Outlander - Diana Gabaldon [230]
“Next one will do it!” Alec was almost dancing in ecstasy, his arthritic form capering up and down in the hay. “Come on, Losgann. Come on, my sweet wee froggie!”
As though in answer, there was a convulsive grunt from the mare. Her hindquarters flexed sharply and the foal slid smoothly onto the clean hay in a slither of knobbly legs and big ears.
I sat back on the hay, grinning idiotically. I was covered with soap and slime and blood, exhausted and aching, and smelt strongly of the less pleasant aspects of horse. I was euphoric.
I sat watching as Willy and the one-handed Roderick tended the new arrival, wiping him down with wisps of straw. And cheered with the rest when Losgann turned and licked him, butting him gently and nosing him to stand at last on his huge, wobbly feet.
“A damn good job, lassie! Damn good!” Alec was exuberant, pumping my unslimed hand in congratulation. Suddenly realizing that I was swaying on my perch, and much less than presentable, he turned and barked at one of the lads to bring some water. Then he circled behind me and set his horny old hands on my shoulders. With an amazingly deft and gentle touch, he pressed and stroked, easing the strain in my shoulders, relaxing the knots in my neck.
“There, lassie,” he said at last. “Hard work, no?” He smiled down at me, then beamed adoringly at the new colt.
“Bonny laddie,” he crooned. “Who’s a sweet lad, then?”
Jamie helped me to clean up and change. My fingers were too stiff to manage the buttons of my bodice, and I knew my entire arm would be blue with bruising by morning, but I felt thoroughly peaceful and contented.
* * *
The rain seemed to have lasted forever, so that when a day finally dawned bright and fair, I squinted in the daylight like a newly emerged mole.
“Your skin is so fine I can see the blood moving beneath it,” Jamie said, tracing the path of a sunbeam across my bare stomach. “I could follow the veins from your hand to your heart.” He drew his finger gently up my wrist to the bend of the elbow, up the inner side of my upper arm, and across the slope below my collarbone.
“That’s the subclavian vein,” I remarked, looking down my nose at the path of his tracking finger.
“Is it? Oh, aye, because it’s below your clavicle. Tell me some more.” The finger moved slowly downward. “I like to hear the Latin names for things; I never dreamed it would be so pleasant to make love to a physician.”
“That,” I said primly, “is an areola, and you know it, because I told you last week.”
“So ye did,” he murmured. “And there’s another one, fancy that.” The bright head dipped to let his tongue replace the finger, then traveled lower.
“Umbilicus,” I said with a short gasp.
“Um,” he said, muffled lips stretching in a smile against my transparent skin. “And what’s this, then?”
“You tell me,” I said, clutching his head. But he was incapable of speech.
Later I lounged in my surgery chair, basking dreamily in memories of awaking in a bed of sunbeams, sheets tumbled in blinding shoals of white like the sands of a beach. One hand rested on my breast, and I toyed idly with the nipple, enjoying the feel of it rising against my palm beneath the thin calico of my bodice.
“Enjoying yourself?”
The sarcastic voice from the door brought me upright so quickly that I bumped my head on a shelf.
“Oh,” I said, rather grumpily. “Geilie. Who else? What are you doing here?”
She glided into the surgery, moving as though on wheels. I knew she had feet; I’d seen them. What I couldn’t figure out was where she put them when she walked.
“I came to bring Mrs. Fitz some saffron from Spain; she was wanting it against the Duke’s coming.”
“More spices?” I said, beginning to recover my good humor. “If the man eats half the things she’s fixing for him, they’ll need to roll him home.”
“They could do that now. He’s a wee round ball of a fellow, I’ve heard.” Dismissing the Duke and his physique, she asked whether I’d like to join her for an expedition to the nearby foothills.
“I’m needing a bit of moss,” she explained.