Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [108]
“And what’s wrong wi’ the way ye smell?” he said heatedly. “At least ye smelt like a woman, not a damn flower garden. What d’ye think I am, a man or a bumblebee? Would ye wash yourself, Sassenach, so I can get within less than ten feet of ye?”
I picked up a cloth and began sponging my torso. Madame Laserre, Louise’s groomer, had applied scented oil all over my body; I rather hoped it would come off easily. It was disconcerting to have him hovering just outside sniffing range, glaring at me like a wolf circling its prey.
I turned my back to dip the cloth into the bowl, and said offhandedly over my shoulder, “Er, I did my legs, too.”
I stole a quick glance over my shoulder. The original shock was fading into a look of total bewilderment.
“Your legs dinna smell like anything,” he said. “Unless you’ve been walkin’ knee-deep in the cow-byre.”
I turned around and pulled my skirt up to my knees, pointing one toe forward to display the delicate curves of calf and shin.
“But they look so much nicer,” I pointed out. “All nice and smooth; not like Harry the hairy ape.”
He glanced down at his own fuzzy knees, offended.
“An ape, am I?”
“Not you, me!” I said, getting exasperated.
“My legs are any amount hairier than yours ever were!”
“Well, they’re supposed to be; you’re a man!”
He drew in breath as though about to reply, then let it out again, shaking his head and muttering something to himself in Gaelic. He flung himself back into the chair and sat back, watching me through narrowed eyes, every now and then muttering to himself again. I decided not to ask for a translation.
After most of my bath had been accomplished in what might best be described as a charged atmosphere, I decided to attempt conciliation.
“It might have been worse, you know,” I said, sponging the inside of one thigh. “Louise had all her body hair removed.”
That startled him back into English, at least temporarily.
“What, she’s taken the hairs off her honeypot?” he said, horrified into uncharacteristic vulgarity.
“Mm-hm,” I replied, pleased that this vision had at least distracted him from my own distressingly hairless condition. “Every hair. Madame Laserre plucked out the stray ones.”
“Mary, Michael, and Bride!” He closed his eyes tightly, either in avoidance, or the better to contemplate the prospect I had described.
Evidently the latter, for he opened his eyes again and glared at me, demanding, “She’s goin’ about now bare as a wee lassie?”
“She says,” I replied delicately, “that men find it erotic.”
His eyebrows nearly met his hairline, a neat trick for someone with such a classically high brow.
“I do wish you would stop that muttering,” I remarked, hanging the cloth over a chairback to dry. “I can’t understand a word you say.”
“On the whole, Sassenach,” he replied, “that’s as well.”
12
L’HôPITAL DES ANGES
All right,” Jamie said resignedly over breakfast. He pointed a spoon at me in warning. “Go ahead, then. But you’ll take Murtagh as escort, besides the footman; it’s a poor neighborhood near the cathedral.”
“Escort?” I sat up straight, pushing back the bowl of parritch which I had been eyeing with something less than enthusiasm. “Jamie! Do you mean you don’t mind if I visit. L’Hôpital des Anges?”
“I don’t know if I mean that, exactly,” he said, spooning in his own parritch in a businesslike way. “But I expect I’ll mind a lot more if ye don’t. And if ye work at the Hôpital, at least it will keep ye from spending all your time with Louise de Rohan. I suppose there are worse things than associating wi’ beggars and criminals,” he said darkly. “At least I don’t expect you’ll come home from a hospital wi’ your privates plucked bare.”
“I’ll try not,” I assured him.
* * *
I had seen a number of good hospital matrons in my time, and a few of the really excellent ones, who had exalted a job into a vocation. With Mother Hildegarde, the process had been reversed, with impressive results.
Hildegarde de Gascogne was the most suitable person I could imagine to be in charge of