“I usually feed him in bed at night. He stays asleep longer if he’s next to me.”
Roger made some murmur of assent, and drew up the low nursing chair before the fire. It was very warm in the room, and the air was thick with smells of cooking, used diapers—and Brianna. Her scent was slightly different these days; the tang of wild grass tempered with a light, sweet smell that he thought must be milk.
Her head was bent, loose red hair falling over her shoulders in a cascade of sparks and shadows. The front of her gown was open to her waist, and the full round curve of one breast showed plainly, only the nipple obscured by the roundness of the baby’s head. There was a faint sound of sucking.
As though feeling his eyes on her, she raised her head.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly, not to disturb the baby. “I cannot pretend not to be looking.”
He couldn’t tell if she flushed; the fire cast a red glow over face and breasts alike. She glanced down, though, as if she was embarrassed.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Nothing much worth looking at.”
Without a word, he stood up and began to undress.
“What are you doing?” Her voice was low, but shocked.
“Not fair for me to sit here gawking at you, is it? It’s much less worth looking at, I expect, but …” He paused, frowning at a knot in the lacing of his breeches. “But at least you’ll not feel you’re on display.”
“Oh.” He didn’t look up to see, but he thought that had made her smile. He’d got his shirt off; the fire felt good on his bare back. Feeling unspeakably self-conscious, he stood up and eased his breeches halfway down before stopping.
“Is this a striptease?” Brianna’s mouth quivered as she tried to keep from laughing out loud, joggling the baby.
“I couldn’t decide whether to turn my back or not.” He paused. “Have you got a preference?”
“Turn your back,” she said softly. “For now.”
He did, and got the breeches off without falling into the fire.
“Stay that way for a minute,” she said. “Please. I like to look at you.”
He straightened up and stood still, looking into the fire. The heat played over him, uncomfortably warm, and he took a step back, a sudden memory of Father Alexandre vivid in his mind. Christ, and why would he think of that now?
“You have marks on your back, Roger,” Brianna said, her voice softer than ever. “Who hurt you?”
“The Indians. It doesn’t matter. Not now.” He hadn’t bound or cut his hair; it fell over his shoulders, tickling the bare skin of his back. He could imagine the tickle of her eyes, going lower, over back and arse and thighs and calves.
“I’m going to turn around now. All right?”
“I won’t be shocked,” she assured him. “I’ve seen pictures.”
She had her father’s trick of hiding her expressions when she wanted to. He couldn’t tell a thing from the soft, wide mouth or the slanted cat-eyes. Was she shocked, frightened, amused? Why ought she to be any of those things? She had touched everything she was now looking at; had caressed and handled him with such intimacy that he had lost himself in her hands, yielded himself to her without reservation—and she to him.
But that had been a lifetime ago, in the freedom and frenzy of hot darkness. Now he stood before her for the first time naked in the light, and she sat there watching him with a baby in her arms. Which of them had changed more, since their wedding night?
She looked at him carefully, head on one side, then smiled, her eyes rising to meet his. She sat up, shifting the child easily to the other breast, leaving her gown open, the one breast bared.
He couldn’t stand there any longer; the fire was singeing the hair on his arse. He moved to the side of the hearth and sat down again, watching her.
“What does that feel like?” he asked, partly from a need to break the silence before it got too heavy, partly from a deep curiosity.
“It feels good,” she answered softly, head bent over the child. “Sort of a pulling. It tingles. When he starts to feed, something happens, and there’s a rushing feeling, like everything in me is surging toward him.”
“It’s not—you don’t feel drained? I should have thought it would feel like your substance being taken, somehow.”
“Oh, no, not like that at all. Here, look.” She put a finger in the infant’s mouth and detached it with a soft pop! She lowered the small body for an instant, and Roger saw the nipple drawn up taut, milk jetting out in a thin stream of incredible force. Before the child could start to wail, she put him back, but not before Roger had felt the spray of tiny droplets, warm and then suddenly cool against the skin of his chest.
“My God,” he said, half shocked. “I didn’t know it did that! It’s like a squirt gun.”
“Neither did I.” She smiled again, her hand cupping the tiny head. Then the smile faded. “There are lots of things I couldn’t have imagined before they happened to me.”
“Bree.” He sat forward, forgetting his nakedness in the need to touch her. “Bree, I know you’re scared. So am I. I don’t want you to be afraid of me—but Bree, I do want ye so.”
His hand rested on the round of her knee. After a moment, her free hand came down on his, light as a landing bird.
“I want you, too,” she whispered. They sat frozen together for what seemed a long time; he had no notion what to do next, only that he must not go too fast, not frighten her. Be careful.
The tiny sucking sounds had ceased and the bundle had gone limp and heavy in the curve of her arm.
“He’s asleep,” she whispered. Moving as cautiously as one holding a vial of nitroglycerine, she scooted to the edge of the bed and stood up.
She might have meant to lay the child in its cradle, but Roger lifted his hands instinctively. She hesitated for no more than a second, then bent to lay the child in his arms. Her breasts hung full and heavy in the shadow of her open gown, and he smelled the deep musk of her body as she brushed him.
The baby was surprisingly heavy; dense, for the size of the bundle. He was amazingly warm, too; warmer even than his mother’s body.
Roger boosted the tiny body cautiously, cuddling it against him; the small, curved buttocks fit in the palm of his hand. It—he—wasn’t quite bald, after all. There was a soft red-blond fuzz all over the head. Tiny ears. Almost transparent; the one he could see was red and crumpled from being pressed against his mother’s arm.
“You can’t tell by looking.” Brianna’s voice jerked him out of his contemplation. “I’ve tried.” She was standing across the room, one drawer of the sideboard open. He thought it might be regret on her face, but the shadows were too deep to tell.
“That wasn’t what I was looking for.” He lowered the baby carefully to his lap. “It’s only—this is the first time I’ve had a proper look at my son.” The words sounded peculiar, stiff to his tongue. She relaxed a little, though.
“Oh. Well, he’s all there.” There was a small note of pride in her voice that caught at his heart, and made him look closer. The little fists were curled up tight as snail shells; he picked one up and gently stroked it with his thumb. Slowly as an octopus moving, the hand opened, enough for him to insert the tip of his index finger. The fist closed again in reflex, astonishing in the strength of its grip.
He could hear a rhythmic whish across the room, and realized that she was brushing her hair. He would have liked to watch her, but was too fascinated to look up.
The body had feet like a frog’s; wide at the toes, narrow at the heel. Roger stroked one with a fingertip, and smiled as the tiny toes sprang wide apart. Not webbed, at least.
My son, he thought, and wasn’t sure what he felt at the thought. It would take time to get used to.
But he could be, came the next thought. Not just Brianna’s child, to be loved for her sake—but his own flesh and blood. That thought was even more foreign. He tried to push it from his mind, but it kept coming back. That coupling in the dark, that bittersw
eet mix of pain and joy—had he started this, in the midst of that?
He hadn’t meant to—but he hoped like hell he had.
The child was wearing some long thing made of white gauzy stuff; he lifted it, looking at the sagging diaper and the perfect oval of the tiny navel just above. Moved by a curiosity he didn’t think to question, he hooked a finger in the edge of the clout and pulled it down.
“I told you he was all there.” Brianna was standing at his elbow.
“Well, it’s there,” Roger said dubiously. “But isn’t it a bit … small?”
She laughed.
“It’ll grow,” she assured him. “It’s not like he needs it for much yet.”
His own penis, gone flaccid between his thighs, gave a small twitch at that reminder.
“Shall I take him?” She reached for the baby, but he shook his head and picked up the child again.
“Not just yet.” It—he—smelled of milk and something sweetly putrid. Something else, his own indefinable smell, like nothing else Roger had ever encountered.
“Eau de baby, Mama calls it.” She sat on the bed, a faint smile on her face. “She says it’s a natural protective device; one of the things babies use to keep their parents from killing them.”
“Killing him? But he’s a sweet wee lad,” Roger protested.
One eyebrow quirked up in derision.
“You haven’t been living with the little fiend for the last month. This is the first night he hasn’t had colic in three weeks. I would have exposed him on a hillside if he wasn’t mine.”
If he wasn’t mine. That certainty was a mother’s reward, he supposed. She’d always know—had always known. For a brief, surprising moment, he envied her.
The baby stirred and made a small, faint yawp! noise against his neck. Before he could move, she was up and had the child back in her arms, patting the rounded little back. There was a soft belch, and he subsided into limpness once more.
Brianna set him on his stomach in the cradle, carefully, as if he were wired to a stick of dynamite. He could see the faint outline of her body through the gauze, highlighted by the fire behind her. When she turned around, he was ready.
“You could have gone back, once you knew. There would have been time.” He held her eyes, not letting her look away. “So it’s my turn to ask, then, isn’t it? What made you wait for me? Love—or obligation?”
“Both,” she said, her eyes nearly black. “Neither. I—just couldn’t go without you.”
He breathed deeply, feeling the last small doubt in the pit of his stomach melt away.
“Then you do know.”
“Yes.” She lifted her shoulders and let them fall, and the loose gown fell too, leaving her as naked as he was. It was red, by God. More than red; she was gold and amber, ivory and cinnabar, and he wanted her with a longing that went beyond flesh.
“You said that you loved me, by all you hold holy,” she whispered. “What is it that’s holy to you, Roger?”
He stood and reached for her, gently, carefully. Held her against his heart, and remembered the stinking hold of the Gloriana and a thin, ragged woman who smelled of milk and ordure. Of fire and drums and blood, and an orphan baptized with the name of the father who had sacrificed himself for fear of the power of love.
“You,” he said, against her hair. “Him. Us. There isn’t anything else, is there?”
68
DOMESTIC BLISS
August 1770
It was a peaceful morning. The baby had slept all night, for which feat he was the recipient of general praise. Two hens had obligingly laid eggs in their coop rather than scattering them round the landscape, so I was not required to crawl through the blackberry bushes in search of breakfast before cooking it.
The bread had risen to a perfect snowy mound in its bowl, been molded into loaves by Lizzie, and—the new Dutch oven sharing the general mood of cooperation—had been baked into a delicate brown fragrance that suffused the house with contentment. Spiced ham and turkey hash sizzled pleasantly on the griddle, adding their aromas to the softer morning scents of damp grass and summer flowers that came through the open window.
These things all helped, but the general atmosphere of drowsy well-being owed more to the night before than to the events of the morning.
It had been a perfect moon-drenched night. Jamie had put out the candle and gone to bolt the door, but instead he stood, arms braced on the doorframe, looking down the valley.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said softly. “Come and see.”
Everything seemed to be floating, deprived of depth by the eerie light. Far off, the spurt of the falls seemed frozen, suspended in air. The wind was toward us, though, and I could hear the faint rumble of tons of falling water.
The night air was scented with grass and water, and the breath of pine and spruce blew down cool from the mountaintops. I shivered in my shift, and drew closer to him for warmth. His shirttails were split at the side, open nearly to his waist. I slid my hand inside the opening nearest me, and cupped one round, warm buttock. The muscles tensed under my grip, then flexed as he turned.
He hadn’t pulled away; only stepped back in order to yank the shirt off over his head. He stood on the porch naked, and held out a hand to me.
He was furred with silver and the moonlight carved his body from the night. I could see every small detail of him, long toes to flowing hair, clear as the clean black canes of the blackberry bushes at the bottom of the yard. Yet like them he was dimensionless; he might have been within hand’s touch or a mile away.
I shrugged the shift from my shoulders and let it fall from my body, left it puddled by the door and took his hand. Without a word we had floated through the grass, walked wet-legged and cool-skinned into the forest, turned wordless toward each other’s warmth and stepped together into the empty air beyond the ridge.
We had wakened in the dark after moonset, leaf-spattered, twig-strewn, bug-bitten, and stiff with cold. We had said not a word to each other, but laughing and staggering drunkenly, stumbling over roots and stones, had helped each other through the moonless wood and made our way back to bed for an hour’s brief sleep before dawn.
I leaned over his shoulder now and deposited a bowl of oatmeal in front of him, pausing to pluck an oak leaf from his hair. I laid it on the table beside his bowl.
He turned his head, a smile hiding in his eyes, caught my hand and kissed it lightly. He let me go, and went back to his parritch. I touched the back of his neck, and saw the smile spread to his mouth.
I looked up, smiling myself, and found Brianna watching. One corner of her mouth turned up, and her eyes were warm with understanding. Then I saw her gaze shift to Roger, who was spooning in his parritch in a absentminded sort of way, his gaze intent on her.
This picture of domestic bliss was broken by the stentorian tones of Clarence, announcing a visitor. I missed Rollo, I reflected, going to the door to see, but at least Clarence didn’t leap on visitors and knock them flat or chase them round the dooryard.
The visitor was Duncan Innes, who had come bearing an invitation.
“Your aunt asks if perhaps ye will be coming to the Gathering at Mount Helicon this autumn. She says ye did give her your word, twa year past.”
Jamie shoved the platter of eggs in front of Duncan.
“I hadna thought of it,” he said, frowning a little. “There’s the devil of a lot to do, and I’m to have a roof on this place before snowfall.” He gestured upward with his chin, indicating the slats and branches that were temporarily shielding us from the vagaries of weather.
“There’s a priest coming, down from Baltimore,” Duncan said, carefully avoiding looking at Roger or Brianna. “Miss Jo did think as how ye might be wishing to have the wean baptized.”
“Oh.” Jamie sat back, lips pursed in thought. “Aye, that’s a thought. Perhaps we will go, then, Duncan.”
“That’s fine; your auntie will be pleased.” Something appe
ared to be caught in Duncan’s throat; he was turning slowly red as I watched. Jamie squinted at him and pushed a jug of cider in his direction.
“Ye’ve something in your throat, man?”
“Ah … no.” Everyone had stopped eating by now, viewing the changes to Duncan’s complexion in fascination. He had gone a sort of puce by the time he managed to squeeze out the next words.
“I—errr—wish to ask your consent, an fhearr Mac Dubh, to the marriage of Mistress Jocasta Cameron and … and—”
“And who?” Jamie asked, the corner of his mouth twitching. “The governor of the colony?”
“And myself?” Duncan seized the cup of cider and buried his face in it with the relief of a drowning man seeing a life raft float past.
Jamie burst out laughing, which seemed to be no great solace to Duncan’s embarrassment.
“My consent? D’ye not think my aunt’s of an age, Duncan? Or you, come to that?”
Duncan was breathing a little easier now, though the purple tinge hadn’t yet begun to fade from his cheeks.
“I thought it only proper,” he said, a little stiffly. “Seeing as how ye’re her nearest kinsman.” He swallowed, and unbent a bit. “And … it didna seem entirely right, Mac Dubh, that I should be takin’ what might be yours.”
Jamie smiled and shook his head.
“I’ve no claim on any of my aunt’s property, Duncan—and wouldna take it when she offered. You’ll be married at the Gathering? Tell her we’ll come, then, and dance at the wedding.”
69
JEREMIAH
October 1770
Roger rode with Claire and Fergus, close to the wagon. Jamie, not trusting Brianna to drive a vehicle containing his grandson, insisted on driving, with Lizzie and Marsali in the wagon bed and Brianna on the seat beside him.
From his saddle Roger caught snatches of the discussion that had been going on ever since his arrival.
“John, for sure,” Brianna was saying, frowning down at her son, who was burrowing energetically under her shawl. “But I don’t know if it should be his first name. And if it was—should it maybe be Ian? That’s ‘John’ in Gaelic—and I’d like to name him that, but would it be too confusing, with Uncle Ian and our Ian, too?”
The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle Page 438
