“You smell like—”
“I smell like a large plate of choucroute garnie,” he interrupted, with a slight grimace. “Give me a moment; I’ll have a wash.” He made as though to get up and go toward the river, and I reached out and seized him by the arm.
He looked at me for a moment, then drew a deep breath and, reaching slowly out in turn, pulled me against him. I didn’t resist. In fact, my own arms went round him in reflex, and we both sighed in unison, in the sheer relief of embrace.
I would have been quite content to sit there forever, breathing the musky, dusty, cabbage-laced smell of him and listening to the thump of his heart under my ear. All the things we’d said—all the things that had happened—hovered in the air around us like the cloud of troubles from Pandora’s box,—but for this one moment, there was nothing but each other.
After a bit, his hand moved, smoothing the loose, damp curls behind my ear. He cleared his throat and shifted a little, drawing himself up, and I reluctantly let go of him, though I left my hand on his thigh.
“I wish to say something,” he said, in the tone of one making a formal statement before a court. My heart had quieted while he held me; now it fluttered in renewed agitation.
“What?” I sounded so apprehensive that he laughed. Only a breath, but he did laugh, and I was able to breathe again. He took my hand firmly and held it, looking into my eyes.
“I don’t say that I dinna mind this, because I do. And I don’t say that I’ll no make a fuss about it later, because I likely will. But what I do say is that there is nothing in this world or the next that can take ye from me—or me from you.” He raised one brow. “D’ye disagree?”
“Oh, no,” I said fervently.
He breathed again, and his shoulders came down a fraction of an inch.
“Well, that’s good, because it wouldna do ye any good if ye did. Just the one question,” he said. “Are ye my wife?”
“Of course I am,” I said, in utter astonishment. “How could I not be?”
His face changed then; he drew a huge breath and took me into his arms. I embraced him, hard, and together we let out a great sigh, settling with it, his head bending over mine, kissing my hair, my face turned into his shoulder, openmouthed at the neck of his open shirt, our knees slowly giving way in mutual relief, so that we knelt in the fresh-turned earth, clinging together, rooted like a tree, leaf-tossed and multi-limbed but sharing one single solid trunk.
The first drops of rain began to fall.
HIS FACE WAS open now and his eyes clear blue and free of trouble—for the moment, at least. “Where is there a bed? I need to be naked with ye.”
I was entirely in sympathy with this proposition, but the question took me momentarily aback. Of course we couldn’t go to John’s house—or at least not in order to go to bed together. Even if John himself was in no position to object, the thought of what Mrs. Figg would say if I walked into the house with a large Scotsman and immediately ascended the stairs to my bedroom with him . . . and then there was Jenny . . . On the other hand, eager as I was, I really didn’t want to be naked with him among the ranunculus, where we might be interrupted at any moment by Bartrams, bumblebees, or rain.
“An inn?” I suggested.
“Is there one where folk wouldna ken ye? A decent one, I mean?”
I knit my brows, trying to think of one. Not the King’s Arms, definitely not that. Otherwise . . . I was familiar only with the two or three ordinaries where Marsali bought ale or bread—and people most assuredly knew me there—as Lady John Grey.
It wasn’t that Jamie by himself needed to avoid notice anymore—but his supposed death and my marriage to John had been the subject of a tremendous amount of public interest, by reason of its tragedy. For it to become widely known that the presumably deceased Colonel Fraser had suddenly reappeared from the dead to reclaim his wife would be a subject of conversation that would dwarf the withdrawal of the British army from the city. I had a quick flash of memory—our wedding night, witnessed at close quarters by a crowd of raucously drunk Highland clansmen—and imagined a reprise of this experience, with interested commentary by the ordinary’s patrons.
I glanced at the river, wondering whether, after all, a nice, sheltering bush—but it was late in the afternoon, cloudy, and the gnats and mosquitoes were hanging in small carnivorous clouds of their own beneath the trees. Jamie stooped suddenly and swept me up in his arms.
“I’ll find a place.”
THERE WAS A wooden thump as he kicked open the door of the new potting shed, and suddenly we were in a light-streaked darkness smelling of sun-warmed boards, earth, water, damp clay, and plants.
“What, here?”
It was abundantly clear that he wasn’t seeking privacy for the purpose of further inquiry, discussion, or reproach. For that matter, my own question was largely rhetorical.
He stood me on my feet, turned me about, and began undoing my laces. I could feel his breath on the bare skin of my neck, and the tiny hairs there shivered.
“Are you—” I began, only to be interrupted by a terse “Hush.” I hushed. I could hear then what he’d heard: the Bartrams, in conversation with each other. They were some distance away, though—on the back porch of the house, I thought, screened from the river path by a thick hedge of English yew.
“I don’t think they can hear us,” I said, though I lowered my voice.
“I’ve done wi’ talking,” he whispered, and, leaning forward, closed his teeth gently on the nape of my exposed neck.