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

Jamie surged off the ledge and into the shallows of the side pool, splashing across to retrieve his prize before the stunned fish could succeed in flapping its way back to the sanctuary of the water. Seizing it by the tail, he slapped it expertly against a rock, killing it at once, then waded back to show it to me.

“A good size,” he said proudly, holding out a solid fourteen-incher. “Do nicely for breakfast.” He grinned up at me, wet to the thighs, hair hanging in his face, shirt splotched with water and dead leaves. “I told you I’d not let ye go hungry.”

He wrapped the trout in layers of burdock leaves and cool mud. Then he rinsed his fingers in the cold water of the burn, and clambering up onto the rock, handed me the neatly wrapped parcel.

“An odd wedding present, may be,” he nodded at the trout, “but not without precedent, as Ned Gowan might say.”

“There are precedents for giving a new wife a fish?” I asked, entertained.

He stripped off his stockings to dry and laid them on the rock to lie in the sun. His long bare toes wiggled in enjoyment of the warmth.

“It’s an old love song, from the Isles. D’ye want to hear it?”

“Yes, of course. Er, in English, if you can,” I added.

“Oh, aye. I’ve no voice for music, but I’ll give you the words.” And fingering the hair back out of his eyes, he recited,

“Thou daughter of the King of bright-lit mansions

On the night that our wedding is on us,

If living man I be in Duntulm,

I will go bounding to thee with gifts.

Thou wilt get a hundred badgers, dwellers in banks,

A hundred brown otters, natives of streams,

A hundred silver trout, rising from their pools…”

And on through a remarkable list of the flora and fauna of the Isles. I had time, watching him declaim, to reflect on the oddity of sitting on a rock in a Scottish pool, listening to Gaelic love songs, with a large dead fish in my lap. And the greater oddity that I was enjoying myself very much indeed.

When he finished, I applauded, keeping hold of the trout by gripping it between my knees.

“Oh, I like that one! Especially the ‘I will go bounding to thee with gifts.’ He sounds a most enthusiastic lover.”

Eyes closed against the sun, Jamie laughed. “I suppose I could add a line for myself – ‘I will leap into pools for thy sake.’ ”

We both laughed, and then were quiet for a time, basking in the warm sun of the early summer. It was very peaceful there, with no sound but the rushing of water beyond our still pool. Jamie’s breathing had calmed. I was very conscious of the slow rise and fall of his breast, and the slow beat of the pulse in his neck. He had a small triangular scar, just there at the base of his throat.

I could feel the shyness and constraint beginning to creep back. I reached out a hand and grasped his tightly, hoping that the touch would reestablish the ease between us as it had before. He slid an arm about my shoulders, but it only made me aware of the hard lines of his body beneath the thin shirt. I pulled away, under the pretext of plucking a bunch of pink-flowered storksbill that grew from a crack in the rock.

“Good for headache,” I explained, tucking them into my belt.

“It troubles you,” he said, tilting his head to look at me intently. “Not headache, I don’t mean. Frank. You’re thinking of him, and so it troubles you when I touch you, because ye canna hold us both in your mind. Is that it?”

“You’re very perceptive,” I said, surprised. He smiled, but made no move to touch me again.

“No great task to puzzle that out, lass. I knew when we married that you couldna help but have him often in your mind, did ye want to or no.”

I didn’t, at the moment, but he was right; I couldn’t help it.

“Am I much like him?” he asked suddenly.

“No.”

In fact, it would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast. Frank was slender, lithe and dark, where Jamie was large, powerful and fair as a ruddy sunbeam. While both men had the compact grace of athletes, Frank’s was the build of a tennis player, Jamie’s the body of a warrior, shaped – and battered – by the abrasion of sheer physical adversity. Frank stood a scant four inches above my own five foot six. Face-to-face with Jamie, my nose fitted comfortably into the small hollow in the center of his chest, and his chin could rest easily on top of my head.

Nor was the physical the only dimension where the two men varied. There was nearly fifteen years’ difference in their ages, for one thing, which likely accounted for some of the difference between Frank’s urbane reserve and Jamie’s frank openness. As a lover, Frank was polished, sophisticated, considerate, and skilled. Lacking experience or the pretense of it, Jamie simply gave me all of himself, without reservation. And the depth of my response to that unsettled me completely.

Jamie was watching my struggle, not without sympathy.

“Well, then, it would seem I have two choices in the matter,” he said. “I can let you brood about it, or…”

He leaned down and gently fitted his mouth over mine. I had kissed my share of men, particularly during the war years, when flirtation and instant romance were the light-minded companions of death and uncertainty. Jamie, though, was something different. His extreme gentleness was in no way tentative; rather it was a promise of power known and held in leash; a challenge and a provocation the more remarkable for its lack of demand. I am yours, it said. And if you will have me, then…

I would, and my mouth opened beneath his, wholeheartedly accepting both promise and challenge without consulting me. After a long moment, he lifted his head and smiled down at me.

“Or, I can try to distract ye from your thoughts,” he finished.

He pressed my head against his shoulder, stroking my hair and smoothing the leaping curls around my ears.

“I do not know if it will help,” he said, quietly, “but I will tell you this: it is a gift and a wonder to me, to know that I can please you – that your body can rouse to mine. I hadna thought of such a thing – beforehand.”

I drew a long breath before replying. “Yes,” I said. “It helps. I think.”

We were silent again for what seemed a long time. At last Jamie drew away and looked down at me, smiling.

“I told ye I’ve neither money nor property, Sassenach?”

I nodded, wondering what he intended.

“I should have warned ye before that we’d likely end up sleeping in haystacks, wi’ naught but heather ale and drammach for food.”

“I don’t mind,” I said.

He nodded toward an opening in the trees, not taking his eyes off me.

“I havena got a haystack about me, but there’s a fair patch of fresh bracken yonder. If ye’d care to practice, just to get the way of it…?”

A little later, I stroked his back, damp with exertion and the juice of crushed ferns.

“If you say ‘thank you’ once more, I will slap you,” I said.

Instead, I was answered with a gentle snore. An overhanging fern brushed his cheek, and an inquisitive ant crawled across his hand, making the long fingers twitch in his sleep.

I brushed it away and leaned back on one elbow, watching him. His lashes were long, seen thus with his eyes closed, and thick. Oddly colored, though; dark auburn at the tips, they were very light, almost blond at the roots.

The firm line of his mouth had relaxed in sleep. While it kept a faintly humorous curl at the corner, his lower lip now eased into a fuller curve that seemed both sensual and innocent.

“Damn,” I said softly to myself.

I had been fighting it for some time. Even before this ridiculous marriage, I had been more than conscious of his attraction. It had happened before, as it doubtless happens to almost everyone. A sudden sensitivity to the presence, the appearance, of a particular man – or woman, I suppose. The urge to follow him with my eyes, to arrange for small “inadvertent” meetings, to watch him unawares as he went about his work, an exquisite sensitivity to the small details of his body – the shoulder-blades beneath the cloth of his shirt, the lumpy bones of his wrists, the soft place underneath his jaw, where the first prickles of his beard begin to show.