The blood was rising up the column of his neck, never a good sign.

“I dinna mean to be ‘involved,’” he said, handling the word as though it had fleas. “And I dinna mean you to be ‘involved’ with John Grey. At all,” he added as an emphatic footnote, and snatched up the shovel with which he’d been digging the new well for the garden, in a manner suggesting that he would have liked nothing better than to crown John Grey with it—or, failing that, me.

“I’m not suggesting any sort of involvement,” I said, with a fair assumption of calm.

“It’s a wee bit late for that,” he said, with a nasty emphasis that sent the blood up into my own cheeks.

“For God’s sake! You know what happened. And how. You know I—”

“Aye, I ken what happened. He laid ye down in his bed, spread your thighs, and swived ye. Ye think I’m ever going to hear the man’s name and not think of that?” He said something very rude in Gaelic featuring John’s testicles, drove the blade of his shovel into the ground, then pulled it up again.

I breathed slowly through my nose, lips pressed firmly together.

“I thought,” I said after a moment, “that we’d done with that.”

I had rather thought that. Apparently that had been wishful thinking on my part. And quite suddenly, I remembered what he’d said—well, one of the things he’d said—when he’d come to find me in Bartram’s Garden, he risen from the dead and smelling of cabbages, me mud-stained and shattered with joy.

“I have loved ye since I saw you, Sassenach. I will love ye forever. It doesna matter if ye sleep with the whole English army—well, no,” he had corrected himself, “it would matter, but it wouldna stop me loving you.”

I drew a slightly calmer breath, though my mind went right ahead and presented me with something else he’d said, later in that conversation:

“I don’t say that I dinna mind this, because I do. And I don’t say that I’ll no make a fuss about it later, because I likely will.”

He moved close to me and looked down into my face, blue eyes dark with intent.

“Did I tell ye once that I am a jealous man?”

“You did, but …”

“And did I tell ye that I grudged every hour ye’d spent in another man’s bed?”

I took a deep breath to squash down the hasty words I could feel boiling up.

“You did,” I said, through only slightly clenched teeth.

He glared at me for a long moment.

“I meant it,” he said. “I still mean it. Ye’ll do what ye damn please—God knows, ye always do—but don’t pretend ye dinna ken what I feel about it!”

He turned on his heel and stalked off, shovel over his shoulder like a rifle.