The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [244]
“Do ye want her, Sassenach?” he asked softly. His face was a pale oval, blurred by the mist of his breath.
“Who?” I asked, startled. He gave a small grunt of amusement.
“The child. Who else?”
Who else, indeed.
“Do I want her—to keep her, you mean?” I asked cautiously. “Adopt her?” The notion hadn’t crossed my mind consciously, but must have been lurking somewhere in my subconscious, for I was not startled at his question, and at the speaking, the idea sprang into full flower.
My breasts had been tender since the morning, feeling full and engorged, and I felt the demanding tug of the little girl’s mouth in memory. I could not feed the baby myself—but Brianna could, or Marsali. Or she could live on cow’s milk, goat’s milk.
I realized suddenly that I had unconsciously cupped one breast, and was gently massaging it. I stopped at once, but Jamie had seen it; he moved closer and put an arm around me. I leaned my head against him, the rough weave of his hunting shirt cold against my cheek.
“Do you want her?” I asked. I wasn’t sure whether I was hopeful of his answer, or fearful of it. The answer was a slight shrug.
“It’s a big house, Sassenach,” he said. “Big enough.”
“Hmm,” I said. Not a resounding declaration—and yet I knew it was commitment, no matter how casually expressed. He had acquired Fergus in a Paris brothel, on the basis of three minutes’ acquaintance, as a hired pickpocket. If he took this child, he would treat her as a daughter. Love her? No one could guarantee love—not he . . . and not I.
He had picked up my dubious tone of voice.
“I saw ye with the wean, Sassenach, riding. Ye’ve a great tenderness about ye always—but when I saw ye so, wi’ the bairn tumbling about beneath your cloak, it—I remembered, how it was, how ye looked, when ye carried Faith.”
I caught my breath. To hear him speak the name of our first daughter like that, so matter-of-factly, was startling. We spoke of her seldom; her death was so long in the past that sometimes it seemed unreal, and yet the wound of her loss had scarred both of us badly.
Faith herself was not unreal at all, though.
She was near me, whenever I touched a baby. And this child, this nameless orphan, so small and frail, with skin so translucent that the blue threads of her veins showed clear beneath—yes, the echoes of Faith were strong. Still, she wasn’t my child. Though she could be; that was what Jamie was saying.
Was she perhaps a gift to us? Or at least our responsibility?
“Do you think we ought to take her?” I asked cautiously. “I mean—what might happen to her if we don’t?”
Jamie snorted faintly, dropping his arm, and leaned back against the wall of the house. He wiped his nose, and tilted his head toward the faint rumble of voices that came through the chinked logs.
“She’d be well cared for, Sassenach. She’s in the way of being an heiress, ken.”
That aspect of the matter hadn’t occurred to me at all.
“Are you sure?” I said dubiously. “I mean, the Beardsleys are both gone, but as she’s illegitimate—”
He shook his head, interrupting me.
“Nay, she’s legitimate.”
“But she can’t be. No one realizes it yet except you and me, but her father—”
“Her father was Aaron Beardsley, so far as the law is concerned,” he informed me. “By English law, a child born in wedlock is the legal child—and heir—of the husband—even if it’s known for a fact that the mother committed adultery. And yon woman did say that Beardsley married her, no?”
It struck me that he was remarkably positive about this particular provision of English law. It also struck me—in time, thank God, before I said anything—exactly why he was positive.
William. His son, conceived in England, and so far as anyone in England knew—with the exception of Lord John Grey—presumably the ninth Earl of Ellesmere. Evidently, he legally was the ninth Earl, according to what Jamie was telling me, whether the eighth Earl had been his father or not. The law