I had been groping in his sporran as he talked, and now fished out not only a small purse, but a wide metal ring, embellished with a coat of arms. I tried it curiously on a finger; it was much larger than any normal ring, and hung like a quoit on a stick.
"Whoever does this belong to?" I asked, holding it out. "It looks like the Duc di Castellotti's coat of arms, but whoever it belongs to must have fingers like sausages." Castellotti was an etiolated Italian stringbean, with the pinched face of a man with chronic dyspepsia—no wonder, judging from Jamie's story. Quince jelly, forsooth!
I glanced up to find Jamie blushing from navel to hairline.
"Er," he said, taking an exaggerated interest in a mud stain on one knee, "it…doesna go on a man's finger."
"Then what…oh." I looked at the circular object with renewed interest. "Goodness. I've heard of them before…"
"You have?" said Jamie, thoroughly scandalized.
"But I've never seen one. Does it fit you?" I reached out to try it. He clasped his hands reflexively over his private parts.
Marguerite, arriving with more water, assured him, "Ne vous en faîtes pas, Monsieur. J'en ai déjà vu un." Don't worry yourself, monsieur; I've already seen one.
Dividing a glare between me and the maid, he pulled a quilt across his lap.
"Bad enough to spend all night defending my virtue," he remarked with some asperity, "without havin' it subjected to comment in the morning."
"Defending your virtue, hm?" I tossed the ring idly from hand to hand, catching it on opposing index fingers. "A gift, was it?" I asked, "or a loan?"
"A gift. Don't do that, Sassenach," he said, wincing. "It brings back memories."
"Ah yes," I said, eying him. "Now about those memories…"
"Not me!" he protested. "Surely ye dinna think I'd do such things? I'm a married man!"
"Monsieur Millefleurs isn't married?"
"He's not only married, he has two mistresses," Jamie said. "But he's French—that's different."
"The Duc di Castellotti isn't French—he's Italian."
"But he's a duke. That's different, too."
"Oh, it is, is it? I wonder if the Duchess thinks so."
"Considering a few things the Duc claimed he learnt from the Duchess, I would imagine so. Isn't that bath ready yet?"
Clutching the quilt about him, he lumbered from the bed to the steaming tub and stepped in. He dropped the quilt and lowered himself quickly, but not quite quickly enough.
"Enorme!" said the maid, crossing herself.
"C'est tout," I said repressively. "Merci bien." She dropped her eyes, blushed, and scuttled out.
As the door closed behind the maid, Jamie relaxed into the tub, high at the back to allow for lounging; the feeling of the times seemed to be that once having gone to the trouble of filling a bath, one might as well enjoy it. His stubbled face assumed an expression of bliss as he sank gradually lower into the steaming water, a flush of heat reddening his fair skin. His eyes were closed, and a faint mist of moisture gleamed across the high, broad cheekbones and shone in the hollows beneath his eyesockets.
"Soap?" he asked hopefully, opening his eyes.
"Yes, indeed." I fetched a cake and handed it to him, then sat down on a stool alongside the bath. I watched for some time as he scrubbed industriously, fetching him a cloth and a pumice stone, with which he painstakingly rasped the soles of his feet and his elbows.
"Jamie," I said at last.
"Aye?"
"I don't mean to quarrel with your methods," I said, "and we agreed that you might have to go to some lengths, but…did you really have to…"
"To what, Sassenach?" He had stopped washing and was watching me intently, head on one side.
"To…to…" To my annoyance, I was flushing as deeply as he was, but without the excuse of hot water.
A large hand rose dripping out of the water and rested on my arm. The wet heat burned through the thin fabric of my sleeve.
"Sassenach," he said, "what do ye think I've been doing?"
"Er, well," I said, trying and failing to keep my eyes away from the marks on his thigh. He laughed, though he didn't sound truly amused.
"O ye of little faith!" he said sardonically.
I withdrew beyond his reach.
"Well," I said, "when one's husband comes home covered with bites and scratches and reeking with perfume, admits he's spent the night in a bawdy house, and…"
"And tells ye flat-out he's spent the night watching, not doing?"
"You didn't get those marks on your leg from watching!" I snapped suddenly, then clamped my lips together. I felt like a jealous biddy, and I didn't care for it. I had vowed to take it all calmly, like a woman of the world, telling myself that I had complete faith in Jamie and—just in case—that you can't make omelets without breaking eggs. Even if something had happened…
I smoothed the wet spot on my sleeve, feeling the air chill through the cooling silk. I struggled to regain my former light tone.
"Or are those the scars of honorable combat, gained in defending your virtue?" Somehow the light tone didn't quite come off. Listening to myself, I had to admit that the overall tone was really quite nasty. I was rapidly ceasing to care.
No slouch at reading tones of voice, Jamie narrowed his eyes at me and seemed about to reply. He drew in his breath, then apparently thought better of whatever he had been going to say and let it out again.
"Yes," he said calmly. He fished about in the tub between his legs, coming up at length with the cake of soap, a roughly shaped ball of white slickness. He held it out on his palm.
"Will ye help me to wash my hair? His Highness vomited on me in the coach coming home, and I reek a bit, all things considered."
I hesitated a moment, but accepted the olive branch, temporarily at least.
I could feel the solid curve of his skull under the thick, soapy hair, and the welt of the healed scar across the back of his head. I dug my thumbs firmly into his neck muscles, and he relaxed slightly under my hands.
The soap bubbles ran down across the wet, gleaming curves of his shoulders, and my hands followed them, spreading the slickness so that my fingers seemed to float on the surface of his skin.
He was big, I thought. Near him so much, I tended to forget his size, until I saw him suddenly from a distance, towering among smaller men, and I would be struck anew by his grace and the beauty of his body. But he sat now with his knees nearly underneath his chin, and his shoulders filled the tub from one side to the other. He leaned forward slightly to assist my ministrations, exposing the hideous scars on his back. The thick red welts of Jack Randall's Christmas gift lay heavily over the thin white lines of the earlier floggings.
I touched the scars gently, my heart squeezed by the sight. I had seen those wounds when they were fresh, seen him driven to the edge of madness by torture and abuse. But I had healed him, and he had fought with all the power of a gallant heart to be whole once more, to come back to me. Moved by tenderness, I brushed the trailing ends of his hair aside, and bent to kiss the back of his neck.
I straightened abruptly. He felt my movement and turned his head slightly.
"What is it, Sassenach?" he asked, voice slow with drowsy contentment.
"Not a thing," I said, staring at the dark-red blotches on the side of his neck. The nurses in the quarters at Pembroke used to conceal them with jaunty scarves tied about their necks the morning after their dates with soldiers from the nearby base. I always thought the scarves were really meant as a means of advertisement, rather than concealment.
"No, not a thing," I said again, reaching for the ewer on the stand. Placed near the window, it was ice-cold to the touch. I stepped behind Jamie and upended it on his head.
I lifted the silk skirts of my nightdress to avoid the sudden wave that spilled over the side of the bath. He was sputtering from the cold, but too shocked yet to form any of the words I could see gathering force on his lips. I beat him to it.
"Just watched, did you?" I asked coldly. "I wouldn't suppose you enjoyed it a bit, did you, poor thing?"
He thrust himself back in the tub with a violence that made the water slosh over the sides, splattering on the stone floor, and twisted around to look up at me.
"What d'ye want me to say?" he demanded. "Did I want to rut with them? Aye, I did! Enough to make my balls ache with not doing it. And enough to make me feel sick wi' the thought of touching one of the sluts."
He shoved the sopping mass of his hair out of his eyes, glaring at me.
"Is that what ye wanted to know? Are ye satisfied now?"
"Not really," I said. My face was hot, and I pressed my cheek against the icy pane of the window, hands clenched on the sill.
"Who looks on a woman with lust in his heart hath committed adultery with her already. Is that how ye see it?"
"Is it how you see it?"
"No," he said shortly. "I don't. And what would ye do if I had lain wi' a whore, Sassenach? Slap my face? Order me out of your chamber? Keep yourself from my bed?"
I turned and looked at him.
"I'd kill you," I said through my teeth.