He looked out over the cove again, sighed deeply, and turned to me.
“Speakin’ of hideous emergencies,” he said thoughtfully, “ye do want to see them coming. So ye can be fettled against them, aye?” His eyes met mine directly. “Would now be a good time to tell me what’s coming, d’ye think?”
“THERE’S NOTHING wrong,” I said, for probably the tenth time. I picked at a scab of bark still clinging to the timber I sat on. “It’s perfectly all right. Really.”
Jamie was standing in front of me, the cove and the clouded sky bright behind him, his face shadowed.
“Sassenach,” he said mildly. “I’m a great deal more stubborn than you are, and ye ken that fine. Now, I know something upset ye when ye went to Beardsley’s place, and I know ye dinna want to tell me about it. Sometimes I ken ye need to fettle your mind about a matter before ye speak, but you’ve had time and more to do that—and I see that whatever it is is worse than I thought, or ye’d have said by now.”
I hesitated, trying to think of something to tell him that perhaps wasn’t quite . . . I looked up at him and decided that, no, I couldn’t lie to him—and not only because he’d be able to tell immediately that I was lying.
“Do you remember,” I said slowly, looking up at him, “on our wedding night? You told me you wouldn’t ask me to tell you things that I couldn’t. You said that love had room for secrets, but not for lies. I won’t lie to you, Jamie—but I really don’t want to tell you.”
He shifted his weight from one leg to the other and sighed.
“If ye think that’s going to relieve my mind, Sassenach . . .” he said, and shook his head. “I didna say that, anyway. I do remember the occasion—vividly”—and he smiled a little at me—“and what I said was that there was nothing between us then but respect—and that I thought respect maybe had room for secrets, but not for lies.”
He paused for a moment, then said very gently, “D’ye no think there’s more than respect between us now, mo chridhe?”
I took a very deep breath. My heart was thumping against my stays, but it was just normal agitation, not panic.
“I do,” I said, looking up at him. “Jamie . . . please don’t ask me just now. I truly think it’s all right; I’ve been praying about it, and—and—I think it will be all right,” I ended, rather lamely. I stood up, though, and took his hands. “I’ll tell you when I think I can,” I said. “Can you live with that?”
His lips tightened as he thought. He wasn’t a man for facile answers. If he couldn’t live with it, he’d tell me.
“Is it a matter that I might need to make preparation for?” he asked seriously. “If it might cause a fight of some kind, I mean, I should need to be ready.”
“Oh.” I let out the breath I’d been holding, somewhat relieved. “No. No, it isn’t anything like that. More of a moral question kind of thing.”
I could see that he wasn’t happy about that; his eyes searched my face, and I saw the troubled look in them, but at last he nodded, slowly.
“I’ll live with it, a nighean,” he said softly, and kissed my forehead. “For now.”
INTERRUPTUS
THE OTHER MAJOR THINGS requiring a healer’s attention in summer were pregnancy and birth. I prayed every day that Marsali had safely delivered her child. Even though it was already June 1, it would likely be months before we had any news, but I had examined her before we parted company—with tears—in Charleston, and all seemed normal.
“Do ye think this one might be . . . like Henri-Christian?” She spoke the name with difficulty and pressed a hand to her swelling belly.
“Probably not,” I said, and saw the emotions ripple across her face like wind passing over water. Fear, regret . . . relief.
I crossed myself, with another quick prayer, and walked up the path to the MacDonald cottage, where Rachel and Ian were staying until Ian could build them a place of their own. Rachel was sitting on the bench out front, shelling peas into a basin, the basin sitting comfortably atop her stomach.
“Madainn mhath!” she said, smiling in delight when she saw me. “Is thee not impressed with my linguistic facility, Claire? I can say ‘Good morning,’ ‘Good night,’ ‘How are you?’ and ‘Bugger off to St. Kilda’ now.”
“Congratulations,” I said, sitting down next to her. “How does that last one go?”
“Rach a h-Irt,” she told me. “I gather ‘St. Kilda’ is actually a figure of speech indicating some extremely remote location, rather than being specified as the actual destination.”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Do you try to impose the principles of plain speech on Gàidhlig, or is that even possible?”
“I have no idea,” she said frankly. “Mother Jenny proposes to teach me the Lord’s Prayer in Gàidhlig. Perhaps I can tell from that, as presumably one addresses the Creator in the same sort of voice that one uses for plain speech.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t thought about that, but it was sensible. “So you call God ‘Thee’ when speaking to Him?”
“Of course. Who should be a closer Friend?”
It hadn’t occurred to me, but presumably that was why one used “thou,” “thy,” et cetera, in prayer; that was originally the familiar form of the singular pronoun “you,” even though common English speech had now moved on and lost the distinction, save for the Friends’ plain speech.