A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [276]
“So we drank a bit together, and she laughed at me, and . . .” He seemed rather at a loss to explain how matters had progressed from there, but he had waked up in her bed. That had sealed the matter, so far as he was concerned, and he had seized every excuse to go to Hillsboro thereafter.
“How long did this affair go on?” I asked, interested. Lacking a decent syringe for drawing blood, I’d merely pierced the vein inside his elbow with a fleam, and drained off the welling blood into a small vial.
For the better part of two years, apparently.
“I kent I couldna wed her,” he explained earnestly. “Meine Mutter would never . . .” He trailed off, assuming the look of a startled rabbit hearing hounds in its immediate vicinity. “Gruss Gott!” he said. “My mother!”
I’d been wondering about that particular aspect of the affair myself. Ute McGillivray wasn’t going to be at all pleased to hear that her pride and joy, her only son, had contracted a disreputable disease, and furthermore, one which was about to lead to the breaking of his carefully engineered engagement and very likely to a scandal that the entire backcountry would hear about. The fact that it was generally a fatal disease would probably be a secondary concern.
“She’ll kill me!” he said, sliding off his stool and rolling his sleeve down hastily.
“Probably not,” I said mildly. “Though I suppose—”
At this fraught moment came the sound of the back door opening and voices in the kitchen. Manfred stiffened, dark curls quivering with alarm. Then heavy footsteps started down the hall toward the surgery, and he dived across the room, flung a leg across the windowsill, and was off, running like a deer for the trees.
“Come back here, you ass!” I bellowed through the open window.
“Which ass is that, Auntie?” I turned to see that the heavy footsteps belonged to Young Ian—heavy, because he was carrying Lizzie Wemyss in his arms.
“Lizzie! What’s the matter? Here, put her on the table.” I could see at once what the matter was: a return of the malarial fever. She was limp, but shivered nonetheless with chill, the contracting muscles shaking her like jelly.
“I found her in the dairy shed,” Ian said, laying her gently on the table. “The deaf Beardsley came rushin’ out as though the devil was chasing him, saw me, and dragged me in. She was on the floor, wi’ the churn overturned beside her.”
This was very worrying—she hadn’t had an attack for some time, but for a second time, the attack had come upon her too suddenly for her to go for help, causing almost immediate collapse.
“Top shelf of the cupboard,” I said to Ian, hastily rolling Lizzie on her side and undoing her laces. “That bluish jar—no, the big one.”
He grabbed it without question, removing the lid as he brought it to me.
“Jesus, Auntie! What’s that?” He wrinkled his nose at the smell from the ointment.
“Gallberries and cinchona bark in goose grease, among other things. Take some and start rubbing it into her feet.”
Looking bemused, he gingerly scooped up a dollop of the purplish-gray cream and did as I said, Lizzie’s small bare foot nearly disappearing between the large palms of his hands.
“Will she be all right, d’ye think, Auntie?” He glanced at her face, looking troubled. The look of her was enough to trouble anyone—the clammy color of whey, and the flesh gone slack so that her delicate cheeks juddered with the chills.
“Probably. Close your eyes, Ian.” I’d got her clothes loosened, and now pulled off her gown, petticoats, pocket, and stays. I threw a ratty blanket over her before working the shift off over her head—she owned only two, and wouldn’t want one spoiled with the reek of the ointment.
Ian had obediently closed his eyes, but was still rubbing the ointment methodically into her feet, a small frown drawing his brows together, the look of concern lending him for a moment a brief but startling resemblance to Jamie.
I drew the jar toward me, scooped up some ointment, and, reaching under the blanket, began to rub it into the