The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [304]
“That’ll do.” He nodded pleasantly to an approaching acquaintance, then turned his back, shielding us from interruption.
“All right,” I said. “Why?”
“Well, it’s to do wi’ Duncan.” He looked at once amused and slightly worried. “There’s a wee difficulty, and he canna bring himself to speak to her about it.”
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “He was married before, and he thought his first wife was dead, but he’s just seen her here, eating cullen skink.”
“Well, no,” he said, smiling. “Not so bad as that. And perhaps it’s nay so troublesome as Duncan fears. But he’s worrit in his mind about it, and yet he canna bring himself to speak to my aunt; he’s a bit shy of her, aye?”
Duncan was a shy and modest man altogether; an ex-fisherman pressed into service during the Rising, he had been captured after Culloden, and spent years in prison. He had been released, rather than transported, only because he had contracted blood poisoning from a scratch, and had lost one arm, making him unfit for labor and unsalable as an indenture. I didn’t have to wonder whose idea this marriage had been; such lofty aspirations would never have occurred to Duncan in a million years.
“I can see that. What’s he worried about, though?”
“Well,” he said slowly, “it’s true that Duncan hasna been wed before. Did ye not wonder why?”
“No,” I said. “I’d just assumed that the Rising had—oh, dear.” I stopped, catching a notion of what this might be about. “It’s not—goodness. You mean . . . he likes men?” My voice rose involuntarily.
“No!” he said, scandalized. “Christ, ye dinna think I’d let him marry my aunt, and him a sodomite? Christ.” He glanced around, to be sure no one had heard this calumny, and shepherded me into the shelter of the trees, just in case.
“Well, you wouldn’t necessarily know, would you?” I asked, amused.
“I’d know,” he said grimly. “Come along.” He lifted an overhanging bough and ushered me beneath it, a hand in the small of my back. The grove was a large one, and it was easy enough to get out of sight of the party.
“No,” he said again, reaching a small open space well in among the trunks. “The filthy mind of you, Sassenach! No, it’s nothing o’ the sort.” He glanced behind him, but we were a good distance from the lawn, and reasonably shielded from view. “It’s only that he’s . . . incapable.” He lifted one shoulder slightly, looking profoundly uncomfortable at the thought.
“What—impotent?” I felt my mouth hanging open, and closed it.
“Aye. He was betrothed, as a young man, but there was a dreadful accident; a cart horse knocked him into the street and kicked him in the scrotum.” He made a slight motion, as though to touch himself for reassurance, but checked it. “He healed, but it—well, he wasna fit for nuptial rites any longer, so he released the young woman and she marrit elsewhere.”
“The poor man!” I said, with a pang of sympathy. “Gracious, poor Duncan’s had nothing but bad luck.”
“Well, he’s alive,” Jamie observed. “A good many others aren’t. Besides”—he gestured over one shoulder, at the spread of River Run behind him—“I shouldna be inclined to call his present situation precisely unlucky. Bar the one small difficulty, that is,” he added.
I frowned, running through the medical possibilities. If the accident had resulted in severe vascular damage, there wasn’t much I could do; I was in no way equipped for fine reconstructive surgery. If it were only a hemocoel, though, then perhaps . . .
“When he was a young man, you said? Hmm. Well, it’s not promising, after so long, but I can certainly have a look and see whether—”
Jamie stared at me, incredulous.
“A look? Sassenach, the man goes puce when ye inquire after the health of his bowels, and he nearly died o’ shame, telling me. He’ll have an apoplexy, and ye go pokin’ his privates.”
A strand of hair had been pulled loose by an oak twig; I pushed it irritably behind my ear.
“Well, what did you expect me to do, then? I can’t heal him with spell-casting!”
“Of course not,” he said, a little impatiently. “I dinna want ye to do anything to