large diamond and triangle pattern in yellow, blue, white, pink, and red Size: 59 ¾ × 47 ½ in. (151.77 × 120.65 cm) Medium: Silk, plain weave, stencil-printed warp and weft threads (heiyō-gasuri meisen)
Lunchtime at Lallybroch was more of an abstract idea than an organized event. With six children (three of whom still needed help being fed) in varying stages of apparent starvation, the four adults fell into an intricate choreography of babies and bottles and plates and drinks. They stole bites between bouncing an inconsolable Michael around the table, cleaning up the noodles Quinn dropped on the floor, changing a soiled nappie, and mopping up the juice Ian knocked over keeping Wee Jamie from stealing Kitty’s last bite of bannock and jam.
Jenny chided her son while bottle-feeding her namesake. Jamie took a still-screaming Michael from Ian so he could tend to Kitty. Claire occupied Maggie and Quinn, who were munching and chattering contentedly as though they were at high tea, a tiny bubble of peace amidst absolute bedlam.
By one that afternoon, children fed and laid down to nap (if ye dinna want tae sleep, then play quietly, I beg ye, Jenny’d told an indignant Jamie who’d insisted he was far too old for such childish things as naps), the adults collapsed onto the sofas in the parlor. No one so much as twitched as they soaked in the silence of the house. It rang, like the ending notes of a tuning fork fading away until its absence was as acute as its presence.
Finally, though, Jenny reached for the sideboard, stretching from her seat toward the cherry-wood cupboard barely within reach. “Anyone else?” she asked as she held up a decanter of golden liquid.
“God, yes,” Jamie answered at the same time Ian breathed out, “Aye.”
“All around, then,” Claire added. Jenny poured the glasses and passed them out. None of them broke the sacred silence again as they took those first heavenly draws.
Tori