Diana Gabaldon · @Writer_DG
8th Apr 2015 from TwitLonger
#DailyLines #Book9 #NoNotYet #ItllBeAwhile #ImSlowYouKnow #JamieAndJenny #Andacoupleofgoats #andmaybeabear
“There’s a bear up here, is there?” Jenny asked, turning back to him. “Shall I take the goats back down?”
“It might be. Jo Beardsley saw it a few days ago, here in the meadow, but there’s no fresh sign.”
Jenny thought that over for a moment, then sat down on a lichened rock, spreading her skirts out neatly. The goats had gone back to their grazing, and she raised her face to the sun, closing her eyes.
“Only a fool would hunt a bear alone,” she said, her eyes still closed. “Claire told me that.”
“Did she?” he said dryly. “Did she tell ye the last time I killed a bear, I did it alone, with my dirk? _ And_ that she hit me in the heid wi’ a fish whilst I was doin’ it?”
She opened her eyes and gave him a look.
“She didna say a fool canna be lucky,” she pointed out. “And if you didna have the luck o’ the devil himself, ye’d have been dead six times over by now.”
“Six?” He frowned, disturbed, and her brow lifted in surprise.
“I wasna really counting,” she said. “It was only a guess. What is it, _a graidh_?”
That casual “_O, love_,” caught him unexpectedly in a tender place, and he coughed to hide it.
“Nothing,” he said, shrugging. “Only, when I was young in Paris, a fortune-teller told me I’d die nine times before my death. D’ye think I should count the fever after Laoghaire shot me?”
She shook her head definitely.
“Nay, ye wouldna have died even had Claire not come back wi’ her wee stabbers. Ye would have got up and gone after her within a day or two.”
He smiled.
“I might’ve.”
His sister made a small noise in her throat that might have been laughter or derision.
They were silent for a moment, both with heads lifted, listening to the wood. The dripping had ceased now, and you could hear a treepie close by, with a call exactly like a rusty hinge opening. Then there was a loud _quah-quah_ as a magpie called from somewhere behind him, and he saw Jenny look up over his shoulder wide-eyed.
“Just one?” he said, keeping his voice calm, but feeling a tightness between his shoulder-blades. _One for sorrow_…
She held up a hand, silencing him, and sat listening, her eyes combing the branches for a second bird. _ Two for mirth_… Her face lightened as a long, shrill _quahhhhhhh_ came from the left and he swung round to see the second magpie clinging to a swaying pine branch, a beady eye fixed on the ground. He relaxed and drew breath.
So did Jenny, and taking up the conversation where she’d left it, asked, “D’ye hold it against me, that I made ye marry Laoghaire?”
He gave her a look.
“What makes ye think ye could make me do_ anything_ I didna want to, ye wee fuss-budget?”
“What the devil is a fuss-budget?” she demanded, frowning up at him.
“A bag of nuisance, so far as I can tell,” he admitted. “Jemmy called Mandy it last week.” A sudden dimple appeared near Jenny’s mouth, but she didn’t actually laugh.
“Aye,” she said. “Ye ken what I mean.”
“I do,” he said. “And I don’t. Hold it against ye, I mean. She didna actually kill me, after all.”