Outlander aka Cross Stitch - Gabaldon Diana (читать книгу онлайн бесплатно полностью без регистрации .TXT) 📗
“You were verra sweet as a baby, Jamie. I remember standing over your cot. Ye canna ha’ been more than two, asleep wi’ your thumb in your mouth, and we agreed we’d never seen a prettier lad. You had fat round cheeks and the dearest red curls.”
The pretty lad turned an interesting shade of rose, and drained his cider at one gulp, avoiding my glance.
“Didna last long, though,” Jenny said, flashing white teeth in a mildly malicious smile at her brother. “How old were ye when ye got your first thrashing, Jamie? Seven?”
“No, eight,” Jamie said, thrusting a new log into the smoldering pile of kindling. “Christ, that hurt. Twelve strokes full across the bum, and he didna let up a bit, beginning to end. He never did.” He sat back on his heels, rubbing his nose with the knuckles of one hand. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes bright from the exertion.
“Once it was over, Father went off a bit and sat down on a rock while I settled myself. Then when I’d quit howling and got down to a sort of wet snuffle, he called me over to him. Now that I think of it, I can remember just what he said. Maybe you can use it on young Jamie, Ian, when the time comes.” Jamie closed his eyes, recalling.
“He stood me between his knees and made me look him in the face, and said, ‘That’s the first time, Jamie. I’ll have to do it again, maybe a hundred times, before you’re grown to a man.’ He laughed a bit then and said, ‘My father did it to me at least that often, and you’re as stubborn and cockle-headed as ever I was.’
“He said, ‘Sometimes I daresay I’ll enjoy thrashing you, depending on what you’ve done to deserve it. Mostly I won’t. But I’ll do it nonetheless. So remember it, lad. If your head thinks up mischief, your backside’s going to pay for it.’ Then he gave me a hug and said, ‘You’re a braw lad, Jamie. Go away to the house now and let your mother comfort ye.’ I opened my mouth to say something to that, and he said, quick-like, ‘No, I know you don’t need it, but she does. Get on wi’ ye.’ So I came down and Mother fed me bread with jam on it.”
Jenny suddenly started to laugh. “I just remembered,” she said, “Da used to tell that story about you, Jamie, about thrashing you, and what he said to you. He said when he sent ye back to the house after, you came halfway down, then all of a sudden stopped and waited for him.
“When he came down to ye, you looked up at him and said, ‘I just wanted to ask, Faither – did ye enjoy it this time?’ And when he said ‘no,’ you nodded and said, ‘Good. I didna like it much either.’ ”
We all laughed for a minute together, then Jenny looked up at her brother, shaking her head. “He loved to tell that story. Da always said you’d be the death of him, Jamie.”
The merriment died out of Jamie’s face, and he looked down at the big hands resting on his knees.
“Aye,” he said quietly. “Well, and I was, then, wasn’t I?”
Jenny and Ian exchanged glances of dismay, and I looked down at my own lap, not knowing what to say. There was no sound for a moment but the crackling of the fire. Then Jenny, with a quick look at Ian, set down her glass and touched her brother on the knee.
“Jamie,” she said. “It wasna your fault.”
He looked up at her and smiled, a little bleakly.
“No? Who else’s, then?”
She took a deep breath and said, “Mine.”
“What?” He stared at her in blank astonishment.
She had gone a little paler even than usual, but remained composed.
“I said it was my fault, as much as anyone’s. For – for what happened to you, Jamie. And Father.”
He covered her hand with his own and rubbed it gently.
“Dinna talk daft, lass,” he said. “Ye did what ye did to try to save me; you’re right, if ye’d not gone wi’ Randall, he’d likely have killed me here.”
She studied her brother’s face, a troubled frown wrinkling her rounded brow.
“No, I dinna regret taking Randall to the house – not even if he’d… well, no. But that wasn’t it.” She drew a deep breath again, steeling herself.
“When I took him inside, I brought him up to my room. I – I didna ken quite what to expect – I’d not… been wi’ a man. He seemed verra nervous, though, all flushed and as though he were not certain himself, which seemed strange to me. He pushed me onto the bed, and then he stood there, rubbing himself. I thought at first I’d really damaged him wi’ my knee, though I knew I hadna struck him so hard, really.” The color was creeping up her cheeks, and she stole a sidelong glance at Ian before looking hastily back at her lap.
“I ken now that he was trying to – to make himself ready. I didna mean to let him know I was frightened, so I sat up straight on the bed and stared at him. That seemed to anger him, and he ordered me to turn round. I wouldna do it, though, and just kept looking at him.”
Her face was the color of one of the roses by the doorstep. “He… unbuttoned himself, and I… well, I laughed at him.”
“You did what?” Jamie said incredulously.
“I laughed. I mean-” Her eyes met her brother’s with some defiance. “I kent well enough how a man’s made. I’d seen you naked often enough, and Willy and Ian as well. But he-” A tiny smile appeared on her lips, despite her apparent efforts to suppress it. He looked so funny, all red in the face, and rubbing himself so frantic, and yet still only half-”
There was a choked sound from Ian, and she bit her lip, but went on bravely.
“He didna like it when I laughed, and I could see it, so I laughed some more. That’s when he lunged at me and tore my dress half off me. I smacked him in the face, and he struck me across the jaw, hard enough to make me see stars. Then he grunted a bit, as though that pleased him, and started to climb onto the bed wi’ me. I had just about sense enough left to laugh again. I struggled up onto my knees, and I – I taunted him. I told him I kent he was no a real man, and couldna manage wi’ a woman. I-”
She bent her head still further, so the dark curls swung down past her flaming cheeks. Her words were very low, almost a whisper.
“I… spread the pieces of my gown apart, and I… taunted him wi’ my breasts. I told him I knew he was afraid o’ me, because he wasna fit to touch a woman, but only to sport wi’ beasts and young lads…”
“Jenny,” said Jamie, shaking his head helplessly.
Her head came up to look at him. “Weel, I did then,” she said. “It was all I could think of, and I could see that he was fair off his head, but it was plain too that he… couldn’t. And I stared right at his breeches and I laughed again. And then he got his hands round my throat, throttling me, and I cracked my head against the bedpost, and… and when I woke he’d gone, and you wi’ him.”
There were tears standing in her lovely blue eyes as she grasped Jamie’s hands.
“Jamie, will ye forgive me? I know if I’d not angered him that way he wouldna have treated you as he did, and then Faither-”
“Oh, Jenny, love, mo cridh, don’t.” He was kneeling beside her, pulling her face into his shoulder. Ian, on her other side, looked as though he had been turned to stone.
Jamie rocked her gently as she sobbed. “Hush, little dove. Ye did right, Jenny. It wasna your fault, and maybe not mine either.” He stroked her back.
“Listen, mo cridh. He came here to do damage, under orders. And it would ha’ made no difference who he’d found here, or what you or I might have done. He meant to cause trouble, to rouse the countryside against the English, for his own purposes – and those of the man that hired him.”
Jenny stopped crying and sat up, looking at him in amazement.
“To rouse folk against the English? But why?”
Jamie made an impatient gesture with one hand. “To find out the folk that might support Prince Charles, should it come to another Rising. But I dinna ken yet which side Randall’s employer is on – if he wants to know so those that follow the Prince can be watched, and maybe have their property seized, or if it’s that he – Randall’s employer – means to go wi’ the Prince himself, and wants the Highlands roused and ready for war when the time comes. I dinna ken, and it isna important now.” He touched his sister’s hair, smoothing it back from her brow.
