The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [132]
“Are you talking to the rat?” I began to crawl toward the foot of the bed, but he motioned me back, shaking his head, while still making the chirping sound.
I waited, with some impatience. Within a minute, he made a grab, evidently catching whatever it was, for he gave a small exclamation of satisfaction. He stood up, smiling, a gray, furry shape clutched by the nape, dangling like a tiny purse from his fingers.
“Here’s your wee ratten, Sassenach,” he said, and gently deposited a ball of gray fur on the coverlet. Huge eyes of a pale celadon green stared up at me, unblinking.
“Well, goodness,” I said. “Wherever did you come from?” I extended a finger, very slowly. The kitten didn’t move. I touched the edge of a tiny gray-silk jaw, and the big green eyes disappeared, going to slits as it rubbed against my finger. A surprisingly deep purr rumbled through its miniature frame.
“That,” Jamie said, with immense satisfaction, “is the present I meant to give ye, Sassenach. He’ll keep the vermin from your surgery.”
“Well, possibly very small vermin,” I said, examining my new present dubiously. “I think a large cockroach could carry him—is it a him?—off to its lair, let alone a mouse.”
“He’ll grow,” Jamie assured me. “Look at his feet.”
He—yes, it was a he—had rolled onto his back and was doing an imitation of a dead bug, paws in the air. Each paw was roughly the size of a broad copper penny, small enough by themselves, but enormous by contrast with the tiny body. I touched the minuscule pads, an immaculate pink in their thicket of soft gray fur, and the kitten writhed in ecstasy.
A discreet knock came at the door, and I snatched the sheet up over my bosom as the door opened and Mr. Wemyss’s head poked in, his hair sticking up like a pile of wheat straw.
“Er . . . I hope all is well, sir?” he asked, blinking shortsightedly. “My lass woke me, sayin’ as she thought there was a skelloch, like, and then we heard a bit of a bang, like—” His eyes, hastily averted from me, went to the scar of raw wood in the whitewashed wall, left by Jamie’s poker.
“Aye, it’s fine, Joseph,” Jamie assured him. “Only a wee cat.”
“Oh, aye?” Mr. Wemyss squinted toward the bed, his thin face breaking into a smile as he made out the blot of gray fur. “A cheetie, is it? Well, and he’ll be a fine help i’ the kitchen, I’ve nae doubt.”
“Aye. Speakin’ of kitchens, Joseph—d’ye think your lassie might bring up a dish of cream for the baudrons here?”
Mr. Wemyss nodded and disappeared, with a final avuncular smile at the kitten.
Jamie stretched, yawned, and scrubbed both hands vigorously through his hair, which was behaving with even more reckless abandon than usual. I eyed him, with a certain amount of purely aesthetic appreciation.
“You look like a woolly mammoth,” I said.
“Oh? And what is a mammoth, besides big?”
“A sort of prehistoric elephant—you know, the animals with the long trunks?”
He squinted down the length of his body, then looked at me quizzically.
“Well, I thank ye for the compliment, Sassenach,” he said. “Mammoth, is it?” He thrust his arms upward and stretched again, casually arching his back, which—quite inadvertently, I didn’t think—enhanced any incidental resemblances that one might note between the half-engorged morning anatomy of a man, and the facial adornments of a pachyderm.
I laughed.
“That’s not precisely what I meant,” I said. “Stop waggling; Lizzie’s coming in any minute. You’d better put your shirt on or get back in bed.”
The sound of footsteps on the landing sent him diving under the quilts, and sent the little cat scampering up the sheet in fright. In the event, it was Mr. Wemyss himself who had brought the dish of cream, sparing his daughter a possible sight of Himself in the altogether.
The weather being fine,