A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [366]
“She will,” he said, mentally crossing his fingers against the day, “and wee Jem, too.”
“How’s this?” Bree had asked him, fixing him with a look of rapt intensity, chin slightly lifted, lips just a fraction of an inch apart. “Jackie Kennedy. That about right, do you think, or shall I aim for Queen Elizabeth reviewing the troops?” Her lips compressed, the chin drew in a bit, and her mobile face altered from rapt attention to dignified approbation.
“Oh, Mrs. Kennedy, by all means,” he’d assured her. He’d be pleased if she kept a straight face, let alone anyone else’s.
“Aye, well, I’ll come along then—if ye dinna think anyone would take it amiss,” Ian added formally to Allan, who dismissed the notion with a hospitable flap of the hand.
“Oh, everyone will be there,” he repeated. The notion made Roger’s stomach contract slightly.
“Out after deer, are ye?” he asked with a nod toward the rifles, in hopes of turning the conversation toward something other than his own impending debut as a preacher.
“Aye,” Allan answered, “but then we heard a painter screech, off this way.” He nodded, indicating the wood just around them. “Ian said if there’s a painter about, the deer will be long gone.”
Roger shot a narrow glance at Ian, whose unnaturally blank expression told him more than he wanted to know. Allan Christie, born and raised in Edinburgh, might not know a panther’s scream from a man’s, but Ian most assuredly did.
“Too bad if it’s frightened away the game,” he said, lifting one brow at Ian. “Come on, then; I’ll walk back with ye.”
HE’D CHOSEN “Love thy neighbor as thyself” as the text for his first sermon. “An oldie but a goodie,” as he’d told Brianna, causing her to fizz slightly. And having heard at least a hundred variations on that theme, he was reasonably sure of having sufficient material to go on for the requisite thirty or forty minutes.
A standard church service was a great deal longer—several readings of psalms, discussion of the lesson of the day, intercessions for members of the congregation—but his voice wouldn’t take that yet. He was going to have to work up to the full-bore service, which could easily run three hours. He’d arrange with Tom Christie, who was an elder, to do the readings and the earliest parayers, to start with. Then they’d see how things went.
Brianna was sitting modestly off to one side now, watching him—not like Jackie Kennedy, thank God, but with a hidden smile that warmed her eyes whenever he met her gaze.
He’d brought notes, in case he should dry up or inspiration fail, but found that he didn’t need them. He’d had a moment’s breathlessness, when Tom Christie, who had read the lesson, snapped shut his Bible and looked significantly at him—but once launched, he felt quite at home; it was a lot like lecturing at university, though God knew the congregation was more attentive by far than his university students usually were. They didn’t interrupt with questions or argue with him, either—at least not while he was talking.
He was intensely conscious for the first few moments of his surroundings: the faint fug of bodies and last night’s fried onions in the air, the scuffed boards of the floor, scrubbed and smelling of lye soap, and the close press of people, ranged on benches, but so many that they crammed into every bit of standing space, as well. Within a few minutes, though, he lost all sense of anything beyond the faces in front of him.
Allan Christie hadn’t exaggerated; everyone had come. It was nearly as crowded as it had been during his last public appearance, presiding at old Mrs. Wilson’s untimely resurrection.
He wondered how much that occasion had to do with his present popularity. A few people were watching him covertly, with a faint air of expectation, as though he might turn water into wine for an encore, but for the most part, they appeared satisfied with the preaching. His voice was