“I’m fattening them to stand the winter,” she said, nodding at the nosy nanny. “Maybe breed them, if they’re ready. They like the grass better than the forage in the woods, and it’s easier to keep an eye on them.”
“Ye ken well enough Fanny would mind them for ye. Is wee Oggy drivin’ ye mad?” The baby had vigorous lungs. You could hear him at the Big House when the wind was right. “Or are ye drivin’ Rachel mad yourself?”
“I like goats,” she said, ignoring his question and shoving aside a pair of questing lips nibbling after the fringe of her shawl. “Teich a’ ghobhair. Sheep are goodhearted things, when they’re not tryin’ to knock ye over, but they’re no bright. A goat has a mind of its own.”
“Aye, and so do you. Ian always said ye liked the goats because they’re just as stubborn as you are.”
She gave him a long, level look.
“Pot,” she said succinctly.
“Kettle,” he replied, flicking a plucked grass stem toward her nose. She grabbed it out of his hand and fed it to the goat.
“Mmphm,” she said. “Well, if ye must know, I come up here to think, now and then. And pray.”
“Oh, aye?” he said, but she pressed her lips together for a moment and then turned to look across the meadow, shading her eyes against the slant of the morning sun.
Well enough, he thought. She’ll say whatever it is when she’s ready.
“There’s a bear up here, is there?” she asked, turning back to him. “Shall I take the goats back down?”
“Not likely. 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 last week.”
“Did she?” he said dryly. “Did she tell ye the first time I killed a bear, I did it alone, with my dirk? And 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 ghràidh?”
That casual “Oh, 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 needle. 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 bird called from somewhere behind him, and he saw Jenny look up over his shoulder wide-eyed.
“Is that a magpie?” she said. In the Highlands, you always listened for magpies, because they were omen birds—and if you heard one, you hoped to hear another. One for sorrow … two for mirth …
“No,” he said, reassuring. “I dinna think there are proper magpies in these mountains. That’s no but a kind of yaffle. Aye—see him there?” He nodded, and she looked over her shoulder to the grayish bird with a scarlet slash at its throat, clinging to a swaying pine branch, a beady eye fixed on the ground.
Jenny relaxed and drew breath, 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 fussbudget?”
“What the devil is a fussbudget?” she demanded, frowning up at him.
“A bag of nuisance, so far as I can tell,” he admitted. “Jemmy calls Mandy that.”