A Breath of Snow and Ashes (129 page)

“I thank ye, Mrs. Bug,” he said politely, “but no. We’ll bide.” He lifted his fingers in dismissal, and she faded reluctantly from view. She hadn’t gone far, though, he knew, just round the edge of the door.

He rubbed a hand over his face, wondering what it was about young girls these days. It was a full moon tonight; perhaps they truly did run lunatic.

On the other hand, the wee bitch had undoubtedly been playing the loon with
someone;
with her apron up like that, the bairn was showing plainly, a hard round swell like a calabash under her thin petticoat.

“How long?” he asked Christie, with a nod toward her.

“Six months gone,” Christie said, and sank reluctantly onto the offered stool. He was dour as Jamie had ever seen him, but in control of himself, that was something.

“It was when the sickness came late last summer; when I was here, helping to nurse his wife!” Malva burst out, lowering her apron and staring reproachfully at her father, full lip a-tremble. “And not just the once, either!” She switched her gaze back to Jamie, wet-eyed and pleading. “Tell them, sir, please—tell them the truth!”

“Oh, I mean to,” he said, giving her a black look. “And ye’ll do the same, lass, I assure ye.”

The shock of it was beginning to fade, and while his sense of irritation remained—in fact, it was growing by the moment—he was beginning to think, and furiously.

She was pregnant by someone grossly unsuitable; that much was clear. Who? Christ, he wished Claire had stayed; she listened to the gossip on the Ridge and she took interest in the lass; she’d know which young men were likely prospects. He’d seldom noticed young Malva particularly himself, save she was always about, helping Claire.

“The first time was when Herself was so ill as we despaired of her life,” Malva said, snapping him back to attention. “I told ye, Faither. It wasna rape—only Himself being off his heid wi’ the sorrow of it, and me, as well.” She blinked, a pearly tear sliding down the unmarked cheek. “I came down from her room late at night, to find him in here, sitting in the dark, and grieving. I felt so sorry for him. . . .” Her voice shook, and she stopped, swallowing.

“I asked could I fetch him a wee bite, maybe something to drink—but he’d drink taken already, there was whisky in a glass before him. . . .”

“And I said no, thank ye kindly, and that I’d be alone,” Jamie broke in, feeling the blood begin to surge in his temples at her recounting. “Ye left.”

“No, I didn’t.” She shook her head; the cap had come half off when she fell and she hadn’t settled it again; dark tendrils of hair hung down, framing her face. “Or rather, ye did say that to me, that ye’d be alone. But I couldn’t bear to see ye in such straits, and—I know ’twas forward and unseemly, but I did pity ye so much!” she burst out, looking up and then immediately dropping her gaze again.

“I . . . I came and touched him,” she whispered, so low that he had trouble hearing her. “Put my hand on his shoulder, like, only to comfort him. But he turned then, and put his arms round me, all of a sudden and grasped me to him. And—and then . . .” She gulped, audibly.

“He . . . he took me. Just . . . there.” The toe of one small buskin stretched out, pointing delicately at the rag rug just in front of the table. Where there was, in fact, a small and ancient brown stain, which might have been blood. It
was
blood—Jemmy’s, left when the wee lad had tripped on the rug and bumped his nose so it bled.

He opened his mouth to speak, but was so choked by outraged amazement that nothing emerged but a sort of gasp.

“So ye’ve not the balls to deny it, eh?” Young Allan had recovered his breath; he was swaying on his knees, hair hanging in his face, and glaring. “Balls enough to do it, though!”

Jamie gave Allan a quelling look, but didn’t bother replying to him. He turned his attention instead to Tom Christie.

“Is she mad?” he inquired. “Or only clever?”

Christie’s face might have been carved in stone, save for the pouchy flesh quivering beneath his eyes, and the eyes themselves, bloodshot and narrowed.

“She’s not mad,” Christie said.

“A clever liar, then.” Jamie narrowed his own eyes at her. “Clever enough to ken no one would believe a tale of rape.”

Her mouth opened in horror.

“Oh, no, sir,” she said, and shook her head so hard the dark curls danced by her ears. “I should
never
say such a thing of ye, never!” She swallowed, and timidly raised her eyes to meet his—swollen with weeping, but a soft dove gray, guileless with innocence.

“Ye needed comfort,” she said, softly but clearly. “I gave it ye.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose hard betwixt thumb and forefinger, hoping the sensation would wake him from what was plainly nightmare. This failing to occur, he sighed and looked at Tom Christie.

“She’s with child by someone, and not by me,” he said bluntly. “Who might it have been?”

“It
was
you!” the girl protested, letting her apron fall as she sat bolt upright on her stool. “There’s no one else!”

Christie’s eyes slid reluctantly toward his daughter, then came back to meet Jamie’s. They were the same dove gray, but they’d never possessed any trace of either guilelessness or innocence.

“I know of no one,” he said. He took a deep breath, squaring his stocky shoulders. “She says it wasn’t just the once. That ye had her a dozen times or more.” His voice was nearly colorless, but not from lack of feeling, rather, from the grip he had upon his feelings.

“Then she’s lied a dozen times or more,” Jamie said, keeping his own voice under as much control as Christie’s.

“Ye know I have not! Your wife believes me,” Malva said, and a steely note had entered her voice. She lifted a hand to her cheek, where the flaming color had subsided but where the print of Claire’s fingers was still clear, livid in outline.

“My wife has better sense,” he said coldly, but was conscious all the same of a sinking sensation at the mention of Claire. Any woman might find such an accusation shock enough to make her flee—but he did wish that she’d stayed. Her presence, stoutly denying any misbehavior by him and personally rebuking Malva’s lies, would have helped.

“Does she?” The vivid color had faded from the girl’s face altogether, but she had stopped weeping. She was white-faced, her eyes huge and brilliant. “Well, I’ve sense, as well, sir. Sense enough to prove what I say.”

“Oh, aye?” he said skeptically. “How?”

“I’ve seen the scars on your naked body; I can describe them.”

That declaration brought everyone up short. There was silence for a moment, broken by Allan Christie’s grunt of satisfaction. He rose to his feet, one hand still pressed to his middle, but an unpleasant smile upon his face.

“So, then?” he said. “Nay answer to that one, have ye?”

Irritation had long since given way to a monstrous anger. Under that, though, was the barest thread of something he would not—not yet—call fear.

“I dinna put my scars on display,” he said mildly, “but there are a number of folk who’ve seen them, nonetheless. I havena lain with any of
them,
either.”

“Aye, folk speak sometimes of the scars on your back,” Malva shot back. “And everyone kens the great ugly one up your leg, that ye took at Culloden. But what of the crescent-shaped one across your ribs? Or the wee one on your left hurdie?” She reached a hand behind her, cupping her own buttock in illustration.

“Not in the center, quite—a bit down, on the outer side. About the size of a farthing.” She didn’t smile, but something like triumph blazed in her eyes.

“I havena got—” he began, but then stopped, appalled. Christ, he did. A spider’s bite, taken in the Indies, that festered for a week, made an abscess, then burst, to his great relief. Once healed, he’d never thought of it again—but it was there.

Too late. They’d seen the realization cross his face.

Tom Christie closed his eyes, jaw working under his beard. Allan grunted again with satisfaction, and crossed his arms.

“Want to show us she’s wrong?” the young man inquired sarcastically. “Take down your breeks, and gie us a look at your backside, then!”

With a good deal of effort, he kept himself from telling Allan Christie what he could do with his own backside. He took a long, slow breath, hoping that by the time he let it out again, some useful thought would have come to him.

It didn’t. Tom Christie opened his eyes with a sigh.

“So,” he said flatly. “I suppose ye’ll not intend to put aside your wife and marry her?”

“I should never do such a thing!” The suggestion filled him with fury—and something like panic at the mere notion of being without Claire.

“Then we’ll draw a contract.” Christie rubbed a hand over his face, shoulders slumped with exhaustion and distaste. “Maintenance for her and the bairn. Formal acknowledgment of the child’s rights as one of your heirs. Ye can decide, I suppose, if ye wish to take it for your wife to rear, but that—”

“Get out.” He rose, very slowly, and leaned forward, hands on the table, eyes fixed on Christie’s. “Take your daughter and leave my house.”

Christie stopped speaking and looked at him, black-browed. The girl had started grieving again, making whimpering noises into her apron. He’d the odd feeling that time had stopped, somehow; they would all just be trapped here forever, himself and Christie staring each other down like dogs, unable to look down but knowing that the floor of the room had vanished beneath their feet and they hung suspended over some dreadful abyss, in the endless moment before the fall.

It was Allan Christie who broke it, of course. The movement of the young man’s hand going to his knife freed Jamie’s gaze from Christie’s, and his fingers tightened, digging into the wood of the table. An instant before, he’d felt bodiless; now blood hammered in his temples and pulsed through his limbs and his muscles trembled with an urgent need to damage Allan Christie. And wring his sister’s neck to stop her noise, as well.

Allan Christie’s face was black with anger, but he’d sense enough—barely, Jamie thought—not to draw the knife.

“I should like nothing better, wee man, than to gie ye your heid in your hands to play with,” he said softly. “Leave now, before I do it.”

Young Christie licked his lips and tensed himself, knucklebones going white on the hilt—but his eyes wavered. He glanced at his father, who sat like a stone, grim-jowled and square. The light had changed; it shone from the side and through the grizzled tufts of Christie’s beard, so his own scar showed, a thin pink rope that curled like a snake above his jaw.

Christie straightened slowly, pushing himself up with his hands on his thighs, then shook his head suddenly like a dog shaking off water and stood up. He gripped Malva by the arm, lifted her from her stool, and pushed her before him, weeping and stumbling on the way out.

Allan followed them, making occasion to brush so near to Jamie as he left that Jamie could smell the younger man’s stink, ripe with fury. Young Christie cast a single angry glance back over his shoulder, hand still on his knife—but left. Their tread in the hall made the floorboards tremble under Jamie’s feet, and then came the heavy slam of the door.

He looked down, then, vaguely surprised to see the battered surface of his table and his own hands still flattened there as if they’d grown to it. He straightened up and his fingers curled, the stiff joints painful as they made themselves into fists. He was drenched with sweat.

Lighter footsteps came down the hall then, and Mrs. Bug came in with a tray. She set it down before him, curtsied to him, and went out. The single crystal goblet that he owned was stood on it, and the decanter that held the good whisky.

He felt obscurely that he wanted to laugh, but couldn’t quite remember how it was done. The light touched the decanter and the drink within glowed like a chrysoberyl. He touched the glass gently in acknowledgment of Mrs. Bug’s loyalty, but that would have to wait. The Devil was loose in the world and there’d be hell to pay, surely. Before he did aught else, he must find Claire.

AFTER A TIME, the drifting clouds boiled up into thunderheads, and a cold breeze moved over the top of the hollow, shaking the laurels overhead with a rattling like dry bones. Very slowly, I got to my feet and began to climb.

I had no sure destination in mind; didn’t care, really, if I were wet or not. I only knew that I couldn’t go back to the house. As it was, I came to the trail that led to the White Spring, just as rain began to fall. Huge drops splattered on the leaves of pokeweed and burdock, and the firs and pines let go their long-held breath in a fragrant sigh.

The patter of drops on leaves and branches was punctuated by the muffled thud of heavier drops striking deep into soft earth—hail was coming with the rain, and suddenly there were tiny white particles of ice bouncing crazily on the packed needles, peppering my face and neck with stinging cold.

I ran, then, and took shelter beneath the drooping branches of a balsam fir that overhung the spring. The hail pocked the water and made it dance, but melted on impact, disappearing at once into the dark water. I sat still, arms wrapped around myself against the chill, shivering.