So unfamiliar and so anxious to please each other, they had both so far stepped delicately—but there seemed no delicate way of handling this. Unsure whether I should prepare myself to be advocate, interpreter, or referee, it was with rather a hollow feeling that I lifted the latch to let him in.
He had washed at the creek; his hair was damp at the temples, and he had wiped his face on his shirttail, judging by the moist patches on it.
“You’re very late; where were you?” I asked, standing on tiptoe to give him a kiss. “And where’s Ian?”
“Fergus came and asked could we give him a hand wi’ his chimney stones, as he couldna manage verra well by himself. Ian’s stayed ower, to help finish the job.” He dropped an absent kiss on top of my head, and patted my bottom. He’d been working hard, I thought; he was warm to my touch and smelled pungently of sweat, though the skin of his face was cool and fresh from washing.
“Did Marsali feed you supper?” I peered at him in the gloom. Something seemed different about him, though I couldn’t think what.
“No. I dropped a stone and I’ve maybe broken my blasted finger again; I thought I’d best come home and have ye tend to it.” That was it, I thought; he’d patted me with his left hand instead of his right.
“Come into the light and let me see.” I drew him to the fire, and made him sit down on one of the oak settles. Brianna was on the other, her sewing spread around her. She got up and came to look over my shoulder.
“Your poor hands, Da!” she said, seeing the swollen knuckles and scraped skin.
“Och, it’s no great matter,” he said, glancing dismissively at them. “Save for the bloody finger. Ow!”
I felt my way gently over the fourth finger of his right hand, from base to nail, disregarding his small grunt of pain. It was reddened and slightly swollen, but not visibly dislocated.
It always troubled me slightly to examine this hand. I had set a number of broken bones in it long ago, before I knew anything of formal surgery, and working under far from ideal conditions. I had managed; I had saved the hand from amputation, and he had good use of it, but there were small awkwardnesses; slight twistings and thickenings that I was aware of whenever I felt it closely. Still, at the moment, I blessed the opportunity for delay.
I closed my eyes, feeling the fire’s warm flicker on my lids as I concentrated. The fourth finger was always stiff; the middle joint had been crushed, and healed frozen. I could see the bone in my mind; not the polished dry surface of a laboratory specimen, but the faintly luminous matte glow of living bone, all the tiny osteoblasts busily laying down their crystal matrix, and the hidden pulse of the blood that fed them.
Once more, I drew my own finger down the length of his, then took it gently between my thumb and index finger, just below the distal joint. I could feel the crack in my mind, a thin dark line of pain.
“There?” I asked, opening my eyes.
He nodded, a faint smile on his lips as he looked at me.
“Just there. I like the way ye look when ye do that, Sassenach.”
“What way is that?” I asked, a bit startled to hear that I looked any way in particular.
“I canna describe it, exactly,” he said, head tilted to one side as he examined me. “It’s maybe like—”
“Madame Lazonga with her crystal ball,” Brianna said, sounding amused.
I glanced up, taken aback to find Brianna gazing down at me, head cocked at the same angle, with the same appraising look. She switched her gaze to Jamie. “A fortune-teller, I mean. A seer.”
He laughed.
“Aye, I think you’re maybe right, a nighean. Though it was a priest I was thinking of; the way they look saying Mass, when they look past the bread and see the flesh of Christ instead. Not that I should think to compare my measly finger wi’ the Body of Our Lord, mind,” he added, with a modest nod toward the offending digit.
Brianna laughed, and a smile curved his mouth on one side, as he looked up at her, his eyes soft despite the lines of tiredness round them. He’d had a long day, I thought. And likely to be a lot longer. I would have given anything to hold that fleeting moment of connection between them, but it had passed already.
“I think you are both ridiculous,” I said. I touched his finger lightly at the spot I’d held. “The bone is cracked, just there below the joint. It’s not bad, though; no more than a hairline fracture. I’ll splint it, just in case.”
I got up and went to rummage through my medical chest for a linen bandage and one of the long, flat wood chips I used as tongue depressors. I glanced covertly over the raised lid, watching him. Something was definitely odd about him this evening, though I still couldn’t put my finger on it.
I had sensed it from the first, even through my own agitation, and sensed it even more strongly when I held his hand to examine it; a sort of energy pulsed through him, as though he were excited or upset, though he gave no outward sign of it. He was bloody good at hiding things when he wanted to; what the hell had happened at Fergus’s house?
Brianna said something to Jamie, too low for me to catch, and then turned away without waiting for an answer, and came to join me by the open chest.
“Do you have some ointment, for his hands?” she asked. Then, leaning close on pretext of looking into the chest, said in a low voice, “Should I tell him tonight? He’s tired and he’s hurt. Hadn’t I better let him rest?”
I glanced at Jamie. He was leaning back against the settle, eyes wide open as he watched the flames, hands resting flat on his thighs. He wasn’t relaxed, though; whatever strange current was flowing through him, it had him strung like a telegraph wire.
“He might rest better not knowing, but you won’t,” I said, equally low-voiced. “Go ahead and tell him. You might let him eat first, though,” I added practically. I was a strong believer in meeting bad news on a full stomach.
I splinted Jamie’s finger while Brianna sat down beside him and dabbed gentian ointment onto the abraded knuckles of his other hand. Her face was quite calm; no one would ever guess what was going on behind it.
“You’ve torn your shirt,” I said, finishing off the last bandage with a small square knot. “Give it to me after supper and I’ll mend it. How’s that, then?”
“Verra nice, Madame Lazonga,” he said, gingerly wiggling his freshly splinted finger. “I shall be getting quite spoilt, wi’ so much attention paid me.”
“When I start to chew your food for you, you can worry,” I said tartly.
He laughed, and gave the splinted hand to Bree for anointing.
I went to the cupboard to fetch a plate for him. As I turned back toward the hearth, I saw him watching her intently. She kept her head bent, eyes on the large, callused hand she held between her own. I could imagine her search for words with which to begin, and my heart ached for her. Perhaps I should have told him privately myself, I thought; not let him near her until the first rush of feeling was safely past and he had himself in hand again.
“Ciamar a tha tu, mo chridhe?” he said suddenly. It was his customary greeting to her, the beginning of their evening Gaelic lesson, but his voice was different tonight; soft, and very gentle. How are you, darling? His hand turned and covered hers, cradling her long fingers.