Claire and Jenny — Each other’s measure

The whole Scene :

While the men went about their busi­ness, Jen­ny and I spent the day in the par­lor, she stitch­ing, I wind­ing up stray bits of yarn and sort­ing the col­ored silks.
Out­ward­ly friend­ly, we cir­cled each oth­er cau­tious­ly in con­ver­sa­tion, watch­ing each oth­er from the cor­ners of our eyes. Jamie’s sis­ter, Jamie’s wife; Jamie was the cen­tral point, unspo­ken, about which our thoughts revolved.
Their shared child­hood linked them for­ev­er, like the warp and the weft of a sin­gle fab­ric, but the pat­terns of their weave had been loos­ened, by absence and sus­pi­cion, then by mar­riage. Ian’s thread had been present in their weav­ing since the begin­ning, mine was a new one. How would the ten­sions pull in this new pat­tern, one thread against another?
Our con­ver­sa­tion ran on casu­al lines, but with the words unspo­ken clear­ly heard beneath.
“You’ve run the house here alone since your moth­er died?”
“Oh, aye. Since I was ten.”I had the nur­tur­ing and the lov­ing of him as a boy. What will you do with the man I helped make?
“Jamie says as you’re a rare fine healer.”
“I mend­ed his shoul­der for him when we first met.”Yes, I am capa­ble, and kind. I will care for him.
“I hear ye mar­ried very quickly.”Did you wed my broth­er for his land and money?
“Yes, it was quick. I didn’t even know Jamie’s true sur­name until just before the ceremony.”I didn’t know he was laird of this place; I can only have mar­ried him for himself.
And so it went through the morn­ing, a light lun­cheon, and into the hours of the after­noon, as we exchanged small talk, tid­bits of infor­ma­tion, opin­ions, small and hes­i­tant jokes, tak­ing each other’s measure.A woman who had run a large house­hold since the age of ten, who had man­aged the estate since her father’s death and her brother’s dis­ap­pear­ance, was not a per­son to be light­ly esteemed. I did won­der what she thought of me, but she seemed as capa­ble as her broth­er of hid­ing her thoughts when she chose to.

All rights for the Pic­ture go to the right­ful owner Starz
Excer­pts and Quo­tes by Diana Gabal­don from “Out­lan­der“
I own not­hing but the editing