“And what happens to you if they
“Oh,” he said airily, waving his free hand in the air, “the pillory. Earnailing. Flogging. Imprisonment. Transportation. That sort of thing. Likely not hanging.”
“What a relief,” I said dryly. I felt a trifle hollow. I hadn’t even tried to imagine what his life might be like, if I found him. Now that I had, I was a little taken aback.
“I did warn ye,” he said. The teasing was gone now, and the dark blue eyes were serious and watchful.
“You did,” I said, and took a deep breath.
“Do ye want to leave now?” He spoke casually enough, but I saw his fingers clench and tighten on a fold of the quilt, so that the knuckles stood out white against the sunbronzed skin.
“No,” I said. I smiled at him, as best I could manage. “I didn’t come back just to make love with you once. I came to be with you—if you’ll have me,” I ended, a little hesitantly.
“If I’ll have you!” He let out the breath he had been holding, and sat up to face me, cross-legged on the bed. He reached out and took my hands, engulfing them between his own.
“I—canna even say what I felt when I touched you today, Sassenach, and knew ye to be real,” he said. His eyes traveled over me, and I felt the heat of him, yearning, and my own heat, melting toward him. “To find you again—and then to lose ye…” He stopped, throat working as he swallowed.
I touched his face, tracing the fine, clean line of cheekbone and jaw.
“You won’t lose me,” I said. “Not ever again.” I smiled, smoothing back the thick ruff of ruddy hair behind his ear. “Not even if I find out you’ve been committing bigamy and public drunkenness.”
He jerked sharply at that, and I dropped my hand, startled.
“What is it?”
“Well—” he said, and stopped. He pursed his lips and glanced at me quickly. “It’s just—”
“Just what? Is there something else you haven’t told me?”
“Well, printing seditious pamphlets isna all that profitable,” he said, in explanation.
“I don’t suppose so,” I said, my heart starting to speed up again at the prospect of further revelations. “What else have you been doing?”
“Well, it’s just that I do a wee bit of smuggling,” he said apologetically. “On the side, like.”
“A
“Well, whisky mostly, but rum now and then, and a fair bit of French wine and cambric.”
“So that’s it!” I said. The pieces of the puzzle all settled into place—Mr. Willoughby, the Edinburgh docks, and the riddle of our present surroundings. “That’s what your connection is with this place—what you meant by saying Madame Jeanne is a customer?”
“That’s it.” He nodded. “It works verra well; we store the liquor in one of the cellars below when it comes in from France. Some of it we sell directly to Jeanne; some she keeps for us until we can ship it on.”
“Um. And as part of the arrangements…” I said delicately, “you, er…”
The blue eyes narrowed at me.
“The answer to what you’re thinking, Sassenach, is no,” he said very firmly.
“Oh, is it?” I said, feeling extremely pleased. “Mind reader, are you? And what am I thinking?”
“You were wondering do I take out my price in trade sometimes, aye?” He lifted one brow at me.
“Well, I was,” I admitted. “Not that it’s any of my business.”
“Oh, isn’t it, then?” He raised both ruddy brows and took me by both shoulders, leaning toward me.
“Is it?” he said, a moment later. He sounded a little breathless.
“Yes,” I said, sounding equally breathless. “And you don’t—”
“I don’t. Come here.”
He wrapped his arms around me, and pulled me close. The body’s memory is different from the mind’s. When I thought, and wondered, and worried, I was clumsy and awkward, fumbling my way. Without the interference of conscious thought, my body knew him, and answered him at once in tune, as though his touch had left me moments before, and not years.
“I was more afraid this time than on our wedding night,” I murmured, my eyes fixed on the slow, strong pulsebeat in the hollow of his throat.
“Were ye, then?” His arm shifted and tightened round me. “Do I frighten ye, Sassenach?”
“No.” I put my fingers on the tiny pulse, breathing the deep musk of his effort. “It’s only…the first time…I didn’t think it would be forever. I meant to go, then.”
He snorted faintly, the sweat gleaming lightly in the small hollow in the center of his chest.
“And ye did go, and came again,” he said. “You’re here; there’s no more that matters, than that.”
I raised myself slightly to look at him. His eyes were closed, slanted and catlike, his lashes that striking color I remembered so well because I had seen it so often; deep auburn at the tips, fading to a red so pale as nearly to be blond at the roots.
“What did you think, the first time we lay together?” I asked. The dark blue eyes opened slowly, and rested on me.
