Outlander aka Cross Stitch - Gabaldon Diana (читать книгу онлайн бесплатно полностью без регистрации .TXT) 📗
I dropped the pruning knife, which I’d taken to dig with, stretched my arms out, and stood waiting. When he released me at last, I stooped to pick up the knife again, saying teasingly, “I always wondered how it was you stayed a virgin so long. Are the girls in Lallybroch all plain, then?”
“No,” he said, squinting up into the morning sun. “It was mostly my father was responsible for that. We’d stroll over the fields in the evenings, sometimes, he and I, and talk about things. And once I got old enough for such a thing to be a possibility, he told me that a man must be responsible for any seed he sows, for it’s his duty to take care of a woman and protect her. And if I wasna prepared to do that, then I’d no right to burden a woman with the consequences of my own actions.”
He glanced behind us, toward the house. And toward the small family graveyard, near the foot of the broch, where his parents were buried.
“He said the greatest thing in a man’s life is to lie wi’ a woman he loves,” he said softly. He smiled at me, eyes blue as the sky overhead. “He was right.”
I touched his face lightly, tracing the broad sweep downward from cheek to jaw.
“Rather hard on you, though, if he expected you to wait so long to marry,” I said.
Jamie grinned, kilt flapping round his knees in the brisk autumn breeze.
“Well, the Church does teach that self-abuse is a sin, but my father said he thought that if it came to a choice between abusin’ yourself or some poor woman, a decent man might choose to make the sacrifice.”
When I stopped laughing, I shook my head and said, “No. No, I won’t ask. You did stay a virgin, though.”
“Strictly by the grace of God and my father, Sassenach. I dinna think I thought much about anything but the lasses, once I turned fourteen or so. But that was when I was sent to foster wi’ Dougal at Beannachd.”
“No girls there?” I asked. “I thought Dougal had daughters.”
“Aye, he has. Four. The two younger are no much to look at, but the eldest was a verra handsome lassie. A year or two older than me, Molly was. And not much flattered by my attention, I dinna think. I used to stare at her across the supper table, and she’d look down her nose at me and ask did I have the catarrh? Because if so, I should go to bed, and if not, she would be much obliged if I’d close my mouth, as she didna care to look at my tonsils while she was eating.”
“I begin to see how you stayed a virgin,” I said, hiking my skirts to climb a stile. “But they can’t all have been like that.”
“No,” he said reflectively, giving me a hand over the stile. “No, they weren’t. Molly’s younger sister, Tabitha, was a bit friendlier.” He smiled reminiscently.
“Tibby was the first girl I kissed. Or perhaps I should say the first girl who kissed me. I was carrying two pails of milk for her, from the barn to the dairy, plotting all the way how I’d get her behind the door, where there wasna room to get away, and kiss her there. But my hands were full, and she had to open the door for me to go through. So it was me ended up behind the door, and Tib who walked up to me, took me by both ears and kissed me. Spilled the milk, too,” he added.
“Sounds a memorable first experience,” I said, laughing.
“I doubt I was her first,” he said, grinning. “She knew a lot more about it than I did. But we didna get much practice; a day or two later, her mother caught us in the pantry. She didna do more than give me a sharpish look and tell Tibby to go and set the table for dinner, but she must have told Dougal about it.”
If Dougal MacKenzie had been quick to resent an insult to his sister’s honor, I could only imagine what he might have done in defense of his daughter’s.
“I shudder to think,” I said, grinning.
“So do I,” said Jamie, shuddering. He shot me a sidelong glance, looking shy.
“You’ll know that young men in the morning, sometimes they wake up with… well, with-” He was blushing.
“Yes, I know,” I said. “So do old men of twenty-three. You think I don’t notice? You’ve brought it to my attention often enough.”
“Mmmphm. Well, the morning after Tib’s mother caught us, I woke up just at dawn. I’d been dreaming about her – Tib, I mean, not her mother – and I wasna surprised to feel a hand on my cock. What was surprising was that it wasn’t mine.”
“Surely it wasn’t Tibby’s?”
“Well, no, it wasna. It was her father’s.”
“Dougal?! Whatever-?”
“Well, I opened my eyes wide and he smiled down at me, verra pleasant. And then he sat on the bed and we had a nice little chat, uncle and nephew, foster-father to foster-son. He said how much he was enjoying my being there, him not having a son of his own, and all that. And how his family was all so fond of me, and all. And how he would hate to think that there might be any advantage taken of such fine, innocent feelings as his daughters might have toward me, but how of course he was so pleased that he could trust me as he would his own son.”
“And all the time he was talking and me lying there, he had his one hand on his dirk, and the other resting on my fine young balls. So I said yes, Uncle, and no, Uncle, and when he left, I rolled myself up in the quilt and dreamed about pigs. And I didna kiss a girl again until I was sixteen, and went to Leoch.”
He looked over at me, smiling. His hair was laced back with a leather thong, but the shorter ends were sticking up at the crown as usual, glimmering red and gold in the brisk, clear air. His skin had darkened to a golden bronze during our journey from Leoch and Craigh na Dun, and he looked like an autumn leaf, swirling joyfully wind-borne.
“And what of you, my bonny Sassenach?” he asked, grinning. “Did ye have the wee laddies panting at your heels, or were ye shy and maidenly?”
“A bit less than you,” I said circumspectly. “I was eight.”
“Jezebel. Who was the lucky lad?”
“The dragoman’s son. That was in Egypt. He was nine.”
“Och, well, you’re no to blame then. Led astray by an older man. And a bloody heathen, no less.”
The mill came into sight below, picture-pretty, with a deep-red vine glowing up the side of the yellow plaster wall, and shutters standing open to the daylight, tidy in spite of the worn green paint. The water gushed happily down the sluice under the idle water-wheel into the millpond. There were even ducks on the pond, teal and goldeneye paused for a rest on their southern flight.
“Look,” I said, pausing at the top of the hill, putting a hand on Jamie’s arm to stop him. “Isn’t it lovely?”
“Be a sight more lovely if the water-wheel were turnin’,” he said practically. Then he glanced down at me and smiled.
“Aye, Sassenach. It’s a bonny place. I used to swim here when I was a lad – there’s a wide pool round the bend of the stream.”
A little further down the hill, the pool became visible through the screen of willows. So did the boys. There were four of them, sporting and splashing and yelling, all naked as jays.
“Brrr,” I said, watching them. The weather was fine for autumn, but there was enough of a nip in the air to make me glad of the shawl I’d brought. “It makes my blood run cold, just to see them.”
“Och?” Jamie said. “Well, let me warm it for ye then.”
With a glance down at the boys in the stream, he stepped back into the shade of a big horse chestnut tree. He put his hands about my waist and drew me into the shadow after him.
“Ye werena the first lass I kissed,” he said softly. “But I swear you’ll be the last.” And he bent his head to my upturned face.
Once the miller had emerged from his lair, and hasty introductions were made, I retired to the bank of the millpond, while Jamie spent several minutes listening to an explanation of the problem. As the miller went back into the millhouse, to try turning the stone from within, Jamie stood a moment, staring into the dark, weedy depths of the millpond. Finally, with a shrug of resignation, he began to strip off his clothes.
