Outlander aka Cross Stitch - Gabaldon Diana (библиотека электронных книг txt) 📗

“In the loch,” he answered, hanging the damp towel neatly over the windowsill. “Someone,” he said grimly, “left the stall door ajar, and the stable door as well, and Cobhar had a wee swim in the twilight.”

“Oh, so that’s why you weren’t at supper. But horses don’t like to swim, do they?” I asked.

He shook his head, running his fingers through his hair to dry it.

“No, they don’t. But they’re just like folk, ye ken; all different. And Cobhar is fond of the young water plants. He was down nibbling by the water’s edge when a pack of dogs from the village came along and chased him into the loch. I had to run them off and then go in after him. Wait ’til I get my hands on wee Hamish,” he said, with grim intent. “I’ll teach him to leave gates ajar.”

“Are you going to tell Colum about it?” I asked, feeling a qualm of sympathy for the culprit.

Jamie shook his head, groping in his sporran. He drew out a roll and a chunk of cheese, apparently filched from the kitchens on his way up to the chamber.

“No,” he said. “Colum’s fair strict wi’ the lad. If he heard he’d been so careless, he’d not let him ride for a month – not that he could, after the thrashing he’d get. Lord, I’m starving.” He bit ferociously into the roll, scattering crumbs.

“Don’t get into bed with that,” I said, sliding under the quilts myself. “What are you planning to do to Hamish, then?”

He swallowed the remainder of the roll and smiled at me. “Dinna worry. I’m going to row him out on the loch just before supper tomorrow and toss him in. By the time he makes it to shore and dries off, supper will be over.” He finished the cheese in three bites and unashamedly licked his fingers. “Let him go to bed wet and hungry and see how he likes it,” he concluded darkly.

He peered hopefully in the drawer of the desk where I sometimes kept apples or other small bits of food. There was nothing there tonight, though, and he shut the drawer with a sigh.

“I suppose I’ll live ’til breakfast,” he said philosophically. He stripped rapidly and crawled in next to me, shivering. Though his extremities were chilled from his swim in the icy loch, his body was still blissfully warm.

“Mm, you’re nice to croodle wi’,” he murmured, doing what I assumed was croodling. “You smell different; been digging plants today?”

“No,” I said, surprised. “I thought it was you – the smell, I mean.” It was a tangy, herbal smell, not unpleasant, but unfamiliar.

“I smell like fish,” he observed, sniffing the back of his hand. “And wet horse. No,” he leaned closer, inhaling. “No, it isna you, either. But it’s close by.”

He slid out of bed and turned back the quilts, searching. We found it under my pillow.

“What on earth…?” I picked it up, and promptly dropped it. “Ouch! It has thorns!”

“It was a small bundle of plants, plucked up roughly by the roots, and bound together with a bit of black thread. The plants were wilted, but a pungent smell still rose from the drooping leaves. There was one flower in the bouquet, a crushed primrose, whose thorny stem had pricked my thumb.

I sucked the offended digit, turning the bundle over more cautiously with my other hand. Jamie stood still, staring down at it for a moment. Then he suddenly picked it up, and crossing to the open window, flung it out into the light. Returning to the bed, he energetically brushed the crumbs of earth from the plants’ roots into the palm of his hand and threw them out after the bundle. He closed the window with a slam and came back, dusting his palms.

“It’s gone,” he said, unnecessarily. He climbed back into bed. “Come back to bed, Sassenach.”

“What was it?” I asked, climbing in beside him.

“A joke, reckon,” he said. “A nasty one, but only a joke.” He raised himself on one elbow and blew out the candle. “Come here, mo duinne,” he said. “I’m cold.”

Despite the unsettling ill-wish, I slept well, secure in the dual protection of a bolted door and Jamie’s arms. Toward dawn, I dreamed of grassy meadows filled with butterflies. Yellow, brown, white, and orange, they swirled around me like autumn leaves, lighting on my head and shoulders, sliding down my body like rain, the tiny feet tickling on my skin and the velvet wings beating like faint echoes of my own heart.

I floated gently to the surface of reality, and found that the butterfly feet against my stomach were the flaming tendrils of Jamie’s soft red thatch, and the butterfly trapped between my thighs was his tongue.

“Mmm,” I said, sometime later. “Well, that’s all very well for me, but what about you?”

“About three-quarters of a minute, if you keep on in that fashion,” he said, putting my hand away with a grin. “But I’d rather take my time over it – I’m a slow and canny man by nature, d’ye see. Might I ask the favor of your company for this evening, Mistress?”

“You might,” I said. I put my arms behind my head, and fixed him with a half-lidded look of challenge. “If you mean to tell me that you’re so decrepit you can’t manage more than once in a day anymore.”

He regarded me narrowly from his seat on the edge of the bed. There was a sudden flash of white as he lunged, and I found myself pressed deep into the featherbed.

“Aye, well,” he said into the tangles of my hair, “you’ll no say I didna warn ye.”

Two and a half minutes later, he groaned and opened his eyes. He scrubbed his face and head vigorously with both hands, making the shorter ends stick up like quills. Then, with a muffled Gaelic oath, he slid reluctantly out from under the blankets and began to dress, shivering in the chilly morning air.

“I don’t suppose,” I asked hopefully, “that you could tell Alec you’re sick, and come back to bed?”

He laughed and bent to kiss me before groping under the bed for his stockings. “Would that I could, Sassenach. I doubt much short of pox, plague, or grievous bodily harm would answer as an excuse, though. If I weren’t bleeding, old Alec would be up here in a trice, dragging me off my deathbed to help wi’ the worming.”

I eyed his graceful long calves as he pulled a stocking up neatly and folded the top. “ ‘Grievous bodily harm,’ eh? I might manage something along those lines,” I said darkly.

He grunted as he reached across for the other stocking. “Well, watch where ye toss your elf-darts, Sassenach.” He tried a lewd wink, but wound up squinting at me instead. “Aim too high, and I’ll be no good to you, either.”

I arched one eyebrow and snuggled back under the quilts. “Not to worry. Nothing above the knee, I promise.”

He patted one of my rounder bulges and left for the stables, singing rather loudly the air from “Up Among the Heather.” The refrain floated back from the stairwell:

“Sittin’ wi’ a wee girl, holdin’ on my knee –

When a bumblebee stung me, weel above the kneeeee –

Up among the heather, at the head o’ Bendikee!”

He was right, I decided; he didn’t have any ear for music.

I relapsed temporarily into a state of satisfied somnolence, but roused myself shortly to go down for breakfast. Most of the castle inhabitants had eaten and gone to their work already; those still in the hall greeted me pleasantly enough. There were no sidelong looks, no expressions of veiled hostility, of someone wondering how well their nasty little trick had worked. But I watched the faces, nonetheless.

The morning was spent alone in the garden and fields with my basket and digging stick. I was running short of some of the most popular herbs. Generally the village people went to Geillis Duncan for help, but there had been several patients from the village turning up of late in my dispensary, and the traffic in nostrums had been heavy. Maybe her husband’s illness was keeping her too busy to care for her regular customers.