The Space Between (Outlander, #7.5)(20)
And yet she’d come back from that safe time, to be with Uncle Jamie again.
For a moment, he entertained the wild fantasy that Lillie wasn’t dead but only swept away into a distant time. He couldn’t see or touch her, but the knowledge that she was doing things, was alive … maybe it was knowing that, thinking that, that had kept Uncle Jamie whole. He swallowed, hard.
“Jared,” he said, clearing his own throat. “What did ye think of Auntie Claire? When she lived here?”
Jared looked surprised but lowered his glass to his knee, pursing his lips in thought.
“She was a bonny lass, I’ll tell ye that,” he said. “Verra bonny. A tongue like the rough side of a rasp, if she took against something, though—and decided opinions.” He nodded, twice, as though recalling a few, and grinned suddenly. “Verra decided indeed!”
“Aye? The goldsmith—Rosenwald, ye ken?—mentioned her when I went to commission the chalice and he saw her name on the list. He called her La Dame Blanche.” This last was not phrased as a question, but he gave it a slight rising inflection, and Jared nodded, his smile widening into a grin.
“Oh, aye, I mind that! ’Twas Jamie’s notion. She’d find herself now and then in dangerous places without him—ken how some folk are just the sort as things happen to—so he put it about that she was La Dame Blanche. Ken what a White Lady is, do ye?”
Michael crossed himself, and Jared followed suit, nodding.
“Aye, just so. Make any wicked sod with villainy in mind think twice. A White Lady can strike ye blind or shrivel a man’s balls, and likely a few more things than that, should she take the notion. And I’d be the last to say that Claire Fraser couldn’t, if she’d a mind to.” Jared raised the glass absently to his lips, took a bigger sip of the raw spirit than he’d meant to, and coughed, spraying droplets of memorial whisky halfway across the room.
Rather to his own shock, Michael laughed.
Jared wiped his mouth, still coughing, but then sat up straight and lifted his glass, which still held a few drops.
“To your da. Slàinte mhath!”
“Slàinte!” Michael echoed, and drained what remained in his own glass. He set it down with finality and rose. He’d drink nay more tonight.
“Oidhche mhath, mo bràthair-athar no mathar.”
“Good night, lad,” said Jared. The fire was burning low but still cast a warm ruddy glow on the old man’s face. “Fare ye well.”
Next night
Michael dropped his key several times before finally managing to turn it in the old-fashioned lock. It wasn’t drink; he’d not had a drop since the wine at supper. Instead, he’d walked the length of the city and back, accompanied only by his thoughts; his whole body quivered and he felt mindless with exhaustion, but he was sure he would sleep. Jean-Baptiste had left the door unbarred, according to his orders, but one of the footmen was sprawled on a settle in the entryway, snoring. He smiled a little, though it was an effort to raise the corners of his mouth.
“Bolt the door and go to bed, Alphonse,” he whispered, bending and shaking the man gently by the shoulder. The footman stirred and snorted, but Michael didn’t wait to see whether he woke entirely. There was a tiny oil lamp burning on the landing of the stairs, a little round glass globe in the gaudy colors of Murano. It had been there since the first day he came from Scotland to stay with Jared, years before, and the sight of it soothed him and drew his aching body up the wide, dark stair.
The house creaked and talked to itself at night; all old houses did. Tonight, though, it was silent, the big copper-seamed roof gone cold and its massive timbers settled into somnolence.
He flung off his clothes and crawled naked into bed, head spinning. Tired as he was, his flesh quivered and twitched, his legs jerking like a spitted frog’s, before he finally relaxed enough to fall headfirst into the seething cauldron of dreams that awaited him.
She was there, of course. Laughing at him, playing with her ridiculous pug. Running a hand filled with desire across his face, down his neck, easing her body close, and closer. Then they were somehow in bed, with the wind blowing cool through gauzy curtains, too cool, he felt cold, but then her warmth came close, pressed against him. He felt a terrible desire but at the same time feared her. She felt utterly familiar, utterly strange—and the mixture thrilled him.
He reached for her and realized that he couldn’t raise his arms, couldn’t move. And yet she was against him, writhing in a slow squirm of need, greedy and tantalizing. In the way of dreams, he was at the same time in front of her, behind her, touching, and seeing from a distance. Candle glow on naked breasts, the shadowed weight of solid buttocks, falling drapes of parting white, one round, firm leg protruding, a pointed toe rooting gently between his legs. Urgency.
She was curled behind him then, kissing the back of his neck, and he reached back, groping, but his hands were heavy, drifting; they slid helpless over her. Hers on him were firm, more than firm—she had him by the cock, was working him. Working him hard, fast and hard. He bucked and heaved, suddenly released from the dream swamp of immobility. She loosed her grip, tried to pull away, but he folded his hand round hers and rubbed their folded hands hard up and down with joyous ferocity, spilling himself convulsively, hot wet spurts against his belly, running thick over their clenched knuckles.
She made a sound of horrified disgust, and his eyes flew open. Staring into them were a pair of huge, bugging eyes, over a gargoyle’s mouth full of tiny, sharp teeth. He shrieked.