough for thee; thee can chase about after him all day, and share his bed at night, and not a word said.”
She sat down on the stool, her knees feeling weak, and took a grip of the thick fur that ruffed the dog’s neck.
“What does he mean?” she asked him. “ ‘I’m worried about whether ye might die because ye do?’ Does he think me one of those fools who pines and swoons and looks pale for love, like Abigail Miller? Not that she’d think of actually dying for anyone’s sake, let alone her poor husband’s.” She looked down at the dog and shook his ruff. “And what does he mean, kissing that chit—forgive my lack of charity, Lord, but there’s no good to be done by ignoring the truth—and not three hours later kissing me? Tell me that! What does he mean by it?”
