Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [113]
“Your pardon, madame,” he said, sounding strangled, and rushed down the stairs and past me, head down, leaving the door to the cookhouse breezeway swinging in his wake.
“What on earth …?” I said aloud, and then I remembered where—and when—we were.
Alone for so long, in a house with a blind mistress and no master, he had grown careless. He had momentarily forgotten that most basic and essential protection—the only true protection a slave had: the blank, bland face that hid all thoughts.
No wonder he had been terrorized when he realized what he had done. If it had been any woman other than myself to have intercepted that unguarded look … my hands grew cold and sweaty, and I swallowed, the remembered scent of blood and turpentine sharp in my throat.
But it had been me, I reminded myself, and no one else had seen. The butler might be afraid, but he was safe. I would behave as though nothing had happened—nothing had—and things would be … well, things would be what they were. The sound of footsteps on the gallery above interrupted my thoughts. I glanced upward, and gasped, all other thoughts driven at once from my mind.
A Highlander in full regalia is an impressive sight—any Highlander, no matter how old, ill-favored, or crabbed in appearance. A tall, straight-bodied, and by no means ill-favored Highlander in the prime of his life is breathtaking.
He hadn’t worn the kilt since Culloden, but his body had not forgotten the way of it.
“Oh!” I said.
He saw me then, and white teeth flashed as he made me a leg, silver shoe-buckles gleaming. He straightened and turned on his heel to set his plaid swinging, then came down slowly, eyes fixed on my face.
For a moment, I saw him as he had looked the morning I married him. The sett of his tartan was nearly the same now as then; black check on a crimson ground, plaid caught at his shoulder with a silver brooch, dipping to the calf of a neat, stockinged leg.
His linen was finer now, as was his coat; the dirk he wore at his waist had bands of gold across the haft. Duine uasal was what he looked, a man of worth.
But the bold face above the lace was the same, older now, but wiser with it—yet the tilt of his shining head and the set of the wide, firm mouth, the slanted clear cat-eyes that looked into my own, were just the same. Here was a man who had always known his worth.
“Your servant, ma’am,” he said. And then burst into a face-splitting smile as he descended the last few stairs.
“You look wonderful,” I said, hardly able to swallow the lump in my throat.
“It’s none so bad,” he agreed, with no trace of false modesty. He arranged a fold over his shoulder with care. “Of course, that’s the advantage of a plaid—there’s no trouble about the fit of it.”
“It’s Hector Cameron’s?” I felt ridiculously shy of touching him, garbed so splendidly. Instead, I touched the hilt of the dirk; it was topped with a small knurl of gold, roughly shaped like a bird in flight.
Jamie drew a deep breath.
“It’s mine, now. Ulysses brought it to me—with my aunt’s compliments.” I caught an odd undertone in his voice, and glanced up at him. Despite his obvious deep pleasure at wearing the kilt again, something was troubling him. I touched his hand.
“What’s wrong?”
He gave me half a smile, but his brows were drawn together in concern.
“I wouldna say anything’s wrong, exactly. It’s only—”
The sound of feet on the stairs interrupted him, and he drew me to one side, out of the way of a hurrying slave with a pile of linens. The house was humming with last-minute preparations; even now, I could hear the sound of wheels on the gravel at the back of the house, and savory smells floated through the air as platters were brought in at a gallop from the kitchen.
“We canna talk here,” he muttered. “Sassenach, will ye stand ready at dinner? If I should signal to ye”—and he tugged at his earlobe—“will ye make a diversion, right then? It doesna matter what—spill wine, swoon away, stab your dinner partner