A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [208]
Cap on straight now, she came into the room, and bobbed a curtsy in front of him.
“Will I fetch ye a bit to eat, sir? There’s bannocks made fresh.” She spoke with great dignity, head upright. He raised his own head from his paper, and smiled at her.
“I should like that,” he said. “Gun robh math agaibh, a nighean.”
She nodded smartly and turned on her heel. At the door, though, she paused, looking back. Jamie raised his brows.
“I was there, ken,” she said, fixing him with a direct look. “When the Sassenachs killed your grandsire, there on Tower Hill. There was a lot of blood.” She pursed her lips, examining him through narrowed, reddened eyes, then relaxed.
“Ye’re a credit to him,” she said, and was gone in a whisk of petticoats and apron strings.
Jamie looked at me in surprise, and I shrugged.
“It wasn’t necessarily a compliment, you know,” I said, and his shoulders began to shake in silent laughter.
“I know,” he said at last, and swiped a knuckle beneath his nose. “D’ye ken, Sassenach—sometimes I mourn the auld bastard?” He shook his head. “Sometime I must ask Mrs. Bug if it’s true what he said, at the last. What they say he said, I mean.”
“What’s that?”
“He gave the headsman his fee, and told him to do a good job—‘For I shall be very angry indeed if ye don’t.’”
“Well, it certainly sounds like something he would say,” I said, smiling a little. “What do you suppose the Bugs were doing in London?”
He shook his head again, and turned his face to me, lifting his chin so the sun from the window glimmered like water along his jaw and cheekbone.
“God knows. D’ye think she’s right, Sassenach? About me being like him?”
“Not to look at,” I said, smiling a little. The late Simon, Lord Lovat, had been short and squat, though powerfully built despite his age. He had also borne a strong resemblance to a malevolent—but very clever—toad.
“No,” Jamie agreed. “Thank God. But otherwise?” The light of humor was still in his eyes, but he was serious; he truly wanted to know.
I studied him thoughtfully. There was no trace of the Old Fox in his bold, clean-cut features—those had come mostly from his mother’s MacKenzie side—nor yet in the broad-shouldered height of him, but somewhere behind those slanted dark blue eyes, I now and then sensed a faint echo of Lord Lovat’s deep-set gaze, glittering with interest and sardonic humor.
“You have something of him,” I admitted. “More than a little, sometimes. You haven’t the overweening ambition, but . . .” I squinted a bit, considering. “I was going to say that you aren’t as ruthless as him,” I went on slowly, “but you are, really.”
“Am I, then?” He didn’t seem either surprised or put out to hear this.
“You can be,” I said, and felt somewhere in the marrow of my bones the popping sound of Arvin Hodgepile’s neck breaking. It was a warm afternoon, but gooseflesh rippled suddenly up my arms, and then was gone.
“Have I the devious nature, d’ye think?” he asked seriously.
“I don’t know, quite,” I said with some dubiousness. “You’re not a proper twister like he was—but that may be only because you’ve a sense of honor that he lacked. You don’t use people like he did.”
He smiled at that, but with less real humor than he’d shown before.
“Oh, but I do, Sassenach,” he said. “It’s only I try not to let it show.”
He sat for a moment, his gaze fixed on the little cherrywood snake that I held, but I didn’t think he was looking at it. At last, he shook his head and looked up at me, the corner of his mouth tucking wryly in.
“If there is a heaven, and my grandsire’s in it—and I take leave to doubt that last—he’s laughing his wicked auld head off now. Or he would be, if it weren’t tucked underneath his arm.”
34
THE EXHIBITS IN THE CASE
AND SO IT WAS that several days later, we