Voyager - Diana Gabaldon [107]
“Fair, quite fair,” Jeffries pronounced, casting an appreciative eye on the spread. He winked at the cook. “Not as it wouldn’ go down easier wi’ a drop o’ something to pave the way, eh? You look the sort would have mercy on a pair o’ poor half-frozen chaps, wouldn’t ye, darlin’?”
Whether it was this piece of Irish persuasion or the sight of their dripping, steaming clothes, the argument had its effect, and a bottle of cooking brandy made its appearance next to the peppermill. Jeffries poured a large tot and drank it off without hesitation, smacking his lips.
“Ah, that’s more like! Here, boyo.” He passed the bottle to Jamie, then settled himself comfortably to a hot meal and gossip with the female servants. “Well, then, what’s to do here? Is the babe born yet?”
“Oh, yes, last night!” the kitchen maid said eagerly. “We were up all night, with the doctor comin’, and fresh sheets and towels called for, and the house all topsle-turvy. But the babe’s the least of it!”
“Now, then,” the cook broke in, frowning censoriously. “There’s too much work to be standin’ about gossiping. Get yer on, Mary Ann-up to the study, and see if his Lordship’ll be wantin’ anything else served now.”
Jamie, wiping his plate with a slice of bread, observed that the maid, far from being abashed at this rebuke, departed with alacrity, causing him to deduce that something of considerable interest was likely transpiring in the study.
The undivided attention of her audience thus obtained, the cook allowed herself to be persuaded into imparting the gossip with no more than a token demur.
“Well, it started some months ago, when the Lady Geneva started to show, poor thing. His Lordship’d been nicer than pie to ’er, ever since they was married couldn’t do enough for ’er, anything she wanted ordered from Lunnon, always askin’ was she warm enough,’ad she what she wanted to eat—fair dotin’, ’is Lordship was. But then, when ’e found she was with child!” The cook paused, to screw up her face portentously.
Jamie wanted desperately to know about the child; what was it, and how did it fare? There seemed no way to hurry the woman, though, so he composed his face to look as interested as possible, leaning forward encouragingly.
“Why, the shouting, and the carryings-on!” the cook said, throwing up her hands in dismayed illustration, “’im shoutin’, and ’er cryin’, and the both of ’em stampin’ up and down and slammin’ doors, and ’im callin’ ’er names as isn’t fit to be used in a stableyard—and so I told Mary Ann, when she told me.…”
“Was his lordship not pleased about the child, then?” Jamie interrupted. The omelet was settling into a hard lump somewhere under his breastbone. He took another gulp of brandy, in hopes of dislodging it.
The cook turned a bright, birdlike eye on him, eyebrow cocked in appreciation at his intelligence. “Well, you’d think as ’e would be, wouldn’t yer? But no indeed! Far from it,” she added with emphasis.
“Why not?” said Jeffries, only mildly interested.
“’E said,” the cook said, dropping her voice in awe at the scandalousness of the information, “as the child wasn’t ’is!”
Jeffries, well along with his second glass, snorted in contemptuous amusement. “Old goat with a young gel? I should think it like enough, but how on earth would his Lordship know for sure whose the spawn was? Could be his as much as anyone’s, couldn’t it, with only her ladyship’s word to go by, eh?”
The cook’s thin mouth stretched in a bright, malicious smile. “Oh, I don’t say as ’e’d know whose it was, now—but there’s one sure way ’e’d know it wasn’t ’is, now isn’t there?”
Jeffries stared at the cook, tilting back on his chair. “What?” he said. “You mean to tell me his Lordship’s incapable?” A broad grin at this juicy thought split his weatherbeaten face. Jamie felt the omelet rising, and hastily gulped more brandy.
“Well, I couldn’t say, I’m sure.” The cook’s mouth assumed a prim line, then split asunder to add, “though the chambermaid did say as the sheets she took off the weddin’ bed was as white as when they’d gone on, to be sure.”
It was too