A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [505]
“Malva,” I said finally. “Did she tell you? Before, I mean.”
“Ye think I scorned her, and that’s what made her accuse Uncle Jamie?” He gave me a wry look, absently scratching Rollo’s ruff. “Well, I wouldna blame ye if ye did, Auntie, but no. She said not a word to me about the matter. If she had, I should ha’ marrit her at once.”
The hurdle of confession overcome, he was talking more easily now.
“You didn’t think of marrying her first?” I said, with perhaps a slight tinge of acerbity.
“Ah . . . no,” he said, very sheepish. “It wasna precisely a matter of—well, I wasna thinking at all, Auntie. I was drunk. The first time, anyway,” he added as an afterthought.
“The first—? How many— No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know the gory details.” I shut him up with a brusque gesture, and sat up straight, struck by a thought. “Bobby Higgins. Was that—”
He nodded, lowering his lashes so I couldn’t see his eyes. The blood had come up under his tan.
“Aye. That was why—I mean, I didna really wish to marry her, to begin with, but still, I would have asked, after we . . . but I put it off a bit, and—” He scrubbed a hand across his face, helpless. “Well, I didna want her to wife, but I couldna keep from wanting her, nonetheless, and I ken well enough how awful it must seem—but I’ve got to tell the truth, Auntie, and that’s it.” He took a gulp of air, and continued.
“I’d—wait for her. In the woods, when she came to gather. She’d not speak when she saw me, only smile, and raise her skirts a bit, then turn quick and run and . . . God, I should be after her like a dog after a bitch in heat,” he said bitterly. “But then one day I came late, and she wasna there where we usually met. But I heard her laughing, far off, and when I went to see . . .”
He twisted his hands hard enough to dislocate a finger, grimacing, and Rollo whined softly.
“Let us just say that yon bairn might well be Bobby Higgins’s, too,” he said, biting off the words.
I felt suddenly exhausted, as I had when recovering from my illness, as though it was too much effort even to breathe. I leaned back against the palisades, feeling the cool papery rustle of grape leaves against my neck, fanning softly over my heated cheeks.
Ian bent forward, head in his hands, the dappled green shadows playing over him.
“What shall I do?” he asked at last, voice muffled. He sounded as tired as I felt. “I dinna mind saying that I—that the child might be mine. But would it help, d’ye think?”
“No,” I said bleakly. “It wouldn’t.” Public opinion would not be changed in the slightest; everyone would simply assume that Ian was lying for his uncle’s sake. Even if he were to marry the girl, it wouldn’t—
A thought struck me and I pulled myself upright again.
“You said you didn’t want to marry her, even before you knew about Bobby. Why?” I asked curiously.
He lifted his head from his hands with a helpless gesture.
“I dinna ken how to say it. She was—well, she was bonnie enough, aye, and a proper spirit to her, as well. But she . . . I dinna ken, Auntie. It was only that I always had the feeling, lying wi’ her—that I dare not fall asleep.”
I stared at him.
“Well, that would be off-putting, I imagine.”
He had dismissed that, though, and was frowning, digging the heel of his moccasin into the soil.
“There’s no means of telling which of two men has fathered a bairn, is there?” he asked abruptly. “Only—if it’s mine, I should want it. I would wed her for the child’s sake, no matter what else. If it’s mine.”
Bree had told me the bare bones of his history; I knew about his Mohawk wife, Emily, and the death of his daughter, and I felt the small presence of my own first child, Faith, stillborn but always with me.
“Oh, Ian,” I said softly, and touched his hair. “You might be able to tell, by the way the child looked—but probably not, or not right away.”
He nodded, and sighed. After a moment, he said, “If I say it’s mine, and I wed her—folk might still talk, but after a time . . .” His voice died away. True, talk might eventually die down. But there would still be those