The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [39]
An atrocious prospect to a devout Protestant, and plainly an uncomfortable one to Duncan. It was, Roger realized, an uncomfortable thought to him, too. Would he have done it, if he had to, to wed Bree? He supposed he would have, in the end, but he admitted to having felt a deep relief that the priest hadn’t insisted on any sort of formal conversion.
“Ah . . . no,” Roger said, and coughed as another fan of smoke washed suddenly over them. “No,” he repeated, wiping streaming eyes. “But they don’t baptize you, ye know, if ye’ve been christened already. You have been, aye?”
“Oh, aye.” Duncan seemed heartened by that. “Aye, when I—that is—” A faint shadow crossed his face, but whatever thought had caused it was dismissed with another shrug. “Yes.”
“Well, then. Let me think a bit, aye?”
The tinkers’ wagons were already in sight, huddled like oxen, their merchandise shrouded in canvas and blankets against the rain, but Duncan stopped, clearly wanting the matter settled before going on to anything else.
Roger rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, thinking.
“No,” he said finally. “No, I think ye needna say anything. See, it’ll not be a Mass, only the marriage service—and that’s just the same. Do ye take this woman, do ye take this man, richer, poorer, all that.”
Duncan nodded, attentive.
“I can say that, aye,” he said. “Though it did take a bit of coming to, the richer, poorer bit. Ye’ll ken that, though, yourself.”
He spoke quite without any sense of irony, merely as one stating an obvious fact, and was plainly taken aback at his glimpse of Roger’s face in response to the remark.
“I didna mean anything amiss,” Duncan said hastily. “That is, I only meant—”
Roger waved a hand, trying to brush it off.
“No harm done,” he said, his voice as dry as Duncan’s had been. “Speak the truth and shame auld Hornie, aye?”
It was the truth, too, though he had somehow managed to overlook it until this moment. In fact, he realized with a sinking sensation, his situation was a precise parallel with Duncan’s: a penniless man without property, marrying a rich—or potentially rich—woman.
He had never thought of Jamie Fraser as being rich, perhaps because of the man’s natural modesty, perhaps simply because he wasn’t—yet. The fact remained that Fraser was the proprietor of ten thousand acres of land. If a good bit of that land was still wilderness, it didn’t mean it would stay that way. There were tenants on that property now; there would be more soon. And when those tenancies began to pay rents, when there were sawmills and gristmills on the streams, when there were settlements and stores and taverns, when the handful of cows and pigs and horses had multiplied into fat herds of thriving stock under Jamie’s careful stewardship . . . Jamie Fraser might be a very rich man indeed. And Brianna was Jamie’s only natural child.
Then there was Jocasta Cameron, demonstrably already a very rich woman, who had stated her intention to make Brianna her heiress. Bree had exigently refused to countenance the notion—but Jocasta was as naturally stubborn as her niece, and had had more practice at it. Besides, no matter what Brianna said or did, folk would suppose . . .
And that was what was truly sitting in the bottom of his stomach like a curling stone. Not just the realization that he was in fact marrying well above his means and position—but the realization that everyone in the entire colony had realized it long ago, and had probably been viewing him cynically—and gossiping about him—as a rare chancer, if not an outright adventurer.
The smoke had left a bitter taste of ashes at the back of his mouth. He swallowed it down, and gave Duncan a crooked smile.
“Aye,” he said. “Well. Better or worse. I suppose they must see something in us, eh? The women?”
Duncan smiled, a little ruefully.
“Aye, something. So, ye think it will be all right, then, about the religion? I wouldna have either Miss Jo or Mac Dubh think I meant aught amiss by not speaking. But I didna like to make a fizz about it, and