The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [28]
Well, he had told the lad it was food, and it was wholesome enough—though he sincerely hoped Mrs. Peggy wasn’t about to reappear, or they’d both be for it.
Peggy didn’t reappear, and they spent a companionable quarter hour pouring mash, then forking fresh hay from the stack outside into a wheelbarrow and trundling it into the stable. On the way back, they met Mr. Lowens, looking satisfied. Whatever haggling he’d been doing with Grieves, he thought he’d got the best of it.
“MacKenzie,” he said, with a cordial nod. He smiled at William, who, Jamie noticed with some dismay, had molasses down his shirt and a good deal of hay sticking out of his hair. “That your lad, is it?”
For an instant, he thought his heart would leap straight out of his mouth. He took a quick gulp of air, though, and answered calmly, “No, sir. This would be the young earl. The Earl of Ellesmere.”
“Oh, aye?” Lowens laughed and squatted down to speak to Willie directly. “Knew your father, I did. Randy old bugger,” he remarked to Jamie. “But he knew his horses, old Earl did. Going to be a good horseman, too, are you?” he said, returning his attention to Willie.
“Es!”
“Good lad, good lad.” He reached out and ruffled Willie’s hair. Willie glowered at him. “Breeched already? You’re young for that.” He affected to sniff deeply. “Smell a bit ripe. You’ve not shit yourself, have you, my lord?” He chuckled fatly, amused at his own wit.
William’s eyes narrowed, in a way that reminded Jamie vividly of his own sister about to go berserk. He thanked God again that the boy’s features were rounded and snub, and prepared to grab him if he tried to kick Mr. Lowens in the shins.
Instead, though, the young earl merely glared up at the farmer and said loudly and distinctly, “NNNNNNO!”
“Oh!” said Lowens, laughing. “My mistake. My apologies, my lord.”
“We must be going, sir,” Jamie said hastily, before William could execute any of the thoughts that were clearly going through his mind. He swung the boy off his feet and held him upside down by the ankles. “It’s time for his lordship’s tea.”
6
Summoning
PEGGY NEVER DID COME BACK. JAMIE CARRIED WILLIAM—now right side up—back to the house and delivered him to one of the kitchen maids, who told him that Peggy was “took bad” but that she would bring his little lordship along to Lady Isobel.
Willie objected vociferously to this proposal—so vociferously that Isobel herself appeared—and was pacified only by the promise that he could visit the stable again tomorrow. Jamie carefully avoided Isobel’s hard eye and absented himself as quickly as he could.
He wondered whether William would come back. Isobel wouldn’t bring him, he was sure of that. But if Peggy felt better, and if William insisted—William struck him as being singularly stubborn, even for a child of two. He smiled at the thought.
Can’t think where he gets that, he thought, and quite suddenly wondered whether his other son was the same. Claire’s son.
Lord, he thought automatically, as he did whenever thought of them came to his mind, that she might be safe. She and the child.
How old would his first child be now? He swallowed a thickness in his throat but continued doggedly in his train of thought. Claire had been two months gone with child when she’d stepped through the stones and back to Frank.
“God bless you, ye bloody English bastard,” he said through his teeth. It was his customary prayer when Frank Randall came to his mind—something he tried to avoid happening, but now and then … “Mind them well!”
Two months gone, and that had been April the 16, Anno Domini 1746. Now it was April again, and 1760. If time went on in a normal fashion—and he saw no reason why it should not—then the child would be almost fourteen.
“Christ, he’s nearly a man,” he whispered, and his hand closed tight on the fence rail, so tight he felt the grain of the wood.
As with Frank Randall, Jamie