Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [185]
“You feel like a porcupine,” I said, brushing my hand over his fingers. “Here, move closer to the fire, so I can see to pull them out.”
He moved obligingly, crawling around Ian, who—freshly de-splintered himself—had fallen asleep with his head pillowed on Rollo’s furry side. Unfortunately, the change of position exposed new weaknesses of construction to Jamie’s critical eye.
“You’ve never built a shed out of logs before, have you?” I interrupted his denunciation of the doorway, neatly tweaking a large splinter out of his thumb with my tweezers.
“Ow! No, but—”
“And you built the bloody thing in two days, with nothing but a felling ax and a knife, for God’s sake! There’s not a nail in it! Why ought you to expect it to look like Buckingham Palace?”
“I’ve never seen Buckingham Palace,” he said, rather mildly. He paused. “I do take your point, though, Sassenach.”
“Good.” I bent closely over his palm, squinting to make out the small dark streaks of splinters, trapped beneath the skin.
“I suppose it willna fall down, at least,” he said, after a longer pause.
“Shouldn’t think so.” I dabbed a cloth to the neck of the brandy bottle, swabbed his hand with it, then turned my attention to his right hand.
He didn’t speak for a time. The fire crackled softly to itself, flaring up now and then as a draft reached in between the logs to tickle it.
“The house is going to be on the high ridge,” he said suddenly. “Where the strawberries grow.”
“Will it?” I murmured. “The cabin, you mean? I thought that was going to be at the side of the clearing.” I’d taken out as many splinters as I could; those that were left were so deeply embedded that I would have to wait for them to work their way nearer the surface.
“No, not the cabin. A fine house,” he said softly. He leaned back against the rough logs, looking across the fire, out through the chinks to the darkness beyond. “Wi’ a staircase, and glass windows.”
“That will be grand.” I laid the tweezers back in their slot, and closed the box.
“Wi’ high ceilings, and a doorway high enough I shall never bump my heid going in.”
“That will be lovely.” I leaned back beside him, and rested my head on his shoulder. Somewhere in the far distance, a wolf howled. Rollo lifted his head with a soft wuff!, listened for a moment, then lay down again with a sigh.
“With a stillroom for you, and a study for me, lined with shelves for my books.”
“Mmmm.” At the moment, he possessed one book—The Natural History of North Carolina, published 1733, brought along as guide and reference.
The fire was burning low again, but neither of us moved to add more wood. The embers would warm us through the night, to be rekindled with the dawn.
Jamie put an arm around my shoulders, and tilting sideways, took me with him to lie curled together on the thick layer of fallen leaves that was our couch.
“And a bed,” I said. “You could build a bed, I expect?”
“As fine as any in Buckingham Palace,” he said.
Myers, bless his kindly heart and faithful nature, did return within the month—bringing not only three pack-mules laden with tools, small furnishings, and necessities such as salt, but also Duncan Innes.
“Here?” Innes looked interestedly over the tiny homestead that had begun to take shape on the strawberry-covered ridge. We had two sturdy sheds now, plus a split-railed penfold in which to keep the horses and any other stock we might acquire.
At the moment, our total stock consisted of a small white piglet, which Jamie had obtained from a Moravian settlement thirty miles away, exchanging for it a bag of sweet yams I had gathered and a bundle of willow-twig brooms I had made. Rather too small for the penfold, it had so far been living in the shed with us, where it had become fast friends with Rollo. I wasn’t quite so fond of it myself.
“Aye. It’s decent land, with plenty of water; there are springs in the wood, and the creek all through.”
Jamie guided Duncan to a spot from which the