“Well, ye ken Ian,” he said, shrugging. “He’s no the one to be doing that sort of thing unless Jenny deviled him into it.”
“I never saw anything of that sort going on,” I said, giving him a hard look.
“Well, she’d scarcely do it in front of ye, would she?”
“And she would, in front of you?”
“Well, not precisely, no,” he admitted. “But I wasna often in the house, after Culloden. Now and then, though, I’d come down for a visit, and I’d see that she was . . . brewing for something.” He rubbed his nose and squinted against the sun, searching for words. “She’d devil him,” he said at last, shrugging. “Pick at him over nothing, make wee sarcastic remarks. She’d—” His face cleared a bit, as he came up with a suitable description. “She’d act like a spoilt wee lassie in need of the tawse.”
I found this description completely incredible. Jenny Murray had a sharp tongue, and few inhibitions about using it on anyone, her husband included. Ian, the soul of good nature, merely laughed at her. But I simply couldn’t countenance the notion of her behaving in the manner described.
“Well, so. I’d seen that a time or two, as I say. And Ian would give her an eye, but held his peace. But then the once, I was out hunting, near sunset, and took a small deer on the hill just behind the broch—ye ken the place?”
I nodded, still feeling stunned.
“It was close enough to carry the carcass to the house without help, so I brought it down to the smoke shed and hung it. There was no one about—I found out later the children had all gone to the market in Broch Mhorda, and the servants with them. So I thought the house was empty altogether, and stepped into the kitchen to find a bite and a cup of buttermilk before I left.”
Thinking the house empty, he had been startled by noises in the bedchamber overhead.
“What sort of noises?” I asked, fascinated.
“Well . . . shrieks,” he said, shrugging. “And giggling. A bit of shoving and banging, with a stool or some such falling over. If it weren’t for the yaffling, I should have thought there were thieves in the house. But I kent it was Jenny’s voice, and Ian’s, and—” He broke off, his ears going pink at the memory.
“So then . . . there was a bit more—raised voices, like—and then the crack of a belt on a bum, and the sort of skelloch ye could hear across six fields.”
He took a deep breath, shrugging.
“Well, I was taken back a bit, and couldna think what to do at once.”
I nodded, understanding that, at least.
“I expect it would be a bit of an awkward situation, yes. It . . . er . . . went on, though?”
He nodded. His ears were a deep red by now, and his face flushed, though that might only be from heat.
“Aye, it did.” He glanced at me. “Mind, Sassenach, if I’d thought he meant harm to her, I should have been up the stairs in an instant. But . . .” He brushed away an inquisitive bee, shaking his head. “There was—it felt—I canna even think how to say it. It wasna really that Jenny kept laughing, because she didna—but that I felt she wanted to. And Ian . . . well, Ian was laughing. Not out loud, I dinna mean; it was just . . . in his voice.”
He blew out his breath, and swiped his knuckles along his jaw, wiping sweat.
“I stayed quite frozen there, wi’ a bit of pie in my hand, listening. I came to myself only when the flies started lighting in my open mouth, and by that time, they’d . . . ah . . . they were . . . mmphm.” He hunched his shoulders, as though his shirt were too tight.
“Making it up, were they?” I asked very dryly.
“I expect so,” he replied, rather primly. “I left. Walked all the way to Foyne, and stayed the night with Grannie MacNab.” Foyne was a tiny hamlet, some fifteen miles from Lallybroch.
“Why?” I asked.
“Well, I had to,” he said logically. “I couldna ignore it, after all. It was either walk about and think of things, or else give in and abuse myself, and I couldna verra well do that—it was my own sister, after all.”
“You mean to say you can’t think and engage in sexual activity at the same time?” I asked, laughing.
“Of course not,” he said—thus confirming a long-held private opinion of mine—and gave me a look as though I were crazy. “Can you?”
“I can, yes.”
He raised one eyebrow, plainly unconvinced.
“Well, I’m not saying I do, always,” I admitted, “but it’s possible. Women are used to doing more than one thing at once—they have to, because of the children. Anyway, go back to Jenny and Ian. Why on earth—”
“Well, I did walk about and think of it,” Jamie admitted. “I couldna seem to stop thinking of it, to be honest. Grannie MacNab could see I’d something on my mind, and pestered me over the supper until . . . ah . . . well, until I told her about it.”
“Really. What did she say?” I asked, fascinated. I’d known Grannie MacNab, a sprightly old person with a highly forthright manner—and a lot of experience with human weakness.
“She cackled like thorns under a pot,” he said, one side of his mouth turning up. “I thought she’d fall into the fire wi’ merriment.”
Recovered to some extent, though, the old lady had wiped her eyes and explained matters to him, kindly, as though addressing a simpleton.
“She said it was because of Ian’s leg,” Jamie said, glancing at me to see whether this made sense to me. “She said that such a thing would make no difference to Jenny, but it would to him. She said,” he added, his color heightening, “that men havena got any idea what women think about bed, but they always think they have, so it causes trouble.”
“I knew I liked Grannie MacNab,” I murmured. “What else?”
“Well, so. She said it was likely that Jenny was only makin’ it clear to Ian—and maybe to herself, as well—that she still thought he was a man, leg or no.”
“What? Why?”
“Because, Sassenach,” he said, very dryly indeed, “when ye’re a man, a good bit of what ye have to do is to draw up lines and fight other folk who come over them. Your enemies, your tenants, your children—your wife. Ye canna always just strike them or take a strap to them, but when ye can, at least it’s clear to everyone who’s in charge.”
“But that’s perfectly—” I began, and then broke off, frowning as I considered this.
“And if ye’re a man, you’re in charge. It’s you that keeps order, whether ye like it or not. It’s true,” he said, then touched my elbow as he nodded toward an opening in the wood. “I’m thirsty. Shall we stop a bit?”
I followed him up a narrow path through the wood to what we called the Green Spring—a bubbling flow of water over pale serpentine stone, set in a cool, shady bowl of surrounding moss. We knelt, splashed our faces, and drank, sighing with grateful relief. Jamie tipped a handful of water down inside his shirt, closing his eyes in bliss. I laughed at him, but unpinned my sweat-soaked kerchief and doused it in the spring, using it to wipe my neck and arms.
The walk to the spring had caused a break in the conversation, and I wasn’t sure quite how—or whether—to resume it. Instead, I merely sat quietly in the shade, arms about my knees, idly wriggling my toes in the moss.
Jamie, too, seemed to feel no need of speech for the moment. He leaned comfortably back against a rock, the wet fabric of his shirt plastered to his chest, and we sat still, listening to the wood.
I wasn’t sure what to say, but that didn’t mean I had stopped thinking about the conversation. In an odd way, I thought I understood what Grannie MacNab had meant—though I wasn’t quite sure I agreed with it.
I was thinking more about what Jamie had said, though, regarding a man’s responsibility. Was it true? Perhaps it was, though I had never thought of it in that light before. It was true that he was a bulwark—not only for me, and for the family, but for the tenants, as well. Was that really how he did it, though? “Draw up lines, and fight other folk who come over them”? I rather thought it was.
There were lines between him and me, surely; I could have drawn them on the moss. Which was not to say we did not “come across” each other’s lines—we did, frequently, and with varying results. I had my own defenses—and means of enforcement. But he had only beaten me once for crossing his lines, and that was early on. So, had he seen that as a necessary fight? I supposed he had; that was what he was telling me.
But he had been following his own train of thought, which was running on a different track.
“It’s verra odd,” he said thoughtfully. “Laoghaire drove me mad wi’ great regularity, but it never once occurred to me to thrash her.”
“Well, how very thoughtless of you,” I said, drawing myself up. I disliked hearing him refer to Laoghaire, no matter what the context.
“Oh, it was,” he replied seriously, taking no notice of my sarcasm. “I think it was that I didna care enough for her to think of it, let alone do it.”
“You didn’t care enough to beat her? Wasn’t she the lucky one, then?”
He caught the tone of pique in my voice; his eyes sharpened and fixed on my face.
“Not to hurt her,” he said. Some new thought came to him; I saw it cross his face.
He smiled a little, got up, and came toward me. He reached down and pulled me to my feet, then took hold of my wrist, which he lifted gently over my head and pinned against the trunk of the pine I had been sitting under, so that I was obliged to lean back flat against it.
“Not to hurt her,” he said again, speaking softly. “To own her. I didna want to possess her. You, mo nighean donn—you, I would own.”
“Own me?” I said. “And what, exactly, do you mean by that?”
“What I say.” There was still a gleam of humor in his eyes, but his voice was serious. “Ye’re mine, Sassenach. And I would do anything I thought I must to make that clear.”
“Oh, indeed. Including beating me on a regular basis?”
“No, I wouldna do that.” The corner of his mouth lifted slightly, and the pressure of his grip on my trapped wrist increased. His eyes were deep blue, an inch from mine. “I dinna need to—because I could, Sassenach—and ye ken that well.”
I pulled against his grip, by sheer reflex. I remembered vividly that night in Doonesbury: the feeling of fighting him with all my strength—to no avail whatever. The horrifying feeling of being pinned to the bed, defenseless and exposed, realizing that he could do anything whatever that he liked to me—and would.
I squirmed violently, trying to escape the grip of memory, as much as his grasp on my flesh. I didn’t succeed, but did turn my wrist so as to be able to sink my nails into his hand.
He didn’t flinch or look away. His other hand touched me lightly—no more than a brush of my earlobe, but that was quite enough. He could touch me anywhere—in any way.