Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [282]
“Hair ribbons?” I said. “Thank you; they’re lovely.”
“No, those aren’t for you,” he said, frowning as he disentanged the blue strands from the mole’s foot he carried as a charm against rheumatism. “They’re for wee Maggie.” He squinted dubiously at the rocks remaining in his palm. To my astonishment, he picked one up and licked it.
“No, not that one,” he muttered, and dived back into his sporran.
“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” I inquired with interest, watching this performance. He didn’t answer, but came out with another handful of rocks, which he sniffed at, discarding them one by one until he came to a nodule that struck his fancy. This one he licked once, for certainty, then dropped it into my hand, beaming.
“Amber,” he said, with satisfaction, as I turned the irregular lump over with a forefinger. It seemed warm to the touch, and I closed my hand over it, almost unconsciously.
“It needs polishing, of course,” he explained. “But I thought it would make ye a bonny necklace.” He flushed slightly, watching me. “It’s…it’s a gift for our first year of marriage. When I saw it, I was minded of the bit of amber Hugh Munro gave ye, when we wed.”
“I still have that,” I said softly, caressing the odd little lump of petrified tree sap. Hugh’s chunk of amber, one side sheared off and polished into a small window, had a dragonfly embedded in the matrix, suspended in eternal flight. I kept it in my medicine box, the most powerful of my charms.
A gift for our first anniversary. We had married in June, of course, not in December. But on the date of our first anniversary, Jamie had been in the Bastille, and I…I had been in the arms of the King of France. No time for a celebration of wedded bliss, that.
“It’s nearly Hogmanay,” Jamie said, looking out the window at the soft snowfall that blanketed the fields of Lallybroch. “It seems a good time for beginnings, I thought.”
“I think so, too.” I got out of bed and came to him at the window, putting my arms around his waist. We stayed locked together, not speaking, until my eye suddenly fell on the other small, yellowish lumps that Jamie had removed from his sporran.
“What on earth are those things, Jamie?” I asked, letting go of him long enough to point.
“Och, those? They’re honey balls, Sassenach.” He picked up one of the objects, dusting at it with his fingers. “Mrs. Gibson in the village gave them to me. Verra good, though they got a bit dusty in my sporran, I’m afraid.” He held out his open hand to me, smiling. “Want one?”
34
THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE
I didn’t know what—or how much—Ian had told Jenny of his conversation in the snow with Jamie. She behaved toward her brother just as always, matter-of-fact and acerbic, with a slight touch of affectionate teasing. I had known her long enough, though, to realize that one of Jenny’s greatest gifts was her ability to see something with utter clarity—and then to look straight through it, as though it wasn’t there.
The dynamics of feeling and behavior shifted among the four of us during the months, and settled into a pattern of solid strength, based on friendship and founded in work. Mutual respect and trust were simply a necessity; there was so much to be done.
As Jenny’s pregnancy progressed, I took on more and more of the domestic duties, and she deferred to me more often. I would never try to usurp her place; she had been the axis of the household since the death of her mother, and it was to her that the servants or tenants most frequently came. Still, they grew used to me, treating me with a friendly respect which bordered sometimes on acceptance, and sometimes on awe.
The spring was marked first by the planting of an enormous crop of potatoes; over half the available land was given to the new crop—a decision justified within weeks by a hailstorm that flattened the new-sprung barley. The potato vines, creeping low and stolid over the