Outlander Read Online Free Page B

but when he’d almost reached the corner, he…disappeared. That’s when I began to feel a bit cold down the backbone.”
    “Perhaps your attention was distracted for a second, and he just stepped aside into the shadows,” I suggested. “There are a lot of trees down near that corner.”
    “I could swear I didn’t take my eyes off him for a moment,” muttered Frank. He looked up suddenly. “I know! I remember now why I thought he was so odd, though I didn’t realize it at the time.”
    “What?” I was getting a bit tired of the ghost, and wanted to go on to more interesting matters, such as bed.
    “The wind was cutting up like billy-o, but his drapes—his kilts and his plaid, you know—they didn’t move at all, except to the stir of his walking.”
    We stared at each other. “Well,” I said finally, “that is a bit spooky.”
    Frank shrugged and smiled suddenly, dismissing it. “At least I’ll have something to tell the Vicar next time I see him. Perhaps it’s a well-known local ghost, and he can give me its gory history.” He glanced at his watch. “But now I’d say it’s bedtime.”
    “So it is,” I murmured.
    I watched him in the mirror as he removed his shirt and reached for a hanger. Suddenly he paused in mid-button.
    “Did you have many Scots in your charge, Claire?” he asked abruptly. “At the field hospital, or at Pembroke?”
    “Of course,” I replied, somewhat puzzled. “There were quite a few of the Seaforths and Camerons through the field hospital at Amiens, and then a bit later, after Caen, we had a lot of the Gordons. Nice chaps, most of them. Very stoic about things generally, but terrible cowards about injections.” I smiled, remembering one in particular.
    “We had one—rather a crusty old thing really, a piper from the Third Seaforths—who couldn’t stand being stuck, especially not in the hip. He’d go for hours in the most awful discomfort before he’d let anyone near him with a needle, and even then he’d try to get us to give him the injection in the arm, though it’s meant to be intramuscular.” I laughed at the memory of Corporal Chisholm. “He told me, ‘If I’m goin’ to lie on my face wi’ my buttocks bared, I want the lass
under
me, not behind me wi’ a hatpin!’ ”
    Frank smiled, but looked a trifle uneasy, as he often did about my less delicate war stories. “Don’t worry,” I assured him, seeing the look, “I won’t tell that one at tea in the Senior Common Room.”
    The smile lightened and he came forward to stand behind me as I sat at the dressing table. He pressed a kiss on the top of my head.
    “Don’t worry,” he said. “The Senior Common Room will love you, no matter what stories you tell. Mmmm. Your hair smells wonderful.”
    “Do you like it then?” His hands slid forward over my shoulders in answer, cupping my breasts in the thin nightdress. I could see his head above mine in the mirror, his chin resting on top of my head.
    “I like everything about you,” he said huskily. “You look wonderful by candlelight, you know. Your eyes are like sherry in crystal, and your skin glows like ivory. A candlelight witch, you are. Perhaps I should disconnect the lamps permanently.”
    “Make it hard to read in bed,” I said, my heart beginning to speed up.
    “I could think of better things to do in bed,” he murmured.
    “Could you, indeed?” I said, rising and turning to put my arms about his neck. “Like what?”
----
    Sometime later, cuddled close behind bolted shutters, I lifted my head from his shoulder and said, “Why did you ask me that earlier? About whether I’d had to do with any Scots, I mean—you must know I had, there are all sorts of men through those hospitals.”
    He stirred and ran a hand softly down my back.
    “Mmm. Oh, nothing, really. Just, when I saw that chap outside, it occurred to me he might be”—he hesitated, tightening his hold a bit—“er, you know, that he might have been someone you’d