The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [113]
No one living in the same house with a nursing mother was likely to be unaware of her breasts, let alone her husband. They had a life of their own, those breasts. They changed size from hour to hour, for the one thing, swelling from their normal soft globes into great round hard bubbles that gave him the eerie feeling that if he touched one it would burst.
Now and then, one did burst, or at least gave that impression. The ridge of soft flesh would rise like kneaded bread, slowly but surely pushing above the edge of Brianna’s bodice. Then suddenly there would be a big, wet circle on the cloth, appearing magically, as though some invisible person had thrown a snowball at her. Or two snowballs—for what one breast did, its fellow rushed at once to follow suit.
Sometimes the Heavenly Twins were foiled, though; Jemmy drained one side, but inconsiderately fell asleep before performing the same service for the other. This left his mother gritting her teeth, gingerly taking the swollen orb in the palm of her hand, pressing the edge of a pewter cup just under the nipple to catch the spray and dribble as she eased the aching fullness, enough to sleep herself.
She was doing it now; modestly turned away from him, an arisaid gathered round her shoulders against the chill. He could hear the hiss of the milk, a tiny chime against the metal.
He was reluctant to drown the sound, which he found erotic, but nonetheless picked up the guitar, and put his thumb to the strings, his hand on the frets. He didn’t strum or strike chords, but plucked single notes, small voices to echo his own, the thrum of one string ringing through the chanted line.
A love song, to be sure. One of the very old ones, in the Gaelic. Even if she didn’t know all the words, he thought she’d take the sense of it.
“On the night that our wedding is on us,
I will come leaping to thee with gifts,
On the night that our wedding is on us . . .”
He closed his eyes, seeing in memory what the night now hid. Her nipples were the color of ripe plums and the size of ripe cherries, and Roger had a vivid mental picture of how one would feel in his mouth. He had suckled them once, long before—before the coming of Jemmy—but no more.
“You will get a hundred silver salmon . . .
A hundred badger skins . . .”
She never asked him not to, never turned away—and yet he could tell by the faint intake of her breath that, often, she was bracing herself not to flinch when he touched her breasts.
Was it only tenderness? he wondered. Did she not trust him to be gentle?
He shied away from the thought, drowning it in a small cascade of notes, liquid as a waterfall.
It might not be you, whispered the voice, stubbornly refusing to be distracted. Perhaps it was him—something that he did to her.
Fuck. Off, he thought succinctly to the voice, marking each word with a sharp-plucked string. Stephen Bonnet would have no place in their wedding bed. None.
He laid a hand on the strings to silence them briefly, and as she slid the arisaid from her shoulders, began again, this time in English. A special song, too—one for the two of them alone. He didn’t know whether anyone else might hear, but it made no difference if they did. She stood and slid the shift from her shoulders as his fingers touched the quiet opening of the Beatles’ “Yesterday.”
He heard her laugh, once, then sigh, and the linen whispered against her skin as it fell.
She came naked behind him as the soft melancholy yearning of the song filled the dark. Her hand stroked his hair, gathered it tight at the nape of his neck. She swayed, and he felt her press against his back, her breasts soft now, yielding and warm through his shirt, her breath tickling his ear. Her hand rested on his shoulder briefly, then slid down inside his shirt, fingers cool on his chest. He could