The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle (69 page)

“All right, then, I’m sorry,” he said. “I was wrong, and I’ll beg your pardon.”

He and his sister sat staring at each other for a long moment, but whatever pardon he was expecting from her was not forthcoming. She examined him closely, biting her lip, but said nothing. Finally he grew impatient.

“I’ve said I’m sorry! What more d’ye want of me?” he demanded. “Do ye want me to go on my knees to ye? I’ll do it if I must, but tell me!”

She shook her head slowly, lip still caught between her teeth.

“No,” she said at last, “I’ll not have ye on your knees in your own house. Stand up, though.”

Jamie stood, and she set the child down on the loveseat and crossed the room to stand in front of him.

“Take off your shirt,” she ordered.

“I’ll not!”

She jerked the shirttail out of his kilt and reached for the buttons. Short of forcible resistance, clearly he was going to obey or submit to being undressed. Retaining as much dignity as he could, he backed away from her, and tightlipped, removed the disputed garment.

She circled behind him and surveyed his back, her face displaying the same carefully blank expression I had seen Jamie adopt when concealing some strong emotion. She nodded, as though confirming something long suspected.

“Weel, and if you’ve been a fool, Jamie, it seems you’ve paid for it.” She laid her hand gently on his back, covering the worst of the scars.

“It looks as though it hurt.”

“It did.”

“Did you cry?”

His fists clenched involuntarily at his sides. “Yes!”

Jenny walked back around to face him, pointed chin lifted and slanted eyes wide and bright. “So did I,” she said softly. “Every day since they took ye away.”

The broad-cheeked faces were once more mirrors of each other, but the expression that they wore was such that I rose and stepped quietly through the kitchen door to leave them alone. As the door swung to behind me, I saw Jamie catch hold of his sister’s hands and say something huskily in Gaelic. She stepped into his embrace, and the rough bright head bent to the dark.

27

THE LAST REASON

We ate like wolves at dinner, retired to a large, airy bedroom, and slept like logs. The sun would have been high by the time we rose in the morning, save that the sky was covered in clouds. I could tell it was late by the bustling feel of the house, as of people going cheerfully about their business, and by the tempting aromas that drifted up the stairs.

After breakfast the men prepared to go out, visiting tenants, inspecting fences, mending wagons, and generally enjoying themselves. As they paused in the hall to don their coats, Ian spotted Jenny’s large basket resting on the table beneath the hall mirror.

“Shall I fetch home some apples from the orchard, Jenny? ’Twould save ye walking so far.”

“Good idea,” said Jamie, casting an appraising eye at his sister’s expansive frontage. “We dinna want her to drop it in the road.”

“I’ll drop
you
where ye stand, Jamie Fraser,” she retorted, calmly holding up the coat for Ian to shrug into. “Be useful for the once, and take this wee fiend outside wi’ ye. Mrs. Crook’s in the washhouse; ye can leave him there.” She moved her foot, dislodging small Jamie, who was clinging to her skirts, chanting “up, up” monotonously.

His uncle obediently grabbed the wee fiend around the middle and swept him out the door, upside down and shrieking with delight. “Ah,” Jenny sighed contentedly, bending to inspect her appearance in the gold-framed mirror. She wet a finger and smoothed her brows, then finished doing up the buttons at her throat. “Nice to finish dressing wi’out someone clinging to your skirts or wrapped round your knees. Some days I can scarce go to the privy alone, or speak a single sentence wi’out being interrupted.”

Her cheeks were slightly flushed, and her dark hair gleamed against the blue silk of her dress. Ian smiled at her, warm brown eyes glowing at the blooming picture she presented.

“Weel, you’ll have time to talk wi’ Claire, perhaps,” he suggested. He cocked one eyebrow in my direction. “I expect she’s mannerly enough to listen, but for God’s sake, dinna tell her any of your poems, or she’ll be on the next coach to London before Jamie and I get back.”

Jenny snapped her fingers under his nose, unperturbed by the teasing.

“I’m none too worried, man. There’s no coach going before next April, and I reckon she’ll be used to us by that time. Get on wi’ ye; Jamie’s waiting.”

While the men went about their business, Jenny and I spent the day in the parlor, she stitching, I winding up stray bits of yarn and sorting the colored silks.

Outwardly friendly, we circled each other cautiously in conversation, watching each other from the corners of our eyes. Jamie’s sister, Jamie’s wife; Jamie was the central point, unspoken, about which our thoughts revolved.

Their shared childhood linked them forever, like the warp and the weft of a single fabric, but the patterns of their weave had been loosened, by absence and suspicion, then by marriage. Ian’s thread had been present in their weaving since the beginning, mine was a new one. How would the tensions pull in this new pattern, one thread against another?

Our conversation ran on casual lines, but with the words unspoken clearly heard beneath.

“You’ve run the house here alone since your mother died?”

“Oh, aye. Since I was ten.”

I had the nurturing and the loving of him as a boy. What will you do with the man I helped make?

“Jamie says as you’re a rare fine healer.”

“I mended his shoulder for him when we first met.”

Yes, I am capable, and kind. I will care for him
.

“I hear ye married very quickly.”

Did you wed my brother for his land and money?

“Yes, it was quick. I didn’t even know Jamie’s true surname until just before the ceremony.”

I didn’t know he was laird of this place; I can only have married him for himself
.

And so it went through the morning, a light luncheon, and into the hours of the afternoon, as we exchanged small talk, tidbits of information, opinions, small and hesitant jokes, taking each other’s measure. A woman who had run a large household since the age of ten, who had managed the estate since her father’s death and her brother’s disappearance, was not a person to be lightly esteemed. I did wonder what she thought of me, but she seemed as capable as her brother of hiding her thoughts when she chose to.

As the clock on the mantelpiece began to strike five, Jenny yawned and stretched, and the garment she had been mending slid down the rounded slope of her belly onto the floor.

She began clumsily to reach for it, but I dropped to my knees beside her.

“No, I’ll get it.”

“Thank ye … Claire.” Her first use of my name was accompanied by a shy smile, and I returned it.

Before we could return to our conversation, we were interrupted by the arrival of Mrs. Crook, the housekeeper, who poked a long nose into the parlor and inquired worriedly whether we had seen wee Master Jamie.

Jenny laid aside her sewing with a sigh.

Jenny laid aside her sewing with a sigh.

“Got away again, has he? Nay worry, Lizzie. He’s likely gone wi’ his Da or his uncle. We’ll go and see, shall we, Claire? I could use a breath of air before supper.”

She rose heavily to her feet and pressed her hands against the small of her back. She groaned and gave me a wry smile.

“Three weeks, about. I canna wait.”

We walked slowly through the grounds outside, Jenny pointing out the brewhouse and the chapel, explaining the history of the estate, and when the different bits had been built.

As we approached the corner of the dovecote, we heard voices in the arbor.

“There he is, the wee rascal!” Jenny exclaimed. “Wait ’til I lay hands on him!”

“Wait a minute.” I laid a hand on her arm, recognizing the deeper voice that underlaid the little boy’s.

“Dinna worrit yourself, man,” said Jamie’s voice. “You’ll learn. It’s a bit difficult, isn’t it, when your cock doesna stick out any further than your belly button?”

I stuck my head around the corner, to find him seated on a chopping block, engaged in converse with his namesake, who was struggling manfully with the folds of his smock.

“What are you doing with the child?” I inquired cautiously.

“I’m teachin’ young James here the fine art of not pissing on his feet,” he explained. “Seems the least his uncle could do for him.”

I raised one eyebrow. “Talk is cheap. Seems the least his uncle could do is show him.”

He grinned. “Well, we’ve had a few practical demonstrations. Had a wee accident last time, though.” He exchanged accusatory looks with his nephew. “Dinna look at
me,
” he said to the boy. “It was all your fault. I
told
ye to keep still.”

“Ahem,” said Jenny dryly, with a look at her brother and a matching one at her son. The smaller Jamie responded by pulling the front of his smock up over his head, but the larger one, unabashed, grinned cheerfully and rose from his seat, brushing dirt from his breeks. He set a hand on his nephew’s swathed head, and turned the little boy toward the house.

“ ‘To everything there is a season,’ ” he quoted, “ ‘and a time for every purpose under heaven.’ First we work, wee James, and then we wash. And
then
—thank God—it’s time for supper.”

The most pressing matters of business attended to, Jamie took time the next afternoon to show me over the house. Built in 1702, it was indeed modern for its time, with such innovations as porcelain stoves for heating, and a great brick oven built into the kitchen wall, so that bread was no longer baked in the ashes of the hearth. The ground floor hallway, the stairwell, and the drawing room walls were lined with pictures. Here and there was a pastoral landscape, or an animal study, but most were of the family and their connections.

I paused before a picture of Jenny as a young girl. She sat on the garden wall, a red-leaved vine behind her. Lined up in front of her along the top of the wall was a row of birds; sparrows, a thrush, a lark, and even a pheasant, all jostling and sidling for position before their laughing mistress. It was quite unlike most of the formally posed pictures, in which one ancestor or another glared out of their frames as though their collars were choking them.

“My mother painted that,” Jamie said, noting my interest. “She did quite a few of the ones in the stairwell, but there are only two of hers in here. She always liked that one best herself.” A large, blunt finger touched the surface of the canvas gently, tracing the line of the red-leaved vine. “Those were Jenny’s tame birds. Anytime there was a bird found wi’ a lame leg or a broken wing, whoever found it would bring it along, and in days she’d have it healed, and eatin’ from her hand. That one always reminded me of Ian.” The finger tapped above the pheasant, wings spread to keep its balance, gazing at its mistress with dark, adoring eyes.

“You’re awful, Jamie,” I said, laughing. “Is there one of you?”

“Oh, aye.” He led me to the opposite wall, near the window.

Two red-haired, tartan-clad little boys stared solemnly out of the frame, seated with an enormous staghound. That must be Nairn, Bran’s grandfather, Jamie, and his older brother Willie, who had died of the smallpox at eleven. Jamie could not have been more than two when it was painted, I thought; he stood between his elder brother’s knees, one hand resting on the dog’s head.

Jamie had told me about Willie during our journey from Leoch, one night by the fire at the bottom of a lonely glen. I remembered the small snake, carved of cherrywood, that he had drawn from his sporran to show me.

“Willie gave it me for my fifth birthday,” he had said, finger gently stroking the sinuous curves. It was a comical little snake, body writhing artistically, and its head turned back to peer over what would have been its shoulder, if snakes had shoulders.

Jamie handed me the little wooden object, and I turned it over curiously.

“What’s this scratched on the underside? S-a-w-n-y. Sawny?”

“That’s me,” Jamie said, ducking his head as though mildly embarrassed. “It’s a pet name, like, a play on my second name, Alexander. It’s what Willie used to call me.”

The faces in the picture were very much alike; all the Fraser children had that forthright look that dared you to take them at less than their own valuation of themselves. In this portrait, though, Jamie’s cheeks were rounded and his nose still snubbed with babyhood, while his brother’s strong bones had begun to show the promise of the man within, a promise never kept.

“Were you very fond of him?” I asked softly, laying a hand on his arm. He nodded, looking away into the flames on the hearth.

“Oh, aye,” he said with a faint smile. “He was five years older than I, and I thought he was God, or at least Christ. Used to follow him everywhere; or everywhere he’d let me, at least.”

He turned away and wandered toward the bookshelves. Wanting to give him a moment alone, I stayed, looking out of the window.

From this side of the house I could see dimly through the rain the outline of a rocky, grass-topped hill in the distance. It reminded me of the fairies’ dun where I had stepped through a rock and emerged from a rabbit hole. Only six months. But it seemed like a very long time ago.

Jamie had come to stand beside me at the window. Staring absently out at the driving rain, he said, “There was another reason. The main one.”

“Reason?” I said stupidly.

“Why I married you.”

“Which was?” I don’t know what I expected him to say, perhaps some further revelation of his family’s contorted affairs. What he did say was more of a shock, in its way.

“Because I wanted you.” He turned from the window to face me. “More than I ever wanted anything in my life,” he added softly.

I continued staring at him, dumbstruck. Whatever I had been expecting, it wasn’t this. Seeing my openmouthed expression, he continued lightly. “When I asked my Da how ye knew which was the right woman, he told me when the time came, I’d have no doubt. And I didn’t. When I woke in the dark under that tree on the road to Leoch, with you sitting on my chest, cursing me for bleeding to death, I said to myself, ‘Jamie Fraser, for all ye canna see what she looks like, and for all she weighs as much as a good draft horse, this is the woman.’ ”

I started toward him, and he backed away, talking rapidly. “I said to myself, ‘She’s mended ye twice in as many hours, me lad; life amongst the MacKenzies being what it is, it might be as well to wed a woman as can stanch a wound and set broken bones.’ And I said to myself, ‘Jamie, lad, if her touch feels so bonny on your collarbone, imagine what it might feel like lower down …’ ”

He dodged around a chair. “Of course, I thought it might ha’ just been the effects of spending four months in a monastery, without benefit of female companionship, but then that ride through the dark together”—he paused to sigh theatrically, neatly evading my grab at his sleeve—“with that lovely broad arse wedged between my thighs”—he ducked a blow aimed at his left ear and sidestepped, getting a low table between us—“and that rock-solid head thumping me in the chest”—a small metal ornament bounced off his own head and went clanging to the floor—“I said to myself …”

He was laughing so hard at this point that he had to gasp for breath between phrases. “Jamie … I said … for all she’s a Sassenach bitch … with a tongue like an adder’s … with a bum like that … what does it matter if she’s a f-face like a sh-sh-sheep?”

I tripped him neatly and landed on his stomach with both knees as he hit the floor with a crash that shook the house.

“You mean to tell me that you married me out of love?” I demanded. He raised his eyebrows, struggling to draw in breath.

“Have I not … just been … saying so?”

Grabbing me round the shoulders with one arm, he wormed the other hand under my skirt and proceeded to inflict a series of merciless pinches on that part of my anatomy he had just been praising.

Returning to pick up her embroidery basket, Jenny sailed in at this point and stood eyeing her brother with some amusement. “And what are
you
up to, young Jamie me lad?” she inquired, one eyebrow up.