Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (55 page)

“Oh. So…if my heart starts twitching, I should brew up a cup of willow-bark tea and it will at least keep my blood from clotting?” She was trying to keep her dubious tone, but I could see that a tiny ray of hope had been kindled. Now it was my job to blow on it and try to encourage it to take hold and burn.

“Yes, exactly. Now, the tea won’t do away with the disturbing symptoms, but there are a few sorts of
ad hoc
things you can try for those.”

“Such as?”

“Well, plunging the face into cold water sometimes works—”

“Or so you’re told? I bet you’ve never seen anybody do that, have you?” She was definitely interested, though.

“In fact, I have. At L’Hôpital des Anges, in Paris.” Plunging various body parts in cold—or sometimes hot—water was a widely prescribed treatment for a lot of different maladies at the
hôpital,
water being both widely available and cheap. And surprisingly, it often worked, at least in the short term.

“Or—if you happen not to be near any cold water—you can try one of the vagal maneuvers.”

That caught her unaware, and she gave me a cat-eyed look.

“If you mean having sex—”

“Not
vaginal
maneuvers,” I said, “though I’d think the fibrillating might be too distracting to want to do that, in any case. I said
vagal
maneuvers—as in, stimulating the vagus nerve. There are a few different ways of doing that, but the simplest—and probably the best—is something called the Valsalva maneuver. That sounds rather grand, but it’s basically just taking a deep breath and holding it, as though you were trying to cure hiccups, then pressing your abdominal muscles down as hard as you can—like trying to force out an uncooperative bowel movement while holding your breath.”

She gave me a long, considering stare, exactly the sort of look Jamie would have given me in receipt of this sort of advice. Deeply suspicious that I was practicing upon him, but inwardly fearful that I wasn’t.

“Well, that should make me very popular at parties,” she said.

NEITHER JAMIE NOR I
had said anything to each other regarding Lord John Grey, sexual jealousy, or general pigheadedness since he had stamped off in the midst of our argument—whether to put a stop to the argument or merely in order to muffle the urge to throttle me, I didn't know.

He'd been perfectly calm and outwardly amiable when he came in for supper, but I bloody knew him. He bloody knew me, too, and we lay down to sleep side by side, wished each other good night and
oidhche mhath,
respectively, turned our backs on each other, and took turns breathing heavily until we fell asleep, me thinking that whichever sage had urged not letting the sun go down on your wrath obviously didn't know any Scots.

I'd meant to find him alone and have it out with him the next day, but what with the roof, Geordie McHugh's smashed thumb, and the worrying news of Brianna's disturbed heartbeat, there hadn't been an opportunity.

Supper was outwardly peaceful; there was no company, no culinary disasters, and no emergencies like one of the children catching fire—which had actually happened to Mandy a few days before, though she had been saved by Jamie noticing her dress sparking, whereupon he dived across the table, tackled her, rolled her on the hearth rug, and then picked her up and stuffed her into the water-filled cauldron, which was half-full of sliced potatoes and carrots, but fortunately not yet boiling. She and Esmeralda had emerged from the ordeal dripping, hysterical, and slightly singed around the edges, but basically sound.

I was feeling slightly singed around the edges myself, and was determined to extinguish the smoldering embers we were presently walking on.

So when we rose from supper, I left the dishes on the table and invited Jamie to come for a stroll with me—ostensibly in search of a night-blooming begonia I'd found. Fanny, who had some idea of what a begonia was, glanced sharply at me, then Jamie, then down at her empty plate with her face studiously blank.

“Are begonias the stuff ye plant around the privy?” he asked, breaking the silence in which we'd come from the house. We were passing the main house privy at the moment, and the bitter scent of tomatoes had begun to overwhelm the heady smell of jasmine. “Is that what I smell?”

“No, that's jasmine; the flowers don't bloom past August, though, so I have tomato plants coming up under the vines. Tomato plants have a strong scent and it comes from the leaves, so you have that almost up until the truly cold weather—when nothing smells anyway, because it's all frozen.”

“So is anyone who spends more than thirty seconds in a privy in January,” Jamie said. “Ye wouldna linger to smell flowers when ye think your shit might turn to ice before ye've got it all the way out.”

I laughed, and felt the tension between us ease, feeble as the joke was. He wanted to resolve it, too, then.

“One of the unappreciated aspects of female clothes,” I said. “Insulation. When the temperature goes down, you just add another petticoat. Or two. Of course,” I added, looking back at the house to be sure we hadn't picked up any outriders, “not having private parts that can be exposed to the elements is rather a help, too.”

A sliver of moon gleamed briefly on the top rail of the paddock, the wood polished by long use. Beyond, the house was huge against the half-dark sky, only a few of the lower windows lit. Solid and handsome, like the man who'd made it.

I stopped by the paddock fence and turned to face him.

“I could have lied, you know.”

“No, ye couldn't. Ye canna lie to anybody, Sassenach, let alone me. And given that his lordship had already told me the truth—”

“You wouldn't have been sure it
was
the truth,” I said. “Given what both parties told me about that fight. I could have told you John was talking out his backside because he wanted to annoy you, and you would have believed me.”

“Ye could choose your words wi' a bit more care, Sassenach,” he said, a hint of grimness in his voice. “I dinna want to hear anything about his lordship's backside. Why d'ye think I would have believed ye, though? I never believe anything ye tell me that I havena seen with my own eyes.”

“Now who's being annoying?” I said, rather coldly. “And you would have believed me because you would have wanted to—and don't tell me otherwise, because
I
won't believe
that.
”

He made a
huh
sort of sound under his breath. We were leaning back against the paddock rails, and the smells of jasmine, tomatoes, and human excrement had been replaced with the sweeter odor of manure and the slow, heavy exhalations of the forest beyond: the spiciness of dying leaves overlaid by the sharp, clean resins of the firs and pines.

“Why didn't ye lie, then?” he asked, after a long silence. “If ye thought I'd believe it.”

I paused, choosing my words. The air was still and warm and filled with cricket songs.
Find me, come to me, love me…
stridulations of the heart? Or merely grasshopper lust?

“Because I promised you honesty a long time ago,” I said. “And if honesty turns out to be a double-edged sword, I think the wounds are usually worth it.”

“Did Frank think that?”

I inhaled, very slowly, and held the breath until I saw spots at the corners of my eyes.

“You'd have to ask him that,” I said, very precisely. “This is about you and me.”

“And his lordship.”

I lost the temper I'd been holding.

“What the bloody hell do you want me to say? That I wish I hadn't slept with John?”

“Do ye?”

“Actually,” I said, through my teeth, “given the situation, or what I thought the situation
was…
”

He was no more than a tall black shape against the night, but I saw him turn sharply toward me.

“If ye say no, Sassenach, I may do something
I'll
regret, so dinna say it, aye?”

“What's wrong with you? You forgave me, you said so—”

“No, I didn't. I said I'd love ye forever, and I will, but—”

“You can't love somebody if you won't bloody forgive them!”

“I forgive you,” he said.

“How fucking
dare
you?” I shouted, turning on him with clenched fists.

“What's wrong wi' you?” He made a grab for my arm, but I jerked away from him. “First ye're angry because I didna say I forgave ye and now ye're outraged because I did?”

“Because I didn't do anything wrong to start with, you fatheaded arsehole, and you know it! How dare you try to forgive me for something I didn't do?”

“Ye did do it!”

“I didn't! You think I was unfaithful to you, and I. Bloody.
Wasn't!
”

I was shrieking loudly enough to drown out the crickets, and shaking with rage.

There was a long moment of silence, in which the crickets cautiously tuned up again. Jamie turned to the fence and gripped the top rail and shook it violently, making the wood creak. He might be speaking Gaelic, but whatever he was saying sounded like an enraged wolf.

I stood still, panting. The night was warm and humid, and sweat was beginning to bloom on my body. I ripped off my shawl and threw it over the fence. I could hear Jamie breathing, too, fast and deep, but he was standing still now, gripping the fence rail with his shoulders stiff, head bent.

“Ye want to ken what's wrong wi' me?” he asked at last. His voice was pitched low, but it wasn't calm. He straightened up, looming in the moonlight.

“I swear to myself I will put…this…thing…out o' my head, and mostly I manage. But then that sodomite sends me a letter, out o' the blue—just as though it never happened! And it's all back again.” His voice shook and he stopped for a second, shaking his head violently, as though to clear it.

“And when I think of it, and then I see you…I want to have ye, then and there. Ye rouse me, whether ye're slicing cucumbers or bathing naked in the creek wi' your hair loose. I want ye bad, Sassenach. But
he's
there in my head, and if—if—” Lost for words, he smashed a fist down on the fence rail and I felt the wood tremble by my shoulder.

“If I canna stand the notion that you and he were fucking
me
behind my back, how do ye think I can stand to think that you and I are sharing a bed wi'
him
in it?”

I would have hammered the fence myself, save for knowing it would hurt. Instead, I rubbed my hands hard over my face and dug my fingers into my scalp, scattering hairpins. I stood there, huffing.

“We're not,” I said, in a tone of complete certainty. “We're not, because
I'm
not. I have never, not for one second, thought of anyone but you when I've been in your bed. And I ought to be really offended at the notion that you
do,
but—”

“I don't.” He gulped air, and took me by the arms. “I don't, Claire. It's only that I'm afraid I might.”

I felt dizzy from hyperventilation and put my own hands flat on his chest to steady myself, and smelled the sudden pungent musk of his body, the waves of it an acrid hot ghost surrounding us. I did rouse him.

“I tell you what,” I said at last, and lifted my head to look at him. It was full dark now, but my eyes were well-enough adapted as to see his face, his eyes searching mine. “I tell you what,” I said again, and swallowed. “You—leave that to me.”

He trembled slightly; it might have been a buried laugh.

“Ye think highly of yourself, Sassenach,” he said, his voice husky. “Ye think a warm place to stick my cock's enough to make me forget?”

I stared at him.

“What on
earth
do you mean by that, you—” Words failed me, and I jerked loose, flapping my arms in bewildered frustration. “Why would you say something like that? You know it isn't true!”

He scratched his jaw; I could hear the whiskers rasp.

“No, it isn't,” he agreed. “I was just tryin' to think of something offensive enough to say as to make ye strike me.”

I actually did laugh, though more from surprise than real humor.

“Don't tempt me. Why do you want me to hit you?”

He rocked back on his heels and looked me over, slowly, from undone hair to battered moccasins. And back.

“Well, in about ten seconds, I mean to lay ye on your back in the grass, lift your skirts, and address ye wi' a certain amount of forcefulness. I thought I'd feel better about doing that if ye provoked me first.”

“Me…provoke
you
?”

I stood stock-still for three of those seconds, blood thundering in my ears and pulsing through my fingers. Then I walked toward him.

“Seven,” I said.

“Six,” and I reached for the neck of his shirt.

“Five…Four…” I yanked it down, said, “Three,” rather loudly, leaned forward, and bit his nipple. Not a teasing love-bite, either.

He yelped, jerked back, grabbed me, and with a big hand gripping the back of my head pushed my face into his. Our mouths collided messily, and stayed that way, open, voracious, amorous, seeking as much as kissing, lips, ears, noses, tongues, and teeth, hands groping and snatching and pulling and rubbing. I found his cock and rubbed it hard through his breeches and he made a deep growling sound and grasped my buttocks and then we
were
in the grass in a tangle of knees and limbs and rumpled clothes and hot flesh bared to the starry sky.

It seemed to last a long time, though it couldn't have. I came back to myself slowly, reverberations passing through me in a slow, pleasant throb. Provocation. Forsooth.

He was lying on his back next to me, face turned to the moon, eyes closed, and breathing like one rescued from the sea. His right hand was still between my thighs and I was curled beside him, the whorls of his ear, beautiful as a seashell, a few inches from my mouth.

“Have we got that out of our system, do you think?” I said drowsily.

“Our?” His right hand twitched, but he didn't pull it away.

“Our.”

He sighed deeply and turned his head toward me, opening his eyes.

“We have.” He smiled a little and closed his eyes again, his chest rising and falling under my hand. I could feel his nipple through his shirt, small and still hard against my palm.

“Did I break the skin?”

“Ye do that every time ye touch me, Sassenach. I'm no bleeding, though.”

We lay in silence for some time, and the sounds of crickets and the rustle of leaves flowed over us like water.

He spoke, quietly, and I turned my head, thinking I hadn't heard him aright, but I had. I just didn't know what language he was speaking.

“That isn't
Gàidhlig,
is it?” I asked dubiously, and he shook his head slowly, eyes still closed.

“Gaeilge,”
he said. “Irish. I heard it from Stephen O'Farrell, during the Rising. It just came back to me now.