A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [459]
“I don’t know,” I repeated. We had reached the coop, a stoutly built edifice that sheltered under a spreading maple. Several of the hens, slightly less stupid than their sisters, were roosting like huge, ripe fruits in the lower branches, heads buried in their feathers.
I pulled open the door, releasing a gust of ripe ammonia from the dark interior, and holding my breath against the stink, pulled the hens from the tree and tossed them brusquely inside. Lizzie ran into the woods nearby, snatching chickens out from under bushes and rushing back to shove them in. Large drops were beginning to plummet from the clouds, heavy as pebbles, making small, audible splats as they struck the leaves above.
“Hurry!” I slammed the door behind the last of the squawking chickens, threw the latch, and seized Lizzie by the arm. Borne on a whoosh of wind, we ran for the house, skirts whirling up round us like pigeons’ wings.
The summer kitchen was nearest; we burst through the door just as the rain came down with a roar, a solid sheet of water that struck the tin roof with a sound like anvils falling.
We stood panting inside. Lizzie’s cap had come off in flight, and her plait had come undone, so that her hair straggled over her shoulders in strands of shining, creamy blond; a noticeable change from the wispy, flyaway look she usually shared with her father. If I had seen her without her cap, I should have known at once. I took time to recover my breath, trying to decide what on earth to say to her.
She was making a great to-do over tidying herself, panting and pulling at her bodice, smoothing her skirts—all the while trying not to meet my eye.
Well, there was one question that had been niggling at me since Mr. Wemyss’s shocking revelation; best to get that one out of the way at once. The initial roar of the rain had slackened to a regular drumbeat; it was loud, but conversation was at least possible.
“Lizzie.” She looked up from her skirt-settling, slightly startled. “Tell me the truth,” I said. I put my hands on either side of her face, looking earnestly into her pale blue eyes. “Was it rape?”
She blinked, the look of absolute amazement that suffused her features more eloquent than any spoken denial could have been.
“Oh, no, ma’am!” she said just as earnestly. “Ye couldna think Jo or Kezzie would do such a thing?” Her small pink lips twitched slightly. “What, did ye think they maybe took it in turns to hold me down?”
“No,” I said tartly, releasing her. “But I thought I’d best ask, just in case.”
I hadn’t really thought so. But the Beardsleys were such an odd mix of the civil and the feral that it was impossible to say definitely what they might or might not do.
“But it was . . . er . . . both of them? That’s what your father said. Poor man,” I added, with a tone of some reproach.
“Oh.” She cast down her pale lashes, pretending to find a loose thread on her skirt. “Ummm . . . well, aye, it was. I do feel something terrible about shaming Da so. And it wasna really that we did it a-purpose . . .”
“Elizabeth Wemyss,” I said, with no little asperity, “rape aside—and we’ve ruled that out—it is not possible to engage in sexual relations with two men without meaning to. One, maybe, but not two. Come to that . . .” I hesitated, but vulgar curiosity was simply too much. “Both at once?”
She did look shocked at that, which was something of a relief.
“Oh, no, ma’am! It was . . . I mean, I didna ken that it . . .” She trailed off, quite pink in the face.
I pulled two stools out from under the table and pushed one toward her.
“Sit down,” I said, “and tell me about it. We aren’t going anywhere for a bit,” I added, glancing through the half-open door at the downpour outside. A silver haze rose knee-high over the yard, as the raindrops struck the grass in small explosions of mist, and the sharp smell of it washed through the room.
Lizzie hesitated, but took the stool; I could see her making up her mind to it that there was really nothing to do now