Outlander aka Cross Stitch - Gabaldon Diana (библиотека электронных книг txt) 📗

“Nonsense,” I said, rather coldly, drawing away from her. “No one would want to poison me simply because I… well, because…” I was floundering a bit, and it occurred to me that I might have had a few sips more than I had realized.

“Now, really, Geilie. This marriage… I didn’t plan it, you know. I didn’t want it!” No lie there. “It was merely a… sort of… necessary business arrangement,” I said, hoping the candlelight hid my blushes.

“Ha,” she said cynically. “I ken the look of a lass that’s been well bedded.” She glanced toward the archway where Jamie had disappeared. “And damned if I think those are midge bites on the laddie’s neck, either.” She raised one silver brow at me. “If it was a business arrangement, I’d say ye got your money’s worth.”

She leaned close again.

“Is it true?” she whispered. “About the thumbs?”

“Thumbs? Geilie, what in God’s name are you babbling about?”

She looked down her small, straight nose at me, frowning in concentration. The beautiful grey eyes were slightly unfocused, and I hoped she wouldn’t fall over.

“Surely ye know that? Everyone knows! A man’s thumbs tell ye the size of his cock. Great toes, too, of course,” she added judiciously, “but those are harder to judge, usually, what wi’ the shoon and all. Yon wee fox-cub,” she nodded toward the archway, where Jamie had just reappeared, “he could cup a good-sized marrow in those hands of his. Or a good-sized arse, hm?” she added, nudging me once more.

“Geillis Duncan, will… you… shut… up!” I hissed, face flaming. “Someone will hear you!”

“Oh, no one who-” she began, but stopped, staring. Jamie had passed right by our table, as though he didn’t see us. His face was pale, and his lips set firmly, as though bent on some unpleasant duty.

“Whatever ails him?” Geilie asked. “He looks like Arthur after he’s eaten raw turnips.”

“I don’t know.” I pushed back the bench, hesitating. He was heading for Colum’s table. Should I follow him? Plainly something had happened.

Geilie, peering back down the room, suddenly tugged at my sleeve, pointing in the direction from which Jamie had appeared.

A man stood just within the archway, hesitating even as I was. His clothes were stained with mud and dust; a traveler of some sort. A messenger. And whatever the message, he had passed it on to Jamie, who was even now bending to whisper it in Colum’s ear.

No, not Colum. Dougal. The red head bent low between the two dark ones, the broad handsome features of the three faces taking on an unearthly similarity in the light of the dying candles. And as I watched, I realized that the similarity was due not so much to the inheritance of bone and sinew that they shared, but to the expression of shocked grief that they now held in common.

Geilie’s hand was digging into the flesh of my forearm.

“Bad news,” she said, unnecessarily.

“Twenty-four years,” I said softly. “It seems a long time to be married.”

“Aye, it does,” Jamie agreed. A warm wind stirred the branches of the tree above us, lifting the hair from my shoulders to tickle my face. “Longer than I’ve been alive.”

I glanced at him leaning on the paddock fence, all lanky grace and strong bones. I tended to forget how young he really was; he seemed so self-assured and capable.

“Still,” he said, flicking a straw into the churned mud of the paddock, “I doubt Dougal spent more than three years of that with her. He was generally here, ye ken, at the Castle – or here and there about the lands, doing Colum’s business for him.”

Dougal’s wife, Maura, had died at their estate of Beannachd. A sudden fever. Dougal himself had left at dawn, in company with Ned Gowan and the messenger who had brought the news the night before, to arrange the funeral and dispose of his wife’s property.

“Not a close marriage, then?” I asked curiously.

Jamie shrugged.

“As close as most, I should reckon. She had the children and the running of the house to keep her busy; I doubt she missed him greatly, though she seemed glad enough to see him when he came home.”

“That’s right, you lived with them for a time, didn’t you?” I was quiet, thinking. I wondered whether this was Jamie’s idea of marriage; separate lives, joining only infrequently for the breeding of children. Yet, from the little he had said, his own parents’ marriage had been a close and loving one.

With that uncanny trick of reading my thoughts, he said, “It was different wi’ my own folk, ye ken. Dougal’s was an arranged marriage, like Colum’s and a matter more of lands and business than the wanting of each other. But my parents – well, they wed for love, against the wishes of both families, and so we were… not cut off, exactly; but more by ourselves at Lallybroch. My parents didna go often to visit relatives or do business outside, and so I think they turned more to each other than husband and wife usually do.”

He laid a hand low on my back and urged me closer to him. He bent his head and brushed his lips across the top of my ear.

“It was an arrangement between us,” he said softly. “Still, I would hope… perhaps one day-” He broke off awkwardly, with a crooked smile and a gesture of dismissal.

Not wanting to encourage him in that direction, I smiled back as neutrally as I could, and turned toward the paddock. I could feel him there beside me, not quite touching, big hands gripping the top rail of the fence. I gripped the rail myself, to keep from taking his hand. I wanted more than anything to turn to him, offer him comfort, assure him with body and words that what lay between us was more than a business arrangement. It was the truth of it that stopped me.

What it is between us, he had said. When I lie with you, when you touch me. No, it wasn’t usual at all. It wasn’t a simple infatuation, either, as I had first thought. Nothing could be less simple.

The fact remained that I was bound, by vows and loyalty and law, to another man. And by love as well.

I could not, could not tell Jamie what I felt for him. To do that and then to leave, as I must, would be the height of cruelty. Neither could I lie to him.

“Claire.” He had turned to me, was looking down at me; I could feel it. I didn’t speak, but raised my face to him as he bent to kiss me. I couldn’t lie to him that way either, and didn’t. After all, I thought dimly, I had promised him honesty.

We were interrupted by a loud “Ahem!” from behind the paddock fence. Jamie, startled, whirled toward the sound, instinctively thrusting me behind him. Then he stopped and grinned, seeing Old Alec MacMahon standing there in his filthy trews, viewing us sardonically with his one bright blue eye.

The old man held a wicked-looking pair of gelding shears, which he raised in ironic salute.

“I was goin’ to use these on Mahomet,” he remarked. “Perhaps they could be put to better use here, eh?” He snicked the thick blades invitingly. “It’d keep your mind on your work, and off your cock, laddie.”

“Don’t even jest about it, man,” said Jamie, grinning. “Wanting me, were ye?”

Alec waggled an eyebrow like a woolly caterpillar.

“No, what gives ye to think that? I thought I’d like to try gelding a blooded two-year-old all by mysel’, for the joy of it.” He wheezed briefly at his own wit, then waved the shears toward the Castle.

“Off wi’ ye, lassie. Ye can have him back at supper – for what good he’ll be to ye by then.”

Apparently not trusting the nature of this last remark, Jamie reached out a long arm and neatly snagged the shears.

“I’ll feel safer if I’ve got these,” he said, cocking an eyebrow at Old Alec. “Go along, Sassenach. When I’ve finished doing all of Alec’s work for him, I’ll come and find ye.”

He leaned down to kiss my cheek, and whispered in my ear, “The stables. When the sun’s mid-sky.”