She looked dubious, but then smiled, too.
“The painting of Fanny’s sister. I wondered whether you knew if the original drawing was made during the day or at night. I painted it as though it was daylight, but it occurred to me that …”
“That given her occupation and the fact that a client of the establishment drew her, it might well have been the evening,” he finished. “You’re right, it almost certainly was.” He nodded at Jane, invisible behind her veil of muslin.
“It would have been at night. There was a fire in the parlor—well, the one time I was in it, at least. And the walls were red, so there was a bit of that in the air. But I only saw her by candlelight. A candle with a brass reflector, a little behind and above her, so the light glowed on the top of her head and ran down the side of her face.”
Her brows—thick for a woman—rose.
“You recall her very well,” she said, with no tone of judgment. “Have you ever drawn, or painted, yourself?”
“No,” he said, startled. “I mean—I had a drawing master when I was a child. Why?”
She smiled a little, as though harboring a secret.
“Our grandmother was a painter. I was thinking you might have … inherited something from her. Like I did.”
The thought made his hands curl, with a slight shock that went through the muscles of his forearms. Our grandmother …
“Jesus,” he said.
“She looked a lot like me,” Brianna said casually, and reached to open the door for him. “And you. That’s where we got the nose.”
121
The Quality of Mercy
Fraser’s Ridge
I WAS IN THE surgery, sorting seeds and enjoying the satisfaction of successful hoarding, when I heard a tentative knock at the front door. The door itself was open, to let fresh air flow through the house, and normally whoever was at the door would have called out. I heard faint whisperings and the shuffle of feet outside, but no one called, and I poked my head out to see who the visitors might be.
To my surprise, there was quite a crowd on the porch; a number of women and children, who all stirred with alarm at seeing me. One woman seemed to be the leader; she plucked up her courage and stepped forward and I saw that it was Mrs. MacIlhenny. Mother Harriet, she was called by everyone: white-haired, widowed three times, and mother to thirteen children and untold quantities of grandchildren.
“By your leave, a bhana-mhaighister,” she said, her voice hesitant, “might we speak with Himself?”
“Er …” I said, disconcerted. “I— Yes of course. I’ll just … tell him you’re here. Ah … won’t you … come in?”
I sounded nearly as hesitant as she did, and for the same reason. There were five women besides Mother Harriet: Doris Hallam, Molly Adair, Fiona Leslie, Annie MacFarland, and Gracie MacNeil. All of them were wives or mothers of tenants Jamie had excommunicated, and it was reasonably clear why they’d come. They’d brought nearly twenty children with them, from ten-year-old girls with their hair neatly braided to skirt-clinging toddlers and babes in arms, all scrubbed within an inch of their lives; the smell of lye soap rose off them in an almost-visible cloud.
Jamie was sitting at his desk with a quill in his hand when I came in, closing the door of the study behind me. He glanced toward the door; the whispering and shushing was clearly audible.
“Is that who I think it is?”
“Yes,” I said. “Five of them. With their children. They want to speak with you.”
He said something under his breath in Gaelic, rubbed his hands hard over his face, and sat up straight in his chair, squaring his shoulders.
“Aye. Let them come in, then.”
Harriet MacIlhenny came in with her head up, jaw clenched, and chin trembling. She stopped abruptly before Jamie’s table and collapsed onto her knees with a thud, followed by the other wives and half the children, spilling out into the hallway, all looking bewildered but obedient.
“We have come to beg thy mercy, Laird,” she said, bowing so low that she spoke to the floor. “Not for ourselves, but for our bairns.”
“Did your husbands put ye up to this?” Jamie demanded. “Get yourselves up, for God’s sake.”
“No, Laird,” Harriet said. She rose, slowly, but her hands were pressed so hard together that the knuckles and nails showed white. “Our husbands forbade us to come to ye; said they would beat us should we stir a foot out of doors. The gomerels would sacrifice us and the bairns for the sake of their pride—but … we came anyway.”