The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [61]
But he was Jamie’s son-in-law, or about to be. Damn it, Duncan had just introduced him that way! He might have been raised in another time—but he was a Highland Scot, for all that, and he was well aware that blood and kinship counted for more than anything.
The husband of an only daughter would normally be considered as the son of the house, coming only second to the head of the household in authority and respect. Unless there was something drastically wrong with him. If he were commonly known to be a drunkard, for instance—or criminally dissolute. Or feeble-minded . . . Christ, was that what Jamie thought of him? A hopeless numpty?
“Sit ye doon, young man, and I’ll attend to this fine boorachie,” Mrs. Bug interrupted these dark musings. She pulled on his sleeve, making clicking noises of disapproval as she viewed the leaves and twigs in his hair.
“Look at ye, all gluthered and blashed about! Fightin’, was it? Och, weel, I hope the other fellow looks worse, that’s all I can say.”
Before he could protest, she had him seated on a rock, had whipped a wooden comb from her pocket and the thong from his hair, and was dealing with his disordered locks in a brisk manner that felt calculated to rip several strands from his scalp.
“Thrush, is it, they call ye?” Mrs. Bug paused in her tonsorial activity, holding up a strand of glossy black and squinting suspiciously at it, as though in search of vermin.
“Oh, aye, but it’s no for the color of his bonnie black locks,” Duncan put in, grinning at Roger’s obvious discomfiture. “It’s for the singin’. Honey-throated as a wee nightingale, is Roger Mac.”
“Singing?” cried Mrs. Bug. She dropped the lock of hair, enchanted. “Was it you we heard last night, then? Singin’ ‘Ceann-ràra,’ and ‘Loch Ruadhainn’? And playin’ on the bodhran with it?”
“Well, it might have been,” Roger murmured modestly. The lady’s unbounded admiration—expressed at great length—flattered him, and made him ashamed of his momentary resentment of her husband. After all, he thought, seeing the shabbiness of her much-mended apron, and the lines in her face, the old people had clearly had a hard time of it. Perhaps Jamie had hired them as much from charity as from his own need of help.
That made him feel somewhat better, and he thanked Mrs. Bug very graciously for her assistance.
“Will ye come along to our fire now?” he asked, with an inquiring glance at Mr. Bug. “Ye’ll not have met Mrs. Fraser yet, I suppose, or—”
He was interrupted by a noise like a fire engine’s siren, distant but obviously coming closer. Quite familiar with this particular racket, he was not surprised to see his father-in-law emerge from one of the trails that crisscrossed the mountain, Jem squirming and squalling like a scalded cat in his arms.
Jamie, looking mildly harried, handed the child across to Roger. Roger took him and—for lack of any other inspiration—stuck his thumb in the wide-open mouth. The noise ceased abruptly, and everyone relaxed.
“What a sweet laddie!” Mrs. Bug stood a-tiptoe to coo over Jem, while Jamie, looking highly relieved, turned to greet Mr. Bug and Duncan.
“Sweet” was not the adjective Roger himself would have chosen. “Berserk” seemed more like it. The baby was bright red in the face, the tracks of tears staining his cheeks, and he sucked furiously on the sustaining thumb, eyes squashed shut in an effort to escape a patently unsatisfactory world. What hair he had was sticking up in sweaty spikes and whorls, and he had come out of his wrappings, which hung in disreputable folds and draggles. He also smelled like a neglected privy,