A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [469]
“Well . . . but . . .” He gave Brianna a pleading look.
“Are you in trouble, Lizzie?” Brianna asked directly, lighting a second candle and putting it in the sconce by the door. With more light, she could see that Lizzie’s eyelids were reddened and swollen, as though she had been crying—though her attitude was one of excited determination, rather than fear.
“Not to say trouble, exactly. But I—I’m wi’ child, aye.” Lizzie crossed her hands on her belly, protective. “We—we wanted to be marrit, before I tell anyone.”
“Oh. Well . . .” Roger gave Jo a disapproving look, but appeared no more than half-convinced. “But your father—won’t he—”
“Da would want us to be marrit by a priest,” Lizzie explained earnestly. “And so we will be. But ye ken, sir, it’ll be months—maybe years—before we can find one.” She cast down her eyes, blushing. “I—I should like to be marrit, with proper words, ken, before the babe comes.”
“Yes,” he said, eyes drawn ineluctably to Lizzie’s midsection. “I grasp that. But I dinna quite understand the rush, if ye take my meaning. I mean, ye won’t be noticeably more pregnant tomorrow than ye are tonight. Or next week.”
Jo and Kezzie exchanged glances over Lizzie’s head. Then Jo put his hand on Lizzie’s waist and drew her gently to him.
“Sir. It’s only—we want to do right by each other. But we’d like it to be private, see? Just me and Lizzie, and my brother.”
“Just us,” Kezzie echoed, drawing close. He looked earnestly at Roger. “Please, sir?” He seemed to have injured his hand somehow; there was a handkerchief wound round it.
Brianna found the three of them touching almost beyond bearing; they were so innocent, and so young, the three scrubbed faces turned earnestly up to Roger in supplication. She moved closer and touched Roger’s arm, warm through the cloth of his sleeve.
“Do it for them,” she said softly. “Please? It’s not a marriage, exactly—but you can make them handfast”
“Aye, well, but they ought to be counseled . . . her father . . .” His protests trailed off as he glanced from her toward the trio, and she could see that he was as much touched by their innocence as she was. And, she thought, privately amused, he was also very much drawn by the thought of performing his first wedding, unorthodox as it might be. The circumstances would be romantic and memorable, here in the quiet of the night, vows exchanged by the light of fire and candle, with the memory of their own lovemaking warm in the shadows and the sleeping child a silent witness, both blessing and promise for the new marriage to be made.
Roger sighed deeply, then smiled at her in resignation, and turned away.
“Aye, all right, then. Let me put my breeches on, though; I’m not conducting my first wedding bare-arsed.”
ROGER HELD A SPOON of marmalade over his slice of toast, staring at me.
“They what?” he said, in a strangled tone.
“Oh, she didn’t!” Bree clapped a hand to her mouth, eyes wide above it, removing it at once to ask, “Both of them?”
“Evidently so,” I said, suppressing a most disgraceful urge to laugh. “You really married her to Jo last night?”
“God help me, I did,” Roger muttered. Looking thoroughly rattled, he put the spoon in his coffee cup and stirred mechanically. “But she’s handfast with Kezzie, too?”
“Before witnesses,” I assured him, with a wary glance at Mr. Wemyss, who was sitting across the breakfast table, mouth open and apparently turned to stone.
“Do you think—” Bree said to me, “I mean—both of them at once?”
“Er, she said not,” I replied, cutting my eyes toward Mr. Wemyss as an indication that perhaps this was not a suitable question to be considering in his presence, fascinating as it was.
“Oh, God,” Mr. Wemyss said, in a voice from the sepulchre. “She is damned.”
“Holy Mary, Mother of God.” Mrs. Bug, saucer-eyed, crossed herself. “May Christ have mercy!”
Roger took a gulp of his coffee, choked, and put it down, spluttering. Brianna pounded him helpfully on the back, but he motioned her away, eyes watering, and pulled himself together.
“Now, it’s maybe