The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [185]
“How say ye, Mac Dubh? Heads or tails?”
Jamie wiped his mouth on his sleeve and smiled. Hairy as the rest, he looked a proper Viking, with the fire glinting red, gold, and silver from his sprouting beard and loosened hair.
“Nay bother, lads,” he said. “I’ll sleep warm enough nay matter how I’m laid.” He tilted his head in my direction, and there was a general rumble of laughter, with a spattering of mildly crude remarks in Scots and Gaelic from the Ridge men.
One or two of the new recruits eyed me with a brief, instinctive speculation, quickly abandoned after a glance at Jamie’s height, breadth, and air of genial ferocity. I met one man’s eyes and smiled; he looked startled, but then smiled back, ducking his head in shyness.
How the hell did Jamie do that? One brief, crude joke, and he’d laid public claim to me, removed me from any threat of unwanted advances, and reasserted his position as leader.
“Just like a bloody baboon troop,” I muttered under my breath. “And I’m sleeping with the head baboon!”
“Baboons are the monkeys with no tails?” Fergus asked, turning from an exchange with Ewald about the horses.
“You know quite well they are.” I caught Jamie’s eye, and his mouth curled up on one side. I knew what he was thinking, and he knew I did; the smile widened.
Louis of France kept a private zoo at Versailles, among the inhabitants of which were a small troop of mandrill baboons. One of the most popular Court activities on spring afternoons was to visit the baboon quarters, there to admire both the sexual prowess of the male, and his splendidly multicolored bottom.
One M. de Ruvel had offered—in my hearing—to have his posterior similarly tattooed, if it would result in such a favorable reception by the ladies of the Court. He had, however, been firmly informed by Madame de la Tourelle that his physique was in every way inferior to that of the mandrill, and coloring it was unlikely to improve matters.
The firelight made it difficult to tell, but I was reasonably sure that Jamie’s own rich color owed as much to suppressed amusement as to heat.
“Speakin’ of tails,” he murmured in my ear. “Have ye got those infernal breeks on?”
“Yes.”
“Take them off.”
“What, here?” I gave him a wide-eyed look of mock innocence. “You want me to freeze my arse off?”
His eyes narrowed slightly, with a blue cat-gleam in the depths.
“Oh, it wilna freeze,” he said softly. “I’ll warrant ye that.”
He moved behind me, and the fierce shimmer of the blaze on my flesh was replaced by the cool solidness of his body. No less fierce, though, as I discovered when he put his arms round my waist and drew me back against him.
“Oh, you found it,” I said. “How nice.”
“Found what? Had you lost something?” Roger paused, coming from the horses with a lumpy roll of blankets under one arm, his bodhran under the other.
“Oh, just a pair of auld breeks,” Jamie said blandly. Under cover of my shawl, one hand slid inside the waistband of my skirt. “D’ye mean to give us a song, then?”
“If anyone likes, sure.” Roger smiled, the firelight ruddy on his features. “Actually, I’m meaning to learn one; Evan’s promised to sing me a silkie-song his grannie knew.”
Jamie laughed.
“Oh, I ken that one, I think.”
One of Roger’s eyebrows shot up, and I twisted slightly round, to look up at Jamie in surprise.
“Well, I couldna sing it,” he said mildly, seeing our amazement. “I ken the words, though. Evan sang it often and again, in the prison at Ardsmuir. It’s a bit bawdy,” he added, with that faintly prim tone that Highlanders often adopt, just before telling you something truly shocking.
Roger recognized it, and laughed.
“I’ll maybe write it down, then,” he said. “For the benefit of future generations.”
Jamie’s fingers had been working skillfully away, and at this point, the breeks—which were his, and thus about six sizes too large for me—came loose and dropped silently to the ground. A cold draft whooshed up under my skirt and struck my