A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [119]
I was mistaken, though. Before I could excuse myself, he set down his cup on the table and sat up straight in bed.
“Mistress Fraser,” he said, fixing me with a beady eye. “I wish to apologize to ye.”
“What for?” I said, startled.
His lips pressed tight.
“For . . . my behavior this morning.”
“Oh. Well . . . that’s quite all right. I can see how the idea of being put to sleep must seem . . . quite peculiar to you.”
“I dinna mean that.” He glanced up sharply, then down again. “I meant . . . that I . . . could not keep myself still.”
I saw the deepening flush rise up his cheeks again, and had a sudden pang of surprised sympathy. He was truly embarrassed.
I set down the tray and sat down slowly on the stool beside him, wondering what I could say that might assuage his feelings—and not make matters worse.
“But, Mr. Christie,” I said. “I wouldn’t expect anyone to hold still while having their hand taken apart. It’s—it’s simply not human nature!”
He shot me a quick, fierce glance.
“Not even your husband?”
I blinked, taken aback. Not so much by the words, as by the tone of bitterness. Roger had told me a bit of what Kenny Lindsay had said about Ardsmuir. It had been no secret that Christie had been envious of Jamie’s leadership then—but what had that to do with this?
“What makes you say that?” I asked quietly. I took his injured hand, ostensibly to check the bindings—in fact, merely to give me somewhere to look other than into his eyes.
“It’s true, aye? Your husband’s hand.” His beard jutted pugnaciously at me. “He said ye’d mended it for him. He didna wriggle and squirm when ye did it, now, did he?”
Well, no, he hadn’t. Jamie had prayed, cursed, sweated, cried—and screamed, once or twice. But he hadn’t moved.
Jamie’s hand wasn’t a matter I wanted to discuss with Thomas Christie, though.
“Everyone’s different,” I said, giving him as straight a look as I could. “I wouldn’t expect—”
“Ye wouldna expect any man to do as well as him. Aye, I ken that.” The dull red color was burning in his cheeks again, and he looked down at his bandaged hand. The fingers of his good hand were clenched in a fist.
“That’s not what I meant,” I protested. “Not at all! I’ve stitched wounds and set bones for a good many men—almost all the Highlanders were terribly brave about—” It occurred to me, that fraction of a second too late, that Christie was not a Highlander.
He made a deep growling noise in his throat.
“Highlanders,” he said, “hmp!” in a tone that made it clear he would have liked to spit on the floor, had he not been in the presence of a lady.
“Barbarians?” I said, responding to the tone. He glanced at me, and I saw his mouth twist, as he had his own moment of belated realization. He looked away, and took a deep breath—I smelled the gust of whisky as he let it out.
“Your husband . . . is . . . certainly a gentleman. He comes of a noble family, if one tainted by treason.” The “r”s of “treason” rolled like thunder—he really was quite drunk. “But he is also . . . also . . .” He frowned, groping for a better word, then gave it up. “One of them. Surely ye ken that, and you an Englishwoman?”
“One of them,” I repeated, mildly amused. “You mean a Highlander, or a barbarian?”
He gave me a look somewhere between triumph and puzzlement.
“The same thing, is it not?”
I rather thought he had a point. While I had met Highlanders of wealth and education, like Colum and Dougal MacKenzie—to say nothing of Jamie’s grandfather, the treasonous Lord Lovat to whom Christie was referring—the fact was that every single one of them had the instincts of a Viking freebooter. And to be perfectly honest, so did Jamie.
“Ah . . . well, they, um, do tend to be rather . . .” I began feebly. I rubbed a finger under my nose. “Well, they are raised