She cast the briefest of glances at her spouse before turning back to me with a shrug.
"Oh, he's well enough," she said. "No worse, at any rate. But what about your husband?"
"Er, what about him?" I replied cautiously.
She dug me familiarly in the ribs with a rather sharp elbow, and I realized that there were a fair number of bottles at her end of the table as well.
"Well, what d'ye think? Does he look as nice out of his sark as he does in it?"
"Um…" I groped for an answer as she craned her neck toward the entryway.
"And you claiming you didna care a bit for him! Cleverboots. Half the girls in the castle would like to tear your hair out by the roots—I'd be careful what I ate, if I were you."
"What I eat?" I looked down in bafflement at the wooden platter before me, empty but for a smear of grease and a forlorn boiled onion.
"Poison," she hissed dramatically in my ear, along with a considerable wafting of brandy fumes.
"Nonsense," I said, rather coldly, drawing away from her. "No one would want to poison me simply because I … well, because…" I was floundering a bit, and it occurred to me that I might have had a few sips more than I had realized.
"Now, really, Geilie. This marriage… I didn't plan it, you know. I didn't want it!" No lie there. "It was merely a… sort of… necessary business arrangement," I said, hoping the candlelight hid my blushes.
"Ha," she said cynically. "I ken the look of a lass that's been well bedded." She glanced toward the archway where Jamie had disappeared. "And damned if I think those are midge bites on the laddie's neck, either." She raised one silver brow at me. "If it was a business arrangement, I'd say ye got your money's worth."
She leaned close again.
"Is it true?" she whispered. "About the thumbs?"
"Thumbs? Geilie, what in God's name are you babbling about?"
She looked down her small, straight nose at me, frowning in concentration. The beautiful grey eyes were slightly unfocused, and I hoped she wouldn't fall over.
"Surely ye know that? Everyone knows! A man's thumbs tell ye the size of his cock. Great toes, too, of course," she added judiciously, "but those are harder to judge, usually, what wi' the shoon and all. Yon wee fox-cub," she nodded toward the archway, where Jamie had just reappeared, "he could cup a good-sized marrow in those hands of his. Or a good-sized arse, hm?" she added, nudging me once more.
"Geillis Duncan, will… you… shut … up!" I hissed, face flaming. "Someone will hear you!"
"Oh, no one who—" she began, but stopped, staring. Jamie had passed right by our table, as though he didn't see us. His face was pale, and his lips set firmly, as though bent on some unpleasant duty.
"Whatever ails him?" Geilie asked. "He looks like Arthur after he's eaten raw turnips."
"I don't know." I pushed back the bench, hesitating. He was heading for Colum's table. Should I follow him? Plainly something had happened.
Geilie, peering back down the room, suddenly tugged at my sleeve, pointing in the direction from which Jamie had appeared.
A man stood just within the archway, hesitating even as I was. His clothes were stained with mud and dust; a traveler of some sort. A messenger. And whatever the message, he had passed it on to Jamie, who was even now bending to whisper it in Colum's ear.
No, not Colum. Dougal. The red head bent low between the two dark ones, the broad handsome features of the three faces taking on an unearthly similarity in the light of the dying candles. And as I watched, I realized that the similarity was due not so much to the inheritance of bone and sinew that they shared, but to the expression of shocked grief that they now held in common.
Geilie's hand was digging into the flesh of my forearm.
"Bad news," she said, unnecessarily.
"Twenty-four years," I said softly. "It seems a long time to be married."
"Aye, it does," Jamie agreed. A warm wind stirred the branches of the tree above us, lifting the hair from my shoulders to tickle my face. "Longer than I've been alive."
I glanced at him leaning on the paddock fence, all lanky grace and strong bones. I tended to forget how young he really was; he seemed so self-assured and capable.
"Still," he said, flicking a straw into the churned mud of the paddock, "I doubt Dougal spent more than three years of that with her. He was generally here, ye ken, at the Castle—or here and there about the lands, doing Colum's business for him."