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

“Hm,” he said thoughtfully. “Worth a try. Ye get verra friendly wi’ each other, hunting all day and coming back to drink whisky by the fire.” He finished fastening my gown up the back and bent to kiss my shoulder briefly.

“I’d be sorry to leave ye, Sassenach, but it might be best.”

“Don’t mind for me,” I said. I hadn’t realized before that his departure would necessarily leave me alone at the Castle, and the thought made me more than slightly nervous. Still, I was resolved to manage, if it might help him.

“Are you ready for supper?” I asked. His hand lingered on my waist, and I turned toward him.

“Mmm,” he said a moment later. “I’d be willing to go hungry.”

“Well, I wouldn’t,” I said. “You’ll just have to wait.”

I glanced down the dinnertable and across the room. By now I knew most of the faces, some intimately. And a motley crew they were, I reflected. Frank would have been fascinated by the gathering – so many different facial types.

Thinking about Frank was rather like touching a sore tooth; my inclination was to shy away. But the time was coming when I would be able to delay no longer, and I forced my mind back, carefully drawing him in my mind, tracing the long, smooth arcs of his brows with my thoughts as I had once traced them with my fingers. No matter that my fingers tingled suddenly with the memory of rougher, thicker brows, and the deep blue of the eyes beneath them.

I hastily turned toward the nearest face, as an antidote to such disturbing thoughts. It happened to be Murtagh’s. Well, at least he looked like neither of the men who haunted my thoughts.

Short, slightly built but sinewy as a gibbon, with long arms that reinforced the simian resemblance, he had a low brow and narrow jaw that for some reason made me think of cave dwellers and pictures of Early Man shown in some of Frank’s texts. Not a Neanderthal, though. A Pict. That was it. There was something very durable about the small clansman that reminded me of the weathered, patterned stones, ancient even now, that stood their implacable guard over crossroads and burial grounds.

Amused at the idea, I looked over the other diners with an eye to spotting ethnic types. That man near the hearth, for example, John Cameron, his name was, was a Norman if I’d ever seen one – not that I had – high cheekbones and a high, narrow brow, long upper lip, and the dark skin of a Gaul.

The odd fair Saxon here and there… ah, Laoghaire, the perfect exemplar. Pale-skinned, blue-eyed, and just the tiniest bit plump… I repressed the uncharitable observation. She carefully avoided looking at either me or Jamie, chattering animatedly with her friends at one of the lower tables.

I looked in the opposite direction, toward the next table, where Dougal MacKenzie sat, apart from Colum for once. A bloody Viking, that one. With his impressive height and those broad, flat cheekbones, I could easily imagine him in command of a dragon ship, deepsunk eyes gleaming with avarice and lust as he peered through the fog at some rocky coastal village.

A large hand, wrist lightly haired with copper, reached past me to take a small loaf of oat-bread from the tray. Another Norseman, Jamie. He reminded me of Mrs. Baird’s legends of the race of giants who once walked Scotland and laid their long bones in the earth of the north.

The conversation was general, as it usually was, small groups buzzing between mouthfuls. But my ears suddenly caught a familiar name, spoken at a nearby table. Sandringham. I thought the voice was Murtagh’s, and turned around to see. He was seated next to Ned Gowan, munching industriously.

“Sandringham? Ah, old Willie the arse-bandit,” said Ned, meditatively.

“What?!” said one of the younger men-at-arms, choking on his ale.

“Our revered duke has something of a taste for boys, or so I understand,” Ned explained.

“Mmm,” agreed Rupert, his mouth full. Swallowing, he added, “Had a wee bit of a taste for young Jamie here, last time he visited these parts, if I remember rightly. That were when, Dougal? Thirty-eight? Thirty-nine?”

“Thirty-seven,” Dougal answered from the next table. He narrowed his eyes at his nephew. “Ye were rather a pretty lad at sixteen, Jamie.”

Jamie nodded, chewing. “Aye. Fast, too.”

When the laughter had died down, Dougal began to tease Jamie.

“I didna ken ye were a favorite, Jamie, lad. There’s several about the Duke as ha’ traded a sore arse for lands and offices.”

“Ye’ll notice I havena got either one,” responded Jamie with a grin, to further roars of laughter.

“What? Never even got close?” said Rupert, chewing noisily.

“A good bit closer than I would have liked, truth be known.”

“Ah, but how close would ye ha’ liked it, hey, lad?” The shout came from further down the table, from a tall, brown-bearded man I didn’t recognize, and was greeted with more laughter and ribald remarks. Jamie smiled tranquilly and reached for another loaf, undisturbed by the teasing.

“Is that why ye left the Castle so sudden and went back to your father?” asked Rupert.

“Aye.”

“Why, ye should ha’ told me ye were having trouble that way, Jamie, lad,” said Dougal, with mock concern. Jamie made a low Scottish noise in his throat.

“And if I’d told ye about it, you old rogue, ye would have slipped a bit of poppy juice in my ale some evening, and left me in His Grace’s bed as a wee gift.”

The table roared, and Jamie dodged as Dougal hurled an onion at him.

Rupert squinted across at Jamie. “Seems to me, lad, I saw ye, soon before ye left, goin’ into the Duke’s chambers near nightfall. Ye’re sure ye’re not holdin’ back on us?” Jamie grabbed another onion and threw it at him. It missed and rolled away into the rushes.

“Nay,” Jamie said, laughing, “I’m a maiden still – that way, at least. But if ye must know all about it before you can sleep, Rupert, I’ll tell ye, and welcome.”

Amid shouts of “Tell! Tell!” he deliberately poured a mug of ale and sat back in the classic storyteller’s posture. I could see Colum at the head table, head cocked forward to hear, as attentive as the ostlers and fighting-men at our table.

“Well,” he began, “it’s true enough what Ned says; His Grace had something of an eye for me, though being the innocent I was at sixteen-” Here he was interrupted by a number of cynical remarks, and raised his voice to go on. “Bein’, as I say, innocent of such carryings on, I’d no idea what he meant, though it seemed a bit strange to me, the way His Grace was always wanting to pat me like a wee dog and was so interested in what I might ha’ in my sporran.” (“Or under it!” shouted a drunken voice.)

“I thought it stranger still,” he went on, “when he found me washing myself at the river and wanted to wash my back for me. When he finished my back and went on wi’ the rest, I began to get a wee bit nervous, and when he put his hand under my kilts, I began to get the general idea. I may have been an innocent, but no a complete fool, ye ken.

“I got out of that particular situation by diving into the water, kilts and all, and swimming across to the other side; His Grace being not of a mind to risk his costly clothes in the mud and water. Anyway, after that I was verra wary of being alone with him. He caught me once or twice in the garden or the courtyard, but there was room to get away, wi’ no more harm than him kissing my ear. The only other bad time was when he came on me alone in the stables.”

“In my stables?” Old Alec looked aghast. He half-rose to his feet and called across the room to the head table. “Colum, ye’ll see that man stays oot o’ my sheds! I’ll not have him frightening my horses, duke or no! Or troubling the boys, neither!” he added, as an obvious afterthought.

Jamie went on with his story, unperturbed by the interruption. Dougal’s two teenaged daughters were listening raptly, mouths slightly agape.