The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [479]
“I think she’s all right. Do you think she’s really in love with Manfred?” They had celebrated Lizzie’s betrothal to Manfred McGillivray the night before, with the entire McGillivray family traveling from their homestead for a lavish supper. Mrs. Bug, who was fond of Lizzie, had given of her best; no wonder she was asleep today.
“No,” Claire said frankly. “But as long as she isn’t in love with anyone else, it’s probably all right. He’s a good lad, and quite good-looking. And Lizzie likes his mother, which is also a good thing, under the circumstances.” She smiled at the thought of Ute McGillivray, who had taken Lizzie at once under her capacious maternal wing, picking out particularly delicious tidbits and poking them assiduously down Lizzie’s gullet, like a robin feeding a puny nestling.
“I think she may like Mrs. McGillivray more than she likes Manfred. She was really young when her own mother died; it’s nice for her to sort of have one again.” Brianna glanced at her mother from the corner of her eye. She could remember all too well the feeling of being motherless—and the sheer bliss of being mothered once more. By reflex, she glanced at Jemmy, who was holding an animated if mostly unintelligible conversation with Adso the cat.
Claire nodded, rubbing the shredded bark between her hands into a small round jar full of alcohol.
“Yes. Still, I think it’s as well they wait a bit—Lizzie and Manfred, I mean—and get used to each other.” It had been agreed that the marriage would take place the next summer, after Manfred had finished setting up his shop in Woolam’s Creek. “I hope this will work.”
“What?”
“The dogwood bark.” Claire stoppered the bottle and put it in the cupboard. “Dr. Rawlings’ casebook says it can be used as a substitute for cinchona bark—for quinine, you know. And it’s certainly easier to get, to say nothing of less expensive.”
“Great—I hope it does work.” Lizzie’s malaria had stayed in abeyance for several months—but there was always the threat of recurrence, and cinchona bark was hideously expensive.
The subject of their earlier conversation lingered in her mind, and she returned to it, as she took a fresh handful of sage leaves for her mortar, bruising them carefully before putting them to steep.
“You didn’t plan to be a doctor when you were young, you said. But you seemed pretty single-minded about it, later on.” She had scattered, but vivid, memories of Claire’s medical training; she could still smell the hospital smells caught in her mother’s hair and clothing, and feel the soft cool touch of the green scrubs her mother sometimes wore, coming in to kiss her goodnight when she came in late from work.
Claire didn’t answer at once, concentrating on the dried corn silk she was cleaning, plucking out rotted bits and flicking them through the open window.
“Well,” she said at last, not taking her eyes off her work. “People—and it’s not just women, not by any means—people who know who they are, and what they’re meant to be . . . they’ll find a way. Your father—Frank, I mean—” She scooped up the cleaned silk and transferred it to a small woven basket, small fragments scattering across the counter as she did so. “He was a very good historian. He liked the subject, and he had the gift of discipline and concentration that made him a success, but it wasn’t really a . . . a calling for him. He told me himself—he could have done other things just as well, and it wouldn’t have mattered a great deal. For some people, one thing does matter a great deal, though. And when it does . . . well, medicine mattered a great deal to me. I didn’t know, early on, but then I realized that it was simply what I was meant to do. And once I knew that . . .” She shrugged, dusting her hands, and covered the basket with a bit of linen, securing it with twine.
“Yes, but . . . you can’t always do what you’re meant to, can you?” she said,