Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [278]
“Sausages with mashed potatoes,” I translated. “A nice traditional English dish, hitherto unknown in the benighted reaches of Scotland. Now, you bloody Scot, where in hell have you been for the last two days? Jenny and I were worried!”
“Well, we had a wee accident—” Jamie began, when he spotted the small figure of Fergus, bearing a lantern. “Och, ye’ve brought a light, then, Fergus? Good lad. Set it there, where ye won’t set fire to the straw, and then take this poor beast into her stall. When ye’ve got her settled, come along to your own supper. You’ll be able to sit to it by now, I expect?” He aimed a friendly cuff at Fergus’s ear. The boy dodged and grinned back; apparently whatever had happened in the barn yesterday had left no hard feelings.
“Jamie,” I said, in measured tones. “If you don’t stop talking about horses and sausages and tell me what sort of accident you had, I am going to kick you in the shins. Which will be very hard on my toes, because I’m only wearing slippers, but I warn you, I’ll do it anyway.”
“That’s a threat, is it?” he said, laughing. “It wasna serious, Sassenach, only that—”
“Ian!” Jenny, delayed momentarily by Maggie, had just arrived, in time to see her husband step into the circle of lanternlight. Startled by the shock in her voice, I turned to see her dart forward and put a hand to Ian’s face.
“Whatever happened to ye, man?” she said. Plainly, whatever the accident had been, Ian had borne the brunt of it. One eye was blackened and swollen half-shut, and there was a long, raw scrape down the slope of one cheekbone.
“I’m all right, mi dhu,” he said, patting Jenny gently as she embraced him, little Maggie squeezed uncomfortably between them. “Only a bit bruised here and there.”
“We were comin’ down the slope of the hill two miles outside the village, leading the horses because the footing was bad, and Ian stepped in a molehole and broke his leg,” Jamie explained.
“The wooden one,” Ian amplified. He grinned, a little sheepishly. “The mole had a bit the best o’ that encounter.”
“So we stayed at a cottage nearby long enough to carve him a new one,” Jamie ended the story. “Can we eat? The sides of my belly are flapping together.”
We went in without further ado, and Mrs. Crook and I served the supper while Jenny bathed Ian’s face with witch hazel and made anxious inquiries about other injuries.
“It’s nothing,” he assured her. “Only bruises here and there.” I had watched him coming into the house, though, and seen that his normal limp was badly exaggerated. I had a few quiet words with Jenny as we cleared away the supper plates, and once we were settled in the parlor, the contents of the saddlebags safely disposed of, she knelt on the rug beside Ian and took hold of the new leg.
“Let’s have it off, then,” she said firmly. “You’ve hurt yourself, and I want Claire to look it over. She can maybe help ye more than I can.”
The original amputation had been done with some skill, and greater luck; the army surgeon who had taken the lower leg off had been able to save the knee joint. This gave Ian a great deal more flexibility of movement than he might otherwise have had. For the moment, though, the knee joint was more a liability than an advantage.
The fall had twisted his leg cruelly; the end of the stump was blue with bruising, and lacerated where the sharp edge of the cuff had pressed through the skin. It must have been agony to set any weight on it, even had all else been normal. As it was, the knee had twisted, too, and the flesh on the inside of the joint was swollen, red and hot.
Ian’s long, good-natured face was nearly as red as the injured joint. While perfectly matter-of-fact about his disability, I knew he hated the occasional helplessness it imposed. His embarrassment at being so exposed now was likely as painful to him as my touching of his leg.
“You’ve torn a ligament through here,” I told him, tracing the swelling inside his knee with a gentle finger. “I can’t tell how bad it is, but bad enough. You