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Waking to the sound of animals – those natural but shameful rumbles we as humans tend to hide behind locked doors, running faucets – is not the most pleasant of awakenings. For one, there’s the accompanying smell. An odor I’d become accustomed to, certainly, but still an overwhelming stench that stings the eyes and itches the skin. For another: the brief moment of panic where you wonder if, God forbid, you had somehow passed in your sleep (for surely you don’t belong in a barn). You wake, assaulted by sound and smell, and think perhaps you’ve been born again, reincarnated as one of the beasts in the stalls. What sins you had committed in your past life now determined your fate in the new: a horse meant for expeditions; a mule destined for the field plow.
I rolled over, half-conscious, and my hand struck something hard. A chest. Muscled, a little worn from age and sun, but reassuringly familiar. Jamie, an internal lightbulb zinged, and I sighed in relief. Still a human, then – though the pounding in my head and the heaviness of my limbs made me feel anything but.
“Jamie,” I mumbled, consciousness coming slowly. My words seemed to slug through a mud I couldn’t remember, and I raised my voice so that they might reach him.
“Jamie?” Clearing my throat, I nearly choked. My mucus tasted of whisky. Lots of it.
“Sassenach?” he replied, a smile in his voice. It held none of the grogginess that mine did but was instead so frustratingly smug with its contrasting clarity. I raised my head to peer at him, owl-eyed, still unprepared to see the world in its entirety. Better to take things slowly in case I were to die on the spot and succumb to Second Life as a barn animal.
“Why do I feel as though I’ve been clobbered over the head with a barrel of whisky?”
Jamie laughed. “Aye, because ye might as well have. We drank two bottles last night, Sassenach.”
And here he paused, looking off into the distance as though the bottles in question were tallied on the wooden planks. “Or, Christ – was it three?”
I groaned and he shook his head, laughing all the more. “I canna remember exactly – though I ken well enough that half of it was you.”
His tone was teasing, and my damaged psyche, though fogged by a raging hangover, recognized that it didn’t appreciate the jibe. I elbowed him in the side, making this known.
“Dinna fash, Sassenach. Ye ken that I love ye fine when you’re a bit worse for drink.” He tickled me. “A feisty wee thing, you become – and a verra generous one at that.”
Despite the pounding in my temples, even I couldn’t keep a smile from stretching across my own face. There was Jamie, so blissful amongst the dirt and hay. He, too, was in a state of utter disarray, errant flops of crimson sticking out like flames. I vaguely remembered running my hands through them some hours before, burning and burning and burning until the completest satiation finally took me under.
“Well I’m glad someone is benefiting from the situation.”
“You only turn 63 once.”
“Must you remind me?
Jamie made a grab for my backside and I swatted him away. Defeated, he settled for a kiss on my forehead, chuckling into the skin there and rumbling my skull with his laughter. Wincing in pain, I reached for his hand and guided his fingers into a gentle massage of my scalp.
“You’re still just as bonnie as the first day I saw ye.” And though I knew he was referring to the more unmentionable parts of my anatomy, I warmed at the tenderness in his voice, letting it ease me back into a sense of growing peace.
“Tell me a story, Jamie. About you. Back then, before then.” I said dreamily, feeling suddenly like I was 6 years old again. In a cot somewhere in Africa, being fed the homeopathic remedy of whichever native woman had been entrusted with my health.
“Ach. There was no time before you, mo chridhe...I’ll tell ye something, though, if you wish it.” I shifted closer to him, settling within the crook where chest and muscled arm met.
Maybe not 6, then – but just as willing to love and be loved.
“You recall me telling ye that I ken straight away? From the moment I met you. You were the lass my father had told me about.”
“Ye had a fine touch – but a mind too. I didna ken how I’d woo ye, but I knew I had to make you love me. Somehow.”
“Woo me?” I teased. “You mean to say that you had secret plans to lure me into your bed?”
“Aye. I had – machinations.” He said this in a mocking British accent, a running joke he and Bree shared whenever my vocabulary surpassed what was acceptable in backcountry America. (“Do you always have to sound so English, Mama?”)
“If that’s supposed to be an imitation of me, Jamie Fraser, then it appears your hearing is failing in your old age.”
“You’re the old one, Sassenach. Not me! Maybe ye dinna ken the sound of yer own voice, mm?”
I slapped him playfully and then kissed away the sting, knowing it’d make him squirm. It did and I rest easy with the knowledge that we knew each other’s bodies – and voices – as if they belonged to both of us equally.
“Verra intelligent,” he conceded finally. “Whatever ye say sounds a bit like that Shakespeare clot-heid.”
“But aye, I did have plans. All honorable, of course,” he joked, grinning. “But none so grand. I was a wee fool back then, and though I knew I loved ye, it was really yer touch that I wanted most.”
“So all the bruised knees and torn flesh were just attempts at getting me to bind your wounds? Jamie, you scandalize me.”
“Ach. That was all fine, too. But no, it wasna that touch that I was after, Sassenach.”
“Hmm, honorable indeed,” I replied sarcastically, gently biting his nipple now. I ran my tongue slowly over it, feeling it rise and stiffen within my mouth. I moved my hand downwards, confident that another part of my husband would be as equally aroused – it was – but now it was Jamie’s turn to reject my advances.
“Are ye still drunk, woman? Yer making this much more difficult than it needs to be.” He winked in the way only a man incapable of such a gesture can. “There’s time for that yet, mo nighean donn.”
“That was part of my plan, actually,” he continued. “I knew that ye wanted to get away from Leoch, so I thought I might assist ye in such matters – get the horse, guide ye away. I thought we might stay in a wee inn somewhere and I’d get ye stinkin’ drunk until ye couldna keep yer hands off me.”
“I watched Letitia, too, seeing how she held herself, what she might fancy and what she might not. She was the only woman I knew who seemed like…”
“Who seemed like me?” I sensed his hesitation in answering. “But?”
“But there aren’t very many time-traveling, foul-mouthed, whisky-drinking lasses out there, aye? And surely none with an arse like yours.” I giggled and rolled on top of him, stretching the length of my body along his so that our flesh melded together, held by the lingering sweat of our lovemaking.
“I suppose there would be few means of comparison…”
“I tried to clean myself up a bit, too. Clean kilt, clean boots, clean hair, no beard. Even practiced speaking like a proper Englishman. Mind, doing such things made my wame curl. I wasna an Englishman and I didna want to be one either.”
He stopped, sighed, as though he were back in the able-bodied, lithe limbs of his former self. Scarred from previous perils but not quite so weathered by the exhaustion an entire lifetime brings.
“No, Sassenach, I just wanted to be yours.”
I lifted his palm to my lips, kissed the raised C I’d left there long ago.
“And so? Then what?”
“Weel, I came to realize perhaps my plan wasna the finest. There was the price on my heid, ye see. I couldna very well march off with a wanted sassenach as a wanted man. And – well, it may be daft of me to say so – but I thought my heart was none so big enough to love ye the way you deserved.”
“Jamie…” I began, but he silenced me with a gentle kiss. It was a brushing of the lips and nothing more, but still I felt the glow of his soul, the warmth of his heart. I was his and he knew it.
“So I stood by, watching. And here you are, Sassenach. And here I am. Too dirty, too proud, a bit worse for wear. And still no an Englishman...”
“Though you do try,” I retorted, scowling.
“Though I do try. But hopefully – ”
“Jamie,” I interrupted, hoping he could sense that I meant so much what I was about to say. “You’re more than enough. You're perfect. Mine.”
He kissed me deeper then, our tongues dancing, curls of red and brown igniting in a single, swirling flame.
“And here I didna have to ply ye wi' liquor to get ye in my bed!”
I laughed and he bucked his hips provocatively. I responded in kind, feeling him stiffen further beneath the movement, a tidal wave of suggestion. “Though I dinna mind it one bit when ye are. Three bottles of whisky and I’m in bed wi’ the Devil herself.”
“And speaking of that…” I moved my hips again so that he’d press me closer, reveling in the escalating warmth taking root in my own belly. No, I certainly wasn’t drunk. And neither was he.
“Dost the Lady Claire have anything particular in mind?” Jamie asked. There was that same hilariously stupid British accent again.
“Put yer mouth somewhere I dinna have to hear that daft accent,” I replied, matching his mockery in an equally unaccomplished Scottish burr.
He laughed, rolling me over and kissing my breasts, my stomach, my thighs, my…
I spent the next hour in utter contentment, blissfully human and clear-headed amongst the barn animals.
No more hangover.