The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [196]
The gated entrance of the castle was wide enough to accommodate two wagons side by side. I say this without fear of contradiction, because it was doing exactly that as we crossed the bridge. One ox-drawn wagon was loaded with barrels, the other with hay. Our little cavalcade huddled on the bridge, waiting impatiently for the wagons to complete their laborious entry.
I risked a question as the horses picked their way over the slippery stones of the wet courtyard. I hadn’t spoken to my escort since hastily re-dressing his shoulder by the roadside. He had been silent, too, aside from an occasional grunt of discomfort when a misstep by the horse jolted him.
“Where are we?” I croaked, my voice hoarse from cold and disuse.
“The keep of Leoch,” he answered shortly.
Castle Leoch. Well, at least now I knew where I was. When I had known it, Castle Leoch was a picturesque ruin, some thirty miles north of Bargrennan. It was considerably more picturesque now, what with the pigs rooting under the walls of the keep and the pervasive smell of raw sewage. I was beginning to accept the impossible idea that I was, most likely, somewhere in the eighteenth century.
—Outlander, chapter 4, “I Come to the Castle”
But Jamie was not quite finished, it seemed. Ignoring Dougal’s fuming, he drew a short string of white beads from his sporran. He stepped forward and fastened the necklace around my neck. Looking down, I could see it was a string of small baroque pearls, those irregularly shaped productions of freshwater mussels, interspersed with tiny pierced-work gold roundels. Smaller pearls dangled from the gold beads.
“They’re only Scotch pearls,” he said, apologetically, “but they look bonny on you.” His fingers lingered a moment on my neck.
“Those were your mother’s pearls!” said Dougal, glowering at the necklace.
“Aye,” said Jamie calmly, “and now they’re my wife’s. Shall we go?”
—Outlander, chapter 14, “A Marriage Takes Place”
Brianna put a stop to the outcry simply by standing up. She was as tall as any of the men, and towered over the women. Laoghaire took one quick step back. Every face in the room was turned to her, marked with hostility, sympathy, or merely curiosity.
With a coolness that she didn’t feel, Brianna reached for the inner pocket of her coat, the secret pocket she had sewed into the seam only a week before. It seemed like a century.
“My mother’s name is Claire,” she said, and dropped the necklace on the table.
There was utter silence in the room, save for the soft hissing of the peat fire, burning low on the hearth. The pearl necklace lay gleaming, the spring sun from the window picking out the gold pierced-work roundels like sparks.
It was Jenny who spoke first. Moving like a sleepwalker, she reached out a slender finger and touched one of the pearls. Freshwater pearls, the kind called baroque because of their singular, irregular, unmistakable shapes.
“Oh, my,” Jenny said softly.
—Drums of Autumn, chapter 34, “Lallybroch”
“And what did you want to buy so much?” I asked suspiciously.
He sighed and hesitated for a moment, then tossed the small package lightly into my lap. “A wedding ring, Sassenach,” he said. “I got it from Ewen the armorer; he makes such things in his own time.”
“Oh,” I said in a small voice.
“Go ahead,” he said, a moment later. “Open it. It’s yours.”
The outlines of the little package blurred under my fingers. I blinked and sniffed, but made no move to open it. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“Well, so ye should be, Sassenach,” he said, but his voice was no longer angry. Reaching, he took the package from my lap and tore away the wrapping, revealing a wide silver band, decorated in the Highland interlace style, a small and delicate Jacobean thistle bloom carved in the center of each link.
So much I saw, and then my eyes blurred again.
I found a handkerchief thrust into my hand, and did my best to stanch the flow with it. “It’s… beautiful,” I said, clearing my throat and dabbling at