The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [240]
“You’re a nice old lad, aren’t you?” I murmured. After an afternoon spent in close contact with babies, all in varying stages of moistness and shrieking, the company of the irascible old goat was rather soothing.
“Is he going to die?”
I looked up in surprise, having quite forgotten the younger Miss Brown, who had been overlooked in the shadows of the settle. She was standing by the hearth now, still holding the Beardsley baby and frowning down at Hiram, who was trying to nibble the edge of my apron.
“No,” I said, twitching the cloth out of his mouth. “I shouldn’t think so.” What was her name? I groped blearily through my memory, matching up faces and names from the earlier flurry of introductions. Alicia, that was it, though I couldn’t help still thinking of her as Juliet.
She wasn’t much older than Juliet; barely fifteen, if that. She was a plain child, though, round-jawed and pasty. Narrow in the shoulder and broad through the hip; not much of the jewel in the Ethiop’s ear about her. She said nothing more, and to keep the conversation going, I nodded at the baby, still in her arms. “How’s the little one?”
“All right,” she said listlessly. She stood staring at the goat a moment longer. Then tears suddenly welled in her eyes.
“I wish I was dead,” she said.
“Oh, really?” I said, taken aback. “Er . . . well . . .” I rubbed a hand over my face, trying to summon enough presence of mind to deal with this. Where was the beastly girl’s mother? I cast a quick look at the door, but heard no one coming. We were momentarily alone, the women milking or minding supper, the men all caring for the stock.
I stepped out of Hiram’s pen and laid a hand on her arm.
“Look,” I said in a low voice. “Isaiah Morton’s not worth it. He’s married; did you know that?”
Her eyes went wide, then squinted nearly shut, spurting sudden tears. No, evidently she hadn’t known.
Tears were pouring down her cheeks and dripping on the baby’s oblivious head. I reached out and took the swaddled child gently from her, steering her toward the settle with my free hand.
“H-how did you . . .? Wh-who . . .?” She was gurgling and sniffling, trying to ask questions and get control of herself at the same time. A man’s voice shouted something outside, and she scrubbed frantically at her cheeks with her sleeve.
The gesture reminded me that while the situation seemed rather melodramatic—not to say slightly comic—in my currently muzzy frame of mind, it was a matter of great seriousness to the principals involved in it. After all, her male relations had tried to kill Morton, and would certainly try again, if they found him. I tensed at the sound of approaching feet, and the baby stirred and whined a little in my arms. But the footsteps crunched past in the road, and the sound vanished in the wind.
I sat down beside Alicia Brown, sighing with the sheer pleasure of taking weight off my feet. Every muscle and joint in my body ached from the aftereffects of the previous day and night, though I hadn’t had time until now to think about it much. Jamie and I would undoubtedly spend the night wrapped in blankets on someone’s floor; I eyed the grimy, firelit boards with an emotion approaching lust.
It was incongruously peaceful in the large room, with the snow whispering down outside, and the stewpot burbling away in the hearth, filling the air with the enticing scents of onion, venison, and turnips. The baby slept on my breast, emanating peaceful trust. I would have liked just to sit and hold her, thinking of nothing, but duty called.
“How do I know? Morton told one of my husband’s men,” I said. “I don’t know who his wife is, though; only that she lives in Granite Falls.” I patted the tiny back, and the baby burped faintly and relaxed again, her breath warm beneath my ear. The women had washed and oiled her, and she smelled rather like a fresh pancake. I kept one eye on the door, and the other warily on Alicia Brown, in case of further hysterics.
She sniffed