A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [288]
“I knew I liked Grannie MacNab,” I murmured. “What else?”
“Well, so. She said it was likely that Jenny was only makin’ it clear to Ian—and maybe to herself, as well—that she still thought he was a man, leg or no.”
“What? Why?”
“Because, Sassenach,” he said, very dryly indeed, “when ye’re a man, a good bit of what ye have to do is to draw up lines and fight other folk who come over them. Your enemies, your tenants, your children—your wife. Ye canna always just strike them or take a strap to them, but when ye can, at least it’s clear to everyone who’s in charge.”
“But that’s perfectly—” I began, and then broke off, frowning as I considered this.
“And if ye’re a man, you’re in charge. It’s you that keeps order, whether ye like it or not. It’s true,” he said, then touched my elbow as he nodded toward an opening in the wood. “I’m thirsty. Shall we stop a bit?”
I followed him up a narrow path through the wood to what we called the Green Spring—a bubbling flow of water over pale serpentine stone, set in a cool, shady bowl of surrounding moss. We knelt, splashed our faces, and drank, sighing with grateful relief. Jamie tipped a handful of water down inside his shirt, closing his eyes in bliss. I laughed at him, but unpinned my sweat-soaked kerchief and doused it in the spring, using it to wipe my neck and arms.
The walk to the spring had caused a break in the conversation, and I wasn’t sure quite how—or whether—to resume it. Instead, I merely sat quietly in the shade, arms about my knees, idly wriggling my toes in the moss.
Jamie, too, seemed to feel no need of speech for the moment. He leaned comfortably back against a rock, the wet fabric of his shirt plastered to his chest, and we sat still, listening to the wood.
I wasn’t sure what to say, but that didn’t mean I had stopped thinking about the conversation. In an odd way, I thought I understood what Grannie MacNab had meant—though I wasn’t quite sure I agreed with it.
I was thinking more about what Jamie had said, though, regarding a man’s responsibility. Was it true? Perhaps it was, though I had never thought of it in that light before. It was true that he was a bulwark—not only for me, and for the family, but for the tenants, as well. Was that really how he did it, though? “Draw up lines, and fight other folk who come over them”? I rather thought it was.
There were lines between him and me, surely; I could have drawn them on the moss. Which was not to say we did not “come across” each other’s lines—we did, frequently, and with varying results. I had my own defenses—and means of enforcement. But he had only beaten me once for crossing his lines, and that was early on. So, had he seen that as a necessary fight? I supposed he had; that was what he was telling me.
But he had been following his own train of thought, which was running on a different track.
“It’s verra odd,” he said thoughtfully. “Laoghaire drove me mad wi’ great regularity, but it never once occurred to me to thrash her.”
“Well, how very thoughtless of you,” I said, drawing myself up. I disliked hearing him refer to Laoghaire, no matter what the context.
“Oh, it was,” he replied seriously, taking no notice of my sarcasm. “I think it was that I didna care enough for her to think of it, let alone do it.”
“You didn’t care enough to beat her? Wasn’t she the lucky one, then?”
He caught the tone of pique in my voice; his eyes sharpened and fixed on my face.
“Not to hurt her,” he said. Some new thought came to him; I saw it cross his face.
He smiled a little, got up, and came toward me. He reached down and pulled me to my feet, then took hold of my wrist, which he lifted gently over my head and pinned against the trunk of the pine I had been sitting under, so that I was obliged to lean back flat against it.
“Not to hurt her,” he said