A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [451]
“I would never have guessed it,” I assured him. “About what?”
He looked momentarily surprised, but then smiled, realizing.
“Ye kent what I told ye, Sassenach, about Brianna and the widow McCallum? That she wouldna scruple long to act, if Roger Mac were to be taking heed where he shouldn’t?”
“I do,” I said.
He nodded, as though verifying something to himself.
“Well, the lass comes by it honestly enough. The MacKenzies of Leoch are proud as Lucifer, all of them, and black jealous with it. Ye dinna want to cross one—still less to betray one.”
I regarded him warily over my cup of tea, wondering where this was leading.
“I thought their defining trait was charm, allied with cunning. And as for betrayal, both your uncles were past hands at it.”
“The two go together, do they not?” he asked, reaching across to dip a spoon in the marmalade. “Ye must beguile someone before ye can betray them, no? And I am inclined to think that a man who would betray is all the quicker to resent betrayal himself. Or a woman,” he added delicately.
“Oh, really,” I said, sipping with pleasure. “Jocasta, you mean.” Put in those terms, I could see it. The MacKenzies of Leoch had powerful personalities—I did wonder what Jamie’s maternal grandfather, the notorious Red Jacob, had been like—and I’d noted small commonalities of behavior between Jocasta and her elder brothers before.
Colum and Dougal had had an unshakable loyalty to each other—but to no one else. And Jocasta was essentially alone, separated from her family since her first marriage at fifteen. Being a woman, it was natural that the charm should be more apparent in her—but that didn’t mean the cunning wasn’t there. Nor yet the jealousy, I supposed.
“Well, plainly she knew that Hector betrayed her—and I do wonder whether she painted that portrait of Phaedre as a means of indicating to the world at large that she knew it, or merely as a private message to Hector—but what has that got to do with the present situation?”
He shook his head.
“Not Hector,” he said. “Duncan.”
I stared at him, absolutely open-mouthed. All other considerations aside, Duncan was impotent; he had told Jamie so, on the eve of his wedding to Jocasta. Jamie smiled crookedly, and reaching across the table, put a thumb under my chin and pushed my mouth gently shut.
“It’s a thought, Sassenach, is all I’m saying. But I think I must go and have a word wi’ the man. Will ye come?”
DUNCAN WAS IN the small room he used as a private office, tucked away above the stables, along with the tiny rooms that housed the grooms and stable-lads. He was slumped in a chair, looking hopelessly at the untidy stacks of papers and undusted ledgers that had accumulated on every horizontal surface.
He looked desperately tired, and a great deal older than when I had last seen him, at Flora MacDonald’s barbecue. His gray hair was thinning, and when he turned to greet us, the light of the sun shone across his face, and I saw the thin line of the harelip scar Roger had mentioned, hidden in the luxuriant growth of his mustache.
Something vital seemed to have gone out of him, and when Jamie delicately broached the subject upon which we had come, he made no attempt at all to deny it. In fact, he seemed glad, rather than otherwise, to have it out.
“Ye did lie wi’ the lass, then, Duncan?” Jamie asked directly, wanting to have the fact established.
“Well, no,” he said vaguely. “I should have liked to, o’ course—but what wi’ her sleeping in Jo’s dressing room . . .” At this reference to his wife, his face flushed a deep, unhealthy red.
“I mean, ye’ve had carnal knowledge of the woman, have ye not?” Jamie said, keeping a grip on his patience.
“Oh, aye.” He gulped. “Aye. I did.”
“How?” I asked bluntly.
The flush deepened, to such a degree that I feared he might have an apoplexy on the spot. He breathed like a grampus for a bit, though, and finally, his complexion began to fade back to something like normal.
“She fed me,” he said at last, rubbing a hand tiredly across his eyes. “Every day.”
Jocasta rose