Outlander aka Cross Stitch - Gabaldon Diana - Страница 150

“And failin’ that,” said Ian, “I’ve found myself on the same number of occasions, bent over a fence rail alongside Mr. Fraser there, listenin’ to him yell his heid off while waitin’ for my own turn.”

“Never!” replied Jamie indignantly. “I never yelled.”

“Ye call it what ye like, Jamie,” his friend answered, “but ye were awful loud.”

“Ye could hear the both of ye for miles,” Jenny interjected. “And not only the yelling. Ye could hear Jamie arguing all the time, right up to the fence.”

“Aye, ye should ha’ been a lawyer, Jamie. But I dinna ken why I always let you do the talking,” said Ian, shaking his head. “You always got us in worse trouble than we started.”

Jamie began to laugh again. “You mean the broch?”

“I do.” Ian turned to me, motioning toward the west, where the ancient stone tower rose from the hill behind the house.

“One of Jamie’s better arguments, that was,” he said, rolling his eyes upward. “He told Brian it was uncivilized to use physical force in order to make your point of view prevail. Corporal punishment was barbarous, he said, and old-fashioned, to boot. Thrashing someone just because they had committed an act with whose ram-ramifications, that was it – with whose ramifications ye didn’t agree was not at a’ a constructive form of punishment…”

All of us were laughing by this time.

“Did Brian listen to all of this?” I asked.

“Oh, aye.” Ian nodded. “I just stood there wi’ Jamie, nodding whenever he’d stop for breath. When Jamie finally ran out of words, his father sort of coughed a bit and said ‘I see.’ Then he turned and looked out of the window for a little, swinging the strap and nodding his head, as though he were thinking. We were standing there, elbow to elbow like Jamie said, sweating. At last Brian turned about and told us to follow him to the stables.”

“He gave us each a broom, a brush, and a bucket, and pointed us in the direction of the broch,” said Jamie, taking up the story. “Said I’d convinced him of my point, so he’d decided on a more ‘constructive’ form of punishment.”

Ian’s eyes rolled slowly up, as though following the rough stones of the broch upward.

“That tower rises sixty feet from the ground,” he told me, “and it’s thirty feet in diameter, wi’ three floors.” He heaved a sigh. “We swept it from the top to the bottom,” he said, “and scrubbed it from the bottom to the top. It took five days, and I can taste rotted oat-straw when I cough, even now.”

“And you tried to kill me on the third day,” said Jamie, “for getting us into that.” He touched his head gingerly. “I had a wicked gash over my ear, where ye hit me wi’ the broom.”

“Oh, weel,” Ian said comfortably, “that was when ye broke my nose the second time, so we were even.”

“Trust a Murray to keep score,” Jamie said, shaking his head.

“Let’s see,” I said, counting on my fingers. “According to you, Frasers are stubborn, Campbells are sneaky, MacKenzies are charming but sly, and Grahams are stupid. What’s the Murrays’ distinguishing characteristic?”

“Ye can count on them in a fight,” said Jamie and Ian together, then laughed.

“Ye can too,” said Jamie, recovering. “You just hope they’re on your side.” And both men went off into fits again.

Jenny shook her head disapprovingly at spouse and brother.

“And we havena even had any wine yet,” she said. She put down her sewing and heaved herself to her feet. “Come wi’ me, Claire; we’ll see has Mrs. Crook made any biscuits to have wi’ the port.”

Coming back down the hall a quarter of an hour later with trays of refreshments, I heard Ian say, “You’ll not mind then, Jamie?”

“Mind what?”

“That we wed without your consent – me and Jenny, I mean.”

Jenny, walking ahead of me, came to a sudden stop outside the drawing room door.

There was a brief snort from the love seat where Jamie lay sprawled, feet propped on a hassock. “Since I didna tell ye where I was, and ye had no notion when – if ever – I’d come back, I can hardly blame ye for not waiting.”

I could see Ian in profile, leaning over the log basket. His long, good-natured face wore a slight frown.

“Weel, I didna think it right, especially wi’ me being crippled…”

There was a louder snort.

“Jenny couldna have a better husband, if you’d lost both legs and your arms as well,” Jamie said gruffly. Ian’s pale skin flushed slightly in embarrassment. Jamie coughed and swung his legs down from the hassock, leaning over to pick up a scrap of kindling that had fallen from the basket.

“How did ye come to wed anyway, given your scruples?” he asked, one side of his mouth curling up.

“Gracious, man,” Ian protested, “ye think I had any choice in the matter? Up against a Fraser?” He shook his head, grinning at his friend.

“She came up to me out in the field one day, while I was tryin’ to mend a wagon that sprang its wheel. I crawled out, all covered wi’ muck, and found her standin’ there looking like a bush covered wi’ butterflies. She looks me up and down and she says-” He paused and scratched his head. “Weel, I don’t know exactly what she said, but it ended with her kissing me, muck notwithstanding, and saying, ‘Fine, then, we’ll be married on St. Martin’s Day.’ ” He spread his hands in comic resignation. “I was still explaining why we couldna do any such thing, when I found myself in front of a priest, saying, ‘I take thee, Janet’… and swearing to a lot of verra improbable statements.”

Jamie rocked back in his seat, laughing.

“Aye, I ken the feeling,” he said. “Makes ye feel a bit hollow, no?”

Ian smiled, embarrassment forgotten. “It does and all. I still get that feeling, ye know, when I see Jenny sudden, standing against the sun on the hill, or holding wee Jamie, not lookin’ at me. I see her, and I think, ‘God, man, she can’t be yours, not really.’ ” He shook his head, brown hair flopping over his brow. “And then she turns and smiles at me…” He looked up at his brother-in-law, grinning.

“Weel, ye know yourself. I can see it’s the same wi’ you and your Claire. She’s… something special, no?”

Jamie nodded. The smile didn’t leave his face, but altered somehow.

“Aye,” he said softly. “Aye, she is that.”

Over the port and biscuits, Jamie and Ian reminisced further about their shared boyhood, and their fathers. Ian’s father, William, had died just the past spring, leaving Ian to run the estate alone.

“You remember when your father came on us down by the spring, and made us go wi’ him to the smithy to see how to fix a wagon-tree?”

“Aye, and he couldna understand why we kept squirming and shifting about-”

“And he kept asking ye did ye need to go to the privy-”

Both men were laughing too hard to finish the story, so I looked at Jenny.

“Toads,” she said succinctly. “The two o’ them each had five or six toads inside his shirt.”

“Oh, Lord,” said Ian. “When the one crawled up your neck and hopped out of your shirt into the forge, I thought I’d die.”

“I cannot imagine why my father didna wring my neck on several occasions,” said Jamie, shaking his head. “It’s a wonder I ever grew up.”

Ian looked consideringly at his own offspring, industriously engaged in piling wooden blocks on top of each other by the hearth. “I don’t quite know how I’m goin’ to manage it, when the time comes I have to beat my own son. I mean… he’s, well, he’s so small.” He gestured helplessly at the sturdy little figure, tender neck bent to his task.

Jamie eyed his small namesake cynically. “Aye, he’ll be as much a devil as you or I, give him time. After all, I suppose even I must ha’ looked small and innocent at one point.”

“You did,” said Jenny unexpectedly, coming to set a pewter cup of cider in her husband’s hand. She patted her brother on the head.