A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [37]
Hanging on for dear life and thrilled by the ride, she arched her back and jerked, shuddering against the heat of him, the night wind’s touch cool and electric on thighs and buttocks, bared to the dark. Trembling and moaning, she melted back against the hay, her legs still locked around his hips. Boneless and nerveless, she let her head roll to the side, and slowly, languidly, opened her eyes.
Someone was there; she saw movement in the dark, and froze. It was Fergus, come to fetch his son. She heard the murmur of his voice, speaking French to Germain, and the quiet rustle of his footsteps in the hay, moving off.
She lay still, heart pounding, legs still locked in place. Roger, meanwhile, had reached his own quietus. Head hanging so that his long hair brushed her face like cobwebs in the dark, he murmured, “Love you . . . God, I love you,” and lowered himself, slowly and gently. Whereupon he breathed, “Thank you,” in her ear and lapsed into warm half-consciousness on top of her, breathing heavily.
“Oh,” she said, looking up to the peaceful stars. “Don’t mention it.” She unlocked her stiff legs, and with some difficulty, got herself and Roger disentangled, more or less covered, and restored to blessed anonymity in their hay-lined nest, Jemmy safely stowed between them.
“Hey,” she said suddenly, and Roger stirred.
“Mm?”
“What sort of monster was Eigger?”
He laughed, and the sound was low and clear.
“Oh, Eigger was a giant sponge cake. With chocolate icing. He’d fall on the other monsters, and smother them wi’ sweetness.” He laughed again, hiccuped, and subsided in the hay.
“Roger?” she said softly, a moment later. There was no answer, and she stretched a hand across the slumbering body of her son, to rest light on Roger’s arm.
“Sing to me,” she whispered, though she knew that he already was asleep.
7
JAMES FRASER, INDIAN AGENT
JAMES FRASER, Indian Agent,” I said, closing one eye as though reading it off a screen. “It sounds like a Wild West television show.”
Jamie paused in the act of pulling off his stockings, and eyed me warily.
“It does? Is that good?”
“Insofar as the hero of a television show never dies, yes.”
“In that case, I’m in favor of it,” he said, examining the stocking he’d just pulled off. He sniffed it suspiciously, rubbed a thumb over a thin patch on the heel, shook his head, and tossed it into the laundry basket. “Must I sing?”
“Si—oh,” I said, recollecting that the last time I had tried to explain television to him, my descriptions had focused largely on The Ed Sullivan Show. “No, I don’t think so. Nor yet swing from a trapeze.”
“Well, that’s a comfort. I’m none sae young as I was, ken.” He stood up and stretched himself, groaning. The house had been built with eight-foot ceilings, to accommodate him, but his fists brushed the pine beams, even so. “Christ, but it’s been a long day!”
“Well, it’s nearly over,” I said, sniffing in turn at the bodice of the gown I’d just shed. It smelled strongly, though not disagreeably, of horse and woodsmoke. Air it a bit, I decided, and see whether it could go another little while without washing. “I couldn’t have swung on a trapeze even when I was young.”
“I’d pay money to see ye try,” he said, grinning.
“What is an Indian agent?” I inquired. “MacDonald seemed to think he was doing you a signal favor by suggesting you for the job.”
He shrugged, unbuckling his kilt.
“Nay doubt he thinks he is.” He shook the garment experimentally, and a fine sifting of dust and horsehair bloomed on the floor beneath it. He went to the window, opened the shutters, and, thrusting the kilt outside, shook it harder.
“He would be”—his voice came faintly from the night outside, then more strongly, as he turned round again—“were it not for this war of yours.”
“Of mine?” I said, indignant. “You sound as though you think I’m proposing to start it, single-handed.”
He made a small