I laughed, and so did she. "So you don't look at their hands at all, then?" I asked.
"Except to check for rings?" She looked surprised.
"Oh, of course you do. It's just that you know ahead of time what you'll see. Generally." She nodded at my open hand.
"But that is not a pattern I've seen before. The large thumb, now." she did lean forward then and touch it lightly—"that wouldn't change much.
It means that you're strong-minded, and have a will not easily crossed." She twinkled at me.
"Reckon your husband could have told you that. Likewise about that one." She pointed to the fleshy mound at the base of the thumb.
"What is it?"
"The Mount of Venus, it's called." She pursed her thin lips primly together, though the corners turned irrepressibly up.
"In a man, you'd say it means he likes the lasses. For a woman, it's a bit different. To be polite about it, I'll make a bit of a prediction for you, and say your husband won't like to stray far from your bed." She gave a surprisingly deep and bawdy chuckle, and I blushed slightly.
The elderly housekeeper pored over my hand again, stabbing a pointed forefinger here and there to mark her words.
"Now, there, a well-marked lifeline; you're in good health, and likely to stay so. The lifeline's interrupted, meaning your life's changed markedly—well, that's true of us all, is it not? But yours is more chopped-up, like, than I usually see; all bits and pieces. And your marriage-line, now"—she shook her head again—"it's divided; that's not unusual, means two marriages…"
My reaction was slight, and immediately suppressed, but she caught the flicker and looked up at once. I thought she probably was quite a shrewd fortune-teller, at that. The grey head shook reassuringly at me.
"No, no, lass. It doesn't mean anything is going to happen to your good man. It's only that if it did."
She emphasized the "if" with a slight squeeze of my hand, "you'd not be one to pine away and waste the rest of your life in mourning. What it means is, you're one of those can love again if your first love's lost."
She squinted nearsightedly at my palm, running a short, ridged nail gently down the deep marriage line.
"But most divided lines are broken—yours is forked." She looked up with a roguish smile.
"Sure you're not a bigamist, on the quiet, like?"
I shook my head, laughing. "No. When would I have the time?"
Then I turned my hand, showing the outer edge.
"I've heard that small marks on the side of the hand indicate how many children you'll have?" My tone was casual, I hoped. The edge of my palm was disappointingly smooth.
Mrs. Lindsay flicked a scornful hand at this idea.
"Pah! After you've had a bairn or two, you might show lines there. More like you'd have them on your face. Proves nothing at all beforehand."
"Oh, it doesn't?" I was foolishly relieved to hear this.
I was going to ask whether the deep lines across the base of my wrist meant anything (a potential for suicide?), but we were interrupted at that point by the Reverend Brainfield coming into the kitchen bearing the empty tea cups.
He set them on the drainboard and began a loud and clumsy fumbling through the cupboard, obviously in hopes of provoking help.
Mrs. Lindsay sprang to her feet to defend the sanctity of her kitchen, and pushing the Reverend adroitly to one side, set about assembling tea things on a tray for the study.
He drew me to one side, safely out of the way.
"Why don't you come to the study and have another cup of tea with me and your husband, Mrs. Affleck? We've made really a most gratifying discovery."
I could see that in spite of outward composure, he was bursting with the glee of whatever they had found, like a small boy with a toad in his pocket. Plainly I was going read Captain Howatt Affleck's laundry bill, his receipt for boot repairs, or some document of similar fascination.
Douglas was so absorbed in the tattered documents that he scarcely looked up when I entered the study. He reluctantly surrendered them to the vicar's podgy hands, and came round to stand behind the Reverend Brainfield and peer over his shoulder, as though he could not bear to let the papers out of his sight for a moment.
"Yes?" I said politely, fingering the dirty bits of paper.
"Ummm, yes, very interesting." In fact, the spidery handwriting was so faded and so ornate that it hardly seemed worth the trouble of deciphering it. One sheet, better preserved than the rest, had some sort of crest at the top.
"The Duke of… Baddingham, is it?" I asked, peering at the crest, with its faded leopard couchant, and the printing below, more legible than the handwriting.
"Yes, indeed," the vicar said, beaming even more.
"An extinct title, now, you know."
I didn't, but nodded intelligently, being no stranger to historians in the manic grip of discovery. It was seldom necessary to do more than nod periodically, saying "Oh, really?" or "How perfectly fascinating!" at appropriate intervals.
After a certain amount of deferring back and forth between Douglas and the vicar, the latter won the honor of telling me about their discovery. Evidently, all this rubbish made it appear that Douglas's ancestor, the notorious Black Jackie Affleck, had not been merely a gallant soldier for the Crown, but a trusted, and secret agent of the Duke of Baddingham.
"Almost an agent provocateur, wouldn't you say, Dr. Affleck?" The vicar graciously handed the ball back to Douglas, who seized it and ran.
"Yes, indeed. The language is very guarded, of course…" He turned the pages gently with a scrubbed forefinger.
"Oh, really?" I said.
"But it seems from this that Howatt Affleck was entrusted with the job of stirring up Jacobite sentiments, if any existed, among the prominent Scottish families in his area.
The point being to smoke out any baronets and clan chieftains who might be harboring secret sympathies in that direction. But that's odd. Wasn't Baddingham a suspected Jacobite himself?"
Douglas turned to the vicar, a frown of inquiry on his face. The vicar's smooth, bald head creased in an identical frown.
"Why, yes, I believe you're right. But wait, let's check in Cameron"—he made a dive for the bookshelf, crammed with calf-bound volumes—"he's sure to mention Baddingham."
"How perfectly fascinating," I murmured, allowing my attention to wander to the huge corkboard that covered one wall of the study from floor to ceiling.