Outlander - Diana Gabaldon [207]
I turned my attention to my other side, where Geillis Duncan sat, demurely sipping at a silver cup of ale. Her husband, Arthur, sat at the next table with Colum, as befitted the procurator fiscal of the district, but Geilie had insisted on sitting next to me, saying that she had no wish to be wearied by hearing man-talk all through supper.
Arthur’s deepset eyes were half-closed, blue-pouched and sunk with wine and fatigue. He leaned heavily on his forearms, face slack, ignoring the conversation of the MacKenzies next to him. While the light threw the sharp-cut features of the laird and his brother into a high relief, it merely made Arthur Duncan look fat and ill.
“Your husband isn’t looking very well,” I observed. “Has his stomach trouble got worse?” The symptoms were rather puzzling; not like ulcer, I thought, nor cancer—not with that much flesh still on his bones—perhaps just chronic gastritis, as Geilie insisted.
She cast the briefest of glances at her spouse before turning back to me with a shrug.
“Oh, he’s well enough,” she said. “No worse, at any rate. But what about your husband?”
“Er, what about him?” I replied cautiously.
She dug me familiarly in the ribs with a rather sharp elbow, and I realized that there were a fair number of bottles at her end of the table as well.
“Well, what d’ye think? Does he look as nice out of his sark as he does in it?”
“Um…” I groped for an answer, as she craned her neck toward the entryway.
“And you claiming you didna care a bit for him! Cleverboots. Half the girls in the castle would like to tear your hair out by the roots—I’d be careful what I ate, if I were you.”
“What I eat?” I looked down in bafflement at the wooden platter before me, empty but for a smear of grease and a forlorn boiled onion.
“Poison,” she hissed dramatically in my ear, along with a considerable wafting of brandy fumes.
“Nonsense,” I said, rather coldly, drawing away from her. “No one would want to poison me simply because I…well, because…” I was floundering a bit, and it occurred to me that I might have had a few sips more than I had realized.
“Now, really, Geilie. This marriage…I didn’t plan it, you know. I didn’t want it!” No lie there. “It was merely a…sort of…necessary business arrangement,” I said, hoping the candlelight hid my blushes.
“Ha,” she said cynically. “I ken the look of a lass that’s been well bedded.” She glanced toward the archway where Jamie had disappeared. “And damned if I think those are midge bites on the laddie’s neck, either.” She raised one silver brow at me. “If it was a business arrangement, I’d say ye got your money’s worth.”
She leaned close again.
“Is it true?” she whispered. “About the thumbs?”
“Thumbs? Geilie, what in God’s name are you babbling about?”
She looked down her small, straight nose at me, frowning in concentration. The beautiful grey eyes were slightly unfocused, and I hoped she wouldn’t fall over.
“Surely ye know that? Everyone knows! A man’s thumbs tell ye the size of his cock. Great toes, too, of course,” she added judiciously, “but those are harder to judge, usually, what wi’ the shoon and all. Yon wee fox-cub,” she nodded toward the archway, where Jamie had just reappeared, “he could cup a good-sized marrow in those hands of his. Or a good-sized arse, hm?” she added, nudging me once more.
“Geillis Duncan, will…you…shut…up!” I hissed, face flaming. “Someone will hear you!”
“Oh, no one who—” she began, but stopped, staring. Jamie had passed right by our table, as though he didn’t see us. His face was pale, and his lips set firmly, as though bent on some unpleasant duty.
“Whatever ails him?” Geilie asked. “He looks like Arthur after he’s eaten raw turnips.”
“I don’t know.” I pushed back the bench, hesitating. He was heading for Colum’s table. Should I follow him? Plainly something had happened.
Geilie, peering back down the room, suddenly tugged