A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [40]
“Oh, I doubt that. Our Donald likely sleeps with a blade—but he kens well enough which side of his bread’s buttered. Ye wouldna be likely to give him breakfast, and he’d skewered your cat.”
I glanced toward the door. The mattress-heaving and muttered curses across the hall had died down; the Major, with the practiced ease of a professional soldier, was already well on his way back to dreamland.
“I suppose not. You were right about his worming his way into a position with the new governor. Which is the real reason for his desire for your political advancement, I imagine?”
Jamie nodded, but had plainly lost interest in discussing MacDonald’s machinations.
“I was right, no? That means ye owe me a forfeit, Sassenach.”
He eyed me with an air of dawning speculation, which I hoped had not been too much inspired by his memories of the wormlike Parisians.
“Oh?” I regarded him warily. “And, um, what precisely . . . ?”
“Well, I havena quite worked out all the details as yet, but I think ye should maybe lie on the bed, to begin with.”
That sounded like a reasonable start to the matter. I piled up the pillows at the head of the bed—pausing to remove the dirk—then began to climb onto it. I paused again, though, and instead bent to wind the bedkey, tightening the ropes that supported the mattress until the bedstead groaned and the ropes gave a creaking twang.
“Verra canny, Sassenach,” Jamie said behind me, sounding amused.
“Experience,” I informed him, clambering over the newly tautened bed on hands and knees. “I’ve waked up often enough after a night with you, with the mattress folded up round my ears and my arse no more than an inch off the ground.”
“Oh, I expect your arse will end up somewhat higher than that,” he assured me.
“Oh, you’re going to let me be on top?” I had mixed feelings about that. I was desperately tired, and while I enjoyed riding Jamie, all right, I’d been riding a beastly horse for more than ten hours, and the thigh muscles required for both activities were trembling spasmodically.
“Perhaps later,” he said, eyes narrowed in thought. “Lie back, Sassenach, and ruckle up your shift. Then open your legs for me, there’s a good lass no, a bit wider, aye?” He began—with deliberate slowness—to remove his shirt.
I sighed and shifted my buttocks a little, looking for a position that wouldn’t give me cramp if I had to hold it for long.
“If you have in mind what I think you have in mind, you’ll regret it. I haven’t even bathed properly,” I said reproachfully. “I’m desperately filthy and I smell like a horse.”
Naked, he raised one arm and sniffed appraisingly.
“Oh? Well, so do I. That’s no matter; I’m fond of horses.” He’d abandoned any pretense of delay, but paused to survey his arrangements, looking me over with approval.
“Aye, verra good. Now then, if ye’ll just put your hands above your head and seize the bedstead—”
“You wouldn’t!” I said, and then lowered my voice, with an involuntary glance toward the door. “Not with MacDonald just across the hall!”
“Oh, I would,” he assured me, “and the devil wi’ MacDonald and a dozen more like him.” He paused, though, studying me thoughtfully, and after a moment, sighed and shook his head.
“No,” he said quietly. “Not tonight. Ye’re still thinking of that poor Dutch bastard and his family, no?”
“Yes. Aren’t you?”
He sat down beside me on the bed with a sigh.
“I’ve been trying verra hard not to,” he said frankly. “But the new dead dinna lie easy in their graves, do they?”
I laid a hand on his arm, relieved that he felt the same. The night air seemed restless with the passage of spirits, and I had felt the dragging melancholy of that desolate garden, that row of graves, all through the events and alarums of the evening.
It was a night to be securely locked inside, with a good fire on the hearth, and people nearby. The house stirred, shutters creaking in the wind.
“I do want ye, Claire,” Jamie said softly. “I need . . . if ye will?”
And had they spent the night before their deaths like this, I wondered? Peaceful