Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [262]
“He got away! Oh, bad luck, sir!” Willie scampered down the bank, pole in hand, face open in sympathy.
“Good luck for the fish.” Still exhilarated from the fight, Jamie grinned and wiped a wet hand over his face. “Will ye try, lad?” Too late, he remembered that he must call the boy “lord,” but Willie was too eager to have noticed the omission.
Face fixed in a scowl of determination, Willie drew back his arm, squinted at the water, and snapped his wrist with a mighty jerk. The rod sailed from his fingers and flew gracefully into the pond.
The boy gaped after it, then turned an expression of utter dismay on Jamie, who made no effort at all to keep back his laughter. The young lord looked thoroughly taken aback, and not very pleased, but after a moment, one corner of his wide mouth curved up in wry acknowledgment. He gestured at the rod, floating some ten feet from the bank.
“Will it not frighten all the fish, if I go in after it?”
“It will. Take mine; I’ll fetch that one back later.”
Willie licked his lips and set his jaw in concentration, taking a firm grip on the new rod, testing it with little whips and jerks. Turning to the pool, he rocked his arm back and forth, then snapped his wrist hard. He froze, the tip of the rod extended in a perfect line with his arm. The loose line wrapped itself around the rod and draped over Willie’s head.
“A verra pretty cast, my lord,” Jamie said, rubbing a knuckle hard over his mouth. “But I think we must put on a new fly first, aye?”
“Oh.” Slowly, Willie relaxed his rigid posture, and looked sheepishly at Jamie. “I didn’t think of that.”
Slightly chastened by these misadventures, the Earl allowed Jamie to fasten a fresh fly in place, and then to take him by the wrist to demonstrate the proper way of casting.
Standing behind the boy, he took Willie’s right wrist in his own, marveling both at the slenderness of the arm and at the knobby wristbones that gave promise of both size and strength to come. The boy’s skin was cool with perspiration, and the feel of his arm much like the tingle of the trout on the line, live and muscular, vivid to his touch. Then Willie twisted free, and he felt a moment’s confusion, and a peculiar sense of loss at the breaking of their brief contact.
“That’s not right,” Willie was saying, turning to look up at him. “You cast with the left hand. I saw you.”
“Aye, but I’m cack-handed, my lord. Most men would cast with the right.”
“Cack-handed?” Willie’s mouth curved up again.
“I find my left hand more convenient to most purposes than is the right, my lord.”
“That’s what I thought it meant. I’m the same.” Willie looked at once rather pleased and mildly shamefaced at this statement. “My—my mother said it wasn’t proper, and that I must learn to use the other, as a gentleman ought. But Papa said no, and made them let me write with my left hand. He said it didn’t matter so much if I should look awkward with a quill; when it came to fighting with a sword, I should be at an advantage.”
“Your father is a wise man.” His heart twisted, with something between jealousy and gratitude—but gratitude was far the uppermost.
“Papa was a soldier.” Willie drew himself up a little, straightening his shoulders with unconscious pride. “He fought in Scotland, in the Ris—oh.” He coughed, and his face went a dull red as he caught sight of Jamie’s kilt and realized that he was quite possibly talking to a defeated warrior of that particular fight. He fiddled with the rod, not knowing where to look.
“Aye, I know. That’s where I met him, first.” Jamie was careful to keep any hint of amusement from his voice. He was tempted to tell the boy the circumstances of that first meeting, but that would be poor repayment to John for his priceless gift, these precious few days with his son.
“He was a verra gallant soldier, indeed,” Jamie agreed, straight-faced. “And right about the hands, as well. Have ye begun your schooling with the sword, then?”
“Just a little.” Willie was forgetting his embarrassment in enthusiasm for the new topic. “I’ve had