Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [310]
“When ye were little, eh?” Amused, Ian cast an eye over her length. “I’ve seldom seen a lass sae braw. I’d say your mother kent her business, aye?”
She smiled back and gave him back the bottle.
“She knew enough to marry a tall man, at least,” she said wryly.
Ian laughed and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. He gazed affectionately at her, brown eyes warm.
“Ah, it’s fine to see ye, lassie. You’re verra much like him, it’s true. Christ, what I wouldna give to be there when Jamie sees you!”
She looked down at the ground, biting her lip. The ground was thick with bracken, and their path up the hill showed plain, where the green fronds that had overgrown the track had been crushed and knocked aside.
“I don’t know whether he knows or not,” she blurted. “About me.” She glanced up at him. “He didn’t tell you.”
Ian rocked back a little, frowning.
“No, that’s true,” he said slowly. “But I am thinking he maybe hadna time to say, even if he knew. He’ll not have been here long, that last time he came, with Claire. And then, it was such a moil, wi’ all that happened—” He stopped, pursing his lips, and glanced at her.
“Your auntie’s been troubled about that,” he said. “Thinking that ye might blame her.”
“Blame her for what?” She stared at him, puzzled.
“For Laoghaire.” The brown eyes held hers, intent.
A faint chill came over Brianna at the memory of those pale eyes, cold as marbles, and the woman’s hateful words. She had dismissed them as simple malice, but the echoes of “whoremaster” and “cheat” lingered unpleasantly in her ear.
“What did Aunt Jenny have to do with Laoghaire?”
Ian sighed, brushing back a thick lock of brown hair that fell down across his face.
“It was her doing that Jamie married the woman. She meant it well, mind,” he said warningly. “We did think Claire was dead these many years.”
His tone held a question, but Brianna merely nodded, looking down and smoothing the fabric across her knee. This was dangerous ground; better to say nothing, if she could. After a moment, Ian went on.
“It was after he’d come home from England—he was a prisoner there for some years after the Rising—”
“I know.”
Ian’s brows shot up in surprise, but he said nothing; simply shook his head.
“Aye, well. When he came back, he was—different. Well, he would be, aye?” He smiled briefly, then dropped his eyes, pleating the fabric of his kilt between his fingers.
“It was like talking to a ghost,” he said quietly. “He would look at me, and smile, and answer—but he wasna really there.” He took a deep breath, and she could see the lines between his brows, carved deep in concentration.
“Before—after Culloden—it was different, then. He was sair wounded—and he’d lost Claire—” He glanced briefly at her, but she kept still, and he went on.
“But it was a desperate time then. A great many folk died; of the fighting, of sickness or of starving. There were English soldiers in the country, burning, killing. When it’s like that, ye canna even think of dying, only because the struggle to live and keep your family takes all your time.”
A small smile touched Ian’s lips, the rue of memory oddly lightened with a private amusement.
“Jamie hid,” he said, with an abrupt gesture toward the hillside above them. “There. There’s a wee cave behind that big gorse bush, halfway up. It’s what I brought ye here to show ye.”
She looked where he pointed, up the tangled slope of rock and heather, the hillside a riot of tiny flowers. There was no sign of a cave, but the gorse bush stood out in a blaze of yellow blossom, brilliant as a torch.
“I came up to bring him food once, when he was sick of the ague. I told him he must come down to the house wi’ me; that Jenny was scairt he’d die up here, all alone. He opened one eye, all bright with the fever, and his voice was sae hoarse I could scarcely hear him. He said Jenny needna be worrit; even though everything in the world seemed set on killin’ him,