Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [273]
The response from the men and children was a good deal more enthusiastic, likely owing to the generous quantities of butter supplied with the potatoes.
“Men would eat horse droppings, if ye served them wi’ butter,” Jenny said, in answer to an observation along these lines. “Men! A full belly, and a place to lie down when they’re drunk, and that’s all they ask o’ life.”
“A wonder ye put up wi’ Jamie and me,” Ian teased, hearing her, “seein’ ye’ve such a low opinion of men.”
Jenny waved her soup ladle dismissively at husband and brother, seated side by side on the ground near the kettle.
“Och, you two aren’t ‘men.’ ”
Ian’s feathery brows shot upward, and Jamie’s thicker red ones matched them.
“Oh, we’re not? Well, what are we, then?” Ian demanded.
Jenny turned toward him with a smile, white teeth flashing in the firelight. She patted Jamie on the head, and dropped a kiss on Ian’s forehead.
“You’re mine,” she said.
* * *
After supper, one of the men began to sing. Another brought out a wooden flute and accompanied him, the sound thin but piercing in the cold autumn night. The air was chilly, but there was no wind, and it was cozy enough, wrapped in shawls and blankets, huddled in small family clusters round the fire. The blaze had been built up after the cooking, and now made a substantial dent in the darkness.
It was warm, if a trifle active, in our own family huddle. Ian had gone to fetch another armload of wood, and baby Maggie clung to her mother, forcing her elder brother to seek refuge and body warmth elsewhere.
“I’m going to stick ye upside down in yonder kettle, an’ ye dinna leave off pokin’ me in the balls,” Jamie informed his nephew, who was squirming vigorously on his uncle’s lap. “What’s the matter, then—have ye got ants in your drawers?”
This query was greeted with a gale of giggles and a marked effort to burrow into his host’s midsection. Jamie groped in the dark, making deliberately clumsy grabs at his namesake’s arms and legs, then wrapped his arms around the boy and rolled suddenly over on top of him, forcing a startled whoop of delight from small Jamie.
Jamie pinned his nephew forcibly to the ground and held him there with one hand while he groped blindly on the ground in the dark. Seizing a handful of wet grass with a grunt of satisfaction, he raised himself enough to jam the grass down the neck of small Jamie’s shirt, changing the giggling to a high-pitched squeal, no less delighted.
“There, then,” Jamie said, rolling off the small form. “Go plague your auntie for a bit.”
Small Jamie obligingly scrambled over to me on hands and knees, still giggling, and nestled on my lap among the folds of my cloak. He sat as still as is possible for an almost four-year-old boy—which is not very still, all things considered—and let me remove the bulk of the grass from his shirt.
“You smell nice, Auntie,” he said, buffing my chin affectionately with his mop of black curls. “Like food.”
“Well, thank you,” I said. “Ought I to take that to mean you’re hungry again?”
“Aye. Is there milk?”
“There is.” I could just reach the stoneware jug by stretching out my fingers. I shook the bottle, decided there was not enough left to make it worthwhile to fetch a cup, and tilted the jug, holding it for the little boy to drink from.
Temporarily absorbed in the taking of nourishment, he was still, the small, sturdy body heavy on my thigh, back braced against my arm as he wrapped his own pudgy hands around the jug.
The last drops of milk gurgled from the jug. Small Jamie relaxed all at once, and emitted a soft burp of repletion. I could feel the heat glowing from him, with that sudden rise of temperature which presages falling asleep in very young children. I wrapped a fold of the cloak around him, and rocked him slowly back and forth, humming softly to the tune of the song beyond the fire. The small bumps of his vertebrae were round and hard as marbles under my fingers.
“Gone to sleep, has he?” The larger Jamie’s bulk loomed near my shoulder, the firelight picking out the