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

“That’s most gallant of you,” I said, with absolute sincerity. “But was it worth, well, worth marriage?”

“It was,” he said, nodding. He smiled again, a little grimly this time. “I’ve good reason to know the man, ye ken. I wouldna see a dog given into his keeping if I could prevent it, let alone a helpless woman.”

“How flattering,” I remarked wryly, and he laughed. He stood up and went to the table near the window. Someone – perhaps the landlady – had supplied a bouquet of wildflowers, set in water in a whisky tumbler. Behind this stood two wineglasses and a bottle.

Jamie poured out two glasses and came back, handing me one as he resumed his seat.

“Not quite so good as Colum’s private stock,” he said with a smile, “but none so bad, either.” He raised his glass briefly. “To Mrs. Fraser,” he said softly, and I felt a thump of panic again. I quelled it firmly and raised my own glass.

“To honesty,” I said, and we both drank.

“Well, that’s one reason,” I said, lowering my glass. “Are there others you can tell me?”

He studied his wineglass with some care. “Perhaps it’s just that I want to bed you.” He looked up abruptly. “Did ye think of that?”

If he meant to disconcert me, he was succeeding nicely, but I resolved not to show it.

“Well, do you?” I asked boldly.

“If I’m bein’ honest, yes, I do.” The blue eyes were steady over the rim of the glass.

“You wouldn’t necessarily have had to marry me for that,” I objected.

He appeared honestly scandalized. “You do not think I would take ye without offering you marriage!”

“Many men would,” I said, amused at his innocence.

He sputtered a bit, at a momentary loss. Then regaining his composure, said with formal dignity, “Perhaps I am pretentious in saying so, but I would like to think that I am not ‘many men,’ and that I dinna necessarily place my behavior at the lowest common denominator.”

Rather touched by this speech, I assured him that I had so far found his behavior both gallant and gentlemanly, and apologized for any doubt I might inadvertently have cast on his motives.

On this precariously diplomatic note, we paused while he refilled our empty glasses.

We sipped in silence for a time, both feeling a bit shy after the frankness of that last exchange. So, apparently there was something I could offer him. I couldn’t, in fairness, say the thought had not entered my mind, even before the absurd situation in which we found ourselves arose. He was a very engaging young man. And there had been that moment, right after my arrival at the castle, when he had held me on his lap, and-

I tilted my wineglass back and drained the contents. I patted the bed beside me again.

“Sit down here with me,” I said. “And” – I cast about for some neutral topic of conversation to ease us over the awkwardness of close proximity – “and tell me about your family. Where did you grow up?”

The bed sank noticeably under his weight, and I braced myself not to roll against him. He sat closely enough that the sleeve of his shirt brushed my arm. I let my hand lie open on my thigh, relaxed. He took it naturally as he sat, and we leaned against the wall, neither of us looking down, but as conscious of the link as though we had been welded together.

“Well, now, where shall I start?” He put his rather large feet up on the stool and crossed them at the ankles. With some amusement, I recognized the Highlander settling back for a leisurely dissection of that tangle of family and clan relationships which forms the background of almost any event of significance in the Scottish Highlands. Frank and I had spent one evening in the village pub, enthralled by a conversation between two old codgers, in which the responsibility for the recent destruction of an ancient barn was traced back through the intricacies of a local feud dating, so far as I could tell, from about 1790. With the sort of minor shock to which I was becoming accustomed, I realized that that particular feud, whose origins I had thought shrouded in the mists of time, had not yet begun. Suppressing the mental turmoil this realization caused, I forced my attention to what Jamie was saying.

“My father was a Fraser, of course; a younger half-brother to the present Master of Lovat. My mother was a MacKenzie, though. Ye’ll know that Dougal and Colum are my uncles?” I nodded. The resemblance was clear enough, despite the difference in coloring. The broad cheekbones and long, straight, knife edged nose were plainly a MacKenzie inheritance.

“Aye, well, my mother was their sister, and there were two more sisters, besides. My auntie Janet is dead, like my mother, but my auntie Jocasta married a cousin of Rupert’s, and lives up near the edge of Loch Eilean. Auntie Janet had six children, four boys and two girls, Auntie Jocasta has three, all girls, Dougal’s got the four girls, Colum has little Hamish only, and my parents had me and my sister, who’s named for my Auntie Janet, but we called her Jenny always.”

“Rupert’s a MacKenzie, too?” I asked, already struggling to keep everyone straight.

“Aye. He’s-” Jamie paused a moment considering, “he’s Dougal, Colum, and Jocasta’s first cousin, which makes him my second cousin. Rupert’s father and my grandfather Jacob were brothers, along with-”

“Wait a minute. Don’t let’s go back any farther than we have to, or I shall be getting hopelessly muddled. We haven’t even got to the Frasers yet, and I’ve already lost track of your cousins.”

He rubbed his chin, calculating. “Hmm. Well, on the Fraser side it’s a bit more complicated, because my grandfather Simon married three times, so my father had two sets of half-brothers and half-sisters. Let’s leave it for now that I’ve six Fraser uncles and three aunts still living, and we’ll leave out all the cousins from that lot.”

“Yes, let’s.” I leaned forward and poured another glass of wine for each of us.

The clan territories of MacKenzie and Fraser, it turned out, adjoined each other for some distance along their inner borders, running side by side from the seacoast past the lower end of Loch Ness. This shared border, as borders tend to be, was an unmapped and most uncertain line, shifting to and fro in accordance with time, custom and alliance. Along this border, at the southern end of the Fraser clan lands, lay the small estate of Broch Tuarach, the property of Brian Fraser, Jamie’s father.

“It’s a fairly rich bit of ground, and there’s decent fishing and a good patch of forest for hunting. It maybe supports sixty crofts, and the small village – Broch Mordha, it’s called. Then there’s the manor house, of course – that’s modern,” he said, with some pride, “and the old broch that we use now for the beasts and the grain.

“Dougal and Colum were not at all pleased to have their sister marrying a Fraser, and they insisted that she not be a tenant on Fraser land, but live on a freehold. So, Lallybroch – that’s what the folk that live there call it – was deeded to my father, but there was a clause in the deed stating that the land was to pass to my mother, Ellen’s, issue only. If she died without children, the land would go back to Lord Lovat after my father’s death, whether Father had children by another wife or no. But he didn’t remarry, and I am my mother’s son. So Lallybroch’s mine, for what that’s worth.”

“I thought you were telling me yesterday that you didn’t have any property.” I sipped the wine, finding it rather good; it seemed to be getting better, the more I drank of it. I thought perhaps I had better stop soon.

Jamie wagged his head from side to side. “Well, it belongs to me, right enough. The thing is, though, it doesna do me much good at present, as I can’t go there.” He looked apologetic. “There’s the minor matter of the price on my head, ye see.”

After his escape from Fort William, he had been taken to Dougal’s house, Beannachd (means “Blessed,” he explained), to recover from his wounds and the consequent fever. From there, he had gone to France, where he had spent two years fighting with the French army, around the Spanish border.