A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [515]
“Yes, what’s a little matter of dual sons-in-law?” Bree agreed.
Amy was regarding the tender scene with a slight sense of wistfulness. She reached out and put an arm round Aidan’s skinny shoulders.
“Well, they do say, the more, the merrier,” she said.
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PRIORITIES
THREE SHIRTS, AN EXTRA PAIR of decent breeches, two pair of stockings, one lisle, one silk—wait, where were the silk ones?
Brianna stepped to the door and called to her husband, who was industriously laying segments of clay pipe into the trench he had dug, assisted by Jemmy and Aidan.
“Roger! What have you done with your silk stockings?”
He paused, frowning, and rubbed his head. Then, handing the shovel to Aidan, he came across to the house, leaping over the open trench.
“I wore them last Sunday to preach, no?” he asked, reaching her. “What did I . . . oh.”
“Oh?” she said suspiciously, seeing his face change from puzzlement to guilt. “What’s ‘oh’?”
“Ahh . . . well, you’d stayed to home with Jem and his stomachache”—a tactically helpful ailment, greatly exaggerated in order to keep her from having to sit through two hours of staring and whispering—“so when Jocky Abernathy asked me would I care to go fishing with him . . .”
“Roger MacKenzie,” she said, fixing him with a look of wrath, “if you put your good silk stockings in a creel full of smelly fish and forgot them—”
“I’ll just nip up to the house and borrow a pair from your Da, shall I?” he said hurriedly. “I’m sure mine will turn up, somewhere.”
“So will your head,” she said. “Probably under a rock!”
That made him laugh, which was not what she had intended, but which had the effect of easing her temper.
“I’m sorry,” he said, leaning forward to kiss her forehead. “It’s probably Freudian.”
“Oh? And what does leaving your stockings wrapped around a dead trout symbolize?” she demanded.
“Generalized guilt and divided loyalties, I imagine,” he said, still joking, but not so much. “Bree—I’ve been thinking. I really don’t think I should go. I don’t need to—”
“Yes, you do,” she said, as firmly as possible. “Da says so, Mama says so, and so do I.”
“Oh, well, then.” He smiled, but she could see the uneasiness under his humor—the more so because she shared it. Malva Christie’s murder had caused an uproar on the Ridge—alarm, hysteria, suspicion, and finger-pointing in every direction. Several young men—Bobby Higgins among them—had simply disappeared from the Ridge, whether from a sense of guilt, or merely from a sense of self-preservation.
There had been accusations enough to go around; even she herself had come in for her share of gossip and suspicion, some of her unguarded remarks about Malva Christie having been repeated. But by far the greatest weight of suspicion rested squarely on her parents.
Both of them were doing their best to go about their daily business, grimly ignoring the gossip and the pointed looks—but it was getting harder; anyone could see that.
Roger had gone at once to visit the Christies—had gone every day since Malva’s death save for his hasty expedition to Halifax—had buried the girl with simplicity and tears—and had since worn himself out with being reasonable and soothing and firm to everyone else on the Ridge. He had immediately put aside his plan to go to Edenton for ordination, but Jamie, hearing of it, had insisted.
“You’ve done everything here you could possibly do,” Brianna said, for the hundredth time. “There’s nothing else you can do to help—and it might be years before you have another chance.”
She knew how urgently he wished to be ordained, and would have done anything to further that wish. For herself, she wished that she could see it; but without a great deal of talk, they had agreed that it was best for her and Jem to go to River Run, and wait there for Roger to make the trip to Edenton and then return. It couldn’t do a candidate for ordination any good to turn up with a Catholic wife and child.
The guilt of leaving, though, with her