Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [152]
“Not really,” I said. My face was hot, and I pressed my cheek against the icy pane of the window, hands clenched on the sill.
“Who looks on a woman with lust in his heart hath committed adultery with her already. Is that how ye see it?”
“Is it how you see it?”
“No,” he said shortly. “I don’t. And what would ye do if I had lain wi’ a whore, Sassenach? Slap my face? Order me out of your chamber? Keep yourself from my bed?”
I turned and looked at him.
“I’d kill you,” I said through my teeth.
Both eyebrows shot up, and his mouth dropped slightly with incredulity.
“Kill me? God, if I found you wi’ another man, I’d kill him.” He paused, and one corner of his mouth quirked wryly.
“Mind ye,” he said, “I’d no be verra pleased wi’ you, either, but still, it’s him I’d kill.”
“Typical man,” I said. “Always missing the point.”
He snorted with a bitter humor.
“Am I, then? So you dinna believe me. Want me to prove it to ye, Sassenach, that I’ve lain wi’ no one in the last few hours?” He stood up, water cascading down the stretches of his long legs. The light from the window highlighted the reddish-gold hairs of his body and the steam rose off his flesh in wisps. He looked like a figure of freshly molten gold. I glanced briefly down.
“Ha,” I said, with the maximum of scorn it was possible to infuse into one syllable.
“Hot water,” he said briefly, stepping out of the tub. “Dinna worry yourself, it won’t take long.”
“That,” I said, with delicate precision, “is what you think.”
His face flushed still more deeply, and his hands curled involuntarily into fists.
“No reasoning wi’ you, is there?” he demanded. “God, I spend the night torn between disgust and agony, bein’ tormented by my companions for being unmanly, then come home to be tormented for being unchaste! Mallaichte bàs!”
Looking wildly about, he spotted his discarded clothing on the floor near the bed and lunged for it.
“Here, then!” he said, scrabbling for his belt. “Here! If lusting is adultery and you’ll kill me for adultery, then ye’d best do it, hadn’t ye!” He came up with his dirk, a ten-inch piece of dark steel, and thrust it at me, haft first. He squared his shoulders, presenting the broad expanse of his chest to me, and glared belligerently.
“Go ahead,” he insisted. “Ye dinna mean to be forsworn, I hope? Being so sensitive to your honor as a wife and all?”
It was a real temptation. My clenched hands quivered at my sides with the longing to take the dagger and plant it firmly between his ribs. Only the knowledge that, all his dramatizing aside, he certainly wouldn’t allow me to stab him, stopped me from trying. I felt sufficiently ridiculous, without humiliating myself further. I whirled away from him in a flurry of silk.
After a moment, I heard the clank of the dirk on the floorboards. I stood without moving, staring out of the window at the back courtyard below. I heard faint rustling sounds behind me, and glanced into the faint reflections of the window. My face showed in the windowpane as a smudged oval in a nimbus of sleep-snarled brown hair. Jamie’s naked figure moved dimly in the glass like someone seen underwater, searching for a towel.
“The towel is on the bottom shelf of the ewer-stand,” I said, turning around.
“Thank you.” He dropped the dirty shirt with which he had begun gingerly dabbing himself and reached for the towel, not looking at me.
He wiped his face, then seemed to make some decision. He lowered the towel and looked directly at me. I could see the emotions struggling for mastery on his face, and felt as though I were still looking into the mirror of the window. Sense triumphed in both of us at once.
“I’m sorry,” we said, in unison. And laughed.
The damp of his skin soaked through the thin silk, but I didn’t care.
Minutes later, he mumbled something into my hair.
“What?”
“Too close,” he repeated, moving back a bit. “It was too damn close, Sassenach, and it scared me.”
I glanced down at the dirk, lying forgotten on the floor.
“Scared? I’ve never seen anyone less scared in my life. You knew damned