The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle (316 page)

“No, thanks,” I said, dodging the oncoming spoon. “I want to hear more about this firmness of yours.”

“No, ye don’t; you’re ill.”

“I feel much better,” I assured him. “Shall I have a look at it?” He was wearing the loose petticoat breeches the sailors wore, in which he could easily have concealed three or four dead mullet, let alone a fugitive firmness.

“You shall not,” he said, looking slightly shocked. “Someone might come in. And I canna think your looking at it would help a bit.”

“Well, you can’t tell that until I
have
looked at it, can you?” I said. “Besides, you can bolt the door.”

“Bolt the door? What d’ye think I’m going to do? Do I look the sort of man would take advantage of a woman who’s not only wounded and boiling wi’ fever, but drunk as well?” he demanded. He stood up, nonetheless.

“I am not drunk,” I said indignantly. “You can’t get drunk on turtle soup!” Nonetheless, I was conscious that the glowing warmth in my stomach seemed to have migrated somewhat lower, taking up residence between my thighs, and there was undeniably a slight lightness of head not strictly attributable to fever.

“You can if ye’ve been drinking turtle soup as made by Aloysius O’Shaughnessy Murphy,” he said. “By the smell of it, he’s put at least a full bottle o’ the sherry in it. A verra intemperate race, the Irish.”

“Well, I’m still not drunk.” I straightened up against the pillows as best I could. “You told me once that if you could still stand up, you weren’t drunk.”

“You aren’t standing up,” he pointed out.

“You are. And I could if I wanted to. Stop trying to change the subject. We were talking about your firmness.”

“Well, ye can just stop talking about it, because—” He broke off with a small yelp, as I made a fortunate grab with my left hand.

“Clumsy, am I?” I said, with considerable satisfaction. “Oh, my. Heavens, you
do
have a problem, don’t you?”

“Will ye leave go of me?” he hissed, looking frantically over his shoulder at the door. “Someone could come in any moment!”

“I told you you should have bolted the door,” I said, not letting go. Far from being a dead mullet, the object in my hand was exhibiting considerable liveliness.

He eyed me narrowly, breathing through his nose.

“I wouldna use force on a sick woman,” he said through his teeth, “but you’ve a damn healthy grip for someone with a fever, Sassenach. If you—”

“I told you I felt better,” I interrupted, “but I’ll make you a bargain; you bolt the door and I’ll prove I’m not drunk.” I rather regretfully let go, to indicate good faith. He stood staring at me for a moment, absentmindedly rubbing the site of my recent assault on his virtue. Then he lifted one ruddy eyebrow, turned, and went to bolt the door.

By the time he turned back, I had made it out of the berth and was standing—a trifle shakily, but still upright—against the frame. He eyed me critically.

“It’s no going to work, Sassenach,” he said, shaking his head. He looked rather regretful, himself. “We’ll never stay upright, wi’ a swell like there is underfoot tonight, and ye know I’ll not fit in that berth by myself, let alone wi’ you.”

There was a considerable swell; the lantern on its swivel-bracket hung steady and level, but the shelf above it tilted visibly back and forth as the
Artemis
rode the waves. I could feel the faint shudder of the boards under my bare feet, and knew Jamie was right. At least he was too absorbed in the discussion to be seasick.

“There’s always the floor,” I suggested hopefully. He glanced down at the limited floor space and frowned. “Aye, well. There is, but we’d have to do it like snakes, Sassenach, all twined round each other amongst the table legs.”

“I don’t mind.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head, “it would hurt your arm.” He rubbed a knuckle across his lower lip, thinking. His eyes passed absently across my body at about hip level, returned, fixed, and lost their focus. I thought the bloody shift must be more transparent than I realized.

Deciding to take matters into my own hands, I let go my hold on the frame of the berth and lurched the two paces necessary to reach him. The roll of the ship threw me into his arms, and he barely managed to keep his own balance, clutching me tightly round the waist.

“Jesus!” he said, staggered, and then, as much from reflex as from desire, bent his head and kissed me.

It was startling. I was accustomed to be surrounded by the warmth of his embrace; now it was I who was hot to the touch and he who was cool. From his reaction, he was enjoying the novelty as much as I was.

Light-headed, and reckless with it, I nipped the side of his neck with my teeth, feeling the waves of heat from my face pulsate against the column of his throat. He felt it, too.

“God, you’re like holding a hot coal!” His hands dropped lower and pressed me hard against him.

“Firm is it? Ha,” I said, getting my mouth free for a moment. “Take those baggy things off.” I slid down his length and onto my knees in front of him, fumbling mazily at his flies. He freed the laces with a quick jerk, and the petticoat breeches ballooned to the floor with a whiff of wind.

I didn’t wait for him to remove his shirt; just lifted it and took him. He made a strangled sound and his hands came down on my head as though he wanted to restrain me, but hadn’t the strength.

“Oh, Lord!” he said. His hands tightened in my hair, but he wasn’t trying to push me away. “This must be what it’s like to make love in Hell,” he whispered. “With a burning she-devil.”

I laughed, which was extremely difficult under the circumstances. I choked, and pulled back a moment, breathless.

“Is this what a succubus does, do you think?”

“I wouldna doubt it for a moment,” he assured me. His hands were still in my hair, urging me back.

A knock sounded on the door, and he froze. Confident that the door was indeed bolted, I didn’t.

“Aye? What is it?” he said, with a calmness rather remarkable for a man in his position.

“Fraser?” Lawrence Stern’s voice came through the door. “The Frenchman says the black is asleep, and may he have leave to go to bed now?”

“No,” said Jamie shortly. “Tell him to stay where he is; I’ll come along and relieve him in a bit.”

“Oh.” Stern’s voice sounded a little hesitant. “Surely. His … um, his wife seems … eager for him to come now.”

Jamie inhaled sharply.

“Tell her,” he said, a small note of strain becoming evident in his voice, “that he’ll be there … presently.”

“I will say so.” Stern sounded dubious about Marsali’s reception of this news, but then his voice brightened. “Ah … is Mrs. Fraser feeling somewhat improved?”

“Verra much,” said Jamie, with feeling.

“She enjoyed the turtle soup?”

“Greatly. I thank ye.” His hands on my head were trembling.

“Did you tell her that I’ve put aside the shell for her? It was a fine hawksbill turtle; a most elegant beast.”

“Aye. Aye, I did.” With an audible gasp, Jamie pulled away and reaching down, lifted me to my feet.

“Good night, Mr. Stern!” he called. He pulled me toward the berth; we struggled four-legged to keep from crashing into tables and chairs as the floor rose and fell beneath us.

“Oh.” Lawrence sounded faintly disappointed. “I suppose Mrs. Fraser is asleep, then?”

“Laugh, and I’ll throttle ye,” Jamie whispered fiercely in my ear. “She is, Mr. Stern,” he called through the door. “I shall give her your respects in the morning, aye?”

“I trust she will rest well. There seems to be a certain roughness to the sea this evening.”

“I … have noticed, Mr. Stern.” Pushing me to my knees in front of the berth, he knelt behind me, groping for the hem of my shift. A cool breeze from the open stern window blew over my naked buttocks, and a shiver ran down the backs of my thighs.

“Should you or Mrs. Fraser find yourselves discommoded by the motion, I have a most capital remedy to hand—a compound of mugwort, bat dung, and the fruit of the mangrove. You have only to ask, you know.”

Jamie didn’t answer for a moment.

“Oh, Christ!” he whispered. I took a sizable bite of the bedclothes.

“Mr. Fraser?”

“I said, ‘Thank you’!” Jamie replied, raising his voice.

“Well, I shall bid you a good evening, then.”

Jamie let out his breath in a long shudder that was not quite a moan.

“Mr. Fraser?”

“Good evening, Mr. Stern!” Jamie bellowed.

“Oh! Er … good evening.”

Stern’s footsteps receded down the companionway, lost in the sound of the waves that were now crashing loudly against the hull. I spit out the mouthful of quilt.

“Oh … my … God!”

His hands were large and hard and cool on my heated flesh.

“You’ve the roundest arse I’ve ever seen!”

A lurch by the
Artemis
here aiding his efforts to an untoward degree, I uttered a loud shriek.

“Shh!” He clasped a hand over my mouth, bending over me so that he lay over my back, the billowing linen of his shirt falling around me and the weight of him pressing me to the bed. My skin, crazed with fever, was sensitive to the slightest touch, and I shook in his arms, the heat inside me rushing outward as he moved within me.

His hands were under me then, clutching my breasts, the only anchor as I lost my boundaries and dissolved, conscious thought a displaced element in the chaos of sensations—the warm damp of tangled quilts beneath me, the cold sea wind and misty spray that wafted over us from the rough sea outside, the gasp and brush of Jamie’s warm breath on the back of my neck, and the sudden prickle and flood of cold and heat, as my fever broke in a dew of satisfied desire.

Jamie’s weight rested on my back, his thighs behind mine. It was warm, and comforting. After a long time, his breathing eased, and he rose off me. The thin cotton of my shift was damp, and the wind plucked it away from my skin, making me shiver.

Jamie closed the window with a snap, then bent and picked me up like a rag doll. He lowered me into the berth, and pulled the quilt up over me.

“How is your arm?” he said.

“What arm?” I murmured drowsily. I felt as though I had been melted and poured into a mold to set.

“Good,” he said, a smile in his voice. “Can ye stand up?”

“Not for all the tea in China.”

“I’ll tell Murphy ye liked the soup.” His hand rested for a moment on my cool forehead, passed down the curve of my cheek in a light caress, and then was gone. I didn’t hear him leave.

57

PROMISED LAND

“It’s persecution!” Jamie said indignantly. He stood behind me, looking over the rail of the
Artemis
. Kingston Harbor stretched to our left, glowing like liquid sapphires in the morning light, the town above half-sunk in jungle green, cubes of yellowed ivory and pink rose-quartz in a lush setting of emerald and malachite. And on the cerulean bosom of the water below floated the majestic sight of a great three-masted ship, furled canvas white as gull wings, gun decks proud and brass gleaming in the sun. His Majesty’s man-of-war
Porpoise
.

“The filthy boat’s pursuing me,” he said, glaring at it as we sailed past at a discreet distance, well outside the harbor mouth. “Everywhere I go, there it is again!”

I laughed, though in truth, the sight of the
Porpoise
made me slightly nervous, too.

“I don’t suppose it’s personal,” I told him. “Captain Leonard did say they were bound for Jamaica.”

“Aye, but why would they no head straight to Antigua, where the naval barracks and the navy shipyards are, and them in such straits as ye left them?” He shaded his eyes, peering at the
Porpoise
. Even at this distance, small figures were visible in the rigging, making repairs.

“They had to come here first,” I explained. “They were carrying a new governor for the colony.” I felt an absurd urge to duck below the rail, though I knew that even Jamie’s red hair would be indistinguishable at this distance.

“Aye? I wonder who’s that?” Jamie spoke absently; we were no more than an hour away from arrival at Jared’s plantation on Sugar Bay, and I knew his mind was busy with plans for finding Young Ian.

“A chap named Grey,” I said, turning away from the rail. “Nice man; I met him on the ship, just briefly.”

“Grey?” Startled, Jamie looked down at me. “Not Lord John Grey, by chance?”

“Yes, that was his name? Why?” I glanced up at him, curious. He was staring at the
Porpoise
with renewed interest.

“Why?” He heard me when I repeated the question a second time, and glanced down at me, smiling. “Oh. It’s only that I ken Lord John; he’s a friend of mine.”

“Really?” I was no more than mildly surprised. Jamie’s friends had once included the French minister of finance and Charles Stuart, as well as Scottish beggars and French pickpockets. I supposed it was not remarkable that he should now count English aristocrats among his acquaintance, as well as Highland smugglers and Irish seacooks.

“Well, that’s luck,” I said. “Or at least I suppose it is. Where do you know Lord John from?”

“He was the Governor of Ardsmuir prison,” he replied, surprising me after all. His eyes were still fixed on the
Porpoise
, narrowed in speculation.

“And he’s a
friend
of yours?” I shook my head. “I’ll never understand men.”

He turned and smiled at me, taking his attention at last from the English ship.

“Well, friends are where ye find them, Sassenach,” he said. He squinted toward the shore, shading his eyes with his hand. “Let us hope this Mrs. Abernathy proves to be one.”

As we rounded the tip of the headland, a lithe black figure materialized next to the rail. Now clothed in spare seaman’s clothes, with his scars hidden, Ishmael looked less like a slave and a good deal more like a pirate. Not for the first time, I wondered just how much of what he had told us was the truth.

“I be leavin’ now,” he announced abruptly.

Jamie lifted one eyebrow and glanced over the rail, into the soft blue depths.

“Dinna let me prevent ye,” he said politely. “But would ye not rather have a boat?”

Something that might have been humor flickered briefly in the black man’s eyes, but didn’t disturb the severe outlines of his face.

“You say you put me ashore where I want, I be tellin’ you ’bout those boys,” he said. He nodded toward the island, where a riotous growth of jungle spilled down the slope of a hill to meet its own green shadow in the shallow water. “That be where I want.”

Jamie looked thoughtfully from the uninhabited shore to Ishmael, and then nodded.

“I’ll have a boat lowered.” He turned to go to the cabin. “I promised ye gold as well, no?”

“Don’t be wantin’ gold, mon.” Ishmael’s tone, as well as his words, stopped Jamie in his tracks. He looked at the black man with interest, mingled with a certain reserve.

“Ye’ll have something else in mind?”

Ishmael jerked his head in a short nod. He didn’t seem outwardly nervous, but I noticed the faint gleam of sweat on his temples, despite the mild noon breeze.

“I be wantin’ that one-arm nigger.” He stared boldly at Jamie as he spoke, but there was a diffidence under the confident facade.

“Temeraire?” I blurted out in astonishment. “Why?”

Ishmael flicked a glance at me, but addressed his words to Jamie, half-bold, half-cajoling.

“He ain’t no good to you, mon; can’t be doin’ field work or ship work neither, ain’t got but one arm.”

Jamie didn’t reply directly, but stared at Ishmael for a moment. Then he turned and called for Fergus to bring up the one-armed slave.

Temeraire, brought up on deck, stood expressionless as a block of wood, barely blinking in the sun. He too had been provided with seaman’s clothes, but he lacked Ishmael’s raffish elegance in them. He looked like a stump upon which someone had spread out washing to dry.

“This man wants you to go with him, to the island there,” Jamie said to Temeraire, in slow, careful French. “Do you want to do this thing?”

Temeraire did blink at that, and a brief look of startlement widened his eyes. I supposed that no one had asked him what he wanted in many years—if ever. He glanced warily from Jamie to Ishmael and back again, but didn’t say anything.

Jamie tried again.

“You do not have to go with this man,” he assured the slave. “You may come with us, and we will take care of you. No one will hurt you. But you can go with him, if you like.”

Still the slave hesitated, eyes flicking right and left, clearly startled and disturbed by the unexpected choice. It was Ishmael who decided the matter. He said something, in a strange tongue full of liquid vowels and syllables that repeated like a drumbeat.

Temeraire let out a gasp, fell to his knees, and pressed his forehead to the deck at Ishmael’s feet. Everyone on deck stared at him, then looked at Ishmael, who stood with arms folded with a sort of wary defiance.

“He be goin’ with me,” he said.

And so it was. Picard rowed the two blacks ashore in the dinghy, and left them on the rocks at the edge of the jungle, supplied with a small bag of provisions, each equipped with a knife.

“Why there?” I wondered aloud, watching the two small figures make their way slowly up the wooded slope. “There aren’t any towns nearby, are there? Or any plantations?” To the eye, the shore presented an unbroken expanse of jungle.

“Oh, there are plantations,” Lawrence assured me. “Far up in the hills; that’s where they grow the coffee and indigo—the sugarcane grows better near the coast.” He squinted toward the shore, where the two dark figures had disappeared. “It is more likely that they have gone to join a band of Maroons, though,” he said.

“There are Maroons on Jamaica as well as on Hispaniola?” Fergus asked, interested.

Lawrence smiled, a little grimly.

“There are Maroons wherever there are slaves, my friend,” he said. “There are always men who prefer to take the chance of dying like animals, rather than live as captives.”

Jamie turned his head sharply to look at Lawrence, but said nothing.

Jared’s plantation at Sugar Bay was called Blue Mountain House, presumably for the sake of the low, hazy peak that rose inland a mile behind it, blue with pines and distance. The house itself was set near the shore, in the shallow curve of the bay. In fact, the veranda that ran along one side of the house overhung a small lagoon, the building set on sturdy silvered-wood pilings that rose from the water, crusted with a spongy growth of tunicates and mussels and the fine green seaweed called mermaid’s hair.

We were expected; Jared had sent a letter by a ship that left Le Havre a week before the
Artemis
. Owing to our delay on Hispaniola, the letter had arrived nearly a month in advance of ourselves, and the overseer and his wife—a portly, comfortable Scottish couple named MacIvers—were relieved to see us.

“I thought surely the winter storms had got ye,” Kenneth MacIver said for the fourth time, shaking his head. He was bald, the top of his head scaly and freckled from long years’ exposure to the tropic sun. His wife was a plump, genial, grandmotherly soul—who, I realized to my shock, was roughly five years younger than myself. She herded Marsali and me off for a quick wash, brush, and nap before supper, while Fergus and Jamie went with Mr. MacIver to direct the partial unloading of the
Artemis
’s cargo and the disposition of her crew.

I was more than willing to go; while my arm had healed sufficiently to need no more than a light bandage, it had prevented me from bathing in the sea as was my usual habit. After a week aboard the
Artemis
, unbathed, I looked forward to fresh water and clean sheets with a longing that was almost hunger.

I had no landlegs yet; the worn wooden floorboards of the plantation house gave the disconcerting illusion of seeming to rise and fall beneath my feet, and I staggered down the hallway after Mrs. MacIver, bumping into walls.

The house had an actual bathtub in a small porch; wooden, but filled—
mirabile dictu!
—with hot water, by the good offices of two black slave women who heated kettles over a fire in the yard and carried them in. I should have felt much too guilty at this exploitation to enjoy my bath, but I didn’t. I wallowed luxuriously, scrubbing the salt and grime from my skin with a loofah sponge and lathering my hair with a shampoo made from chamomile, geranium oil, fat-soap shavings, and the yolk of an egg, graciously supplied by Mrs. MacIver.

Smelling sweet, shiny-haired, and languid with warmth, I collapsed gratefully into the bed I was given. I had time only to think how delightful it was to stretch out at full length, before I fell asleep.

When I woke, the shadows of dusk were gathering on the veranda outside the open French doors of my bedroom, and Jamie lay naked beside me, hands folded on his belly, breathing deep and slow.

He felt me stir, and opened his eyes. He smiled sleepily and reaching up a hand, pulled me down to his mouth. He had had a bath, too; he smelled of soap and cedar needles. I kissed him at length, slowly and thoroughly, running my tongue across the wide curve of his lip, finding his tongue with mine in a soft, dark joust of greeting and invitation.

I broke loose, finally, and came up for air. The room was filled with a wavering green light, reflections from the lagoon outside, as though the room itself were underwater. The air was at once warm and fresh, smelling of sea and rain, with tiny currents of breeze that caressed the skin.

“Ye smell sweet, Sassenach,” he murmured, voice husky with sleep. He smiled, reaching up to twine his fingers into my hair. “Come here to me, curly-wig.”

Freed from pins and freshly washed, my hair was clouding over my shoulders in a perfect explosion of Medusa-like curls. I reached up to smooth it back, but he tugged gently, bending me forward so the veil of brown and gold and silver fell loose over his face.

I kissed him, half-smothered in clouds of hair, and lowered myself to lie on top of him, letting the fullness of my breasts squash gently against his chest. He moved slightly, rubbing, and sighed with pleasure.

His hands cupped my buttocks, trying to move me upward enough to enter me.

“Not bloody yet,” I whispered. I pressed my hips down, rolling them, enjoying the feel of the silky stiffness trapped beneath my belly. He made a small breathless sound.

“We haven’t had room or time to make love properly in months,” I told him. “So we’re taking our time about it now, right?”

“Ye take me at something of a disadvantage, Sassenach,” he murmured into my hair. He squirmed under me, pressing upward urgently. “Ye dinna think we could take our time next time?”

“No, we couldn’t,” I said firmly. “Now. Slow. Don’t move.”

He made a sort of rumbling noise in his throat, but sighed and relaxed, letting his hands fall away to the sides. I squirmed lower on his body, making him inhale sharply, and set my mouth on his nipple.

I ran my tongue delicately round the tiny nub, making it stand up stiff, enjoying the coarse feel of the curly auburn hairs that surrounded it. I felt him tense under me, and put my hands on his upper arms to hold him still while I went on with it, biting gently, sucking and flicking with my tongue.

A few minutes later, I raised my head, brushed my hair back with one hand, and asked, “What’s that you’re saying?”

He opened one eye.

“The rosary,” he informed me. “It’s the only way I’m going to stand it.” He closed his eyes and resumed murmuring in Latin.
“Ave Maria, gratia plena …”

I snorted and went to work on the other one.

“You’re losing your place,” I said, next time I came up for air. “You’ve said the Lord’s Prayer three times in a row.”

“I’m surprised to hear I’m still makin’ any sense at all.” His eyes were closed, and a dew of moisture gleamed on his cheekbones. He moved his hips with increasing restiveness. “Now?”

“Not yet.” I dipped my head lower and seized by impulse, went
Pffft!
into his navel. He convulsed, and taken by surprise, emitted a noise that could only be described as a giggle.

“Don’t do that!” he said.

“Will if I want to,” I said, and did it again. “You sound just like Bree,” I told him. “I used to do that to her when she was a baby; she loved it.”

“Well, I’m no a wee bairn, if ye hadna noticed the difference,” he said a little testily. “If ye must do that, at least try it a bit lower, aye?”

I did.

“You don’t have any hair at all at the tops of your thighs,” I said, admiring the smooth white skin there. “Why is that, do you think?”

“The cow licked it all off last time she milked me,” he said between his teeth. “For God’s sake, Sassenach!”