“Now, then,” Jamie said, and paused, carefully brushing crumbs off his shirtfront into his palm and licking them off. “Now, then,” he repeated. “Amanda tells me she can read her book by herself. Will ye maybe read it to us, a leannan?”
“Yes!”
And with only a brief interruption for the wiping of sticky hands and face, she was ensconced once more in her mother’s arms—but this time, the vivid orange book was in her own lap. She opened the cover and glared at her audience.
“Everybody shut up,” she said firmly. “I read.”
THE SURGERY WAS the only room with complete walls, so once the cookie crumbs were all devoured, and Mandy’s book read aloud several times, Ian and his family left for their own cabin and the children lugged their pallets down the rudimentary hallway, excited at the prospect of sleeping in their own house.
I went with them to make up a fire in the brazier, the second chimney not being yet complete, and hung tattered quilts over the open window and doorway to discourage bats, mosquitoes, foxes, and curious rodents.
“Now, if a raccoon or a possum should come in,” I said, “don’t try to make it leave. Just come out of the surgery and get your father or your grandsire. Or your mother,” I added. Bree could certainly deal with a rogue raccoon.
I threw a kiss to the room at large and went back to the kitchen.
The smell of molasses had faded, but the air was still sweet, now with the scent of whisky. Brianna, sitting on a wooden box of indigo, raised her tin cup to me.
“You’re just in time,” she said.
“For what?”
Jamie handed me a full cup and tapped the rim of his to mine. “Slàinte,” he said. “To the new hearth.”
“For presents,” Bree said, half apologetically. “I thought about it for a long time. I didn’t know if I’d ever find you—any of you—” she added, with a serious glance at Roger. “And I wanted to bring something that would last, even if it got destroyed or lost.”
Jamie and I exchanged a puzzled look, but she was already delving into her canvas bag. She came up with a chunky blue book and, eyes dancing, put it into my hands.
“What—” I began, but I knew instantly from the feel of it and let out a noise that could only be called a squeal. “Bree! Oh, oh …!”
Jamie was smiling but still puzzled. I held it out to him, then clutched it to my bosom before he could take it. “Oh!” I said again. “Bree, thank you! This is wonderful!”
She was pink with pleasure, her eyes shiny in response to my excitement. “I thought you’d like it.”
“Oh …!”
“Let me see it, mo nighean donn,” Jamie said, reaching gently for the book. I could hardly bear to let go of it, but relinquished it.
“Merck Manual, Thirteenth Edition,” he read from the cover, and looked up, brows raised. “Merck seems a popular writer—that, or he makes the devil of a lot of mistakes.”
“It’s a—a—medical book,” I explained, beginning to get hold of myself, though little thrills of elation were still washing through me. “The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy. It’s a sort of compendium of—of the state of general medical knowledge.”
“Oh.” He looked at the book with interest, and opened it, though I could see he didn’t yet grasp its full importance. “Controlling the spread of E. histolytica requires preventing access of human feces to the mouth,” he read, and looked up. “Oh,” he said softly, seeing the look on my face, and smiled. “It’s what folk will have found out—then. Things about healing that ye dinna ken yet, yourself. Though I’m guessing ye do ken not to eat shite?”
I nodded, and he closed the book gently and handed it back. I clasped it to my bosom, overwhelmed with anticipation. Thirteenth edition—from 1977!
Roger coughed, and when Brianna looked at him, he tilted his head toward the bag.
“And …” she said, smiling at Jamie. “For you, Da.” She pulled out a small, thick paperback and handed it to him. “And for you …” A second book followed the first. “And this one’s for you, too.” The third.
“They all go together,” Roger said gruffly. “It’s all one story, I mean, but printed in three volumes.”
“Oh, aye?” Jamie turned over one of the books gingerly, as though afraid it might disintegrate in his hands.
“It’s glued, is it? The binding?”
“Aye,” Roger said, smiling. “It’s called a paperback, that sort of wee book. They’re cheap and light.”
Jamie weighed the book on his hand and nodded, but he was already reading the back cover.
“Frodo Baggins,” he read aloud, and looked up, baffled. “A Welshman?”
“Not exactly. Brianna thought the tale might speak to ye,” Roger said, his smile deepening as he looked at her. “I think she’s right.”
“Mmphm.” Jamie gathered the trio of books together and—with a thoughtful look at the sticky fingerprints Mandy had left on her cup—put them on the top of my simples closet. He kissed Bree and nodded toward her bag.
“Thank ye kindly—I ken they’ll be braw. What did ye bring for yourself, lass?”
“Well … mostly small tools,” she said. “Mostly things that exist now, but of a better quality, or that I couldn’t get here without a lot of trouble and expense.”
“What, nay books at all?” Jamie asked, smiling. “Ye’ll be the only illiterate of the family?”
Bree was already flushed with pleasure and excitement, but grew noticeably pinker at this question.
“Um. Well … just the one.” She glanced at me, cleared her throat, and reached into the almost-empty bag.
“Oh,” I said, and the tone of my voice made Jamie look at me, rather than at the hardbound book in its plastic-covered dust jacket. The Soul of a Rebel, it said. The Scottish Roots of the American Revolution. By Franklin W. Randall, PhD.
Bree was looking at Jamie, a small anxious frown between her brows, but at this, she turned to me.
“I haven’t read it yet,” she said. “But you—either of you,” she added, glancing between me and Jamie, “are welcome to read it anytime. If you want to.”
I met Jamie’s eyes. His brows lifted briefly and he looked away.
BRIANNA AND ROGER took the sticky cups, mixing bowl, spoon, and milk pitcher outside to rinse, and I sat down beside Jamie on a large sack of dried beans to gloat over my Merck Manual for a few minutes. He was turning Frank’s book over in his hands with a ginger air indicating that he thought it might explode, but put it aside and smiled when he saw me fondling the blue pebbled cover of my new baby.
“D’ye mean to read it through from beginning to end, like the Bible?” he asked. “Or will ye just wait ’til someone comes to ye with blue spots and look that up?”
“Oh, both,” I assured him, weighing the chunky little book in my hand. “It may have new treatments to suggest for things I recognize—but it undoubtedly describes things I’ve never seen or heard of, too.”
“May I see it again?” He held out a hand, and I carefully laid the book in it. He opened it at random, read … “Trypanosomiasis.” His eyebrows rose. “Can ye do anything about trypanosomiasis, Sassenach?”