A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [680]
A piercing scream from upstairs made her grimace. The helot, less hardened, dropped her clipboard with a yelp.
“MAMA!” Jem, in tattling mode.
“WHAT?” she roared in answer. “I’m BUSY!”
“But Mama! Mandy hit me!” came an indignant report from the top of the stairs. Looking up, she could see the top of his head, the light from the window glowing on his hair.
“She did? Well—”
“With a stick!”
“What sort of—”
“On purpose!”
“Well, I don’t think—”
“AND . . .”—a pause before the damning denouement—“SHE DIDN’T SAY SHE WAS SORRY!”
The builder and his helot had given up looking for woodworm, in favor of following this gripping narrative, and now both of them looked at Brianna, doubtless in expectation of some Solomonic decree.
Brianna closed her eyes momentarily.
“MANDY,” she bellowed. “Say you’re sorry!”
“Non’t!” came a high-pitched refusal from above.
“Aye, ye will!” came Jem’s voice, followed by scuffling. Brianna headed for the stair, blood in her eye. Just as she set her foot on the tread, Jem uttered a piercing squeal.
“She BIT me!”
“Jeremiah MacKenzie, don’t you dare bite her back!” she shouted. “Both of you stop it this instant!”
Jem thrust a disheveled head through the banister, hair sticking up on end. He was wearing bright blue eye shadow, and someone had applied pink lipstick in a crude mouth-shape from one ear to the other.
“She’s a feisty wee baggage,” he ferociously informed the fascinated spectators below. “My grandda said so.”
Brianna wasn’t sure whether to laugh, cry, or utter a loud shriek, but with a hasty wave at the builder and his assistant, she ran up the stairs to sort them out.
The sorting took rather more time than expected, since she discovered in the process that Fiona’s three little girls, so notably quiet during the latest squabble, had been quiet because—having decorated Jem, Mandy, and themselves—they were busily engaged in painting faces on the bathroom walls with Brianna’s new makeup.
Coming back down a quarter of an hour later, she discovered the builder sitting peaceably on an upturned coal scuttle, having his tea break, while the helot wandered open-mouthed about the entry hall, a half-eaten scone in one hand.
“All those kids yours?” she asked Brianna, with a sympathetic quirk of one pierced brow.
“No, thank God. Does everything look all right down here?”
“Touch o’ damp,” the builder said cheerfully. “Only to be expected, though, old place like this. When’s it built, then, hen, d’ye know?”
“1721, thickie,” the helot said, with comfortable scorn. “Did ye not see it carved in the lintel, there, where we came in?”
“Nah, then, is it?” The builder looked interested, but not enough to get up and look for himself. “Cost a fortune to put back in shape, won’t it?” He nodded at the wall, where one of the oak panels showed the damage of boots and sabers, crisscrossed with slashes whose rawness had darkened with the years, but still showed clear.
“No, we won’t fix that,” Brianna said, a lump in her throat. “That was done right after the ’45. It’ll stay that way.” We keep it so, her uncle had told her, to remember always what the English are.
“Oh, historic-like. Right you are, then,” the builder said, nodding wisely. “Americans don’t often mind about the history so much, do they? Wanting all mod cons, electric cookers, effing automatic thisses and thats. Central heating!”
“I’ll settle for toilets that flush,” she assured him. “That, and hot water. Speaking of which, will you have a look at the boiler? It’s in a shed in the yard, and it’s fifty years old if it’s a day. And we’ll want to replace the geyser in the upstairs bath, too.”
“Oh, aye.” The builder brushed crumbs from his shirt, corked his Thermos flask, and rose ponderously to his feet. “Come on, Angie, let’s have a look, then.”
Brianna hovered suspiciously at the foot of the stair, listening for any sounds of riot before following, but all was well above; she could hear the crash of building blocks, evidently being thrown at the walls, but no yells of outrage. She turned to follow, just in time to see the builder,