The Fiery Cross (161 page)

She was lying on her stomach, face buried in the pillow, and the linen sheet had slipped down past the swell of her buttocks, leaving her bare from her nape to the crack of her arse. She lay so close in the narrow bed that his leg touched hers, and the warmth of her breathing brushed his bare shoulder. His mouth was dry.

He closed his eyes. That didn’t help; he promptly started seeing images of the night before: Brianna by the dim light of a smothered fire, the flames of her hair sparking in the shadows, light gleaming sudden across the curve of a naked breast as she slipped the butter-soft linen from her shoulders.

Late as it was, tired as he was, he’d wanted her desperately. Someone else had wanted her more, though. He cracked an eyelid and raised himself just slightly, enough to see over Brianna’s tumbled red locks, to where the cradle stood against the wall, still in shadow. No sign of movement.

They had a long-standing agreement. He woke instantly when disturbed, she was groggy and maladroit. So when a siren shriek from the cradle jerked him into heart-pounding alertness, it was Roger who would rise, pick up the soggy, yowling bundle, and deal with the immediate necessities of hygiene. By the time he brought Jemmy to his mother, bucking and squirming in the search for sustenance, Brianna would have roused herself far enough to wriggle free of her gown, and would reach up for the child, drawing him down in warm dark to the murmuring, milky refuge of her body.

Now that Jem was older, he seldom woke at night, but when he did, with bellyache or nightmare, it took a lot longer to settle him back to sleep than it had when he was tiny. Roger had fallen back to sleep while Bree was still administering comfort, but woke when she turned in the narrow bed, her buttocks sliding past his thigh. The corn shucks under them crackled loudly with a noise like a thousand distant firecrackers, all going off down the length of his spine, waking him to full awareness of an urgent, nearly painful arousal.

He’d felt the pressure of her arse against him and narrowly restrained himself from rolling over and assaulting her from the rear. Small suckling noises from the other side of her body stopped him. Jem was still in their bed.

He’d lain still, listening, praying that she’d stay awake long enough to return the little bugger to his cradle; sometimes they fell asleep together, mother and child, and Roger would wake in the morning to the confusingly mingled scents of a beddable woman and baby pee. And then in the end, he’d fallen asleep himself, in spite of his discomfort, worn out from a day of felling logs on the mountainside.

He inhaled gently. No, she’d put him back. No scent in his bed now save Brianna’s, the earthy smell of woman-flesh, a faint, sweet cloud of sweat and slippery willingness.

She sighed in her sleep, murmured something incomprehensible, and turned her head on the pillow. There were blue smudges under her eyes; she’d been up late making jelly, up again twice more with the little bas—with the baby. How could he wake her, only to gratify his own base urges?

How could he
not
?

He gritted his teeth, torn between temptation, compassion, and the sure conviction that if he yielded to his inclinations, he would get precisely as far as the worst possible moment before an interruption from the vicinity of the cradle compelled him to stop.

Experience had been a harsh teacher, but the urgings of the flesh were louder than the voice of reason. He put out a stealthy hand and gently grasped the buttock nearest. It was cool and smooth and round as a gourd.

She made a small noise deep in her throat and stretched luxuriously. She arched her back, pushing her backside up in a way that convinced Roger that the course of wisdom was to fling back the quilt, roll on top of her, and achieve his goal in the ten seconds flat it was likely to take.

He got as far as flinging back the quilt. As he raised his head from the pillow, a round, pale object rose slowly into view over the rim of the cradle, like one of the moons of Jupiter. A pair of blue eyes regarded him with clinical dispassion.

“Oh,
shit
!” he said.

“Oh,
chit
!” Jemmy said, in happy mimicry. He clambered to his feet and stood, bouncing up and down as he gripped the edge of the cradle he was rapidly outgrowing, chanting
“Chit-chit-chit-chit”
in what he evidently thought was a song.

Brianna jerked into wakefulness, blinking through tangled locks.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Ah . . . something stung me.” Roger flipped the edge of the quilt discreetly back in place. “Must be a wasp in here.”

She stretched on her pillow, groaning and smoothing her hair out of her face with one hand, then picked up the cup from the table and took a drink; she always woke up thirsty.

Her eyes traveled over him, and a slow smile spread across her wide, soft mouth. “Yeah? Nasty sting you got there. Want me to rub it?” She put down the cup, rolled gracefully up onto an elbow, and reached out a hand.

“Ye’re a sadist,” Roger said, gritting his teeth. “No doubt about it. Ye must get it from your father.”

She laughed, took her hand off the quilt, and stood up, pulling her shift on over her head.

“MAMA! Chit, Mama!” Jemmy informed her, beaming, as she swung him up out of his cradle with a grunt of effort.

“You rat,” she said, affectionately. “You aren’t very popular with Daddy this morning. Your timing stinks.” She wrinkled her nose. “And not only your timing.”

“Depends on your perspective, I suppose.” Roger rolled onto his side, watching. “I imagine from
his
point of view, the timing was perfect.”

“Yeah.” Brianna gave him a raised brow. “Hence the new word, huh?”

“He’s heard it before,” Roger said dryly. “Many times.” He sat up, swinging his legs out of bed, and rubbed a hand through his hair and over his face.

“Well, all we have to do now is figure out how to get from the abstract to the concrete, huh?” She put Jemmy on his feet and knelt in front of him, kissing him on the nose, then unpinning his diaper. “Oh, yag. Is eighteen months too soon for toilet-training, do you think?”

“Are ye asking me, or him?”

“Pew. I don’t care; whichever one of you has an opinion.”

Jemmy plainly didn’t; cheerfully stoic, he was ignoring his mother’s determined assault on his private parts with a cold, wet cloth, absorbed in a new song of his own composition, which went along the lines of “Pew, pew, chit, chit, PEW, PEW . . .”

Brianna put a stop to this by swinging him up in her arms and sitting down with him in the nursing chair by the hearth.

“Want snackies?” she said, pulling down the neck of her shift invitingly.

“God, yes,” Roger said, with feeling. Bree laughed, not without sympathy, as she settled Jemmy on her lap, where he settled happily to suckling.

“Your turn next,” she assured Roger. “You want oatmeal porridge, or fried mush for breakfast?”

“Anything else on the menu?” Damn, he’d been nearly ready to stand up. Back to square one.

“Oh, sure. Toast with strawberry jam. Cheese. Eggs, but you’ll have to go get them from the coop; I don’t have any in the pantry.”

Roger found it hard to concentrate on the discussion, faced with the sight of Brianna in the dim smoky light of the cabin, long thighs spread under her shift, her heels tucked under the chair. She seemed to detect his lack of interest in matters dietary, for she looked up and smiled at him, her eyes taking in his own nakedness.

“You look nice, Roger,” she said softly. Her free hand drifted down, resting lightly on the inner curve of one thigh. The long, blunt-nailed fingers made slow circles, barely moving.

“So do you.” His voice was husky. “Better than nice.”

Her hand rose and patted Jemmy softly on the back.

“Want to go see Auntie Lizzie after breakfast, sweetie?” she asked, not looking at him. Her eyes were fixed on Roger’s, and her wide mouth curved in a slow smile.

He didn’t think he could wait until after breakfast to touch her, at least. Her shawl was thrown across the foot of the bed; he grabbed it and wrapped it round his hips for the sake of decency as he got out of bed and crossed to kneel beside her chair.

Her hair stirred and lifted in a draft from the window, and he saw the stipple of gooseflesh break out suddenly on her arms. He put his arms around them both. The draft was cold on his bare back, but he didn’t care.

“I love you,” he whispered in her ear. His hand lay over hers, resting on her thigh.

She turned her head and kissed him, a glancing contact of soft lips.

“I love you, too,” she said.

She had rinsed her mouth with water and wine, and tasted of autumn grapes and cold streams. He was just settling down to more serious business when a loud hammering shivered the timbers of the door, accompanied by his father-in-law’s voice.

“Roger! Are ye in there, man? Up wi’ ye this minute!”

“What does he mean am I in here?” Roger hissed to Brianna. “Where the hell else would I be?”

“Shh.” She nipped his neck and reluctantly let go, her eyes traveling over him with deep appreciation.

“He’s already up, Da!” she called.

“Aye, it’s likely to be a permanent condition, too,” Roger muttered. “Coming!” he bellowed. “Where the hell are my clothes?”

“Under the bed where you left them last night.” Brianna set down Jemmy, who shrieked ecstatically at the sound of his grandfather’s voice and ran to pound on the bolted door. Having finally ventured to walk, he had lost no time with the next stage, moving on to rapid—and perpetual—locomotion within a matter of days.

“Hurry!” Sunlight flooded into the cabin as the hide over the window was thrust aside, revealing Jamie Fraser’s broad-boned face, flushed with excitement and morning sun. He lifted an eyebrow at the view of Roger thus revealed, crouched on the floor with a shirt clutched protectively to his midsection.

“Move yourself, man,” he said, mildly. “It’s no time to be hangin’ about bare-arsed; MacLeod says there are beasts just over the ridge.” He blew a kiss to Jemmy.
“A ghille ruaidh, a charaid! Ciamar a tha thu?”

Roger forgot both sex and self-consciousness. He jerked the shirt over his head and stood up.

“What kind? Deer, elk?”

“I dinna ken, but they’re meat!” The hide dropped suddenly, leaving the room half in shadow.

The intrusion had let in a blast of cold air, breaking the warm, smoke-laden atmosphere and bringing with it the breath of hunting weather, of crisp wind and crimson leaves, of mud and fresh droppings, of wet wool and sleek hide, all spiced with the imaginary reek of gunpowder.

With a final, longing look at his wife’s body, Roger grabbed his stockings.

G
RUNTING AND PUFFING, the men pushed into the dark-green zone of the conifers by noon. High on the upper ridges, clusters of balsam fir and hemlock huddled with spruce and pine, over the tumbled rock. Here they stood secure in seasonal immortality, needles murmuring lament for the bright fragility of the fallen leaves below.

Roger shivered in the cold shadow of the conifers, and was glad of the thick wool hunting shirt he wore over the linen one. There was no conversation; even when they paused briefly to draw breath, there was a stillness in the wood here that forbade unnecessary speech.

The wilderness around them felt calm—and empty. Perhaps they were too late, and the game had moved on; perhaps MacLeod had been wrong. Roger had not yet mastered the killing skills, but he had spent a good deal of time alone in sun and wind and silence; he had acquired some of the instincts of a hunter.

The men came out into full sun as they emerged on the far side of the ridge. The air was thin and cold, but Roger felt heat strike through his chilled body, and closed his eyes in momentary pleasure. The men paused together in unspoken appreciation, basking in a sheltered spot, momentarily safe from the wind.

Jamie stepped to the edge of a rocky shelf, sun glinting off his tailed copper hair. He turned to and fro, squinting downward through the trees. Roger saw his nostrils flare, and smiled to himself. Well, then, perhaps he did smell the game. He wouldn’t be surprised. Roger sniffed experimentally, but got nothing but the must of decaying leaves and a strong whiff of well-aged perspiration from the body of Kenny Lindsay.

Fraser shook his head, then turned to Fergus, and with a quiet word, climbed over the edge of the shelf and disappeared.

“We wait,” Fergus said laconically to the others, and sat down. He produced a pair of carved stone balls from his bag, and sat rolling them to and fro in his palm, concentrating intently, rolling a sphere out and back along the length of each dexterous finger.

A brilliant fall sun poked long fingers through the empty branches, administering the last rites of seasonal consolation, blessing the dying earth with a final touch of warmth. The men sat talking quietly, reeking in the sun. He hadn’t noticed in the colder wood, but here in the sun, the tang of fresh sweat was apparent, overlying the deeper layers of grime and body odors.

Roger reflected that perhaps it was not extraordinary olfactory acuteness on the part of animals, but merely the extreme smelliness of human beings that made it so difficult to get near game on foot. He had sometimes seen the Mohawk rub themselves with herbs, to disguise their natural odor when hunting, but even oil of peppermint wouldn’t make a dent in Kenny Lindsay’s stench.