The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [469]
“I see,” I said, tactfully averting my own gaze, and brushing a few bits of stray bloodroot off the desk. “Would you like me to talk to her?”
“Oh, I should be most grateful, Mum!” Lightened by relief, he nearly sprang to his feet. He wrang Jamie’s hand fervently, bowed repeatedly to me, and at last made his way out, with much bobbing and murmuring of thanks.
The door closed behind him, and Jamie sighed, shaking his head.
“Christ knows it’s trouble enough to get daughters married when they do ken their own minds,” he said darkly, plainly thinking of Brianna and Marsali. “Maybe it’s easier if they don’t.”
THE SINGLE CANDLE was guttering, casting flickering shadows over the room. I got up and went to the shelf where a few fresh ones lay. To my surprise, Jamie got up and came to join me. He reached past the assortment of half-burned tapers and fresh candles, pulling out the squat clock-candle that sat behind them, hidden in the shadows.
He set it on the desk, and used one of the tapers to light it. The wick was already blackened; the candle had been used before, though it wasn’t burned down very far. He looked at me, and I went quietly to shut the door.
“Do you think it’s time?” I asked softly, moving back to stand beside him.
He shook his head, but didn’t answer. He sat back a little in his chair, hands folded in his lap, watching the flame of the clock-candle take hold and swell into a wavering light.
Jamie sighed and put out a hand to turn his account-book toward me. I could see the state of our affairs laid out there in black and white—dismal, so far as cash went.
Very little business in the Colony was done on a cash basis—virtually none, west of Asheville. The mountain homesteaders all dealt in barter, and so far as that went, we managed fairly well. We had milk, butter, and cheese to trade; potatoes and grain, pork and venison, fresh vegetables and dried fruit, a little wine made from the scuppernong grapes of the autumn past. We had hay and timber—though so did everyone else—and my honey and beeswax. And above everything else, we had Jamie’s whisky.
That was a limited resource, though. We had fifteen acres in new barley, which—bar hailstones, forest fires, and other Acts of God—would eventually be made into nearly a hundred kegs of whisky, which could be sold or traded for quite a lot, even completely raw and unaged. The barley was still green in the field, though, and the whisky no more than a profitable phantom.
In the meantime, we had used or sold almost all the spirit on hand. True, there were fourteen small kegs of spirit remaining—buried in a small cave above the whisky-spring—but that couldn’t be used. From each distilling, Jamie put aside two kegs, to be religiously kept for aging. The eldest barrel in this cache was only two years old; it would stay there for ten more, God willing, to emerge as liquid gold—and almost as valuable as the solid kind.
The immediate financial demands were not going to wait ten years, though. Beyond the possibility of a gunsmith’s shop for Manfred McGillivray and a modest dowry for Lizzie, there were the normal expenses of farming, livestock maintenance, and an ambitious plan to provide ploughshares to every tenant—many of whom were still tilling by hand.
And beyond our own expenses, there was one very burdensome obligation. Bloody Laoghaire MacKenzie damn-her-eyes Fraser.
She wasn’t precisely an ex-wife—but she wasn’t precisely not an ex-wife, either. Thinking me permanently gone, if not actually dead, Jamie had married her, under the prodding of his sister Jenny. The marriage had rather quickly proved to be a mistake, and upon my reappearance, an annulment had been sought, to the relief—more or less—of all parties.
Generous to a fault, though, Jamie had agreed to pay a large sum to her in annual maintenance, plus a dowry to each of her daughters. Marsali’s dowry was being paid gradually, in land and whisky, and there was no news of Joan’s impending marriage. But the money to keep Laoghaire in whatever style she kept in