Outlander - Diana Gabaldon [289]
I could see Ian in profile, leaning over the log basket. His long, good-natured face wore a slight frown.
“Weel, I didna think it right, especially wi’ me being crippled…”
There was a louder snort.
“Jenny couldna have a better husband, if you’d lost both legs and your arms as well,” Jamie said gruffly. Ian’s pale skin flushed slightly in embarrassment. Jamie coughed and swung his legs down from the hassock, leaning over to pick up a scrap of kindling that had fallen from the basket.
“How did ye come to wed anyway, given your scruples?” he asked, one side of his mouth curling up.
“Gracious, man,” Ian protested, “ye think I had any choice in the matter? Up against a Fraser?” He shook his head, grinning at his friend.
“She came up to me out in the field one day, while I was tryin’ to mend a wagon that sprang its wheel. I crawled out, all covered wi’ muck, and found her standin’ there looking like a bush covered wi’ butterflies. She looks me up and down and she says—” He paused and scratched his head. “Weel, I don’t know exactly what she said, but it ended with her kissing me, muck notwithstanding, and saying, ‘Fine, then, we’ll be married on St. Martin’s Day.’ ” He spread his hands in comic resignation. “I was still explaining why we couldna do any such thing, when I found myself in front of a priest, saying, ‘I take thee, Janet’…and swearing to a lot of verra improbable statements.”
Jamie rocked back in his seat, laughing.
“Aye, I ken the feeling,” he said. “Makes ye feel a bit hollow, no?”
Ian smiled, embarrassment forgotten. “It does and all. I still get that feeling, ye know, when I see Jenny sudden, standing against the sun on the hill, or holding wee Jamie, not lookin’ at me. I see her, and I think, ‘God, man, she can’t be yours, not really.’ ” He shook his head, brown hair flopping over his brow. “And then she turns and smiles at me…” He looked up at his brother-in-law, grinning.
“Weel, ye know yourself. I can see it’s the same wi’ you and your Claire. She’s…something special, no?”
Jamie nodded. The smile didn’t leave his face, but altered somehow.
“Aye,” he said softly. “Aye, she is that.”
* * *
Over the port and biscuits, Jamie and Ian reminisced further about their shared boyhood, and their fathers. Ian’s father, William, had died just the past spring, leaving Ian to run the estate alone.
“You remember when your father came on us down by the spring, and made us go wi’ him to the smithy to see how to fix a wagon-tree?”
“Aye, and he couldna understand why we kept squirming and shifting about—”
“And he kept asking ye did ye need to go to the privy—”
Both men were laughing too hard to finish the story, so I looked at Jenny.
“Toads,” she said succinctly. “The two o’ them each had five or six toads inside his shirt.”
“Oh, Lord,” said Ian. “When the one crawled up your neck and hopped out of your shirt into the forge, I thought I’d die.”
“I cannot imagine why my father didna wring my neck on several occasions,” said Jamie, shaking his head. “It’s a wonder I ever grew up.”
Ian looked consideringly at his own offspring, industriously engaged in piling wooden blocks on top of each other by the hearth. “I don’t quite know how I’m goin’ to manage it, when the time comes I have to beat my own son. I mean…he’s, well, he’s so small.” He gestured helplessly at the sturdy little figure, tender neck bent to his task.
Jamie eyed his small namesake cynically. “Aye, he’ll be as much a devil as you or I, give him time. After all, I suppose even I must ha’ looked small and innocent at one point.”
“You did,” said Jenny unexpectedly, coming to set a pewter cup of cider in her husband’s hand. She patted her brother on the head.
“You were verra sweet as a baby, Jamie. I remember standing over your cot. Ye canna ha’ been more than two, asleep wi’ your thumb in your mouth, and we agreed we’d never seen a prettier lad. You had fat round cheeks and the dearest red curls.”
The pretty lad turned an interesting shade of rose,