Jamie said something under his breath in Gaelic. I didn’t catch most of the words. He sat with his head bent, elbows on his knees and head in his hands, and breathed audibly.
After a moment, I sat back down beside him and breathed, too. The cicadas grew louder, an urgent buzz that drowned out the rush of water and the rustling of leaves, humming in my bones.
“Damn him,” Jamie muttered at last, and sat up. He looked disturbed, angry—but not angry at me.
“John, um, is all right, isn’t he?” I asked hesitantly. To my surprise—and my slight unease—Jamie’s lips twisted a little.
“Aye. Well. I’m sure he is,” he said, in a tone admitting of a certain doubt, which I found alarming.
“What the bloody hell did you do to him?” I said, sitting up straight.
His lips compressed for an instant.
“I hit him,” he said. “Twice,” he added, glancing away.
“Twice?” I echoed, in some shock. “Did he fight you?”
“No,” he said shortly.
“Really.” I rocked back a bit, looking him over. Now that I had calmed down enough to take notice, I thought he was displaying . . . what? Concern? Guilt?
“Why did you hit him?” I asked, striving for a tone of mild curiosity, rather than one of accusation. Evidently I was less than successful with this, as he turned on me like a bear stung in the rump by a bee.
“Why? Ye dare to ask me why?”
“Certainly I do,” I said, discarding the mild tone. “What did he do to make you hit him? And twice?” Jamie had no problem with mayhem, but he normally did require a reason.
He made a deeply disgruntled Scottish noise, but he’d promised me honesty a long time ago and hadn’t seen fit to break that promise yet. He squared his shoulders and looked at me straight.
“The first was between him and me; it was a blow I’ve owed him for a good while.”
“And you just seized the opportunity to punch him, because it was convenient?” I asked, a bit wary of asking directly what the devil he meant by “between him and me.”
“I couldna help it,” he said testily. “He said something and I hit him.”
I didn’t say anything but inhaled through my nose, meaning him to hear it. There was a long moment of silence, weighted with expectation and broken only by the shush of the river.
“He said the two of ye hadna been making love to each other,” he finally muttered, looking down.
“No, we weren’t,” I said, somewhat surprised. “I told you. We were both—oh!”
He did look up at me then, glaring.
“Oh,” he said, the word dripping with sarcasm. “Ye were both f**king me, he said.”
“Oh, I see,” I murmured. “Well. Um. Yes, that’s quite true.” I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “I see,” I said again, and thought I probably did. There was a deep friendship of long standing between Jamie and John, but I was aware that one of the pillars it rested on was a strict avoidance of any reference to John’s sexual attraction toward Jamie. If John had lost his composure sufficiently as to kick that pillar out from under the two of them . . .
“And the second time?” I asked, choosing not to ask him to elaborate any further on the first.
“Aye, well, that one was on your account,” he said, both voice and face relaxing a little.
“I’m flattered,” I said, as dryly as possible. “But you really shouldn’t have.”
“Well, I ken that now,” he admitted, flushing. “But I’d lost my temper already and hadna got it back again. Ifrinn,” he muttered, and, stooping, picked up the discarded digging knife and jammed it hard into the bench beside him.
He closed his eyes then, pressed his lips tight, and sat tapping the fingers of his right hand against his leg. He hadn’t done that since I’d amputated the remains of his frozen fourth finger, and I was taken aback to see him do it now. For the first time, I began to appreciate the true complexities of the situation.
“Tell me,” I said, in a voice not much louder than the cicadas. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“About John Grey. About Helwater.” He drew a deep, exasperated breath and opened his eyes, though he didn’t look at me. “I managed there. Staying numb, as ye said. I suppose I might have stayed drunk, too, had I been able to afford it.” His mouth twisted, and he folded his right hand into a fist, then looked down at it in surprise; he hadn’t been able to do that for thirty years. He opened it and put his hand flat on his knee.
“I managed,” he repeated. “But then there was Geneva—and I told ye how that was, too, did I not?”
“You did.”
He sighed. “And then there was William. When Geneva died and it was my fault, it was a knife in my heart—and then William . . .” His mouth softened. “The bairn cut me wide open, Sassenach. He spilled my guts out into my hands.”
I put my hand on his, and he turned it, his fingers curling over mine.
“And that bloody English sodomite bandaged me,” he said, so low I could scarcely hear him above the sound of the river. “With his friendship.”
He drew breath again and let it out explosively. “No, I didna kill him. I dinna ken if I’m glad of it or not—but I didn’t.”
I let out my own breath in a deep sigh and leaned against him.
“I knew that. I’m glad.”
The haze had thickened into steel-gray clouds, coming purposefully up the river, muttering with thunder. I took a deep, lung-filling whiff of ozone and then another, of his skin. I detected the basic male animal, very appetizing in itself, but he seemed to have acquired a rather unusual—though savory—bouquet in addition: a faint whiff of sausage, the strong bitter scent of cabbage, and . . . yes, mustard, underlaid with something oddly spicy. I sniffed again, repressing the urge to lick him.