The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [178]
“Is the wean not ower-young to be trussed up like a Christmas goose?” he asked bluntly.
Betty blinked at him, taken by surprise.
“Like … Oh, you mean the corset? It’s only a light thing, barely any boning. He won’t have a real one ’til he’s five, but his grandmother and his aunt thought he might as well grow used to it now. While they can still overpower him,” she added in an undertone, with an unwilling twitch of amusement. “The little bugger kicked a hole in the wall of the nursery yesterday and broke six of the best teacups the day before. Stole them off the table and flung them against the wall to hear them smash, laughing all the time. He’ll be a right devil when he’s grown, you mark my words,” she said, nodding at William, who had a thumb in his mouth and was dreamily lost in the horse’s motion and the soothing proximity of Jamie’s body.
Jamie contented himself with a neutral sound in his throat, though he felt his ears grow hot. They would not discipline the boy, and yet they meant to case his sweet small body in linen and whalebone, to narrow his shoulders and sway his back to meet the demands of what they thought fashionable?
He knew that the custom of corseting children was common among the wealthy English—to form their bodies into the slope-shouldered, high-chested figure thought most fashionable—but such things were not done in the Highlands, save perhaps among the nobles. The odious garment—he could feel the hard edge of it pressing into Willie’s soft flesh, just below his oxter—made Jamie want to spur up and ride hell-bent for the Border, pausing only to strip the thing off and throw it into the mere as they passed.
But he couldn’t do that and so rode on, one arm tight around William, seething.
“He’s selling,” Betty murmured, distracting him from his dark thoughts, “but Lady D’s not buying. Poor Isobel!”
“Eh?”
She nodded and he looked ahead, seeing Mr. Wilberforce riding between the two ladies, now and then casting a quick, possessive glance at Isobel but turning the most of his winsome charm on Lady Dunsany. Who, as Betty said, seemed less than overwhelmed.
“Why poor Isobel?” Jamie asked, watching this byplay with interest.
“Why, she’s sweet on him, you great nit. Surely even you can see that?”
“Aye, so?”
Betty sighed and rolled her eyes dramatically but was sufficiently bored as to put aside her pose of disinterest.
“So,” she said, “Lady Isobel wants to marry him. Well,” she added fairly, “she wants to be married, and he’s the only one in the county that’s halfway presentable. But only halfway, and I don’t think that’ll be enough,” she said, squinting judiciously at Wilberforce, who was nearly falling out of his saddle in the effort to pay a compliment to Lady Dunsany, who was pretending to be hard of hearing.
On Wilberforce’s other side, Isobel was glaring at her mother, with a look of mingled frustration and apprehension on her face. Lady Dunsany rode tranquilly, rocking a little on her sidesaddle, glancing vaguely at Wilberforce’s importunate face from time to time, with an expression that said plainly, “Oh, are you still here?”
“Why do they not like him for their daughter, then?” Jamie asked, interested despite himself. “Do they not wish her to be married?”
Betty snorted. “After what happened to Geneva?” she asked, and looked pointedly at William, then raised her face to Jamie, with a tiny smirk. He kept his own face carefully blank, despite a lurch of the innards, and did not reply.
They rode in silence for a bit, but Betty’s innate restlessness would not tolerate silence for long.
“They’d let her marry well, I s’pose,” she said, grudging. “But they don’t mean to let her throw herself away on a lawyer. And one that’s talked about, too.”
“Aye? What’s said about him?” Jamie didn’t give a fig for Wilberforce—and not much more for Lady Isobel—but the conversation took his mind off Willie’s corset.
Betty pursed her lips, with a knowing, sly sort of look.
“They