It fascinated him to watch her do that, and he nearly walked straight off a steep rocky outcrop doing so. She turned round at his exclamation as he scrabbled for footing, though, and smiled at him, so she maybe wasn’t that bothered about Sylvie.
“D’ye no mean to eat that?” he inquired, coming up beside her stirrup.
“I do,” she said calmly, “but all in good time.” She licked the substantial length of the warty green thing with a long, slow swipe of her tongue and then—holding his eyes—sucked deliberately on the end of it. He walked straight into a springy pine branch, which swiped him across the face with its needles.
He swore, rubbing at his watering eyes. She was laughing!
“Ye did that on purpose, Rachel Murray!”
“Is thee accusing me of propelling thee into a tree?” she inquired, arching one brow. “Thee is an experienced Indian scout, or so I was led to believe. Surely one of those should look where he’s going.”
She had pulled Clarence to a stop—Clarence was always agreeable to stopping, particularly if there was anything edible in sight—and sat there smiling at Ian, cheeky as a monkey.
“Give me that, aye?” She handed him the pickle willingly, wiping her damp hand on her thigh. He took a large bite, his mouth flooded with garlic and dill and vinegar. Then he jammed the cucumber into one of the saddlebags and extended a hand to her. “Come down here.”
“Why?” she asked. She was still smiling, but her body had shifted, leaning toward him but making no effort to get off. He understood that sort of conversation and reached up, took her by what was left of her waist, and pulled her off in a flurry of skirts. He paused for an instant to swallow the bite of pickle, then kissed her thoroughly, a hand on her bottom. Her hair smelled of pinecones, chicken feathers, and the soft soap Auntie Claire called shampoo, and he could taste the German sausage they’d had for lunch, under the veil of pickling spice.
Her arms were round his neck, her belly pressed against him, and quite suddenly he felt a small hard shove in his own belly. He looked down in astonishment, and Rachel giggled. He hadn’t realized that she wasn’t wearing stays; her br**sts were bound with a simple band under her shift, but her belly was just there, round and firm as a pumpkin under her gown.
“He—or she—is wakeful,” she said, putting a hand on her bulge, which was moving slightly as tiny limbs poked experimentally here and there inside her. This was always fascinating in its own way, but Ian was still under the influence of her pickle-sucking.
“I’ll rock him back to sleep for ye,” he whispered in her ear, and, bending, lifted her in his arms. Nearly eight months gone, she was noticeably heavy, but he managed with no more than a slight grunt and, with a care to low-hanging branches and loose stones, carried her off into the forest, leaving Clarence to graze on a succulent clump of muhly grass.
“I RATHER HOPE that it wasn’t the meeting with thy former paramour that caused this outbreak of passion,” Rachel remarked a short time later, flicking a wandering wood louse off her husband’s forearm, which was just by her face. They were lying on their sides on Ian’s plaid, naked and cupped together like spoons in a box. It was cool under the trees, but she seemed never to grow cold these days; the child was like a small furnace—doubtless taking after its father, she thought. Ian’s skin was usually warm, but for him the heat of passion was no mere metaphor; he blazed when they lay together.
“She’s no my paramour,” Ian murmured into her hair, and kissed the back of her ear. “It was only a commercial transaction.”
She didn’t like hearing that and stiffened a little.
“I did tell ye I’d gone wi’ whores.” Ian’s voice was quiet, but she could hear the slight reproach in it. “Would ye rather I had discarded lovers strewn about the countryside?”
She took a breath, relaxed, and stretched her neck to kiss the back of his long, sun-browned hand.
“No, it’s true—thee did tell me,” she admitted. “And while there is some small part of me that could wish thee came to me virgin, chaste and untouched . . . honesty obliges me to acknowledge some gratitude for the lessons learned from the likes of Mrs. Sylvie.” She wanted to ask whether he’d learned the things he’d just been doing to her from Mrs. Sylvie or perhaps from his Indian wife—but she had no wish to bring any thought of Works With Her Hands between them.
His hand lifted and cupped her breast, playing very gently with her nipple, and she squirmed involuntarily—a slow, insinuating squirm that thrust her bu**ocks back against him. Her ni**les were very large these days and so sensitive that they couldn’t bear the rubbing of stays. She squirmed again, and he laughed under his breath and rolled her over to face him so he could take her nipple in his mouth.
“Dinna make noises like that,” he murmured against her skin. “The others will be comin’ along the trail any time now.”
“What—will they think when they see Clarence alone?”
“If anyone asks later, we’ll say we were gatherin’ mushrooms.”
THEY MUSTN’T STAY much longer, she knew that. But she longed to stay like this forever—or at least for five minutes more. Ian lay once more behind her, warm and strong. But his hand was now on her stomach, tenderly stroking the rounded mystery of the child within.
He might have thought she was asleep. Perhaps he didn’t mind if she heard him. He spoke in the Gàidhlig, though, and while she didn’t yet know enough of the tongue to make out all he said, she knew it was a prayer. “A Dhia” meant “O God.” And of course she knew what it was he prayed for.