crush anything, and kirtled up my skirts out of the way as best I could. There was a faint breeze; there always is, over moving water, and I sighed in relief, both at the coolness and the sudden sense of solitude. The company of plants is always soothing, and after the incessant—well, you couldn’t call it sociability, exactly, but at least the incessant presence of people requiring to be conversed with, directed, hectored, scolded, conferred with, persuaded, lied to—that I had experienced over the last few days, I found the rooted silence, rushing stream, and rustling leaves balm to the spirit.
Frankly, I thought, my spirit could use a bit of balm. Between—or rather, among—Jamie, John, Hal, William, Ian, Denny Hunter, and Benedict Arnold (to say nothing of Captain Richardson, General Clinton, Colenso, and the whole bloody Continental army), the male of the species had been rather wearing on my nerves of late.
I dug slowly and peaceably, lifting the dripping roots into my basket and packing each layer between mats of watercress. Sweat was running down my face and between my breasts, but I didn’t notice it; I was melting quietly into the landscape, breath and muscle turning to wind and earth and water.
Cicadas buzzed heavily in the trees nearby, and gnats and mosquitoes were beginning to collect in uneasy clouds overhead. These were luckily only a nuisance when they flew up my nose or hovered too close to my face; apparently my twentieth-century blood wasn’t attractive to eighteenth-century insects, and I was almost never bitten—a great blessing to a gardener. Lulled into mindlessness, I had quite lost track of time and place, and when a pair of large, battered shoes appeared in my field of view, I merely blinked at them for a moment, as I might at the sudden appearance of a frog.
Then I looked up.
“OH,” I SAID, a little blankly. Then, “There you are!” I said, dropping my knife and scrambling to my feet in a surge of joyous relief. “Where the bloody hell have you been?”
A smile flickered briefly across Jamie’s face, and he took my hands, wet and muddy as they were. His were large and warm and solid.
“In a wagon full of cabbages, most recently,” he said, and the smile took hold as he looked me over. “Ye look well, Sassenach. Verra bonny.”
“You don’t,” I said frankly. He was grubby, very thin, and he plainly hadn’t been sleeping well; he had shaved, but his face was gaunt and shadowed. “What’s happened?”
He opened his mouth to reply but then seemed to think better of it. He let go my hands, cleared his throat with a low Scottish noise, and fixed his eyes on mine. The smile had gone.
“Ye went to bed with John Grey, aye?”
I blinked, startled, then frowned at him. “Well, no, I wouldn’t say that.”
His eyebrows rose.
“He told me ye did.”
“Is that what he said?” I asked, surprised.
“Mmphm.” Now it was his turn to frown. “He told me he’d had carnal knowledge of ye. Why would he lie about such a thing as that?”
“Oh,” I said. “No, that’s right. Carnal knowledge is a very reasonable description of what happened.”
“But—”
“‘Going to bed,’ though . . . For one thing, we didn’t. It started on a dressing table and ended—so far as I recall—on the floor.” Jamie’s eyes widened noticeably, and I hastened to correct the impression he was obviously forming. “For another, that phraseology implies that we decided to make love to each other and toddled off hand in hand to do so, and that wasn’t what happened at all. Umm . . . perhaps we should sit down?” I gestured toward a rustic bench, standing knee-deep in creamy drifts of ranunculus.
I hadn’t had a single thought of that night since learning Jamie was alive, but it was beginning to dawn on me that it might quite possibly seem important to Jamie—and that explaining what had happened might be somewhat tricky.
He nodded, rather stiffly, and turned toward the bench. I followed, noting with some concern the set of his shoulders.
“Have you hurt your back?” I asked, frowning as I saw the care with which he sat down.
“What did happen?” he asked, ignoring the question. Politely, but with a distinct edge.
I took a deep breath, then blew out my cheeks in a helpless gesture.
He growled. I glanced at him, startled, having never heard such a noise from him before—at least, not aimed at me. Apparently it was somewhat more than important.
“Er . . .” I said