A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [504]
Ian scooped up the ball, and turning, flung it out through the open gate, Rollo after it like the tail of a comet.
“I did want to ask ye something, Auntie,” he said, turning back to me. “It would wait, though.”
“No, that’s all right. Now’s as good a time as any.” Getting awkwardly to my feet, I waved him to the little bench Jamie had made for me in a shady nook beneath a flowering dogwood that overhung the corner of the garden.
“So?” I settled myself beside him, brushing crumbs of dirt from the bottom of my skirt.
“Mmphm. Well . . .” He stared at his hands, linked over his knee, big-knuckled and bony. “I . . . ah . . .”
“You haven’t been exposed to syphilis again, have you?” I asked, with a vivid memory of my last interview with an awkward young man in this garden. “Because if you have, Ian, I swear I will use Dr. Fentiman’s syringe on you and I won’t be gentle with it. You—”
“No, no!” he said hastily. “No, of course not, Auntie. It’s about—about Malva Christie.” He tensed as he said it, in case I should lunge for the pruning knife, but I merely drew a deep breath and let it out again, slowly.
“What about her?” I said, my voice deliberately even.
“Well . . . no really her, exactly. More what she said—about Uncle Jamie.” He stopped, swallowing, and I drew another slow breath. Disturbed as I was by the situation myself, I’d scarcely thought about its impact on anyone else. But Ian had idolized Jamie from the time he was a tiny boy; I could well imagine that the widespread suggestions that Jamie might have feet of clay were deeply upsetting to him.
“Ian, you mustn’t worry yourself.” I put a consoling hand—dirt-stained as it was—on his arm. “It will . . . work itself out, somehow. Such things always do.” They did—generally with the maximum of uproar and catastrophe. And if Malva’s child should by some horrid cosmic joke be born with red hair . . . I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling a wave of dizziness.
“Aye, I suppose they will,” Ian said, sounding uncertain in the extreme. “It’s only—what they’re sayin’, about Uncle Jamie. Even his own Ardsmuir men, folk that should know better! That he must have—well, I’ll no repeat any of it, Auntie—but . . . I canna bear to hear it!”
His long, homely face was twisted with unhappiness, and it suddenly occurred to me that he might be having his own doubts about the matter.
“Ian,” I said, with as much firmness as I could muster, “Malva’s child could not possibly be Jamie’s. You do believe that, don’t you?”
He nodded, very slowly, but wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“I do,” he said softly, and then swallowed hard. “But, Auntie . . . it could be mine.”
A bee had lighted on my arm. I stared at it, seeing the veins in its glassy wings, the dust of yellow pollen that clung to the minuscule hairs of its legs and abdomen, the gentle pulsing of its body as it breathed.
“Oh, Ian,” I said as softly as he’d spoken himself. “Oh, Ian.”
He was strung tight as a marionette, but when I spoke, a little of the tension left the arm under my hand, and I saw that he had closed his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Auntie,” he whispered.
Wordless, I patted his arm. The bee flew off, and I wished passionately that I could exchange places with it. It would be so wonderful, simply to be about the business of gathering, single-minded in the sun.
Another bee lighted on Ian’s collar, and he brushed it absently away.
“Well, so,” he said, taking a deep breath and turning his head to look at me. “What must I do, Auntie?”
His eyes were dark with misery and worry—and something very like fear, I thought.
“Do?” I said, sounding as blank as I felt. “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, Ian.”
I hadn’t meant to make him smile, and he didn’t, but he did seem to relax very slightly.
“Aye, I’ve done it already,” he said, very rueful. “But—it’s done, Auntie. How can I mend it?”
I rubbed my brow, trying to think. Rollo had brought back his ball, but seeing that Ian was in no mood to play, dropped it by his feet and leaned