Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone

31 Pater Familias

WILLIAM HAD BEEN HALF hoping that his inquiries for Lord John Grey would meet either with total ignorance or with the news that his lordship had returned to England. No such luck, though. Major General Prévost’s clerk had been able to direct him at once to a house in St. James Square, and it was with thumping heart and a ball of lead in his stomach that he came down the steps of Prévost’s headquarters to meet Cinnamon, waiting in the street.

His anxiety was dispersed the next instant, though, as Colonel Archibald Campbell, former commander of the Savannah garrison and William’s personal bête noire, came up the walk, two aides beside him. William’s first impulse was to put his hat on, pull it over his face, and scuttle past in hopes of being unrecognized. His pride, already raw, was having none of this, and instead, he marched straight down the walk, head high, and nodded regally to the colonel as he passed.

“Good day to you, sir,” he said. Campbell, who had been saying something to one of the aides, looked up absently, then halted abruptly, stiffening.

“What the devil are you doing here?” he said, broad face darkening like a seared chop.

“My business, sir, is none of your concern,” William said politely, and made to pass.

“Coward,” Campbell said contemptuously behind him. “Coward and whoremonger. Get out of my sight before I have you arrested.”

William’s logical mind was telling him that it was Campbell’s relations with Uncle Hal that lay behind this insult, and he ought not to take it personally. He must walk straight on as though he hadn’t heard.

He turned, gravel grinding under his heel, and only the fact that the expression on his face made Campbell go white and leap backward allowed John Cinnamon time to take three huge strides and grab William’s arms from behind.

“Amène-toi, imbécile!” he hissed in William’s ear. “Vite!” Cinnamon outweighed William by forty pounds, and he got his way—though in fact, William didn’t fight him. He didn’t turn round, though, but backed—under Cinnamon’s compulsion—slowly toward the gate, burning eyes fixed on Campbell’s mottled countenance.

“What’s wrong with you, gonze?” Cinnamon inquired, once they were safely out the gate and out of sight of the clapboard mansion. The simple curiosity in his voice calmed William a little, and he wiped a hand hard down his face before replying.

“Sorry,” he said, and drew breath. “That—he—that man is responsible for the death of a—a young lady. A young lady I knew.”

“Merde,” Cinnamon said, turning to glare back at the house. “Jane?”

“Wh—how—where did you get that name?” William demanded. The lead in his belly had caught fire and melted, leaving a seared hollow behind. He could still see her hands, small and delicate and white, as he’d laid them on her breast—crossed, the torn wrists neatly bound in black.

“You say it in your sleep sometimes,” Cinnamon said with an apologetic shrug. He hesitated, but his own urge was strong and he couldn’t keep from asking, “So?”

“Yes.” William swallowed and repeated more firmly, “Yes. He’s here. Number Twelve Oglethorpe Street. Come on, then.”

THE HOUSE WAS modest but neat, a white-painted clapboard with a blue door, standing in a street of similarly tidy homes, with a small church of red sandstone at the end of the street. Rain-shattered leaves had fallen from a tree in the front garden and lay in damp yellow drifts upon a brick walk. William heard Cinnamon draw in his breath as they came to the gate, and saw him glance to and fro as they went up to the door, covertly taking note of every detail.

William hammered on the door without hesitation, ignoring the brass knocker in the shape of a dog’s head. There was a moment of silence, and then the sound of a baby crying within the house. The two young men stared at each other.

“It must be his lordship’s cook’s child,” William said, with assumed nonchalance. “Or the maid. Doubtless the woman will—”

The door swung open, revealing a frowning Lord John, bareheaded and in his shirtsleeves, clutching a small, howling child to his bosom.

“You woke the baby, damn your eyes,” he said. “Oh. Hallo, Willie. Come in, then, don’t stand there letting in drafts; the little fiend is teething, and catching a cold on top of that won’t improve his temper to any noticeable extent. Who’s your friend? Your servant, sir,” he added, putting a hand over the child’s mouth and nodding to Cinnamon with a fair assumption of hospitality.

“John Cinnamon,” both young men said automatically, speaking together, then stopped, equally flustered. William recovered first.

“Yours?” he inquired politely, with a nod at the child, who had momentarily stopped howling and was gnawing ferociously on Lord John’s knuckle.

“Surely you jest, William,” his father replied, stepping back and jerking his head in invitation. “Allow me to make you acquainted with your second cousin, Trevor Wattiswade Grey. I am delighted to meet you, Mr. Cinnamon—will you take a drop of beer? Or something stronger?”

“I—” Panicked, Cinnamon looked to William for direction.

“We may require something a bit stronger, sir, if you have it.” William reached for the baby, whom he received gingerly from Lord John’s wet, relieved grasp. His father wiped his hand on his breeches and extended it to Cinnamon.

“Your servant, s—” He stopped abruptly, having evidently got a good look at Cinnamon for the first time. “Cinnamon,” he said slowly, eyes fixed on the big Indian’s face. “John Cinnamon, you said?”

“Yes, sir,” said Cinnamon huskily, and dropped suddenly to his knees with a crash that rattled the china on the sideboard and made little Trevor stiffen and shriek as though he were being disemboweled by badgers.

“Oh, God,” said Lord John, glancing from Trevor to Cinnamon and back again. “Here.” He took the child from William again and joggled it in a practiced fashion.

“Mr. Cinnamon,” he said. “Please. Do get up. There’s no need—”

“What in God’s name are you doing to that baby, Uncle John?” The furious female voice came from the doorway on the far side of the room, and William’s head swiveled toward it. Framed in the doorway was a blond girl of medium size, except for her bosoms, which were very large, white as milk, and half-exposed by the open banyan and untied shift that she wore.

“Me?” Lord John said indignantly. “I didn’t do anything to the little beast. Here, madam, take him.”

She did, and little Trevor at once thrust his face into her bosom, making bestial rooting noises. The young woman caught a glimpse of William’s face and glared at him.

“And who the devil are you?” she demanded.

He blinked. “My name is William Ransom, madam,” he said, rather stiffly. “Your servant.”

“This is your cousin Willie, Amaranthus,” Lord John said, coming forward and patting the top of Cinnamon’s head in an apologetic fashion as he pushed past him. “William, may I present Amaranthus, Viscountess Grey, your cousin Benjamin’s … widow.” It was almost not there, that pause, but William heard it and glanced sharply from the young woman to his father, but Lord John’s face was composed and amiable. He didn’t meet William’s eye.

So … either they’ve found Ben’s body—or they haven’t, but they’re letting his wife believe he’s dead.

“My sympathies, Lady Grey,” he said, bowing.

“Thank you,” she said. “Ow! Trevor, you beastly little Myotis!” She had stifled Trevor by stuffing him under a hastily pulled-forward wing of her banyan, evidently pulling down her shift in the same movement, for the child had battened onto her breast and was now making embarrassingly loud sucking noises.

“Er … Myotis?” It sounded vaguely Greek, but wasn’t a word William was familiar with.

“A vesper bat,” she replied, shifting her hold to adjust the child more comfortably. “They have very sharp teeth. I beg your pardon, my lord.” And with that, she turned on her bare heel and vanished.

“Ahem,” said Cinnamon, who, ignored, had quietly risen to his feet. “My lord … I hope you pardon my coming here without warning. I didn’t know where to find you, until my friend”—nodding at William—“found out your house just now. I should maybe have waited, though. I … can come back …?” he added, with a hesitant movement toward the door.

“No, no.” Relieved of the presence of Amaranthus and Trevor, Lord John had regained his usual equanimity. “Please—sit down, will you? I’ll send—Oh. Actually, there’s no one to send, I’m afraid. The manservant’s joined the army and my cook is quite drunk. I’ll get—”

William took him by the sleeve as he made to exit toward the kitchen.

“We don’t need anything,” he said, quite gently. Paradoxically, the chaos of the last few minutes had settled his own sense of agitation. He put a hand on his father’s shoulder, feeling the hard bones and warmth of his body, wondering whether he would ever call him “Papa” again, and turned him toward John Cinnamon.

The Indian had gone as pale as it was possible for someone of his complexion to go, and looked as though he was about to be sick.

“I came to say thank you,” he blurted, and clamped his lips shut, as though fearing to say more.

Lord John’s face lightened, softening as he looked the tall young man up and down. William’s heart squeezed a little.

“Not at all,” he said, and stopped to clear his throat. “Not at all,” he said again, more strongly. “I’m so happy to meet you again, Mr. Cinnamon. Thank you for coming to find me.”

William found that there was a lump in his own throat, and turned away toward the window, with an obscure feeling that he should give them a moment’s privacy.

“It was Manoke who told me,” Cinnamon said, his voice husky, too. “That it was you, I mean.”

“He told you … well, yes, now that I recall, he was there in Quebec when I took you to the mission—after your mother died, I mean. You saw Manoke—recently?” Lord John’s voice held an odd note, and William glanced back at him. “Where?”

“At Mount Josiah,” William answered, turning round. “I … er … went there. And found Mr. Cinnamon visiting Manoke. He—Manoke, I mean—said to give you his regards, and tell you to come fishing with him again.”

A very odd look flickered in Lord John’s eyes, but then was gone as he focused anew on John Cinnamon. William could see that the Indian was still nervous, but no longer panic-stricken.

“It’s kind of you to—to receive me, sir,” he said, with an awkward nod toward Lord John. “I wanted to—I mean, I don’t want to—to impose upon you, or—or cause any trouble. I would never do that.”

“Oh—of course,” Lord John said, puzzlement clear in his voice and face.

“I don’t expect acknowledgment,” Cinnamon continued bravely. “Or anything else. I don’t ask anything. I just—I just … had to see you.” His voice broke suddenly on the last words and he turned hastily away. William saw tears trembling on his lashes.

“Acknowledgment.” Lord John was staring at John Cinnamon, his face gone quite blank, and suddenly William couldn’t bear it anymore.

“As your son,” he said roughly. “Take him; he’s better than the one you have.” And reaching the door in two strides, he yanked it open and went out, leaving it ajar behind him.

WILLIAM WALKED PURPOSEFULLY to the gate, and stopped. He wanted to be gone, go away and leave Lord John and his son to make what accommodations they might. The less he knew of their conversation, the better. But he hesitated, hand on the latch.

He couldn’t bring himself to abandon Cinnamon, not knowing what the outcome of that conversation might be. If things went awry … he had a vision of Cinnamon, rejected and distraught, blundering out of the house and away, God knew where, alone.

“Don’t be a fool,” he muttered to himself. “You know Papa wouldn’t …” “Papa” stuck like a thorn in his throat and he swallowed.

Still, he took his hand off the latch and turned back. He’d wait for a quarter of an hour, he decided. If anything terrible was going to happen, it would likely be quick. He couldn’t linger in the tiny front garden, though, let alone skulk about beneath the windows. He skirted the yard and went down the side of the house, toward the back.

The back garden was sizable, with a vegetable patch, dug over for the next planting, but still sporting a fringe of cabbages. A small cook shed stood at the end of the garden, and a grape arbor at one side, with a bench inside it. The bench was occupied by Amaranthus, who held little Trevor against her shoulder, patting his back in a business-like way.

“Oh, hullo,” she said, spotting William. “Where’s your friend?”

“Inside,” he said. “Talking to Lord John. I thought I’d just wait for him—but I don’t wish to disturb you.” He made to turn away, but she stopped him, raising her hand for a moment before resuming her patting.

“Sit down,” she said, eyeing him with interest. “So you’re the famous William. Or ought I to call you Ellesmere?”

“Indeed. And no, you oughtn’t.” He sat down cautiously beside her. “How’s the little fellow?”

“Extremely full,” she said, with a small grimace. “Any minute—whoops, there he goes.” Trevor had emitted a loud belch, this accompanied by a spew of watery milk that ran over his mother’s shoulder. Apparently such explosions were common; William saw that she had placed a napkin over her banyan to receive it, though the cloth seemed inadequate to the volume of Trevor’s production.

“Hand me that, will you?” Amaranthus shifted the child expertly from one shoulder to the other and nodded toward another wadded cloth that lay on the ground near her feet. William picked it up gingerly, but it proved to be clean—for the moment.

“Hasn’t he got a nurse?” he asked, handing the cloth over.

“He did have,” Amaranthus said, frowning slightly as she mopped the child’s face. “I sacked her.”

“Drunkenness?” he asked, recalling what Lord John had said about the cook.

“Among other things. Drunk on occasion—too many of them—and dirty in her ways.”

“Dirty as in filth, or … er … lacking fastidiousness in her relations with the opposite sex?”

She laughed, despite the subject.

“Both. Did I not already know you to be Lord John’s son, that question would have made it clear. Or, rather,” she amended, gathering the banyan more closely around her, “the phrasing of it, rather than the question itself. All of the Greys—all those I’ve met so far—talk like that.”

“I’m his lordship’s stepson,” he replied equably. “Any resemblance of speech must therefore be a matter of exposure, rather than inheritance.”

She made a small interested noise and looked at him, one fair brow raised. Her eyes were that changeable color between gray and blue, he saw. Just now, they matched the gray doves embroidered on her yellow banyan.

“That’s possible,” she said. “My father says that a kind of finch learns its songs from its parents; if you take an egg from one nest and put it into another some miles away, the nestling will learn the songs of the new parents, instead of the ones who laid the egg.”

Courteously repressing the desire to ask why anyone should be concerned with finches in any way, he merely nodded.

“Are you not cold, madam?” he asked. They were sitting in the sun, and the wooden bench was warm under his legs, but the breeze playing on the back of his neck was chilly, and he knew she wasn’t wearing anything but a shift under her banyan. The thought brought back a vivid recollection of his first sight of her, milky bosom and prominent nipples on display, and he looked away, trying to think instantly of something else.

“What is your father’s profession?” he asked at random.

“He’s a naturalist—when he can afford to be,” she replied. “And no, I’m not cold. It’s always much too hot in the house, and I don’t think the smoke from the hearth is good for Trevor; it makes him cough.”

“Perhaps the chimney isn’t drawing properly. You said, ‘when he can afford to be.’ What does your father do when he cannot afford to pursue his … er … particular interests?”

“He’s a bookseller,” she said, with a slight tone of defiance. “In Philadelphia. That’s where I met Benjamin,” she added, with a barely perceptible catch in her voice. “In my father’s shop.” She turned her head slightly, watching to see what he made of this. Would he disapprove of the connection, knowing her now for a tradesman’s daughter? Not likely, he thought wryly. Under the circumstances.

“You have my deepest sympathies on the loss of your husband, madam,” he said. He wondered what she knew—had been told, rather—about Benjamin’s death, but it seemed indelicate to ask. And he’d best find out just what Papa and Uncle Hal knew about it now, before he went trampling into unknown territory.

“Thank you.” She looked away, her eyes lowered, but he saw her mouth—rather a nice mouth—compress in a way suggesting that her teeth were clenched.

“Bloody Continentals!” she said, with sudden violence. She lifted her head, and he saw that, far from being filled with tears, her eyes were sparking with rage. “Damn them and their nitwit republican philosophy! Of all the obstinate, muddle-headed, treasonous twaddle … I—” She broke off suddenly, perceiving his startlement.

“I beg your pardon, my lord,” she said stiffly. “I … was overcome by my emotions.”

“Very … suitable,” he said awkwardly. “I mean—quite understandable, given the … um … circumstances.” He glanced sideways at the house, but there was no sound of doors opening or voices raised in farewell. “Do call me William, though—we are cousins, are we not?”

She smiled fully at that. She had a lovely smile.

“So we are. You must call me Cousin Amaranthus, then—it’s a plant,” she added, with the slightly resigned air of one frequently obliged to make this explanation. “Amaranthus retroflexus. Of the family Amaranthaceae. Commonly known as pigweed.”

Trevor, who to this point had been perched on his mother’s knee, goggling stupidly at William, now made an urgent noise and reached out toward him. Fearing lest the child escape his mother’s clutches and pitch face-first onto the brick pathway, William grabbed him round the midsection and hoisted him onto his own knee, where the little boy stood, wobbling and crowing, beaming into William’s face. Despite himself, William smiled back. The boy was handsome, when not screeching, with soft dark hair and the pale-blue eyes common to the Greys.

“Wotcha, then, Trev?” he said, lowering his head and pretending to butt the child, who giggled and clutched at his hair.

“He looks quite like Benjamin,” he said, extracting his ears from Trevor’s grip. “And my uncle. I hope I don’t give you pain by saying so?” he added, suddenly unsure. She shook her head, though, and her smile turned rueful.

“No. It’s as well that he does. Your uncle was somewhat suspicious of me, I think. We married rather in haste,” she explained, in answer to William’s inquiring look, “and while Benjamin did write to tell his father of the marriage, his letter apparently didn’t reach England before His Grace left for the colonies. So when I discovered that His Grace was in Philadelphia, and wrote to him myself …” She lifted one shoulder in a graceful shrug and glanced toward the house.

“Tell me about your friend,” she said. “Is he an Indian?”

William felt a sudden weight come back, one that he’d shed without noticing it over the last few minutes.

“Yes,” he said. “His mother was half Indian, half French, he says. Though I can’t say to what Indian nation she might have belonged. She died when he was an infant, and he was raised in a Catholic orphanage in Quebec.”

Amaranthus was interested. She leaned forward, looking toward the house.

“And his father?” she asked. “Or does he know anything of his father?”

William glanced involuntarily at the house again, but all was silent.

“As to that,” he said, groping for something to say that was not a lie, but still something short of the full truth, “it’s a long story—and it’s not my story to tell. All I can say is that his father was a British soldier.”

“I did notice his hair,” Amaranthus said, dimpling. “Most remarkable.” She glanced past him at the house, and reached to take the baby back. “Will you be staying with his lordship?”

“I don’t think so.” Still, the thought of being home—even if home was a place he’d never been before—swept through him with a sudden longing. Apparently Amaranthus perceived this, for she leaned toward him and put a gentle hand on his.

“Will you not stay—just for a bit? I know Uncle John would like it; he misses you very much. And I should like to know you better.”

The simple sincerity of this statement moved him.

“I—should like to,” he said awkwardly. “I don’t—that is, it may depend upon my friend. Upon his conversation with my father.”

“I see.” She petted Trevor, smoothing his soft hair and snuggling him into her shoulder. William had a sudden pang of envy, seeing it. Amaranthus, though, rose and stood swaying with the child in her arms, her own light hair lifting in the breeze as she looked at the house.

“I should like to go inside, but I don’t want to disturb them. I wonder what can be taking so long?”

32 Lhude Sing Cuccu!

JOHN GREY STOOD FOR a moment, blinking at the door through which his son had just vanished, and feeling just behind him the enormous quandary perched on a tiny gilt chair. Without the slightest notion what might happen next, he turned round and said the only thing possible in the circumstances.

“Would you like some brandy, Mr. Cinnamon?”

The young man sprang up at once, graceful in spite of his size and the look of profound anxiety stamped upon his broad features. The mixture of dread and hope in John Cinnamon’s eyes wrung Grey’s heart, and he put a hand gently on the young man’s arm, turning him toward the sturdiest piece of furniture available, a wide-armed chair with a solid oak frame.

“Sit down,” he said, gesturing to this object. “And let me get you something to drink. I daresay you need it.” I certainly do, he thought, heading for the door that led into the kitchen. What in God’s name am I to say to him?

Neither the time consumed in finding brandy, nor the ceremonious pouring of it, provided him with any answers. He sat down in the green-striped wing chair and picked up his own brandy, feeling a most peculiar mix of dismay and exhilaration.

“I’m so pleased to make your acquaintance again, Mr. Cinnamon,” he said, smiling. “I last saw you at the age of six months or so, I believe. You’ve grown.”

Cinnamon flushed a little at this—an improvement over the pallor with which he’d entered the room—and bobbed his head awkwardly.

“I—thank you,” he blurted. “For seeing to my welfare all these years.”

Grey lifted a hand in brief dismissal, but asked curiously, “How many years has it been? How old are you?”

“Twenty, sir—or ought I to call you ‘my lord’ or ‘Excellency’?” he asked, anxiety still evident.

“‘Sir’ is quite all right,” Grey assured him. “May I ask how you fell into company with my—with William?”

Having a straightforward story to tell seemed to relax the young man somewhat, and by the time he’d got through it all, the brandy in his glass had sunk to amber dregs and his manner was substantially less anxious. With Cinnamon’s size in mind, Grey had poured with a lavish hand.

Manoke, he thought, with mingled exasperation and amusement. No point in being angry; Manoke made his own rules, and always had. At the same time, though … Despite the intermittent and casual nature of their relationship, Grey trusted the Indian more than anyone, with the exception of his own brother or Jamie Fraser. Manoke wouldn’t put Cinnamon on his trail for the sake of mischief; either he’d thought Cinnamon likely was his son and therefore had a right to know it—or having met William as an adult, he’d thought that Grey might need another son.

Perhaps he did, he thought, with a small clench of the belly. If William chose to deal with the problem of his paternity by simply disappearing … or even if he didn’t … but no. It wouldn’t do, he concluded, with a surprising sense of regret.

“I’m glad you’re here, Mr. Cinnamon,” he said, eyes on the brandy as he poured another glass for the young man. “I must begin by apologizing.”

“Oh, no!” Cinnamon burst out, sitting upright. “I would never expect you to—I mean, there’s nothing to apologize for.”

“Yes, there is. I ought to have written down a brief account of your circumstances when I put you in the care of the Catholic brothers at Gareon, rather than simply leave you there with nothing but a name. It is difficult, though,” he added with a smile, “to look at a six-month-old child and envision the … er … ultimate result of passing time. Somehow, one never thinks that children will grow up.” He had a passing vision of Willie at the age of two and a half, small and fierce—and already beginning to resemble his real father.

Cinnamon looked down at his very broad hands, braced on his knees—and then, as though he couldn’t help it, stared at Grey’s slender hand, still wrapped around the brandy bottle. Then he looked up at Grey’s face, searching for kinship.

“You do resemble your father,” Grey said, meeting the young man’s eyes directly. “I wish that I were that man—both for your sake and for my own.”

There was a deep silence in the room. Cinnamon’s face went blank and stayed that way. He blinked once or twice, but gave away nothing of what he felt. Finally he nodded, and took a breath that went to the roots of his soul.

“Can you—will you—tell me of my father, sir?”

Well, that was it, Grey thought. He’d realized the choices instantly: claim the young man as his own, or tell him the truth. But how much of the truth?

The trouble was that Cinnamon’s existence wasn’t purely his own concern; there were other people involved; did Grey have the right to meddle with their affairs without consultation or permission? But he had to tell the boy something, he thought. And reached for his glass.

“He was a British soldier, as Manoke told you,” he said carefully. “Your mother was half French and half … I’m afraid I have no idea of the nation from which her other parent originated.”

“Assiniboine, I always thought,” Cinnamon said. “I mean—I knew some part of me must be Indian, and I’d look at the men who came through Gareon, to see if— There are a lot of Assiniboine in that part of the country. They’re often tall and …” His big hand lifted and gestured half consciously at the breadth of his shoulders.

Grey nodded, surprised, but pleased that the young man was taking the news calmly.

“I saw her, your mother,” he said, and took another swallow of the brandy. “Only the once—but she was in fact tall for a woman; perhaps an inch or so taller than I am. And very beautiful,” he added gently.

“Oh.” It was little more than a breath of acknowledgment, but Grey was startled—and moved—to see the boy’s face change. Just for an instant, Grey was reminded of the look on Jamie Fraser’s face when he had received Communion from the hand of an Irish priest, when the two of them had gone to Ireland in search of a criminal. A look of reverence, of grateful peace.

“She died of the smallpox, in an epidemic. I … er … purchased you from your grandmother for the sum of five guineas, two trade blankets, and a small cask of rum. She was a Frenchwoman,” he added, in apologetic explanation, and Cinnamon actually gave a brief twitch of the lips.

“And … my father?” He leaned forward, hands on his knees, intent. “Will you tell me his name? Please,” he added, some of the anxiety returning.

Grey hesitated, with the vivid images of what had happened when William had discovered his true parentage fresh in his mind—but the situations were quite different, he told himself, and in all conscience …

“His name is Malcolm Stubbs,” he said. “You, um, didn’t inherit your stature from him.”

Cinnamon stared at him for a bewildered instant, then, catching the allusion, gave a brief, shocked laugh. He put a hand over his mouth in embarrassment, but seeing that Grey was not discomposed, lowered it.

“You say is, sir. He is … alive, then?” All the hope—and all the fear—with which he had entered the house was back in his eyes.

“He was, the last time I had word of him, though that will be more than a year past. He lives in London, with his wife.”

“London,” Cinnamon whispered, and shook his head, as though London surely could not be a real place.

“As I said, he was wounded when we took Quebec. Badly wounded—he lost a foot and the lower part of his leg to a cannonball; I was amazed that he survived, but he had great resilience. I’m quite sure he managed to pass that trait on to you, Mr. Cinnamon.” He smiled warmly at the young Indian. He hadn’t drunk as much brandy as the young man, but quite enough.

Cinnamon nodded, swallowed, and then, lowering his head, stared at the pattern in the Turkey carpet for some moments. Finally, he cleared his throat and looked up, resolute.

“You say he is married, sir. I do not imagine that his wife—is aware of my existence.”

“A hundred to one against,” Grey assured him. He eyed the young man carefully. Might he actually set out for London? At the moment, upright and stalwart, he looked capable of anything. Grey tried—and failed—to imagine just what Malcolm’s wife would do, should John Cinnamon turn up on her doorstep one fine morning.

“Blame me, I expect,” he murmured under his breath, reaching for the decanter. “Another drop, Mr. Cinnamon? I should advise it, really.”

“I—yes. Please.” He inhaled the brandy and set the glass down with an air of finality. “Be assured, sir, I wish to do nothing that would cause my father or his wife the least discomfort.”

Grey took a cautious sip of his own fresh glass.

“That’s most considerate,” he said. “But also rather prudent. May I ask, had I actually proved to be your father—and let me repeat that I regret the fact that I am not—” He lifted his glass an inch and Cinnamon cast down his eyes, but gave a brief nod of acknowledgment. “What did you intend to do? Or ought I to ask what you had hoped for?”

Cinnamon’s mouth opened, but then shut as he considered. Grey was beginning to be impressed by the young man’s manner. Deferential but not shy at all; straightforward but thoughtful.

“In truth, I scarcely know, sir,” Cinnamon said at last. He sat back a little, settling himself. “I did not expect, nor do I seek”—he added, with an inclination of his head—“any recognition or … or material assistance. I suppose it was in good part curiosity. But more, perhaps, a desire for some sense of … not of belonging; it would be foolish to expect that—but some knowledge of connection. Just to know that there is a person who shares my blood,” he ended simply. “And what he is like.

“Oh!” he said then, abashed. “And of course I wished to thank my father for taking thought for my welfare.” He cleared his throat again. “Might I ask, sir—a particular favor of you?”

“Certainly,” Grey replied. His mind had been stimulated by his own question—what might an abandoned child seek from an unknown parent? William certainly wanted nothing from Jamie Fraser, but that was quite a different circumstance; William had known Jamie since he was a child, though knowing him as a man was likely to prove a different kettle of fish …. And then, too, William had a family, a proper family, people who shared not his blood, but his place in the world. Grey tried—and failed completely—to imagine what it must be like to feel oneself totally alone.

“—if I were to write such a letter,” Cinnamon was saying, and Grey returned to the present moment with a jerk.

“Send a letter,” he repeated. “To Malcolm. I—yes, I suppose I could do that. Er … saying what, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Just to acknowledge his kindness in providing for my welfare, sir—and to assure him of my service, should he ever find himself in want of it.”

“Oh. His … yes, his kindness …” Cinnamon looked sharply at him, and Grey felt a flush rise in his cheeks that had nothing to do with the brandy. Damn it, he should have realized that Cinnamon thought Malcolm had provided the funds for his support all these years. Whereas, in reality …

“It was you,” Cinnamon said, surprise almost covering the disappointment in his face. “I mean—Mr. Stubbs didn’t …”

“He couldn’t have,” Grey said hurriedly. “As I said—he was badly wounded, very badly. He nearly died, and was sent back to England as soon as possible. Truly, he—he would have been unable …”

Unable to take thought for the son he’d made and left behind. Malcolm had never mentioned the boy to Grey, nor asked after him.

“I see,” Cinnamon said bleakly. He pressed his lips together and focused his gaze on the silver coffeepot sitting on the sideboard. Grey didn’t try to speak further; he could only make matters worse.

Finally, Cinnamon’s eyes cleared and he looked at Grey again, serious. The young man had very beautiful dark eyes, deep-set and slightly slanting. Those had come from his mother—Grey wished that he could tell him so, but this was not the moment for such details.

“Then I thank you, sir,” he said softly, and bowed, deeply, toward Grey. “It was most generous in you, to perform such a service for your friend.”

“I didn’t do it for Malcolm’s sake,” Grey blurted. His glass was empty—how had that happened?—and he set it down carefully on the little drum table.

They sat regarding each other, neither knowing quite what to say next. Grey could hear Moira the cook talking outside; she often talked to the faeries in the garden even when not drunk. The carriage clock on the mantel struck the half hour, and Cinnamon jerked in surprise, turning to look at it. It had musical chimes, and a mechanical butterfly under a glass dome, that raised and lowered its cloisonné wings.

The movement had broken the awkward silence, though, and when Cinnamon turned back, he spoke without hesitation.

“Father Charles said that you gave me a name, when you left me at the mission. You did not know what my mother called me, I suppose?”

“Why, no,” Grey said, disconcerted. “I didn’t.”

“So it was you who called me John?” A slight smile appeared on Cinnamon’s face. “You gave me your own name?”

Grey felt an answering smile on his own face, and lifted one shoulder in a deprecating way.

“Oh, well …” he said. “I liked you.”

33 Spoilt for Choice

WHATEVER PAPA AND JOHN Cinnamon were doing, they were taking the devil of a long time about it. After a few minutes, during which Trevor yowled unceasingly, Amaranthus had made her excuses and withdrawn to the house in search of clean clouts.

Without occupation or acquaintance in town or camp, and reluctant to go into the house himself, William found himself at loose ends. The last thing he wanted was to encounter anyone he knew, in any case. He pulled the black slouch hat well down over his brow and forced himself to stroll, rather than stride, through the town toward camp. The place was full of private soldiers, sutlers, and support troops; it would be easy to escape notice.

“William!”

He stiffened at the shout, but smothered the momentary impulse to run. He recognized that voice—just as the owner of it had undoubtedly recognized his height and figure. He turned reluctantly to greet his uncle, the Duke of Pardloe, who had emerged from a house directly behind him.

“Hallo, Uncle Hal,” he said, with what grace he could muster. He supposed it didn’t matter; Lord John would tell his brother about William’s and John Cinnamon’s presence, in any case.

“What are you doing here?” his uncle inquired—mildly, for him. His sharp glance took in everything from William’s mud-caked boots to the stained rucksack on his shoulder and the worn cloak over his arm. “Come to enlist?”

“Haha,” William said coldly, but felt immediately better. “No. I came with a—friend, who had business in camp.”

“Seen your father?”

“Not really.” He didn’t elucidate, and after a thoughtful pause, Hal shook out his own gray military cloak and slung it over his shoulders.

“I’m going down to the river for a bit of air before supper. Come along?”

William shrugged. “Why not?”

They made their way out of the town and down from the bluffs without being accosted, and William felt the tightness between his shoulder blades ease. His uncle didn’t indulge in idle conversation, and didn’t mind silence in the least. They reached the edge of the narrow beach without exchanging a word, and made their way slowly through scrubby pines and yaupon bushes to the clean, solid sand of the tidal zone.

William placed his feet just so, enjoying making prints in the silty gray sand. The summer sky was vast and blue above them, a blazing yellow sun coming slowly down into the waves. They followed the curve of the beach, ending on a tiny spit of sandy gravel inhabited by a gang of orange-billed oystercatchers, who eyed them coldly and gave way with ill grace, turning their heads and glaring as they waddled sideways.

Here they stood for some minutes, looking out into the water.

“Do you miss England?” Hal asked abruptly.

“Sometimes,” William answered honestly. “But I don’t think about it much,” he added, with less honesty.

“I do.” His uncle’s face looked relaxed, almost wistful in the fading light. “But you haven’t a wife there, or children. No establishment of your own, yet.”

“No.”

The sounds of slaves working in the fields behind them were still audible, but muted by the rhythm of the surf at their feet, the passage of the silent clouds above their heads.

The trouble with silence was that it allowed the thoughts in his head to take on a tiresome insistence, like the ticking of a clock in an empty room. Cinnamon’s company, disturbing as it occasionally was, had allowed him to escape them when he needed to.

“How does one go about renouncing a title?”

He hadn’t actually been intending to ask that just yet, and was surprised to hear the words emerge from his mouth. Uncle Hal, by contrast, didn’t seem surprised at all.

“You can’t.”

William glared down at his uncle, who was still looking imperturbably downriver toward the sea, the wind pulling strands of his dark hair from his queue.

“What do you mean, I can’t? Whose business is it whether I renounce my title or not?”

Uncle Hal looked at him with an affectionate impatience.

“I’m not speaking rhetorically, blockhead. I mean it literally. You can’t renounce a peerage. There’s no means set down in law or custom for doing it; ergo, it can’t be done.”

“But you—” William stopped, baffled.

“No, I didn’t,” his uncle said dryly. “If I could have at the time, I would have, but I couldn’t, so I didn’t. The most I could do was to stop using the title of ‘Duke,’ and threaten to physically maim anyone who used it in reference or address to me. It took me several years to make it clear that I meant that,” he added offhandedly.

“Really?” William asked cynically. “Who did you maim?”

He actually had supposed his uncle to be speaking rhetorically, and was taken aback when the once and present duke furrowed his brow in the effort of recall.

“Oh … several scribblers—they’re like roaches, you know; crush one and the others all rush off into the shadows, but by the time you turn round, there are throngs of them back again, happily feasting on your carcass and spreading filth over your life.”

“Anyone ever tell you that you have a way with words, Uncle?”

“Yes,” his uncle said briefly. “But beyond punching a few journalists, I called out George Mumford—he’s the Marquess of Clermont now, but he wasn’t then—Herbert Villiers, Viscount Brunton, and a gentleman named Radcliffe. Oh, and a Colonel Phillips, of the Thirty-fourth—cousin to Earl Wallenberg.”

“Duels, do you mean? And did you fight them all?”

“Certainly. Well—not Villiers, because he caught a chill on the liver and died before I could, but otherwise … but that’s beside the point.” Hal caught himself and shook his head to clear it. Evening was coming on, and the onshore breeze was brisk. He wrapped his cloak about his body and nodded toward the town.

“Let’s go. The tide’s coming in and I’m dining with General Prévost in half an hour.”

They made their way slowly through the twilight, the rough marram grass rasping at their boots.

“Besides,” his uncle went on, head down against the wind, “I had another title—one without taint. Refusing to use the Pardloe title meant I also refused to use the income from the title’s estates, but it meant almost nothing in terms of my daily life, bar a bit of eye-rolling from society. My friends largely remained my friends, I was received in most of the places I was accustomed to go, and—the important point—I continued doing what I intended to do: raise and command a regiment. You—” He glanced at William, running an appraising eye over him from slouch hat to clodhopper boots.

“Not to put too fine a point on it, William—it might be easier to ask what it is you want to do, rather than asking how not to do what you don’t.”

William stopped, closed his eyes, and just stood, listening to the water for a few moments of blessed relief from the tick-tock thoughts. Absolutely nothing was happening inside his head.

“Right,” he said at last, taking a deep breath and opening his eyes. “Were you born knowing that’s what you wanted to do?” he asked curiously.

“I suppose so,” his uncle answered slowly, beginning to walk again. “I can’t recall ever thinking of being anything save a soldier. As to wanting it, though … I don’t think that question ever occurred to me.”

“Exactly,” said William, with a certain dryness. “You were born into a family where that’s what the oldest son did, and that happened to suit you. I was raised believing that my sacred duty was to care for my lands and tenants, and it never occurred to me for an instant that what I wanted came into it—no more than it did to you.

“The fact remains,” he went on, taking off his hat and tucking it under his arm to keep it from being carried away by the wind, “that I don’t feel entitled—as it were—to any of the titles I was supposedly born to …. Besides—” A thought struck him, and he gave his uncle a narrow look.

“You said you didn’t accept the dukedom’s income. I don’t suppose you also neglected the care of the estates you weren’t profiting from?”

“Of course n—” Hal broke off and gave William a look in which annoyance was tempered by a certain respect. “Who taught you to think, boy? Your father?”

“I imagine Lord John may have had some small influence,” William said politely. His insides had turned over—as they did with monotonous regularity recently—at mention of his erstwhile father. He couldn’t forget the look of fearful eagerness in John Cinnamon’s eyes … oh, bloody hell, of course he could forget. It was a matter of will, that’s all. He shoved it aside, the next best thing.

“But you didn’t in fact renounce your responsibilities, even though you wouldn’t profit by them. You’re telling me, though, that you couldn’t have done so. There are no circumstances in which a peer can stop being a peer?”

“Well, not at his own whim, no. Mind you, a peerage is the gift of a grateful monarch. A monarch who ceases to be grateful can indeed strip a peer of his titles, though I doubt any monarch could do so without support from the House of Lords. Peers don’t like to feel threatened—it so seldom happens to any of them these days, they’re not used to it,” he added sardonically.

“Even so—it isn’t a matter of kingly whim, either. Grounds for revoking a peerage are rather limited, I believe. The only one that comes to mind is engaging in a rebellion against the Crown.”

“You don’t say.”

William had spoken lightly—or meant to—but Hal stopped and turned a piercing look on his nephew.

“If you consider treason and the betrayal of your King, your country, and your family a suitable means of solving your personal difficulties, William, then perhaps John hasn’t taught you as well as I supposed.”

Without waiting for an answer, he turned and stumped off through the beds of rotting waterweed, leaving amorphous footprints in the sand.

WILLIAM STAYED BY the shore for some little while. Not thinking. Not feeling much of anything, either. Just watching the currents move through the river, washing out his tired brain. A squadron of brown pelicans with white heads came floating down the sky, keeping formation as they skimmed two feet above the surface of the water. Evidently seeing nothing interesting, they rose again as one and sailed back over the marshes toward the open sea.

No wonder that people run away to sea, he thought, with a small sense of longing. To slough off the small cares of daily life and escape the demands of a life unwanted. Nothing but miles of boundless water, boundless sky.

And bad food, seasickness, and the chance of being killed at any moment by pirates, rogue whales, or, much more likely, the weather.

The thought of rogue whales made him laugh and the thought of food, bad or not, reminded him that he was starving. Turning to go, he discovered that while he had stood there vegetating, a large bull alligator had crawled out of the shrubbery behind him and was reposing about four feet away. He shrieked, and the reptile, startled and indignant, opened a horrifying set of jaws and made a noise between a growl and an enormous belch.

He had no idea exactly how he’d done it, but when he stopped, panting and drenched with sweat, he was in the middle of the army camp. Heart still pounding, he made his way through the neat aisles of tents, feeling once more safe amid the normal noises of a camp settling toward supper, the air thick with the smells of wood fire, hot earth from the camp kitchens, grilling meat, and simmering stew.

He was ravenous by the time he reached Papa’s house, though at this time of summer, it would be broad daylight for another hour at least. He assumed that Trevor would be abed, sunlight notwithstanding, and so walked as quietly as he could, using the damp grass beside the brick walk.

As Trevor—and necessarily Trevor’s mother—was in his mind, he glanced round the side of the house and discovered that the bench in the grape arbor was occupied, all right, but not by Amaranthus, with or without baby attached.

“Guillaume!” John Cinnamon spotted him and erupted from the leafy bower with such force as to scatter leaves and stray grapes across the gravel.

“John! How did it go?” He could see Cinnamon’s broad face, shining with joy, and his inner organs shriveled. Had Papa accepted John Cinnamon as his son?

“Oh! It was—he was—your father is a great, good man, Guillaume! You’re so fortunate to have him.”

“I—er—yes,” William said, a little dubiously. “But what did he say—”

“He told me all about my father,” Cinnamon said, and stopped to swallow at the enormity of the word. “My father. He’s called Malcolm Stubbs; have you ever met him?”

“I’m not sure,” William said, frowning in an effort at recollection. “I’m sure I’ve heard the name once or twice, but if I’ve ever met him, it must have been when I was quite young.”

Cinnamon flapped a large hand, dismissing this.

“He was a soldier, a captain. He was badly hurt in the big battle for the City of Quebec, up on the Plains of Abraham, you know?”

“I know about the battle, yes. But he survived?”

“He did. He lives in London.” Cinnamon squeezed William’s shoulder in a transport of delight at the name, and William felt his collarbone shift.

“I see. Well, that’s good, I suppose?”

“Lord John says that if I choose to write a letter, he will see that Captain Stubbs receives it. In London!” Clearly, London was next door to Faery-land, and William smiled at his friend, at once truly happy that Cinnamon was genuinely thrilled about this revelation—and secretly and shamefacedly relieved that, after all, Cinnamon really wasn’t Papa’s natural son.

It was necessary to walk up and down the yard several times, listening to Cinnamon’s excited account of exactly what he had said, and what Lord John had said, and what he had thought when Lord John said it, and …

“So you are going to write a letter, aren’t you?” William finally managed to interrupt him sufficiently as to ask.

“Oh, yes.” Cinnamon grabbed his hand and squeezed. “Will you help me, Guillaume? Help me decide what to say?”

“Ouch. Yes, of course.” He retrieved his crushed hand and flexed the fingers gently. “Well. I suppose that means that you’d like to remain here in Savannah for a bit, in case there should be a reply from Captain Stubbs?”

Cinnamon seemed to pale slightly, whether at the thought of receiving such a reply, or at the possibility that he might not, but he took a huge breath and nodded.

“Yes. Lord John was so kind as to invite us to remain with him, but I think that wouldn’t be right. I told him I’ll find work, a little place to live. Oh, Guillaume, I’m so happy. Je n’arrive pas à y croire!”

“So am I, mon ami,” William said, and smiled; Cinnamon’s delight was catching. “But I tell you what—let’s go and be happy together over supper. I’m going to drop dead of starvation any minute.”

34 The Son of a Preacher-man

THE MEETING HOUSE, AS everyone had taken to calling the cabin that was to serve the Ridge as schoolroom, Masonic Lodge, a church for Presbyterian and Methodist services, and a place for Quaker meeting, was now finished, and in the afternoon of that day, the reluctant schoolteacher, the Worshipful Master of the Lodge, and the three competing preachers met—spouses brought along as congregation—to inspect and bless the place.

“It smells like beer,” said the nominative schoolteacher, wrinkling her nose.

It did, the smell of hops strong enough to compete with the fragrance of the raw pinewood of the walls and the new benches, so freshly cut as still to be oozing a pale golden sap in places.

“Aye,” said the Master. “Ronnie Dugan and Bob McCaskill had a difference of opinion about whether there should be something for the preachers to stand on besides the floor, and someone kicked over the keg.”

“No great loss,” replied the husband of the sole practicing Quaker on Fraser’s Ridge. “Worst beer I’ve had since wee Markie Henderson pissed in his mother’s brew tub and no one found it out before the beer was served.”

“Oh, it wasn’t quite that bad,” the Presbyterian minister said, presumably on the judge-not principle, but he was drowned out by a general buzz of agreement.

“Who made it?” asked Rachel in a low voice, glancing over her shoulder in case the miscreant brewer should be in earshot.

“I blush to admit that I supplied the keg,” Captain Cunningham said, frowning, “but I’ve no notion of its manufacture. It came up with some of my books from Cross Creek.”

There was a general murmur of understanding—punctuated by a grunt of disapproval from Mrs. Cunningham—and the topic of beer was tabled by unspoken general consensus.

“Well, now.” Jamie called the meeting to order, opening one of his spare ledgers, this now devoted to the business of the Meeting House. “Brianna says she’s willing to teach the wee bug—er, the bairns—for two hours in the morning, from nine o’clock until elevenses, so spread the word about that—she’ll be starting after the harvest. And if any of the older lads and lassies canna read or write yet, they can come to learn their letters … when, a nighean?”

“Let’s say ‘by appointment,’” Bree replied. “What about slates—do we have any?”

“No,” Jamie replied, and wrote down Slates—10 in his ledger with a pencil.

“Only ten?” I said, peering over his arm. “Surely there are more children than that to be taught.”

“They’ll come once they’re sure Brianna won’t beat them,” Roger said, grinning at his wife. “I think we can find out where to get slates from Gustav Grunewald, the Moravian schoolmaster; I know him and he’s a good sort. I’ll paint you a blackboard to use until we get them.”

“I know where there’s a decent chalk bed,” I chimed in. “I’ll bring some back when I go up there tomorrow after cranesbill.”

“Desks?” Bree asked tentatively, glancing round. The room was spacious and well lighted, with windows—so far, uncovered—in three of the four walls, but there were no furnishings beyond the benches—apparently whoever had wanted to construct a podium had lost the argument.

“As soon as someone has the time, mo chridhe. It willna hurt them to hold their slates on their knees for a bit, and ye’ll no have more than a few before the autumn. They need to be working until the crops are in, ken.” Jamie flipped over a page.

“Business of the Lodge … well, that’s for the Lodge to deal with. Now, we’ve been accustomed—last time we had a gathering place—to have the regular Lodge meeting on a Wednesday, but I understand that the captain here would like to have that night for a church service?”

“If it does not discommode you too much, sir?”

“Not at all,” Roger said, causing the captain to look sharply at him. “You’d be more than welcome to join us at Lodge, of course, Captain.”

Cunningham glanced at Jamie, who nodded, and the captain relaxed, just slightly, with an inclination of his own head.

“Then it will be regular meeting of the Lodge on Tuesday, and … we’ve been accustomed to use the cabin as a meeting place on other evenings, just socially, aye?”

“Bring your own stool and bottle,” Roger clarified. “And a stick of wood for the hearth.”

Mrs. Cunningham snorted in a ladylike fashion, indicating what she thought of free-form social gatherings of men involving bottles. I rather thought she had a point, but Jamie, Roger, and Ian had all assured me that the informal evenings were a great help in finding out what was going on around the Ridge—and just possibly doing something about it before things got out of hand.

“So, then.” Jamie flipped to a new page, this one headed Church in large black letters, underlined. “How d’ye want to manage Sundays—or is it Sunday for Friends, Rachel?”

“They call it First Day, but it’s really Sunday, aye,” Young Ian put in. Rachel looked amused, but nodded.

“So, will the three of ye hold service—or meeting,” he added, with a nod to Rachel, “every Sunday? Or d’ye want to alternate?”

Roger and the captain eyed each other, hesitant to say anything that might seem confrontational, but determined to claim time and space for their nascent congregations.

“I will be here each First Day,” Rachel said calmly. “But given the nature of Quaker meeting, I think perhaps it would be best if I were to come in the later part of the afternoon. Those who attend service earlier in the day might find it useful to sit and contemplate in the quietness of their hearts what they’ve heard, or to share it with others.”

“Mam and I will be there, too,” Ian said firmly.

The two preachers looked surprised, but then nodded.

“We’ll also hold service every Sunday,” Roger said. “The third commandment doesn’t say, ‘Thou shalt keep holy the Lord’s day twice a month,’ after all.”

“Quite true,” said the captain, but before he could speak further, Mrs. Cunningham said what everyone was thinking.

“Who goes first?”

There was an uneasy silence, which Jamie broke by digging in his sporran and pulling out a silver shilling, which he flipped into the air, caught on the back of his hand, and clapped the other hand over it.

“Heads or tails, Captain?”

“Um …” Caught by surprise, Cunningham hesitated, and I saw his mother begin to mouth “tails”—quite unconsciously, I thought. “Heads,” he said firmly. Jamie lifted his hand to peek at the coin, then showed it to the group.

“Heads it is. D’ye choose first or second, then, Captain?”

“Can ye sing, sir?” Roger asked, startling Cunningham anew.

“I—yes,” he said, taken aback. “Why?”

“I can’t,” Roger said, touching his throat in illustration. “If ye go first, ye can leave them in an uplifted frame of mind with a parting hymn. So they’ll be more receptive, maybe, to what I have to say.” He smiled, and there was a small ripple of laughter, but I didn’t think he was joking.

Jamie nodded.

“Ye needna worry about bein’ first or last, Captain. Entertainment’s scarce.”

JOHN QUINCY MYERS had, during his short stay with us, opined that mountain-dwellers were so lacking in opportunities for entertainment that they would travel twenty miles to watch paint dry. This thought was part of his modest disclaimer to being entertaining in himself, but he wasn’t wrong.

One new preacher would have been enough to draw a crowd. Two was unheard of, and two preachers representing different faces of Christianity …! As I stood with Jamie outside the new Meeting House, waiting for Captain Cunningham’s service to begin, I heard muttered bets behind me—first, as to whether the two preachers would fight each other, and if so, who might win.

Jamie, also hearing this, turned round to address the gaggle of half-grown boys doing it.

“A hundred to one says they willna fight each other,” he said, in a carrying voice, adding then in a lower tone, “But if they do, I’ll have ten shillings on Roger Mac, five to one.”

This caused a minor sensation among the boys—and a clucking of disapproval among the few actual Methodists and Anglicans present—which died away as the captain approached, in full naval uniform, including gold-laced hat, but with a surplice over one arm, and his mother—fine in black, with a black lace bodice—on the other. An approving murmur broke out, and Jamie and I made our way to the front of the crowd to bid them welcome.

The captain was sweating a little—it was a warm morning—but seemed both in good spirits and self-possessed.

“General Fraser,” he said, bowing to Jamie. “And Mrs. General Fraser. I hope I see you well on this blessed morning.”

“You do, sir,” Jamie said, bowing back. “And I thank ye. I’ll thank ye further, though, to grant us a title more modest, perhaps, but more fitting. I am Colonel Fraser—and this is my lady.”

I spread my calico skirts and curtsied, hoping I remembered how. I wondered whether the captain had caught the intimation that Jamie had, did, or could command a militia. Yes, he had …

The captain had stiffened noticeably, but Mrs. Cunningham executed a beautiful straight-backed curtsy to Jamie and rose smoothly.

“Our thanks to you, Colonel,” she said, not batting an eye, “for providing my son the opportunity to bring God’s word to those most in need of it.”

ROGER HAD BEEN of several minds regarding attending Captain Cunningham’s service.

“Mama and Da are going,” Bree had argued. “And Fanny and Germain. We don’t want to look as though we’re avoiding the poor man, do we—or high-hatting his service?”

“Well, no. But I don’t want to look as though I’ve just come to judge the competition, as it were. Besides, your da has to go; he can’t seem … partial.”

She laughed, and bit off the thread she’d been sewing with, hemming one of Mandy’s skirts, which had somehow contrived to unhem itself on one side while the owner was supposedly virtuously occupied with helping Grannie Claire make applesauce.

“Da doesn’t like things happening on the Ridge behind his back, so to speak,” she said. “Not that I think Captain Cunningham is going to preach insurrection and riot from the pulpit.”

“Neither am I,” he assured her. “Not first thing, anyway.”

“Come on,” she said. “Aren’t you curious?”

He was. Intensely so. It wasn’t as though he’d not heard his share of sermons, growing up as the son of a Presbyterian minister—but at the time, he hadn’t had the slightest thought of becoming a minister himself, and hadn’t paid much attention to the fine points. He’d learned quite a bit during his first go at sermonizing on the Ridge, and more during his try at ordination, but that was a few years past—and many of the present audience wouldn’t know him as anything other than Himself’s son-in-law.

“Besides,” she added, holding up the skirt and squinting at it to judge her work, “we’ll stick out like a sore thumb if we don’t go. Everybody on the Ridge will be there, believe me. And they’ll all be there for your service, too—remember what Da said about entertainment.”

He had to admit that she was right on all counts. Jamie and Claire were there in their best, looking benign, Germain and Fanny with them, looking unnaturally clean and even more unnaturally subdued.

He cast a narrow glance at his own offspring, who were at least clean, and—if not completely subdued—at least closely confined on the bench between him and Brianna. Jemmy was twitching slightly, but reasonably quiescent, and Mandy was occupied in teaching Esmeralda the Lord’s Prayer in a loud whisper—or at least the first line, which was all Mandy knew—pressing the doll’s pudgy cloth hands piously together.

“I wonder how long the sermon’s likely to be,” Bree said, with a glance at the kids.

“Well, he’s used to preaching to sailors—I suppose with a captive audience that doesn’t dare leave or interrupt, ye might be tempted to go on a bit.” He could hear from the shuffle and muttering at the back of the room that a number of older boys were standing back there, similar to the lot who’d loosed a snake during his own first sermon.

“You aren’t planning to heckle him, are you?” asked Bree, glancing over her shoulder.

“I’m not, no.”

“What’s heckle, Daddy?” Jem came out of his comatose state, attracted by the word.

“It means to interrupt someone when they’re speaking, or shout rude things at them.”

“Oh.”

“And you’re never, ever to do it, hear me?”

“Oh.” Jem lost interest and went back to looking at the ceiling.

A stir of interest ran through the congregation as Captain Cunningham and his mother came in. The captain nodded to right and left, not precisely smiling, but looking agreeable. Mrs. Cunningham was glancing sharply round, with an eye out for trouble.

Her eye lighted on Esmeralda, and she opened her mouth, but her son cleared his throat loudly and, gripping her elbow, steered her to a spot on a front bench. Her head swiveled briefly round, but the captain had taken his place and she swiveled back, amid the shufflings and shushings of the congregation.

“Brothers and sisters,” the captain said, and everyone straightened abruptly, as he’d addressed them in what Roger thought must be the voice used on his quarterdeck, raised to be heard over the flapping of sails and the roar of cannon. Cunningham coughed, and repeated more quietly, “Brothers and sisters in Christ, I bid you welcome.

“Many of you know me. For those who do not—I am Captain Charles Cunningham, late of His Majesty’s navy. I received a call from God two years ago, and I am endeavoring to answer that call to the best of my ability. I will tell you more about my journey—and yours—toward God, but let us now begin our services this morning by singing ‘O God, Our Help in Ages Past.’”

“I think he’s actually going to be good,” Bree whispered to Roger as the congregation obligingly rose.

The captain was good. After the hymn—which roughly half the congregation knew, but it was a simple tune, and easy enough for the rest to hum along—he opened his worn leather Bible and read them Matthew 4:18–22:

After which, he set down his worn leather Bible and told them, with great simplicity, what had brought him here.

“Two years ago, I captained one of His Majesty’s ships, HMS Lenox, on the North American Station. It was our charge to blockade the colonial ports and carry out occasional raids against rebellious communities.”

Roger felt the instant wariness that spread through the room like low-lying fog. Some of those present were bound to be secret Loyalists, though most of those who had declared themselves openly had done so as rebels, whether from conviction or from a pragmatic desire to ally themselves with their landlord—the landlord sitting in the third row—he didn’t know.

“My son Simon had recently joined the ship as second lieutenant. I was very pleased, as we had not seen each other for at least two years, he having seen duty in the Channel.”

The captain paused for a moment, as though looking into the past.

“I was proud of him,” he said quietly. “Proud that he chose to follow me into the navy, and proud of his conduct. He was a very young lieutenant—only just eighteen—but enterprising and courageous, and with a great care of his men.”

He pressed his lips together for a moment, then took an audible breath.

“While patrolling the coast of Rhode Island, we encountered and pursued a rebel cutter, and brought her to action. My son was killed in that action.”

There was a muffled sound of shock and sympathy from the congregation, but Cunningham gave no evidence of having heard it, and went steadily on.

“I was no more than a few feet away from him when the shot struck him, and I caught him in my arms. I felt him die.

“I felt him die,” he repeated, softly, and now his eyes searched the congregation. “Some of you will know that feeling.”

Many of them did.

“There is no time to mourn, of course, in the midst of an action, and it was nearly an hour later that we took possession of the cutter and made her crew prisoners. I sent the cutter into port under the command of my master’s mate—normally, that duty would have fallen to my son, as lieutenant. But at that point, all activity, all motion, all the need to lead and command—all of that dropped away. And I went to bid my son farewell.”

Roger glanced involuntarily down at Jemmy, at the soft swirl of hair on the crown of his head, the backs of his clean, pink ears.

“He was below, laid on a cot in the sick bay, and I sat down beside him. I cannot say what I felt, or what I thought; the space within me was void. Of course I knew what had happened to me, the loss of a part of myself, a loss greater than any loss of limb or physical injury—and yet I felt nothing. I think”—he broke off and cleared his throat—“I think I was afraid to feel anything. But while I sat, I watched his face—that face that I knew so well—and I saw the light enter it again.

“It changed,” he said, looking from face to face, urgent that they should understand. “His face became … transcendent. And beautiful, suddenly, the face of an angel. And then he opened his eyes.”

The shock brought every soul in the room upright. Mrs. Cunningham, Roger saw, already was as upright as it was possible for someone with a backbone to be. She sat rigid and immobile, her face turned away.

“He spoke to me,” the captain said, and his voice was husky. “He said, ‘Don’t worry, Father. I’ll see you again. In seven years.’” He cleared his throat again, harder. “And—then he closed his eyes and … was dead.”

It took several moments for the murmurs and gasps to die away, and Cunningham stood patiently until the silence returned.

“As I rose from my son’s side,” he said, “I realized that the Lord had given me both a blessing and a sign. The knowledge—the sure knowledge,” he emphasized, “that the soul is not destroyed by death, and the conviction that the Lord had called me to go forth and give this message to His people.

“So I have come among you in answer to God’s call. To bring you the word of God’s goodness, to humbly offer guidance where I may do so—and to honor the memory of my son, First Lieutenant Simon Elmore Cunningham, who served his King, his country, and his God always with honor and fidelity.”

Roger rose for the final hymn in a flurry of feeling. He’d been with Cunningham through every word, totally absorbed, filled with sorrow, pride, warmth, uplifted—and even putting aside the purely emotional aspects of the captain’s sermon, he had to admit that it was a really good bit of work in terms of religion.

Roger turned to Brianna, and under the rising song, said, “Jesus Christ,” meaning no blasphemy whatever.

“You can say that again,” she replied.

I DID WONDER just how Roger proposed to follow Captain Cunningham’s act. The congregation had scattered under the trees to take refreshment, but every group I passed was discussing what the captain had said, with great excitement and absorption—as well they might. The spell of his story remained with me—a sense of wonder and hope.

Bree seemed to be wondering, too; I saw her with Roger, in the shade of a big chinkapin oak, in close discussion. He shook his head, though, smiled, and tugged her cap straight. She’d dressed her part, as a modest minister’s wife, and smoothed her skirt and bodice.

“Two months, and she’ll be comin’ to kirk in buckskins,” Jamie said, following the direction of my gaze.

“What odds?” I inquired.

“Three to one. Ye want to wager, Sassenach?”

“Gambling on Sunday? You’re going straight to hell, Jamie Fraser.”

“I dinna mind. Ye’ll be there afore me. Askin’ me the odds, forbye … Besides, going to church three times in one day must at least get ye a few days off purgatory.”

I nodded.

“Ready for Round Two?”

Roger kissed Brianna and strode out of the shade into the sunlit day, tall, dark, and handsome in his best black—well, his only—suit. He came toward us, Bree on his heels, and I saw several people in the nearby groups notice this and begin to put away their bits of bread and cheese and beer, to retire behind bushes for a private moment, and to tidy up children who’d come undone.

I sketched a salute as Roger came up to us.

“Over the top?”

“Geronimo,” he replied briefly. With a visible squaring of the shoulders, he turned to greet his flock and usher them inside.

Back inside, it was noticeably warm, though not yet hot, thank God. The smell of new pine was softer now, cushioned by the rustle of homespun and the faint scents of cooking and farming and the messy business of raising children that rose in a pleasantly domestic fog.

Roger let them resettle for a moment, but not long enough for conversations to break out. He walked in with Bree on his arm, left her on the front bench, and turned to smile at the congregation.

“Is there anyone here who doesna ken me already?” he asked, and there was a slight ripple of laughter.

“Aye, well, the fact that ye do ken me and ye’re here anyway is reassuring. Sometimes it’s the things we know that mean a lot, in part because we ken them well and understand their strength. Will ye be upstanding then, and we’ll say the Lord’s Prayer together.”

They rose obligingly and followed him in the prayer—some, I noticed, speaking it in the Gàidhlig, though most in variously accented English.

When we all sat down again, he cleared his throat, hard, and I began to worry. I was sure that his voice was better than it had been, whether from natural healing or from the treatments—if something so simple and yet so peculiar as Dr. McEwan’s laying on of hands could be dignified by the name—I’d been giving him once a month. But it had been a long time since he’d spoken at length in public, let alone preached—let alone sung, and the stress of expectation was a lot to deal with.

“Some of ye are from the Isles, I know—and from the North. So ye’ll ken what lined singing is.”

I saw Hiram Crombie glance down the bench at his assembled family, and felt the interested stir of others in the crowd who did indeed know.

“For those of ye who’ve come lately from other parts—it’s nay bother; only a way of dealing wi’ things like Psalms and hymns, when ye havena got more than one prayer book amongst ye. Or most of one.” He held up his own battered hymnal, a coverless wodge of tattered pages that Jamie had found in a tavern in Salisbury and bought for threepence and two pig’s trotters, the latter having been recently acquired in a card game.

“Today, we’re going to sing Psalm One Thirty-three. It’s a short one, but one I like. I’ll sing—or chant, maybe”—he smiled at them and cleared his throat again, but shortly—“the first line, and then ye sing it back to me. I’ll do the next, and so on we go, aye?”

He opened the book to his marked page and managed—in a voice that was at least powerful enough to be heard and rhythmic enough to follow—the first phrase:

“Behold how good!”

An instant’s pause, and several voices, confident, took it up:

“Behold how good!”

A look of joy rose up in his face, and it was only then that I realized he hadn’t been sure it would work.

“And how pleasant it is …”

“And how pleasant it is!”

More voices, a spreading confidence, and by the third phrase, we were sharing Roger’s happiness, moving into the words and their meaning.

It was a fairly short psalm, but they were having such a good time that he went through it twice, and stopped, finally, wringing with sweat and flushed with heat and effort, “Even life for evermore!” still ringing in the air.

“That was good,” he said, in a croak, and they laughed, though kindly. “Jamie—will ye come read to us from the Old Testament?”

I glanced at Jamie in surprise, but apparently he was ready for this, for he picked up his small green Bible, which he’d brought along with him, and came to the front of the room. He was wearing the best of his two kilts, with the only sober-looking coat he possessed, and taking his spectacles from the pocket, put them on and looked sternly over the tops of them at the boys in the back, who instantly ceased their whispering.

Evidently satisfied that the stern look would suffice, he opened the book and read from Genesis the story of the angels who visited Abraham, and in receipt of his hospitality, assured him that by the time they came again, his wife, Sarah, would have borne him a son, “Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?”

He glanced up briefly at that line, and his eyes met mine. He said, “Mmphm,” in the back of his throat and ended with “Is any thing too hard for the Lord? At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son.”

I heard a tiny snigger from somewhere behind me, but it was instantly drowned by the final verse: “Then Sarah denied, saying I laughed not: for she was afraid. And he said, Nay; but thou didst laugh.”

Jamie closed the book with neat decision, handed it to Roger, and sat down beside me, folding away his spectacles.

“I dinna ken how people can think God doesna have a wicked sense o’ humor,” he whispered to me.

I was saved from reply by Roger, announcing that they would try a brief hymn, and how many here were familiar with “Jesus Shall Reign”? Seeing a satisfactory show of hands, he started them off, and while his voice cracked like a broken cup in the midst of the first line, enough of them did know the hymn to keep them going, with Roger measuring the pitch with a flattened hand, and managing the first few words of each verse.

Even if it hadn’t been ninety degrees and a thousand percent humidity in the small room, I would have been wringing wet in sheer sympathy with Roger.

Bree had brought a canteen, and now rose and handed it to him. He drank deeply, breathed, and wiped a sleeve across his face.

“Aye,” he said, voice still very rough, but working. “I’ve asked my wife to read a bit from the New Testament for ye.” He gestured to Brianna, who was flushed from the warmth of the room, but now went significantly pinker. She looked gravely round the room, though, making eye contact, and then without preliminary opened Jamie’s small green Bible and read the passage describing the wedding feast at Cana, where Jesus, at the behest of his mother, had saved the bridegroom from humiliation by changing water into wine.

She read well, in a strong, clear voice, and sat down to nods of somewhat grudging acceptance. Roger, who had sat during the reading, stood up and—once more—cleared his throat.

“As ye can tell … I won’t be able to talk for long. So the sermon will be short.” That seemed agreeable to the congregation, who all nodded and settled themselves.

“I know ye mostly all heard Mr. Cunningham talk this morning, and ye were moved by his testimony. So was I.” His voice was a sandpaper rasp, but it was understandable. A hum of response, and sober nods.

“It’s important to hear of great events, of revelations and of miracles. These remind us of the greatness of God, and His glory. But most of us—” He paused to breathe. “Most of us don’t live life in situations of great danger or adventure. We aren’t called upon so often to make a grand gesture … to be heroes. Though we have a few among us.” He smiled at them, meeting eyes here and there in the crowd.

“But each one of us is called to live our lives in the smaller moments; to do kindness, to risk our feelings, to take a chance on someone else, to meet the needs of the people we care for. Because God is everywhere, and lives in all of us. Those small moments are His. And He will make of those small things glory … and let His … greatness … shine in … in you.”

He barely made it through the last line, forcing air to support each word, and had to stop, mouth half open, struggling for breath.

“Amen,” said Jamie, in his most decided voice, and the people chorused “Amen!” with great enthusiasm.

Roger was instantly submerged by well-wishers mobbing up to the front. I saw Brianna, off to one side, smiling through tears, and it dimly occurred to me that I was doing the same thing.

I’D THOUGHT THAT most people would have lost their appetite for religion after the first two rounds, and at least half of them did head back to their homes for dinner, still discussing the virtues and defects of the rival liturgies. But a good twenty people—not counting our family—came back down through the woods in the late afternoon, and—in some cases, visibly girding their loins—prepared to enter the Meeting House once more, clearly wondering what the hell they were about to encounter.

Rachel and Jenny had rearranged the benches so that they stood in a square, facing into the center of the room. In the center was my small instrument table, now holding a jug of water and a tin cup.

Rachel herself stood by the door to welcome people, with Jenny and Ian at her elbows.

“I bid thee welcome, Friend McHugh, and thy family with thee,” she said to Sean McHugh. “It is our custom that women sit on one side of the room and men the other.” She smiled at Mairi McHugh. “So as thee is the first woman, thee may take thy choice.”

“Oh. Well, then. Er … thank thee? Is that right?” she whispered to her husband.

“How would I know?” he asked reasonably. “Do we say ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ when we’re here?” he asked Rachel, who, with a straight face, told them that they needn’t use Plain Speech unless the spirit moved them to do so, but that no one would laugh if they did.

I heard a murmur of relief from the people behind me, and a slight relaxation as the very large McHugh boys passed gingerly through the door, one at a time.

Jamie and I waited until everyone went in.

“Ye’ll do fine, lass,” Jamie said to Rachel, patting her shoulder as he turned to go in.

“Oh, I don’t mean to do anything,” she assured him. “Unless I am moved by the spirit to speak, in which case, I imagine I’ll say something suitable.”

“That doesna necessarily mean she willna start a stramash,” Ian muttered in my ear. “The spirit tends to be very free wi’ its opinions.”

SUPPER WAS SIMPLE, because there had been no one to stay at home and cook it during the day. I’d made a huge kettle of milky corn chowder in the morning, with onions, bacon, and sliced potatoes to fill it out, and after the usual obsessive checking of hearth and coals had covered the cauldron and left it to simmer, along with a prayer that the house would not burn down in our absence. There was bread from yesterday, and four cold apple pies for pudding, with a little cheese.

“’Snot a pudding,” Mandy had said, frowning when she heard me say that. “Issa pie!”

“True, darling,” I said. “It’s just an English manner of speech, to call all desserts ‘pudding.’”

“Why?”

“Because the English dinna ken any better,” Jamie told her.

“Says the Scot who has ‘creamed crud’ for his dessert,” I replied, making Jem and Mandy roll on the floor with laughter, repeating “creamed crud” to each other whenever they paused for breath.

Germain, who had been eating creamed curd for pudding—and pronouncing it “crud” in the Scottish fashion—since he was born, shook his head at them and sighed in a worldly fashion, glancing at Fanny to share his condescension. Fanny, who had likely not encountered anything beyond bread-and-butter or pie in the dessert line, looked confused.

“Regardless,” I said, ladling chowder into bowls. “Get the bread, will you please, Jem? Regardless,” I repeated, “it’s good to be able to sit down to supper, isn’t it? It was rather a long day,” I added, smiling at Roger and then at Rachel.

“Thee was wonderful, Roger,” Rachel said, smiling at him. “I hadn’t heard of lined singing before. Had thee, Ian?”

“Oh, aye. There was a wee Presbyterian kirk on Skye that I stopped by wi’ my da once, when I went with him to buy a sheep. There’s nothing else to do on Skye on Sunday,” he explained. “Kirk, I mean, not buying sheep.”

“It seems familiar,” I remarked, shaking a large pat of cold butter out of its mold. “That kind of singing, I mean, not Skye. But I don’t know why it should.”

Roger smiled faintly. He couldn’t talk above a whisper, but happiness glowed in his eyes.

“African slaves,” he said, barely audible. “They do it. Call and response, it’s called sometimes. Did ye maybe … hear them at River Run?”

“Oh. Yes, perhaps,” I said, a little dubiously. “But it seems more … recent?” A lift of one dark eyebrow indicated that he took my meaning as to “recent.”

“Aye.” He took up his beer and took a deep swallow. “Aye. Black singers, then others … took it up. It’s one of”—he glanced at Fanny and then Rachel—“one of the roots you see, in, um, more modern music.”

Rock ’n’ roll, I supposed he meant, or possibly rhythm and blues—I was no kind of a music scholar.

“Speaking of music, Rachel, you have a beautiful voice,” Bree said, leaning across the table to wave a bit of bread under Oggy’s nose.

“I thank thee, Brianna,” Rachel said, and laughed. “So does the dog. She added greatly to our first meeting, though perhaps she gave substance to the argument that singing in meeting is a distraction.” She took the bread and let Oggy squash it in his fist. “I was pleased that so many people chose to share our meeting—though I suppose it was mostly curiosity. Now that they know the terrible truth about Friends, they likely won’t come again.”

“What’s the terrible truth about Friends, Auntie Rachel?” Germain asked, fascinated.

“That we’re boring,” Rachel told him. “Did thee not notice?”

“Well, except for Bluebell, it was kind of boring,” Jem agreed, poking his bowl of chowder in search of crispy bits of bacon. “But not in a bad way,” he added hastily, catching Ian’s eye upon him. “Just—you know—peaceful.” He slurped soup and lowered his head.

“That’s the point, is it not? Have we any pepper?” Jamie had salted his soup and passed the cellar down the table, but the pepper mill had rolled away and fallen to the floor.

“Yes, we have. Oh—Bluebell’s got it. Here, dog …” I bent to reach under the table, where Bluey was sniffing cautiously at the pepper mill. She sneezed explosively, several times, and I came up with the snot-spattered pepper mill, which I gingerly wiped on my apron.

“You want to watch that pepper, dog,” Roger rasped, peering under the table. “Bad for your vocal cords.”

Bluebell uttered an amiable garoo, and wagged her tail in reply. Rachel had assured Fanny that Bluebell—who had been left outside during the morning services to ramble in the woods with other dogs who had accompanied their owners—was welcome to come to meeting, too, a courtesy Bluey had repaid lavishly by joining in enthusiastically on the chorus of the simple hymn Rachel had been moved to sing. She’d told me that meetings generally had no music, owing to a presumption that it would interfere with the spontaneousness of worship—but that it was acceptable for one person to sing, if they felt so moved. It had certainly done as much as the captain’s and Roger’s sermons to lift the spirits of the congregation.

“I liked your meeting, a leannan,” Jamie said, smiling at Rachel as he ground a generous amount of pepper over his soup. “And I think ye’ll be surprised, come next week. Folk talk, ken.”

“I do,” she assured him. “And the Lord knows what they will say. But thank thee, Jamie, for coming—and all of you, too,” she added, smiling round to include me, Bree and Roger, and the assorted children, all of whom had been compelled to attend all three services. Unlike at the earlier services, though, they had been allowed and even encouraged to talk.

Rachel had explained the basic working of a Friends meeting to the attendees—that you sat in silence, listening to your inner light, unless or until the spirit moved you to say something—whether that was a worry you wished to share, a prayer you wanted to make, a song to sing, or a thought you might want to discuss.

She’d added that while many meetings both began and ended in silence, she felt moved of the spirit to begin today’s meeting by singing, and while she did not pretend to do so with the skill of Friend Cunningham or Friend Roger (the MacKenzies had come, of course, but the Cunninghams had not, which didn’t surprise me), if anyone wished to join her, she would be grateful for their company.

A good deal of warmth having been enkindled by the song—and Bluebell’s contribution—everyone had sat quietly for a few minutes. I’d felt Jamie, beside me, draw himself up a little, as though having made a decision, and he’d then told the congregation about Silvia Hardman, a Quaker woman he’d met by chance at her house near Philadelphia, and who had cared for him for several days, his back having chosen to incapacitate him.

“Besides her great kindness,” he said, “I was taken by her wee daughters. They were as kind as their mother—but it was their names I liked most. Patience, Prudence, and Chastity, they were called. So I’d meant to ask ye, Rachel—do Friends often call their children after virtues?”

“They do,” she said, and smiling at Jemmy, who had started to twitch a little, added, “Jeremiah—if thee wasn’t called Jeremiah, what name would thee choose? If thee were to be named for a virtue, I mean.”

“Whassa virtue?” Mandy had asked, frowning at her brother as though expecting him to sprout one momentarily.

“Something good,” Germain had told her. “Like …” He glanced dubiously at Rachel for confirmation. “… Peace? Or maybe Goodness?”

“Exactly,” she’d said, nodding gravely. “What name would thee choose, Germain, while Jemmy is thinking? Piety? Or perhaps Obedience?”

“No!” he’d said, horrified, and amid the general laughter, people had begun proposing noms-de-vertu, both for themselves and for various family members, with ensuing outbursts of laughter or—once or twice—heated discussions regarding the appropriateness of a suggestion.

“You started it, Da,” Brianna said now, amused. “But I noticed you didn’t pick a virtuous name at the meeting.”

“He’s already got the names of three Scottish kings,” Roger protested. “He’ll be gettin’ above himself if ye give him any more to play with.”

“You didn’t pick one, either, did you, Mama?” I could see the wheels turning in Bree’s mind, and moved to forestall her.

“Er … how about Gentleness?” I said, causing many of those at the table to burst into laughter.

“Is Ruthlessness a virtue?” Jamie asked, grinning at me.

“Probably not,” I said, rather coldly. “Though I suppose it depends on the circumstances.”

“True,” he said, and, taking my hand, kissed it. “Resolve, then—or maybe Resolution?”

“Well, Resolution Fraser does have a certain ring to it,” I said. “I have one for you, too.”

“Oh, aye?”

“Endurance.”

He didn’t stop smiling, but a certain look of ruefulness came into his eyes.

“Aye,” he said. “That’ll do.”

35 Ambsace

JAMIE TOOK THE LETTER back from me and read it over again, frowning. We were sitting on a log just outside my garden, and now I moved closer to him in order to look over his shoulder. My stomach had clenched into a knot at the word “captured” and rose into my throat at the word “hang.”

“Stony Point,” I said, striving for calmness. “Do you know where that is?” Jamie shook his head, eyes still fixed on the paper.

“Somewhere in New York, I think.” He handed me the letter. “His wife,” he said. “D’ye think Dottie kens where Denny is? Or d’ye think she’s maybe with him?”

“In prison?” I asked, incredulous. It had been nearly a year since we’d last seen Denzell and Dottie, and at sight of the words “Doctor Hunter” my hand had gone involuntarily to my side. The small scar where Denny had removed a musket ball from my liver after the Battle of Monmouth had healed well, but I still felt a deep twinge in my side when I turned to reach for something—and I still woke suddenly now and then in the middle of the night with a sense of deep confusion, my body vibrating with the memory of impact. The body forms internal scars as well as surface scars when a wound heals—and so does the mind.

“Perhaps.” The frown had faded, but he still looked troubled. “In the town, at least. She could help him,” he added, in answer to my puzzled expression. “Food, medicine, blankets. He got a message out, aye?” He waved the paper.

Dottie could be in the prison, at that, I realized, though probably not as a prisoner herself. It wasn’t unknown for wives—and sometimes children—to go to live with an imprisoned husband, going out by day to beg for food or perhaps to find a little work. Prisoners were normally fed poorly and sometimes not fed at all, being forced to rely on help from families or friends, or from charitably inclined souls in the community, if they were imprisoned far from home. Likely wives wouldn’t be allowed in a military prison, though …

“Have you got any paper in your study?” I asked, sliding off the log.

“Aye. Why?” He folded the letter, raising a brow at me.

“I’m going to write to John Grey,” I said, trying to sound as though this were both a simple and an obvious thing to do. Well, it was obvious. Or so I thought.

“No, you’re not.” He said it calmly, though his answer had come so fast, I thought he’d said it from pure reflex. Then I looked at his eyes. I straightened my back, folded my arms, and fixed him with a stare of my own.

“Would you care to rephrase that?” I said politely.

One of the benefits of long marriage is that you can see quite clearly where some conversations are likely to lead—and occasionally you can sidestep the booby traps and choose another path by silent mutual assent. He pursed his lips a little, looking thoughtfully up at me. Then he took a deep breath and nodded.

“Dorothea will write to her father, if she hasna done it already,” he said reasonably. He tucked Judah’s letter into his sporran and stood up. “His Grace will do whatever can be done.”

“We don’t know that Dottie can write to her father. She may not be near Denzell—she may not even know that he’s in prison! For that matter, we don’t know where Hal—er, I mean the duke—is, either,” I added. Bloody hell, I shouldn’t have called Hal by his first name … “But he and John can both be found, at least. The British army certainly knows where they are.”

“By the time I sent a message to Savannah or New York, Denzell will likely have been released, or paroled. Or moved.”

“Or died.” I unfolded my arms. “For heaven’s sake, Jamie. If anybody knows what the conditions are like inside a British prison, it’s you!”

He’d turned to go, but at this, his head whipped round like a snake’s.

“Aye, I do.”

Aye, he did. Prison is where he met John …

“Besides,” I said, trying to scramble back onto safer ground, “I said I’d write to him. Denzell’s more my friend than yours. You needn’t be involved at all.”

The blood was rising up the column of his neck, never a good sign.

“I dinna mean to be ‘involved,’” he said, handling the word as though it had fleas. “And I dinna mean you to be ‘involved’ with John Grey. At all,” he added as an emphatic footnote, and snatched up the shovel with which he’d been digging the new well for the garden, in a manner suggesting that he would have liked nothing better than to crown John Grey with it—or, failing that, me.

“I’m not suggesting any sort of involvement,” I said, with a fair assumption of calm.

“It’s a wee bit late for that,” he said, with a nasty emphasis that sent the blood up into my own cheeks.

“For God’s sake! You know what happened. And how. You know I—”

“Aye, I ken what happened. He laid ye down in his bed, spread your thighs, and swived ye. Ye think I’m ever going to hear the man’s name and not think of that?” He said something very rude in Gaelic featuring John’s testicles, drove the blade of his shovel into the ground, then pulled it up again.

I breathed slowly through my nose, lips pressed firmly together.

“I thought,” I said after a moment, “that we’d done with that.”

I had rather thought that. Apparently that had been wishful thinking on my part. And quite suddenly, I remembered what he’d said—well, one of the things he’d said—when he’d come to find me in Bartram’s Garden, he risen from the dead and smelling of cabbages, me mud-stained and shattered with joy.

“I have loved ye since I saw you, Sassenach. I will love ye forever. It doesna matter if ye sleep with the whole English army—well, no,” he had corrected himself, “it would matter, but it wouldna stop me loving you.”

I drew a slightly calmer breath, though my mind went right ahead and presented me with something else he’d said, later in that conversation:

“I don’t say that I dinna mind this, because I do. And I don’t say that I’ll no make a fuss about it later, because I likely will.”

He moved close to me and looked down into my face, blue eyes dark with intent.

“Did I tell ye once that I am a jealous man?”

“You did, but …”

“And did I tell ye that I grudged every hour ye’d spent in another man’s bed?”

I took a deep breath to squash down the hasty words I could feel boiling up.

“You did,” I said, through only slightly clenched teeth.

He glared at me for a long moment.

“I meant it,” he said. “I still mean it. Ye’ll do what ye damn please—God knows, ye always do—but don’t pretend ye dinna ken what I feel about it!”

He turned on his heel and stalked off, shovel over his shoulder like a rifle.

My fists were clenched so hard I could feel my nails cutting into my palms. I would have thrown a rock at him, but he was already out of range and moving fast, shoulders bunched with anger.

“What about William?” I bellowed after him. “If he’s ‘involved’ with John, so are you, you pigheaded Scot!”

The shoulders bunched harder, but he didn’t turn round. His shout floated back to me, though.

“Damn William!”

A SMALL COUGH from behind me distracted me from the mental list of synonyms for “bloody Scot!” I was compiling. I turned round to find Fanny standing there, her apron bulging with dirt-covered turnips and her sweet face fixed in a troubled frown, this directed at Jamie, who was vanishing into the trees by the creek.

“What has Will-iam done, Mrs. Fraser?” she asked, glancing up at me from under her cap. I smiled, in spite of the recent upheaval. Her speech was very fluent now, save when she was upset or talking fast, but she often still had that slight hesitation between the syllables of William’s name.

“William hasn’t done anything amiss,” I assured her. “Not that I know of. We haven’t seen him since … er …” I broke off an instant too late.

“Jane’s funeral,” she said soberly, and looked down into the purple-and-white mass of turnips. “I thought … maybe Mr. Fraser had had a letter. From William. Or maybe about him,” she added, the frown returning. She nodded toward the trees. “He’s angry.”

“He’s Scottish,” I amended, with a sigh. “Which means stubborn. Also unreasonable, intolerant, contumelious, froward, pigheaded, and a few other objectionable things. But don’t worry; it really isn’t anything to do with William. Here, let’s put the turnips in the tub there and cover them with water. That will keep the tops from wilting. I’m making bashed neeps for supper, but I want to cook the tops with bacon grease and serve them alongside. If anything will make Highlanders eat a leafy green vegetable, bacon grease ought to do it.”

She nodded as though this made sense and let down her apron slowly, so the turnips rolled out into the tub in a tumbling cascade, dark-green tops waving like pom-poms.

“You probably shouldn’t have told him.” Fanny spoke with an almost clinical detachment.

“Told who what?” I said, picking up a water bucket and sloshing it over the muddy turnips. “Get another bucket, will you?”

She did, heaved the water into the tub, then set down the bucket, looked up at me, and said seriously, “I know what ‘swived’ means.”

I felt as though she’d just kicked me sharply in the shin.

“Do you, indeed?” I managed, picking up my working knife. “I, um … suppose you would.” She’d spent half her short life in a brothel in Philadelphia; she probably knew a lot of other words not in the vocabulary of the average twelve-year-old.

“It’s too bad,” she said, turning to fetch another bucket; the boys had filled all of them this morning; there were six left. “I like his lordship a lot. He wath—was so good to me and—and Jane. I like Mr. Fraser, too,” she added, though with a certain reserve.

“I’m sure he appreciates your good opinion,” I said gravely, wondering, What the hell? “And yes, his lordship is a very fine man. He’s always been a good friend to us.” I put a bit of emphasis on the “us,” and saw that register.

“Oh.” A small frown disturbed the perfect skin of her forehead. “I thup-suppose that makes it worse. That you went to bed with him,” she explained, lest I have missed her point. “Men don’t like to share a woman. Unless it’s an ambsace.”

“An ambsace?” I was beginning to wonder how I might extricate myself from this conversation with any sort of dignity. I was also beginning to feel rather alarmed.

“That’s what Mrs. Abbott called it. When two men want to do things to a girl at the same time. It costs more than it would to have two girls, because they often damage her. Mostly just bruises,” she added fairly. “But still.”

“Ah.” I paused for a moment, then picked up the last bucket and finished filling the tub. The smaller turnips bobbed on the surface of the water, hairy roots shedding swirls of dirt. I looked down at Fanny, who met my eyes with an expression of calm interest. I’d really rather she didn’t share her interesting thoughts with anyone else on the Ridge, and I was reasonably sure that Jamie would feel the same.

“Come sit down with me inside for a moment, will you, Fanny?” Not waiting for acquiescence, I beckoned her to follow me back to the house. I pushed aside the canvas sheet that was substituting for the front door of our emergent house and led the way into the cavernous space of the kitchen. The canvas covering the door stirred gently with the sound of sails, and the space had a soothing dimness, broken only by light from the open back door and the two windows that looked out onto the well and the garden path.

We had a table and benches, but in addition there were two serviceable three-legged stools, one rather decrepit wooden chair that Maggie MacAllan had given me in payment for midwifing the birth of her granddaughter, two small kegs of salt fish, and several packing cases that hadn’t yet been broken down for their lumber, whose presence increased the ambient illusion of being in the hold of a ship under sail. I motioned Fanny to one stool and took the other, sighing with the pleasure of taking the weight off my feet.

Fanny sat, too, looking mildly apprehensive, and I smiled, in hopes of reassuring her.

“You really needn’t worry about William,” I said. “He’s a very resourceful young man. He’s just … a bit confused, I think. And maybe angry, but I’m sure he’ll get over that soon.”

“Oh,” Fanny said slowly, “you mean nobody told him that Mr. Fraser is his father, but then he found out?” She frowned at her clasped hands, then looked up at me. “I think I’d be angry, too. But why is Mr. Fraser angry? Did he give William away?”

“Ah … not exactly.” I looked at Fanny in some concern. Within a very few minutes, without knowing it, she’d managed to touch on a good many of the family secrets, including the very hot potato of my relations with Lord John.

“Mr. Fraser was a Jacobite—do you know what that means?”

She nodded uncertainly.

“The Jacobites were supporters of James Stuart, and fought against the King of England,” I explained. “They lost that war.” A hollow place opened under my ribs as I spoke. So few words for such a shattering of so very many lives.

“Mr. Fraser went to prison afterward; he wasn’t able to take care of William. Lord John was his friend, and he raised William as his son, because neither of them thought that Mr. Fraser would ever be released, and Lord John thought that he would never have children of his own.” I caught the distant echo of Frank’s advice, like a spider’s whisper behind the empty hearth: Always stick to the truth, as far as possible …

“Was Lord John wounded?” Fanny asked. “In the war?”

“Wounded—oh, because he couldn’t have children, you mean? I don’t know—he was certainly wounded, though.” I’d seen his scars. I cleared my throat. “Let me tell you something, Fanny. About myself.”

Her eyes widened in curiosity. They were a soft light brown gone almost black as her pupils went large in the shadows of the kitchen.

“I fought in a war, too,” I said. “Not the same war; another one, in a different country—before I met either Mr. Fraser or Lord John. I was a—healer; I took care of wounded men, and I spent a lot of time among soldiers, and in bad places.” I took a breath, fragments of those times and places coming back. I knew the memories must show on my face, and I let them.

“I’ve seen very bad things,” I said simply. “I know you have, too.”

Her chin trembled slightly and she looked away, her soft mouth drawing in on itself. I reached out slowly and touched her shoulder.

“You can say anything to me,” I said, with slight emphasis on “anything.” “You don’t ever have to tell me—or Mr. Fraser—anything that you don’t want to. But if there are things that you want to talk about—your sister, maybe, or anything else—you can. Anyone in the family—me, Mr. Fraser, Brianna, or Mr. MacKenzie … You can tell any of us anything you need to. We won’t be shocked—” Actually, we probably would be, I thought, but no matter. “And perhaps we can help, if you’re troubled about anything. But—”

She looked up at that, instantly alert, unsettling me a little. This child had had a lot of experience in detecting and interpreting tones of voice, probably as a matter of survival.

“But,” I repeated firmly, “not everyone who lives on the Ridge has had such experiences, and many of them have never met anyone who has. Most of them have lived in small villages in Scotland, many of them aren’t educated. They would be shocked, perhaps, if you told them very much about … where you lived. How you and your sister—”

“They’ve never met whores?” she said, and blinked. “I think some of the men must have.”

“Doubtless you’re right,” I said, trying to keep my grip on the conversation. “But it’s the women who talk.”

She nodded soberly. I could see a thought come to her; she looked away for an instant, blinked, then looked back at me, a thoughtful squint to her eyes.

“What?” I said.

“Mrs. MacDonald’s mother says you’re a witch,” she replied. “Mrs. MacDonald tried to make her stop, when she saw I was listening, but the old lady doesn’t stop talking about anything, ever, except when she’s eating.”

I’d met Janet MacDonald’s mother, Grannie Campbell, once or twice, and was not overly surprised to hear this.

“I don’t suppose she’s the only one,” I said, a little tersely. “But I’m suggesting that perhaps you should be careful about what you say to people outside the family about your life in Philadelphia.”

She nodded, accepting what I’d said.

“It doesn’t matter that Grannie Campbell says you’re a witch,” she said thoughtfully. “Because Mr. MacDonald is afraid of Mr. Fraser. He tried to make Grannie stop talking about you,” she added, and shrugged. “Anyway, nobody’s afraid of me.”

Give them time, child, I thought, eyeing her.

“I wouldn’t say that people are afraid of Mr. Fraser, really—but they do respect him,” I said carefully.

She ducked her head a little, indicating that she knew better but wasn’t going to argue with me.

“Sometimes,” she said, “one of the girls would find a protector. Once in a very long while, he would even marry her”—she sighed briefly at the thought—“but usually he just would make sure that she had good food and nice clothes, and nobody would hurt her or use her badly.”

I didn’t know quite where this was going, but tilted my head inquiringly.

“When my sister met William again near Philadelphia, he th-said that he would take her and me both under his protection. She was so happy.” Her small, clear voice was suddenly thick with tears. “If—if we could have stayed wif him …”

Jamie had told me exactly what had happened to Fanny’s sister, Jane—and had done so in the bare minimum of words, his terseness betraying just how deeply it had shocked him, and how deeply it had wounded both him and William. I got up and knelt down by Fanny, gathering her into my arms. She wept almost silently, in the way of a child hiding grief or pain for fear of attracting punishment, and I held her tight, my own eyes stinging with tears.

“Fanny,” I whispered at last. “You’re safe. We won’t let anything happen to you, ever again.”

She hiccuped and shuddered briefly, but didn’t cling to me. She didn’t move away, either; just sat on her stool, quiet and fragile as a wounded bird, her feathers fluffed to keep what life she still had.

“William,” she said, so low I could hardly hear her. “He asked Mr. Fraser to look after me. But … Mr. Fraser doesn’t have to. I’m not weally under hith protection.”

“You are, Fanny,” I said, into the limp linen smell of her cap, and patted her gently. “William gave you to him, and—”

“And now he’s angwy with Will-iam.” She pulled away, knuckling the tears from her eyes.

“Oh, dear God. You mean you’re afraid that we’d put you out, because Mr. Fraser has a—um—difference of opinion with William? No. No, really, Fanny. Believe me, that won’t happen.”

She gave me a doubtful look, but nodded dutifully. Clearly she didn’t believe me.

“Mr. Fraser is a man of his word.”

She looked at me for a long moment, a frown puckering the soft skin between her brows. Then she stood up abruptly, wiped her sleeve under her nose, and curtsied to me. “I won’t talk to anybody,” she said. “About anything.”

36 What Lies Unseen

I HAD MADE UP my mind what to do about Denny within moments of shouting “pigheaded Scot!” at Jamie, but the ensuing conversation with Fanny had momentarily driven the matter out of my mind, and what with one thing and another, it was late the next afternoon before I managed to find Brianna alone.

Sean McHugh and his two biggest lads had come in the morning—with their hammers—to help with the roofing of the kitchen and the framing of the third story; Jamie and Roger had been up there with them, and the effect of five large men armed with hammers was much like that of a platoon of overweight woodpeckers marching in close formation overhead. They’d been at it all morning—causing everyone else to flee the house—but had broken for a late lunch down by the creek, and I’d seen Bree go back inside with Mandy.

I found her in my rudimentary surgery, sitting in the late sun that fell through the big window, the largest window in the New House. There was no glass in it yet—there might not be glass before spring, if then—but the flood of unobstructed afternoon light was glorious, glowing from the new yellow-pine boards of the floor, the soft butternut of Bree’s homespun skirt, and the fiery nimbus of her hair, half-bound in a long, loose plait.

She was drawing, and watching her absorbed in the paper pinned to her lap desk, I felt a deep envy of her gift—not for the first time. I would have given a lot to be able to capture what I saw now, Brianna, bronze and fire in the deep clear light, head bent as she watched Mandy on the floor, chanting to herself as she built an edifice of wooden blocks and the small, heavy glass bottles I used for tinctures and dried herbs.

“What are you thinking, Mama?”

“What did you say?” I looked up at Bree, blinking, and her mouth curled up.

“I said,” she repeated patiently, “what are you thinking? You have that look.”

“Which look is that?” I asked warily. It was an article of faith amongst the members of my family that I couldn’t keep secrets; that everything I thought was visible on my face. They weren’t entirely right, but they weren’t completely wrong, either. What never occurred to them was just how transparent they were to me.

Brianna tilted her head to one side, eyes narrowed as she examined my face. I smiled pleasantly, putting out a hand to intercept Mandy as she trotted past me, three medicine bottles in hand.

“You can’t take Grannie’s bottles outside, sweetheart,” I said, removing them deftly from her chubby grasp. “Grannie needs them to put medicine in.”

“But I’m gonna catch leeches wif Jemmy and Aidan and Germain!”

“You couldn’t get even one leech into a bottle that size,” I said, standing up and placing the bottles on a shelf out of reach. I scanned the next shelf down and found a slightly chipped pottery bowl with a lid.

“Here, take this.” I wrapped a small linen towel around the bowl and tucked it into the pocket of her pinafore. “Be sure to put in a little mud—a little mud, all right? No more than a pinch—and some of the waterweed you find the leeches in. That will keep them happy.”

I watched her trot out the door, black curls bouncing, then braced myself and turned back to Bree.

“Well, if you must know, I was thinking how much I should tell you.”

She laughed, though with sympathy.

“That’s the look, all right. You always look like a heron staring into the water when you have something you can’t quite decide whether to tell somebody.”

“A heron?”

“Beady-eyed and intent,” she explained. “A contemplative killer. I’ll draw you doing it one of these days, so you can see.”

“Contemplative … I’ll take your word for it. I don’t think you’ve ever met Denzell Hunter, have you?”

She shook her head. “No. Ian mentioned him once or twice, I think—a Quaker doctor? Isn’t he Rachel’s brother?”

“That’s him. To keep it to the essentials for the moment, he’s a wonderful doctor, a good friend of mine, and besides being Rachel’s brother, he’s married to the daughter of the Duke of Pardloe—who happens to be Lord John Grey’s elder brother.”

“Lord John?” Her face, already glowing with light, broke into a brilliant smile. “My favorite person—outside the family. Have you heard from him? How is he?”

“Fine, to the best of my knowledge. I saw him briefly in Savannah a few months ago—the British army is still there, so it’s likely he is, too.” I’d thought out what to say, in hopes of avoiding anything awkward, but a script is not a conversation. “I was thinking that you might write to him.”

“I suppose I might,” she said, tilting her head and looking at me sideways, one red brow raised. “Right this minute?”

“Well … soonish. The thing is, Jamie’s just had a letter from one of his aides—from the army—I’ll tell you about that later. Anyway, the gist of it is that Denzell Hunter was captured by the British army and is being held in a military prison camp at Stony Point.”

“Captured doing what?” She sat up straighter and set her lap desk aside. She hadn’t been drawing a sentimental portrait of her daughter, I saw—it looked like a floor plan of something, embellished with small marginal sketches of apes. “You said he’s a Quaker?”

I sighed. “Yes. He’s what they call a Fighting Quaker, but he doesn’t fight. He joined the Continental army as a surgeon, though, and was evidently scooped up off a battlefield somewhere.”

“Sounds like an interesting man,” she remarked, the brow still high. “What does he have to do with me writing to Lord John?”

I explained, as briefly as possible, the connections and possibilities, concluding, “So I—we—want to see that the duke knows where Denny is. Even if he can’t get him released directly—and knowing Hal, I wouldn’t bet against him doing exactly that—he can make sure that Denny’s well treated, and naturally he’d find Dottie and see she’s taken care of.”

Bree was watching me with a curiously analytic look on her face, as though she were estimating the shear forces on the girders of a bridge.

“What?” I said. “John was a good friend of yours. Before, I mean. I should think you’d want to write to him in any case.”

“Oh, I do,” she assured me. “I’m just wondering why you aren’t writing to him. Or for that matter, why aren’t you writing to ‘Hal’? Since you’re on first-name terms, I mean.”

Damn. I couldn’t outright lie; questions of honesty aside, she’d detect it instantly. Stick to the truth as much as possible, then …

“Well, it’s Jamie,” I said reluctantly. It was, but I felt some scruples about dropping him in it with Bree. “He had a falling-out with the Greys a little while ago. They’re not on speaking terms, and if I were to write to John or Hal, he’d … take it amiss,” I ended, rather weakly.

Being her father’s daughter, she instantly put her finger on the crux of the matter.

“What sort of falling-out?” she asked. The analytical look had gone, subsumed by curiosity.

Well, that was it. I could either say, “Ask your father,” and she bloody would, or I could bite the bullet and hope for the best. While I was still trying to make up my mind, though, she went on to the next thought.

“If Da would mind about your writing to Lord John, why wouldn’t he mind me doing it?” she asked reasonably. She’d laid the drawing on the counter, where I could see it clearly. The little apes all looked like Mandy.

“Because he theoretically wouldn’t know I’d told you there was a falling-out to begin with.” And with luck, he might not find out you’d written it. The room was warm with sunlight, but I was feeling uncomfortably hot, my clothes prickling and wilting on my skin.

“Okay,” she said, after a moment’s thought, and reached for a quill. “I’ll do it right now. But”—she said, pointing the quill at me—“unless you tell me what this is all about, I’m asking Lord John. He’ll tell me.” He bloody well might. He’d told Jamie, for God’s sake …

“Fine,” I said, and closed my eyes. “He married me, when we thought Jamie was dead.” Total silence. I opened my eyes to find Bree staring at me, both eyebrows raised, her face completely blank with incomprehension. And then I remembered my conversation with Fanny. I thought she would keep quiet about the conclusions she’d drawn. But if she didn’t …

“And I slept with him. But it’s not what you think …”

At this inauspicious moment, Jamie walked past the window with Sean McHugh. They were talking, both of them looking upward, Jamie pointing at something on the upper story. Brianna made a noise as though she’d tried to swallow a pawpaw whole, and Jamie glanced in at us, startled.

I felt as though I had swallowed a hand grenade, but I hastily pounded Brianna on the back, making an “It’s nothing” gesture at Jamie. He frowned, but McHugh said something and he glanced away, then back at me, still frowning. I waved him away more firmly, but he said, “A moment, a charaid,” over his shoulder to Sean and strode toward the window.

“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” I muttered under my breath, and thought I heard a strangled laugh from Brianna.

“Is the lass all right?” Jamie asked, thrusting his head through the window and lifting his chin at Bree, who was huddled on her stool, gasping a little.

“I—fine,” she croaked. “Swallowed s-something …” She waved feebly at the counter, where a mug of something sat among the scatter of dried herbs and crockery.

He lifted one eyebrow but didn’t pursue the matter, instead turning to me.

“Can ye come up? Geordie’s smashed his thumb wi’ a hammer. He says it’s naught, but it looks sideways to me.”

I felt as though I’d just run a mile on a full stomach.

“All right,” I said, wiping my sweaty palms on my apron. I glanced over my shoulder. “Bree—I’ll be right back.” The scarlet was fading from her face.

“Mm-hm.” She coughed and took a deep breath. “Don’t fall off the roof.”

BRIANNA PICKED UP the sketch of a potential schoolhouse and stared at it for a minute, but she wasn’t seeing windows and benches. She was—with a mixture of horror and profound curiosity—envisioning her mother in bed with Lord John Grey.

“How on earth did that happen?” she asked the sketch. She set it down again and turned to look out the window, now empty and tranquil, with its view of the long slope that fell away below the house, filled with flowering grass and clumps of dogwood. “And how in bloody hell am I ever going to be able to look John Grey in the eye next time I see him?”

For that matter, looking her father in the eye … Okay, she could see why Da would have a problem with her mother writing to John Grey. Despite her perturbation, a shocked giggle escaped her and she clapped a hand to her mouth.

“I do like women,” he’d told her once, exasperated. “I admire and honor them, and for several of the sex I feel considerable affection—your mother among them, though I doubt the sentiment is reciprocated.” Her diaphragm gave a small, disconcerted lurch at that. “Oh, really?” she murmured, recalling his last remark on the subject: “I do not, however, seek pleasure in their beds. Do I speak plainly enough?”

“Loud and clear, your lordship,” she said aloud, torn between shock and amusement. People changed, of course—but surely not that much. She shook her head. Her breathing had slowed, but her bodice still felt too tight. She put a finger in the top of her stays to pull them out a little, and then felt the tremble in her chest.

“Oh, bloody hell …” she whispered, and grabbed the edge of the stool to keep from falling. All the blood had left her head and her vision had gone white. Her heart had stopped again. Literally. Stopped.

One … two … three … beat, goddammit, beat! In panic, she thumped the heel of her hand hard against her breastbone. And then gasped when it did start beating, with shock at the startling thud in her chest, as much as with relief. And then it was off like a hare at a greyhound race, juddering in her chest, leaving her breathless and terrified, hand pressed flat to her chest.

“Stop it, stop it, stop it …” she whispered through clenched teeth. It had stopped before, the racing … it would stop again … But it didn’t.

“Bree? Where did you—Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!”

Her mother was suddenly there, snatching the crumpled paper out of her hand, seizing her with a strong arm round her waist.

“Down,” her mother said, calm and authoritative. “Sit all the way down. Yes, that’s it—” Her skirts bloomed around her as she sank to the floor, a yellowish cloud flickering through the white haze. Hands braced flat on the floor, she resisted her mother’s pressure to lie down, shaking her head.

“No.” She didn’t seem to have any connection with her voice, but she heard it, hoarse but clear. “Be okay. It’s okay.”

“All right.” A creak of boards; her mother eased down beside her, and she heard the scrape of a wooden cup against the floorboards. Warmth … her mother’s hand wrapped round her wrist, a thumb moving in search of a pulse.

Good luck with that one, she thought muzzily. But as she thought it, the racing eased. A confused halt, one or two random beats, and then her heart quietly resumed its normal operations, as though nothing had happened.

It had, though, and she lifted her head to find her mother’s eyes fixed on her face, with a look of intent thoughtfulness she knew all too well. The heron.

“I’m fine,” she said firmly, trying anyway. “Just—I just got light-headed for a minute.”

One of her mother’s brows twitched up, but Claire said nothing. Her hand was still wrapped around Brianna’s telltale wrist.

“Really. It’s nothing,” she said, detaching herself from her mother’s grip.

Each time, she’d told herself it was nothing.

“When did it start?” Claire’s eyes were normally a soft amber—except when she was being a doctor. Then they went a sharp, dark-pupiled yellow, like the eyes of a bird of prey.

“When you told me you— Jesus, did you just tell me …” Brianna got her feet under her and rose. Cautiously, but her heart went on quietly beating, just as it should. It’s nothing.

“Yes, I did. And I don’t mean this time,” her mother said dryly, rising, too. “When did it first happen?”

She debated lying, but the urge to keep denying that anything was truly amiss was fading fast against the need—the hope—of being reassured.

“Right after we came through the stones on Ocracoke. It was—I didn’t think I’d make it.” The giddiness threatened to come back with the memory of that … that … Her gorge rose suddenly, and she leaned over and threw up, a light spatter of half-digested porridge on the clean new boards of the surgery.

“Dear me.” Her mother’s voice was mild. “You aren’t pregnant, are you?”

“Don’t even think it!” She shuddered, wiping her mouth on her apron. “I can’t be.” She hadn’t even thought of the possibility, and wasn’t about to start. She was already haunted by the idea that she might die and leave Jem and Mandy …

“On Ocracoke,” she repeated, getting hold of herself. “I came out of the stones with Mandy in my arms. I couldn’t see—it was all black and white spots, and I thought I was going to faint, and then I sort of did … I was lying on the ground and I still had hold of Mandy; she was fighting to get loose and yelling, ‘Mummy, Mummy!’ but I couldn’t answer her and then I realized my heart wasn’t beating. I thought I was dying.” She smelled something sweet and pungent, and her mother wrapped Bree’s fingers around a cup and guided it to her lips.

“You’re not going to die,” her mother said, with a welcome tone of conviction. Bree nodded, wanting to believe it, even though her heart was still skipping beats, leaving moments of emptiness in her chest. She sipped the liquid; it was whisky, sweetened with honey, and with something herbal and very fragrant in it.

She closed her eyes and concentrated on taking slow sips, willing things to settle down, to go back to normal. Her surroundings were beginning to come back. The sun from the big window fell warm on her shoulders.

“How often has it happened?”

She swallowed, savoring the sweetness that was seeping into her bloodstream, and opened her eyes.

“Four times, before now. At Ocracoke, then again the next night. We were camping, on the road.” She flinched at the memory; lying rigid on the ground next to Roger, the children asleep between them. Her heart racing, fists clenched not to grab Roger’s arm and shake him awake. “That was bad—it went on for hours. Or at least it seemed like hours. It stopped finally, just before dawn.” She’d felt wrung out, limp as the dew-damp clothes that wrapped her limbs; she still remembered the terrible effort needed to rise, to put one foot in front of the other …

The next time had been a week later, on a barge in the Yadkin River, and the last before this on the road from Cross Creek to Salisbury.

“Those weren’t so bad. Just a few minutes—like this one.” She took another sip, held it in her mouth, then swallowed and looked up at her mother. “Do you know what it is?”

Her mother was wiping up the last of the vomit from the raw floorboards, lips compressed, a pair of vertical lines visible between her soft brows.

“There’s a limit to what I can say for certain, lacking an EKG,” Claire said, eyes on the cloth she was using. “But speaking very generally—it sounds as though you’re exhibiting something called atrial fibrillation. It’s not life threatening,” she added quickly, looking up and seeing the alarm on Bree’s face.

Her heart had given a sort of flopping leap at her mother’s words, and was beating now in what seemed a tentative fashion. Her knees were quivering and she sat down, quite suddenly. Her mother dropped the cloth, got down beside her, and pulled her close. Her face was half buried in her mother’s coarse gray apron, smelling of grease and rosemary, soft soap and cider. The smell of the cloth, of Mama’s body, brought helpless tears to her eyes. Maybe it wasn’t life threatening, but she could tell that it wasn’t nothing, either.

“It’s going to be all right,” her mother whispered into her hair. “It’ll be all right, baby.”

She was clutching her mother’s arm, hard, the slender bone a life raft.

“If—if anything happens—you’ll take care of the kids for me.” It wasn’t a question and her mother didn’t take it as one.

“Yes,” she said, without hesitation, and the quivering sensation eased in Bree’s chest. She was breathing hard, but there didn’t seem room for enough air.

“Okay,” she said. She could feel her fingers trembling on her mother’s arm, and with an effort let go. “Okay,” she said again, and sitting up straight, pushed her hair out of her face. “Okay. Now what?”

LUB-DUB, LUB-DUB … THE meaty sounds of a healthy heart were clear through my wooden Pinard stethoscope. Beating a little faster than normal—and no wonder—but healthy. I straightened up and Bree instantly clutched the neck of her blouse closed, her face tense.

“Your heart sounds perfect, darling,” I said. “I’m sure that it’s a bit of atrial fibrillation, but that’s just a matter of stray electrical impulses. You aren’t going to have a heart attack or anything of that sort.”

The tension in her face eased, and my own heart clenched a little.

“Well, thank God for that.” A thick lock of hair had come loose from its ribbon, and I saw that her hand was trembling as she brushed it back from her face. “But it—is it going to keep happening?”

“I don’t know.” Aside from bad news, “I don’t know” is the worst thing a doctor can say to a patient, but it’s unfortunately the most usual thing, too. I took a deep breath and turned to my medicine shelves.

“Oh, God,” Bree said, the genuine apprehension in her voice tinged with reluctant amusement. “You’re getting out more whisky. It must be serious.”

“Well, if you don’t want any, I do,” I said. I’d chosen the good stuff, the Jamie Fraser Special, rather than the strictly medicinal whisky I gave the patients, and the scent of it rose warm and lively, displacing the smells of turpentine, scorched metal, and pollen-laced dust.

“Oh, I’m pretty sure I do.” She took the tin cup and inhaled the comforting fumes, her eyes closing involuntarily and her face relaxing.

“So,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “What do you know?”

I rolled my own whisky slowly round my tongue, then swallowed, too.

“Well, as I said, atrial fibrillation is a matter of irregular electrical impulses. Your heart muscle is sound, but it’s—once in a while—getting its signals crossed, so to speak. Normally, all the muscle fibers in your atria contract at once; when they don’t get a synchronized message from the electrical node in your heart that supplies them, they contract more or less at random.”

Brianna swallowed another sip, nodding.

“That’s pretty much what it feels like, all right. But you said it’s not dangerous? It’s freaking scary.”

I hesitated, a fraction of a second too long. No one but Jamie was more sensitive to the transparency of my face, and I saw the alarm rise again at the back of her eyes.

“It’s not very dangerous,” I said hastily. “And you’re young and very fit; it’s much less likely.”

“What’s less likely?” She put down the cup, agitated, and glanced involuntarily up at the ceiling; Mandy was back in the children’s room just overhead, loudly singing “Frère Jacques” to her doll Esmeralda.

“Well … stroke. If the atria don’t contract properly for too long—they’re meant to squeeze blood down into the ventricles; the right ventricle pumps blood to the lungs, the left to the rest of the body—” Seeing her ruddy brows draw together, I cut to the chase. “Blood can pool in the atria long enough that it forms a clot. And if so, it might dissolve before it gets out into the body, but if not …”

“Curtains?” She took a much bigger gulp of her drink. She’d been pale as a fish belly after the attack, and looked much the same way now. “Or just being disabled, so I drool and can’t talk and people have to feed me and drag me around and wipe my butt?”

“It’s not likely to happen,” I said, as reassuringly as possible, which under the circumstances was not all that reassuring. I could visualize the hideous possible outcomes as well as she was obviously doing. Somewhat better, in fact, as I’d actually seen a good many people suffering the aftereffects of stroke, including death. I had a momentary absurd impulse to tell her a fascinating fact about men who die of stroke, but this wasn’t the time.

“So what can you do about it?” she asked, straightening up and firming her lips. I saw her eyes turn toward the bulk of the new Merck Manual, and I handed it to her.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Have a look.” I wasn’t hopeful, given what atrial fibrillation actually was—an intermittent derangement of the heart’s electrical system.

“I mean,” I said, watching her thumb through the book, brows furrowed, “you can stop a severe attack—one that goes on for days—”

“For days?” she blurted, looking up wide-eyed. I patted the air.

“You don’t have that sort of fibrillation,” I assured her. Mind, you can always develop it … “You just have the minor, paroxysmal kind that comes and goes and may just disappear altogether one day.” And God, please, please let it do just that …

“But for a severe attack, the normal treatment in the 1960s was to administer an electric shock to the heart with paddles applied to the chest. That makes the fibrillating stop and the heart start working normally again.” Most of the time …

“Which we plainly can’t do here,” Bree said, looking round the surgery as though estimating its resources.

“No. But I repeat—you don’t have anything as severe as that. You won’t need it.” My mouth had dried at the remembered visions of cardioversion. Even when it worked, I’d seen a patient shocked repeatedly, the poor body seized by electricity and jerked high into the air, to fall back limp and tortured onto the table, only to face another round when the EKG pen fluttered like a seismograph. I gulped the rest of my whisky, coughed, and set down the cup.

“Does it say anything helpful?”

“No,” she said, closing the book. Her tone was deliberately casual, but I could see clearly how shaken she was. “It’s just the same as you said—administration of electric shock. I mean—they do have a medicine that they say works sometimes on some patients, but I’m sure that isn’t anything we can manage here, either. Digitalis?”

I shook my head. Penicillin was one thing—and even that was by no means dependable; I still had no way of producing a standard dosage, or of telling whether a given batch of the stuff was even potent.

“No,” I said regretfully. “I mean—you can extract digitalin from foxglove leaves, and people do. But it’s dreadfully dangerous, because you can’t predict the dosage, and even a bit too much will kill you. And we do have a few things to hand.” I tried to sound brightly helpful. “We’ll make sure to keep a good stock of the white willow tea on hand—it’s the most powerful.” White willow didn’t grow in North Carolina but was reasonably available from city apothecaries, and I had a good stock that Jamie had brought me from Salisbury.

“Tea?” she asked skeptically.

“As a matter of fact, the active principle in willow-bark tea is exactly the same chemical that you find in aspirin. And while people mostly use it for pain relief, it has the interesting side effect of thinning the blood.”

“Oh. So … if my heart starts twitching, I should brew up a cup of willow-bark tea and it will at least keep my blood from clotting?” She was trying to keep her dubious tone, but I could see that a tiny ray of hope had been kindled. Now it was my job to blow on it and try to encourage it to take hold and burn.

“Yes, exactly. Now, the tea won’t do away with the disturbing symptoms, but there are a few sorts of ad hoc things you can try for those.”

“Such as?”

“Well, plunging the face into cold water sometimes works—”

“Or so you’re told? I bet you’ve never seen anybody do that, have you?” She was definitely interested, though.

“In fact, I have. At L’Hôpital des Anges, in Paris.” Plunging various body parts in cold—or sometimes hot—water was a widely prescribed treatment for a lot of different maladies at the hôpital, water being both widely available and cheap. And surprisingly, it often worked, at least in the short term.

“Or—if you happen not to be near any cold water—you can try one of the vagal maneuvers.”

That caught her unaware, and she gave me a cat-eyed look.

“If you mean having sex—”

“Not vaginal maneuvers,” I said, “though I’d think the fibrillating might be too distracting to want to do that, in any case. I said vagal maneuvers—as in, stimulating the vagus nerve. There are a few different ways of doing that, but the simplest—and probably the best—is something called the Valsalva maneuver. That sounds rather grand, but it’s basically just taking a deep breath and holding it, as though you were trying to cure hiccups, then pressing your abdominal muscles down as hard as you can—like trying to force out an uncooperative bowel movement while holding your breath.”

She gave me a long, considering stare, exactly the sort of look Jamie would have given me in receipt of this sort of advice. Deeply suspicious that I was practicing upon him, but inwardly fearful that I wasn’t.

“Well, that should make me very popular at parties,” she said.

37 Maneuvers Beginning with the Letter “v”

NEITHER JAMIE NOR I had said anything to each other regarding Lord John Grey, sexual jealousy, or general pigheadedness since he had stamped off in the midst of our argument—whether to put a stop to the argument or merely in order to muffle the urge to throttle me, I didn’t know.

He’d been perfectly calm and outwardly amiable when he came in for supper, but I bloody knew him. He bloody knew me, too, and we lay down to sleep side by side, wished each other good night and oidhche mhath, respectively, turned our backs on each other, and took turns breathing heavily until we fell asleep, me thinking that whichever sage had urged not letting the sun go down on your wrath obviously didn’t know any Scots.

I’d meant to find him alone and have it out with him the next day, but what with the roof, Geordie McHugh’s smashed thumb, and the worrying news of Brianna’s disturbed heartbeat, there hadn’t been an opportunity.

Supper was outwardly peaceful; there was no company, no culinary disasters, and no emergencies like one of the children catching fire—which had actually happened to Mandy a few days before, though she had been saved by Jamie noticing her dress sparking, whereupon he dived across the table, tackled her, rolled her on the hearth rug, and then picked her up and stuffed her into the water-filled cauldron, which was half-full of sliced potatoes and carrots, but fortunately not yet boiling. She and Esmeralda had emerged from the ordeal dripping, hysterical, and slightly singed around the edges, but basically sound.

I was feeling slightly singed around the edges myself, and was determined to extinguish the smoldering embers we were presently walking on.

So when we rose from supper, I left the dishes on the table and invited Jamie to come for a stroll with me—ostensibly in search of a night-blooming begonia I’d found. Fanny, who had some idea of what a begonia was, glanced sharply at me, then Jamie, then down at her empty plate with her face studiously blank.

“Are begonias the stuff ye plant around the privy?” he asked, breaking the silence in which we’d come from the house. We were passing the main house privy at the moment, and the bitter scent of tomatoes had begun to overwhelm the heady smell of jasmine. “Is that what I smell?”

“No, that’s jasmine; the flowers don’t bloom past August, though, so I have tomato plants coming up under the vines. Tomato plants have a strong scent and it comes from the leaves, so you have that almost up until the truly cold weather—when nothing smells anyway, because it’s all frozen.”

“So is anyone who spends more than thirty seconds in a privy in January,” Jamie said. “Ye wouldna linger to smell flowers when ye think your shit might turn to ice before ye’ve got it all the way out.”

I laughed, and felt the tension between us ease, feeble as the joke was. He wanted to resolve it, too, then.

“One of the unappreciated aspects of female clothes,” I said. “Insulation. When the temperature goes down, you just add another petticoat. Or two. Of course,” I added, looking back at the house to be sure we hadn’t picked up any outriders, “not having private parts that can be exposed to the elements is rather a help, too.”

A sliver of moon gleamed briefly on the top rail of the paddock, the wood polished by long use. Beyond, the house was huge against the half-dark sky, only a few of the lower windows lit. Solid and handsome, like the man who’d made it.

I stopped by the paddock fence and turned to face him.

“I could have lied, you know.”

“No, ye couldn’t. Ye canna lie to anybody, Sassenach, let alone me. And given that his lordship had already told me the truth—”

“You wouldn’t have been sure it was the truth,” I said. “Given what both parties told me about that fight. I could have told you John was talking out his backside because he wanted to annoy you, and you would have believed me.”

“Ye could choose your words wi’ a bit more care, Sassenach,” he said, a hint of grimness in his voice. “I dinna want to hear anything about his lordship’s backside. Why d’ye think I would have believed ye, though? I never believe anything ye tell me that I havena seen with my own eyes.”

“Now who’s being annoying?” I said, rather coldly. “And you would have believed me because you would have wanted to—and don’t tell me otherwise, because I won’t believe that.”

He made a huh sort of sound under his breath. We were leaning back against the paddock rails, and the smells of jasmine, tomatoes, and human excrement had been replaced with the sweeter odor of manure and the slow, heavy exhalations of the forest beyond: the spiciness of dying leaves overlaid by the sharp, clean resins of the firs and pines.

“Why didn’t ye lie, then?” he asked, after a long silence. “If ye thought I’d believe it.”

I paused, choosing my words. The air was still and warm and filled with cricket songs. Find me, come to me, love me … stridulations of the heart? Or merely grasshopper lust?

“Because I promised you honesty a long time ago,” I said. “And if honesty turns out to be a double-edged sword, I think the wounds are usually worth it.”

“Did Frank think that?”

I inhaled, very slowly, and held the breath until I saw spots at the corners of my eyes.

“You’d have to ask him that,” I said, very precisely. “This is about you and me.”

“And his lordship.”

I lost the temper I’d been holding.

“What the bloody hell do you want me to say? That I wish I hadn’t slept with John?”

“Do ye?”

“Actually,” I said, through my teeth, “given the situation, or what I thought the situation was …”

He was no more than a tall black shape against the night, but I saw him turn sharply toward me.

“If ye say no, Sassenach, I may do something I’ll regret, so dinna say it, aye?”

“What’s wrong with you? You forgave me, you said so—”

“No, I didn’t. I said I’d love ye forever, and I will, but—”

“You can’t love somebody if you won’t bloody forgive them!”

“I forgive you,” he said.

“How fucking dare you?” I shouted, turning on him with clenched fists.

“What’s wrong wi’ you?” He made a grab for my arm, but I jerked away from him. “First ye’re angry because I didna say I forgave ye and now ye’re outraged because I did?”

“Because I didn’t do anything wrong to start with, you fatheaded arsehole, and you know it! How dare you try to forgive me for something I didn’t do?”

“Ye did do it!”

“I didn’t! You think I was unfaithful to you, and I. Bloody. Wasn’t!”

I was shrieking loudly enough to drown out the crickets, and shaking with rage.

There was a long moment of silence, in which the crickets cautiously tuned up again. Jamie turned to the fence and gripped the top rail and shook it violently, making the wood creak. He might be speaking Gaelic, but whatever he was saying sounded like an enraged wolf.

I stood still, panting. The night was warm and humid, and sweat was beginning to bloom on my body. I ripped off my shawl and threw it over the fence. I could hear Jamie breathing, too, fast and deep, but he was standing still now, gripping the fence rail with his shoulders stiff, head bent.

“Ye want to ken what’s wrong wi’ me?” he asked at last. His voice was pitched low, but it wasn’t calm. He straightened up, looming in the moonlight.

“I swear to myself I will put … this … thing … out o’ my head, and mostly I manage. But then that sodomite sends me a letter, out o’ the blue—just as though it never happened! And it’s all back again.” His voice shook and he stopped for a second, shaking his head violently, as though to clear it.

“And when I think of it, and then I see you … I want to have ye, then and there. Ye rouse me, whether ye’re slicing cucumbers or bathing naked in the creek wi’ your hair loose. I want ye bad, Sassenach. But he’s there in my head, and if—if—” Lost for words, he smashed a fist down on the fence rail and I felt the wood tremble by my shoulder.

“If I canna stand the notion that you and he were fucking me behind my back, how do ye think I can stand to think that you and I are sharing a bed wi’ him in it?”

I would have hammered the fence myself, save for knowing it would hurt. Instead, I rubbed my hands hard over my face and dug my fingers into my scalp, scattering hairpins. I stood there, huffing.

“We’re not,” I said, in a tone of complete certainty. “We’re not, because I’m not. I have never, not for one second, thought of anyone but you when I’ve been in your bed. And I ought to be really offended at the notion that you do, but—”

“I don’t.” He gulped air, and took me by the arms. “I don’t, Claire. It’s only that I’m afraid I might.”

I felt dizzy from hyperventilation and put my own hands flat on his chest to steady myself, and smelled the sudden pungent musk of his body, the waves of it an acrid hot ghost surrounding us. I did rouse him.

“I tell you what,” I said at last, and lifted my head to look at him. It was full dark now, but my eyes were well-enough adapted as to see his face, his eyes searching mine. “I tell you what,” I said again, and swallowed. “You—leave that to me.”

He trembled slightly; it might have been a buried laugh.

“Ye think highly of yourself, Sassenach,” he said, his voice husky. “Ye think a warm place to stick my cock’s enough to make me forget?”

I stared at him.

“What on earth do you mean by that, you—” Words failed me, and I jerked loose, flapping my arms in bewildered frustration. “Why would you say something like that? You know it isn’t true!”

He scratched his jaw; I could hear the whiskers rasp.

“No, it isn’t,” he agreed. “I was just tryin’ to think of something offensive enough to say as to make ye strike me.”

I actually did laugh, though more from surprise than real humor.

“Don’t tempt me. Why do you want me to hit you?”

He rocked back on his heels and looked me over, slowly, from undone hair to battered moccasins. And back.

“Well, in about ten seconds, I mean to lay ye on your back in the grass, lift your skirts, and address ye wi’ a certain amount of forcefulness. I thought I’d feel better about doing that if ye provoked me first.”

“Me … provoke you?”

I stood stock-still for three of those seconds, blood thundering in my ears and pulsing through my fingers. Then I walked toward him.

“Seven,” I said.

“Six,” and I reached for the neck of his shirt.

“Five … Four …” I yanked it down, said, “Three,” rather loudly, leaned forward, and bit his nipple. Not a teasing love-bite, either.

He yelped, jerked back, grabbed me, and with a big hand gripping the back of my head pushed my face into his. Our mouths collided messily, and stayed that way, open, voracious, amorous, seeking as much as kissing, lips, ears, noses, tongues, and teeth, hands groping and snatching and pulling and rubbing. I found his cock and rubbed it hard through his breeches and he made a deep growling sound and grasped my buttocks and then we were in the grass in a tangle of knees and limbs and rumpled clothes and hot flesh bared to the starry sky.

It seemed to last a long time, though it couldn’t have. I came back to myself slowly, reverberations passing through me in a slow, pleasant throb. Provocation. Forsooth.

He was lying on his back next to me, face turned to the moon, eyes closed, and breathing like one rescued from the sea. His right hand was still between my thighs and I was curled beside him, the whorls of his ear, beautiful as a seashell, a few inches from my mouth.

“Have we got that out of our system, do you think?” I said drowsily.

“Our?” His right hand twitched, but he didn’t pull it away.

“Our.”

He sighed deeply and turned his head toward me, opening his eyes.

“We have.” He smiled a little and closed his eyes again, his chest rising and falling under my hand. I could feel his nipple through his shirt, small and still hard against my palm.

“Did I break the skin?”

“Ye do that every time ye touch me, Sassenach. I’m no bleeding, though.”

We lay in silence for some time, and the sounds of crickets and the rustle of leaves flowed over us like water.

He spoke, quietly, and I turned my head, thinking I hadn’t heard him aright, but I had. I just didn’t know what language he was speaking.

“That isn’t Gàidhlig, is it?” I asked dubiously, and he shook his head slowly, eyes still closed.

“Gaeilge,” he said. “Irish. I heard it from Stephen O’Farrell, during the Rising. It just came back to me now.

“My body is out from my control,” he said softly. “She was the half of my body—the very half of my soul.”

38 Grim Reaper

I WAS DIGGING UP a number of four-leaved milkweeds, with the intent of transplanting them to my garden, when I heard the unmistakable bray of an annoyed mule. I’d had enough experience with Clarence and a few of his fellows to tell the difference between a call of greeting and a declaration of hostility. Both earsplitting, but different.

A couple of male voices and another mule now joined the argument. Hastily tucking the uprooted milkweeds into the wet moss in my basket, I picked up said basket and went to see what was happening.

Neither of the voices sounded familiar, and I stopped short of the racket, peering through a screen of silver firs and tall, skinny aspens. Two men, two mules, all right—but one of the mules, a light bay, had turned aside and was browsing on the flowering grass by the trail, while the other, darker mule was fiercely resisting the efforts of the two men to force him—I checked; yes, it was a him—to continue up the narrow, rocky defile.

Frankly, I didn’t blame the mule in the slightest. He and his fellow were both heavily laden, each with a long wooden crate slung on each side and large canvas-covered bundles tied messily to a pack frame on top.

I could guess what had happened. There was a good, wide trail that led up this side of the cove, but it branched at a spot called Wounded Lady, which was a small, brilliantly blue spring with a single aspen on its edge, white-barked and solid, but with trails of blood-red sap trickling slowly from the wounds inflicted by burrowing insects and the woodpeckers hunting them. The main trail made a sharp turn and went on to the east, while a narrower deer path, much obstructed by growth and rolling stones, went straight up the right side of the aspen.

The lead mule had either stumbled on rocks or been caught by the branches of the trees that edged the path. Whatever had caused it, the bindings of his baggage had broken or slipped, and half the load was hanging down over his tail, scattering small boxes and leather bags, with one of the long boxes resting with one end on the ground, the other pointing at the sky, and a fragile strand of rope still anchoring it to the mule.

I had seen the sort of cases used to ship firearms, many times. In France, in Scotland, in America—it didn’t matter what the time period, a bang-stick is a bang-stick, and you need a long, narrow box if you want to carry a large number of them.

I didn’t recognize either of the men, and I didn’t wait about to introduce myself. I took myself and my milkweeds off as fast as I could go.

Luckily, I found Jamie within half an hour, passing the time of day with Tom MacLeod, the coffin maker.

“Who’s dead?” I gasped, out of breath from scrambling down the mountain.

“No one, yet,” Jamie said, eyeing me. “But ye look like ye’re about to be, Sassenach. What’s happened?”

I set my basket on a sawhorse, sat down on another, and told them, pausing to gasp for breath or gulp water from the canteen Tom handed me.

“Nothin’ up that path but Captain Cunningham’s place, is there?” Tom observed.

“Ye mean they maybe didna go up that way by accident, aye?” Jamie stuck his head out of the coffin shed and looked up at the sky. “It’s going to rain soon. Be a pity if our friends find themselves stuck in the mud.”

Tom grunted in approval, and without further consultation went into his house, returning in less than a minute with an old leather hat on his head, a good rifle in his hand, a pistol in his belt, and a cartridge box slung over his bowed shoulder. He had a second pistol in his other hand, which he gave Jamie. Jamie nodded, checked the priming, and stuck it in his own belt. Absently touching his dirk, he nodded to me.

“Go get Young Ian, will ye, Sassenach? I saw him mowing in his upper field not an hour since.”

“But what—”

“Go,” he said, though mildly. “Dinna fash, Sassenach. It will be fine.”

I FOUND YOUNG Ian, not in his upper field, but in the woods nearby, rifle in hand.

“Don’t shoot!” I called, spotting him through the brush. “It’s me!”

“I couldna mistake ye for anything save a small bear or a large hog, Auntie,” he assured me as I pawed my way through a clump of dogwood toward him. “And I dinna want either one of those today.”

“Fine. How about a nice, fat pair of gunrunners?”

I explained as well as I could while jog-trotting along behind him as he detoured through the field in order to grab his scythe, which he thrust into my hands.

“I dinna think ye’ll have to use it, Auntie,” he said, grinning at the look on my face. “But if ye stand there blocking the trail, it would be a desperate man would try to go through ye.”

When we arrived, we discovered that the trail had already been effectively blocked by the first mule’s burden, which he had succeeded in shedding completely. When Ian and I showed up a little way below the gunrunners, the first mule, enjoying his new lightness of spirit, was nimbly climbing over the pile of bags, boxes, and wickerwork toward us, intent on joining his fellow, who was not letting his own pack stop him from browsing a large patch of blackberry brambles that edged the trail just there.

Evidently, we had arrived almost at the same time as Jamie and Tom MacLeod, for the two gunrunners had turned to gawk at me and Ian just as Jamie and Tom came into sight on the trail above them.

“Who the devil are you?” one of the men demanded, looking from me to Ian in bewilderment. Ian had tied up his hair in a topknot to keep it out of the way while mowing, and without his shirt, deeply tanned and tattooed, he looked very like the Mohawk he was. I didn’t want to think what I must look like, comprehensively disheveled and with my hair full of leaves and coming down, but I gripped my scythe and gave them a stern look.

“I’m Ian Òg Murray,” Ian said mildly, and nodded at me. “And that’s my auntie. Oops.” The first mule was nosing his way determinedly between us, causing us both to step off the path.

“I’m Ian Murray,” Ian repeated, stepping back his rifle in a relaxed-but-definitely-ready position across his chest.

“And I,” said a deep voice from above, “am Colonel James Fraser, of Fraser’s Ridge, and that’s my wife.” He moved into sight, broad-shouldered and tall against the light, with Tom behind him, sunlight glinting off his rifle.

“Catch that mule, will ye, Ian? This is my land. And who, may I ask, are you gentlemen?”

The men jerked in surprise and whirled to look upward—though one cast an apprehensive glance over his shoulder, to keep an eye on the threat to the rear.

“Er … we’re … um …” The young man—he couldn’t be much more than twenty—exchanged a panicked look with his older companion. “I am Lieutenant Felix Summers, sir. Of—of His Majesty’s ship Revenge.”

Tom made a noise that might have been either menace or amusement.

“Who’s your friend, then?” he asked, nodding at the older gentleman, who might have been anything from a town vagrant to a backwoods hunter, but who looked somewhat the worse for drink, his nose and cheeks webbed with broken capillaries.

“I—believe his name is Voules, sir,” the lieutenant said. “He is not my friend.” His face had gone from a shocked white to a prim pink. “I hired him in Salisbury, to assist with—with my baggage.”

“I see,” Jamie said politely. “Are ye perhaps … lost, Lieutenant? I believe the nearest ocean is roughly three hundred miles behind you.”

“I am on leave from my ship,” the young man said, regaining his dignity. “I have come to visit … someone.”

“No prize for guessing who,” Tom said to Jamie, and lowered his rifle. “What d’ye want to do with ’em, Jamie?”

“My wife and I will take the lieutenant and his … man … down to the house for some refreshment,” Jamie said, bowing graciously to Summers. “Would ye maybe help Ian with—” He nodded toward the chaos scattered among the rocks. “And, Ian, once ye’ve got things in hand, go up and bring Captain Cunningham down to join us, will ye?”

Summers picked up the subtle difference between “invite” and “bring” just as well as Ian did, and stiffened, but he had little choice. He did have a pistol and an officer’s dirk in his belt, but I could see that the former wasn’t primed and therefore likely wasn’t loaded, either, and I doubted that he’d ever drawn his dirk with any motive beyond polishing it. Jamie didn’t even glance at the weapons, let alone ask for their surrender.

“I thank you, sir,” Summers said, turned on his heel, and shying only slightly as he passed me and my scythe, started down the trail, back stiff.

IT WAS NEARLY suppertime when Captain Cunningham arrived, not quite in Young Ian’s custody, but definitely in his company and not that pleased about it.

I’d fortunately had time to wash, comb oak leaves and spruce needles out of my hair, and generally put myself to rights while Jamie sat Lieutenant Summers and Mr. Voules down in the parlor and offered them beer. Voules accepted eagerly, Summers reluctantly—but they drank it. And now, two hours and four quarts of beer later, they were, if not happy, somewhat more relaxed.

“Who are those men?” Fanny whispered to me, coming back to the kitchen after another beer delivery. “They don’t theem—seem to like Mr. Fraser much.”

“Friends of Captain Cunningham,” I said. “I think the captain will be joining them shortly. Do we have anything they can eat? Men are always easier to handle if their stomachs are full.”

“That’s true,” she said, nodding sagely. “A first-rate brothel hath—has a good cook. But you can’t let a man eat too much if you want him to do anything. Mother Abbott thaid if a man’s belly sticks out so far he can’t see his cock, you’d best give him enough wine that he falls asleep and then tell him he had a good time when he wakes up. He—”

“How about the game pie Mrs. Chisholm sent down?” I interrupted hastily. “Is there any of that left?” I’d told Fanny she could tell me anything, and I’d meant it, but I was occasionally still disconcerted by the vivid detail of her recollections.

The captain definitely had a lean and hungry look.

“Such men are dangerous,” I murmured, watching as he strode into the parlor, Young Ian at his heels like a genial wolf.

Then I caught a glimpse of Jamie, rising to greet Cunningham, and thought, And he’s not the only one …

I left Fanny to deal with the game pie, and followed the men into the parlor with a tray holding a bottle of the JFS whisky, a small pitcher of water, and five of our best glasses, these being the heavy-bottomed small glasses known as shot glasses, as they made a sound strongly resembling a pistol shot when slammed on the table following a toast. I hoped there would still be five of them after this little social gathering.

“Captain,” I said, smiling pleasantly as I set the tray down. “How nice to see you.”

He glared at me but was too well bred to say what he was patently thinking. I wasn’t sure whether my presence would make things better or worse, but Jamie cut his eyes briefly sideways, indicating that said presence wouldn’t be required, so I curtsied to the assembled and walked down the hall to the kitchen, where I took my shoes off and crept back quietly in my stocking feet, much to Fanny’s amusement.

“I imagine my nephew told ye the circumstances in which we encountered your—acquaintances this afternoon?” Jamie was saying, in a pleasant tone of voice. There was a splashing sound and the clink of glasses.

“Circumstances,” Cunningham repeated sharply. “Lieutenant Summers is—was—a close friend of my late son. We have remained in correspondence since Simon’s death, and I hold Felix in the same regard as I would were he my son as well. I take considerable exception to your treatment of him and his servant, sir!”

“A dram wi’ ye, sir? Slàinte mhath!”

From my vantage spot, flattened against the wall, I couldn’t see Jamie, but I could see the captain, who looked startled at this reply to his statement.

“What?” he said sharply, and looked down into his whisky glass as though it might be poisoned. “What did you say, sir?”

“Slàinte mhath,” Jamie repeated mildly. “It means, ‘to your health.’”

“Oh.” The captain looked at Summers, who by this point resembled a pig who has just been struck on the head with a maul. “Er … yes. To—your health, Mr. Fraser.”

“Colonel Fraser,” Ian put in helpfully. “Slàinte mhath!”

The captain threw back his dram, swallowed, and turned purple.

“Perhaps a bit o’ water, Captain.” I saw Jamie’s arm stretch out, pitcher in hand. “It’s said to open the flavor of the whisky. Ian?”

Ian took the pitcher and deftly mixed a fresh drink—half water, this time—for the captain, who took it, eyes watering.

“I repeat … sir …” he said hoarsely. “I take exception …”

“Well, so do I, sir,” Jamie said, in the same amiable tone. “And I think any self-respecting man would do the same, at discovering a martial enterprise taking place under his nose, upon his land, without warning or notice. D’ye not agree?”

“I do not pretend to understand what you mean by ‘a martial enterprise,’ Colonel.” Cunningham had got hold of himself and sat up straight as a poker. “Lieutenant Summers has had the kindness to bring me some supplies I had requested from friends in the navy. They—”

“I did wonder, ken, why a Lowlander, and especially one who’s a naval captain, should choose Fraser’s Ridge to settle,” Jamie said, interrupting him. “And why ye should have wanted land so far up the Ridge, for that matter. But of course, your place is nay more than ten miles from the Cherokee villages, isn’t it?”

“I—I’m sure I don’t know,” the captain said. “But this has nothing to do—”

“I was an Indian agent for some time, ken,” Jamie went on, in the same mild tone. “Under Superintendent Johnson. I spent considerable time wi’ the Cherokee, and they ken me for an honest man.”

“I was not impugning your honesty, Colonel Fraser.” Cunningham sounded rather testy, though it was obvious that this was news to him. “I do take issue with your—”

“Ye’ll ken, I suppose, that the British government has been in cahoots wi’ various Indians in the conduct of this war, encouraging them to attack settlements suspected of rebellious persuasions. Providing them wi’ guns and powder on occasion.”

“No, sir.” The captain’s tone had changed, his belligerence slightly tinged now with wariness. “I was not aware of that.”

Jamie and Ian both made polite Scottish noises indicating skepticism.

“Ye’ll admit that ye do ken I am a rebel, Captain?”

“You are fairly open about it, sir!” Cunningham snapped. He sat upright, fists clenched on his knees.

“I am,” Jamie agreed. “Ye make no secret of your own loyalties—”

“Loyalty to King and country requires neither secrecy nor defense, Colonel!”

“Aye? Well, I suppose that depends on whether that loyalty results in actions that might be considered injurious to me and mine, Captain. My cause or my family.”

“We didn’t mean—” Lieutenant Summers was beginning to be alarmed. Stirred from his lethargy by the rising tone of the conversation, he made an attempt to sit up straight, his round face earnest. “We wasn’t meaning to bring Indians down upon you, sir, so help me God!”

“Mr. Summers.” The captain lifted a hand, and the lieutenant went red and subsided.

“Colonel. I repeat that I make no secret of my loyalties. I preach them in public each Sunday, before God and man.”

“I’ve heard ye,” Jamie said dryly. “And ye’ll notice, I suppose, that I’ve made nay move to hinder ye doing so. I take no issue with your opinions; speak as ye find and let the devil listen.”

I blinked. He was angry, and was beginning to let it show.

“Talk all ye like, Captain. But I’ll not countenance any action that threatens the Ridge.”

Lieutenant Summers made a small, involuntary movement, and Captain Cunningham made a short, sharp movement that silenced him.

“You have my word, Colonel,” he said between his teeth.

There was a long moment of silence, and then I heard Jamie take a deep breath, this succeeded by the pouring of whisky.

“Then let us drink to the understanding between us, Captain,” he said calmly, and I heard the brief shifting and scrape of glass on wood as they all picked up their drams.

“To peace,” Jamie said. He emptied his glass and slammed it on the table with a bang that startled Mr. Voules out of his stupor.

“What the hell was that?” He sat up, staring blearily to and fro. “They shootin’ at us with our own guns?”

The brief silence was broken by Jamie.

“Guns?” he said mildly. “Did ye notice any guns, Ian, when ye packed up the captain’s gear?”

“No, Uncle,” Ian said, in exactly the same tone. “No guns.”

DESPITE ITS FARCICAL aspects, the incident with the captain’s guns was truly alarming. Preaching loyalty to the King in church of a Sunday was one thing; preparing—evidently—for an armed conflict under Jamie’s nose was another.

“Can you evict him?” I asked tentatively. The children had all gone to bed after supper, and Jamie, I, Brianna, and Roger were holding a minor council of war over dishes of corn pudding.

“I could,” Jamie said, frowning at the cream jug. “But I’ve been turnin’ it over in my mind, and I think it’s maybe better to let him stay, where he’ll be under my eye, than have him up to mischief where he’s not.”

“What do ye think he was—or is—planning to do?” Roger asked. “I mean—it’s at least possible that he wanted arms for protection; his place is very near the Cherokee Line.”

“Twenty muskets is maybe that wee bit excessive for keepin’ stray Indians out of his house,” Jamie replied. “If he’s bought guns, he had a plan to use them. For what, though? Does he have it in mind to try to assassinate me and burn out my tenants? What would be the point of that?”

“Maybe he’s doing the same thing you are, Da.” Bree poured cream on her own pudding, and then on Jamie’s. “Raising a personal militia to guard his property.”

I glanced at Jamie. He returned the look, but shook his head almost imperceptibly and took up his spoon. While preventing attacks on the Ridge was certainly one of Jamie’s motives in arming some of his men, I was sure he had others. He clearly didn’t feel this was the time to be telling Roger and Bree about them, though.

“Ian said one of the men who’d brought the guns was a naval lieutenant—one of the captain’s men from his career at sea, I suppose?” Bree asked.

“I’d suppose that, too,” Jamie said, with a certain terseness.

“Implying,” she said, “that he still has connections with the navy. Which is probably where the guns came from—do they use muskets on ships?”

“Aye, they do.” Jamie shifted slightly, as though his shirt was too tight—which it wasn’t. “When ships come close together, fightin’, the sailors take muskets up into the rigging and fire down into the other ship. The navy has a great many guns.”

“How do you know that?” Bree asked, curious.

“I read, lass,” her father said, raising one eyebrow at her. “There was an account of a sea battle in the Salisbury newspaper, and a drawing showin’ the wee sailors up among the masts, blastin’ away.”

“Aye, well,” said Roger, spooning ripe, sliced strawberries over his pudding, “I doubt Cunningham will try to bring guns up that way again. And if he does …”

“Then he’s arming us, instead of himself.” Despite the seriousness of the discussion, Bree was amused. The look of amusement faded, though, and she leaned toward us.

“But you’ll need more guns than what you took from the captain, won’t you?”

“I will,” Jamie admitted. “But it may take some time to find them. And buy the powder and shot to fire them.”

Roger and Bree exchanged a look, and he nodded.

“Let us help with that, Da,” she said, and reaching into her pocket drew out three small, flat strips of what could only be gold, glowing dully in the candlelight.

“Where on earth did you get those?” I picked one up, fingering it gingerly. It was surprisingly heavy for its size; definitely gold.

“A jeweler on Newbury Street in 1980,” she said. “I had fifty of these made; I sewed some into the hems of our clothes, and hid others in the heels of our shoes. It only took ten to provision us for the trip and buy passage on the ship from Scotland. There’s plenty left, I mean, if you need to buy powder or anything.”

“You’re sure, lass?” Jamie touched one of the slips with a forefinger. “I’ve gold enough. It’s just—”

“Just that wee bit more difficult to use,” Roger said, smiling. “Don’t fash yourself; we’re honored to help finance the Revolution.”

39 I Have Returned

40 Black Brandy

M, THE DUKE OF Pardloe wrote, and then stopped. Dipping his quill again, he carefully inserted the word “Dear,” though he was obliged to angle it upward in order to squeeze it onto the page, having begun his writing too far to the left. He stared at the blank page for a moment, then looked up to find his younger brother staring at him, one eyebrow raised.

“What the devil do you want?” he snapped.

“Brandy,” John answered mildly. “And so do you, from the look of it. What the devil are you doing?” Crossing the room, he went down on one knee to rummage in his campaign chest, emerging with a round-bellied black bottle that sloshed in a reassuringly weighty fashion.

“That’s brandy? Are you sure?” Hal nevertheless reached round the small table on which he’d perched his writing desk, and dipped into his own chest for a pair of dented pewter cups.

“Stephan von Namtzen said it was.” John shrugged and, coming to the table, picked up Hal’s penknife and started removing the wax seal from the bottle. “You recall our friend the Graf von Erdberg? He says it’s black brandy, to be exact.”

“Is it really black?” Hal asked, interested.

“Well, the bottle is, though I gather from his letter that it’s called that colloquially because it’s made by a small group of monks who live on the edge of the Black Forest. Its real name is something German …” Discarding the last shreds of wax, he held the bottle up close to his eyes and squinted at the handwritten label. “Blut der Märtyrer. Blood of Martyrs.”

“How jolly.” Hal held out his cup, and the rich aroma of what was plainly good brandy, if perhaps a little more red than usual—he squinted into his cup—filled his nose. “You’ve kept up your German, then?”

John glanced up from his own cup, raising the other eyebrow.

“I’ve scarcely had time to forget it,” he said. “It’s barely a year since Monmouth and bloody Hessians coming out of every crack in the earth. Though I suppose,” he added casually, glancing away, “that you mean have I seen our friend the graf lately. I haven’t. This came with a brief note saying that Stephan was in Trier, God knows why.”

“Ah.” Hal took a sip of the brandy and closed his eyes, both to enhance the taste and to avoid looking at John.

The brandy began to settle in John’s limbs, the warmth of it softening his thoughts. And, just possibly, his judgment.

“Have you decided to write to Minnie, then?” John’s voice was casual, but the question wasn’t.

“I haven’t.”

“But you—oh. I see, you mean you haven’t quite decided, which is why you were hovering over that sheet of paper like a vulture waiting for something to die.”

Hal opened his eyes and sat up straight, fixing John with the sort of look meant to shut him up like a portmanteau. John, though, picked up the bottle and refilled Hal’s cup.

“I know,” he said simply. “I wouldn’t want to, either. But you think Ben’s really dead, then? Or are you writing to her about Dottie and her husband?”

“No, I bloody don’t.” The cup tilted in Hal’s hand. He saved it with no more than a splash of brandy landing on his waistcoat, which he ignored. “I don’t believe it, and I think Mrs. MacKenzie is likely right about Dottie writing to me. I want to wait until we hear from her before I alarm Minnie.”

John watched this, his own expression deliberately blank.

“It’s only that I’ve never seen you begin any letter, to anyone, with the salutation ‘Dear.’”

“I don’t need to,” Hal said irritably. “Beasley does all that nonsense when it’s official, and if it’s not, whoever I’m writing to already knows who they are and what I think of them, for God’s sake. Pointless affectation. I do sign them,” he added, after a brief pause.

John made a noncommittal hm noise and took a swig of brandy, holding it meditatively in his mouth. The quill had made an inky spot on the table where his brother had dropped it. Seeing it, Hal stuffed the quill back into its jar and rubbed at the mark with the side of his hand.

“It was just—I couldn’t think how to begin, dammit.”

“Don’t blame you.”

Hal glanced at the sheet of paper, with its accusatory salutation.

“So I … wrote … ‘M.’ Just to get started, you know, and then I had to decide whether to go on and write out her name, or leave it at ‘M.’ … So while I was thinking …” His voice died away, and he took a quick, convulsive swallow of the Blood of Martyrs.

John took a somewhat more reserved mouthful, thinking of Stephan von Namtzen, who wrote now and then, always addressing him with German formality as “My Esteemed and Noble Friend,” though the letters themselves tended to be much less formal …. Jamie Fraser’s salutations ranged from the casual “Dear John” to the slightly warmer “My dear friend,” and depending upon the state of their relations, “Dear Sir” or a coldly abrupt “My Lord,” in the other direction.

Possibly Hal was right. People he wrote to never were in any doubt about what he thought of them, and the same was true of Jamie. Perhaps it was good of Jamie to give fair warning, so you could open a bottle before reading on ….

The brandy was good, dark and very strong. He ought to have watered it, but—but given the rigidity of Hal’s body, thought that it was just as well that he hadn’t.

Dear M. It was true that Hal had always addressed letters to him merely as “J.” Just as well that Mr. Beasley, Hal’s clerk, did tidy up Hal’s correspondence, or the King might well have found himself addressed curtly as “G.” Or would it be “R,” for “Rex”?

Absurd as it was, the thought jarred loose the memory that had been niggling at him since he’d seen the vestigial letter, and he glanced at it, and then at his brother’s face.

Hal had called Esmé that—“Em.” His first wife, dead in childbirth—and Hal’s first child dead with her. He’d been accustomed to write notes to her beginning that way—just an “M,” with no other salutation; John had seen a few. Perhaps seeing the single letter, black and bold against the white paper, had brought it all back with the unexpected suddenness of a bullet in the heart.

Hal cleared his throat explosively and gulped brandy, which made him cough, sputtering amber-red droplets all over the paper. He grabbed it and crumpled it up, then tossed it into the fire, where it caught and blazed up with a blue-tinged flame.

“I can’t,” he said definitely. “I won’t! I mean—I don’t know that Ben’s dead. Not for sure.”

John rubbed a hand over his face, then nodded. He himself had a very cold feeling round the heart when he thought of his eldest nephew.

“All right. Is anyone else likely to tell Minnie? Adam or Henry? Or, you know—Dottie?” he added diffidently.

The blood drained from Hal’s face. To the best of John’s knowledge, neither of Ben’s brothers was a very good correspondent. But his sister, Dottie, was accustomed to write regularly to her mother—had, in fact, even written to inform her parents that she was eloping with a Quaker doctor. And becoming a rebel, in the bargain. She wouldn’t scruple to tell Minnie anything she thought her mother ought to know.

“Dottie doesn’t know, either,” Hal said, trying to convince himself. “All I told her was that he was missing.”

“Missing, presumed dead,” John pointed out. “And William said—”

“And where’s William, speaking of writing?” Hal demanded, seeking refuge in hostility. “Unless you know something I don’t know, he’s just run off without a word.”

John exhaled strongly, but kept his temper.

“William found good evidence that Ben didn’t die at that prison camp in New Jersey,” he pointed out. “And he discovered Ben’s wife and child for us.”

“He found a body in a grave with Ben’s name on it, and it wasn’t Ben—but for all we know, Ben is in a grave with that fellow’s name on it, and whoever buried them simply muddled the bodies.” Hal wanted urgently to believe that someone had buried a stranger under Ben’s name—but why should anyone have done that?

John picked up the thought as neatly as if Hal had stenciled it on his forehead.

“They might have. But they might also have done it deliberately—buried a stranger under Ben’s name. And there are any number of reasons why someone might have done that. Ben managing it to cover his escape is the best one.”

“I know,” Hal said shortly. “No. You’re right, I don’t know for sure that he’s dead. I wasn’t going to tell Minnie that I thought he was—though I do think there’s a good chance of it.” He firmed his jaw as he said it. “But I have to tell her something. If I don’t write fairly soon, she’ll know something’s wrong—she’s bloody good at knowing things one doesn’t want her to know.”

That made John laugh, and Hal huffed a little, the tension in his shoulders relaxing slightly.

“Well,” John suggested, “you told her that Ben had married and had a son, didn’t you? Why not write and tell her you’ve met the girl—Amaranthus, I mean—and your presumed grandson and invited her to take up residence here while Ben is … absent? That’s surely news enough for one letter.”

And if Ben is dead, the knowledge that he’s left a son will be some consolation. John didn’t say that out loud, but the words hovered in the air between them.

Hal nodded, exhaling.

“I’ll do that.” His mind, released from immediate dread, took flight. “Do you think that fellow Penobscot or whatever he’s called—you know, Campbell’s mapmaker—do you think he might be able to draw a passing likeness of young Trevor? I should like Minnie to see him.”

And if anything should happen to the boy, at least we’d have that ….

“Alexander Penfold, you mean,” John said. “I’ve never seen him draw anything more complex than a compass rose, but let me ask round a bit. I might just know of a decent portrait painter.” He smiled then, and lifted his newly filled cup. “To your grandson, then. Prosit!”

“Prosit,” Hal echoed, and drank the rest of the brandy without stopping to breathe.

41 Awkward Sod

JOHN GREY TOOK UP his penknife—a small French thing cased in rosewood and extremely sharp—and cut a fresh quill with a sense of anticipation. In the course of his life to date, he reckoned that he’d written more than a hundred letters to Jamie Fraser, and had always experienced a slight frisson at the thought of impending connection—whatever the nature of that connection might be. It always happened, no matter whether the letters were written in friendship, in affection—or in anxious warning, in anger, or in longings that went up in flames and the smell of burning, leaving bitter ash behind.

This one, though, would be different.

He envisioned Jamie in his chosen habitat amid the wilderness, his hands hard and smooth with calluses and his hair bound back with a leather lace, companion to Indians, wolves, and bears. And companioned also by his female accoutrements, to be sure …

He wanted to begin with the salutation “My dear Jamie,” but he hadn’t yet earned back the right to do that. He would, though.

“In another thousand years or so …” he murmured, dipping the quill again. “Or … maybe sooner.”

Ought it to be “General Fraser”?

“Ha,” he muttered. No point in putting the man’s back up a priori …

He smiled a little to himself at the thought of Brianna Fraser MacKenzie—and Claire Fraser—and what either woman might say in answer to his offer of assistance in her affairs.

“Which,” he murmured to himself, “is exactly what I do propose to do, you awkward sod …”

If he’d been at all circumspect about it, Fraser would have been immediately suspicious of his motives. But in a long career of soldiery and diplomacy, he’d seen just how often the bald-faced truth, spoken in all seriousness, might be taken for a jest. He continued, tongue firm in his cheek:

Might Jamie come himself? That would be deeply interesting … bloody dangerous, though …

He stopped to consider, twiddling the quill. Should he mention the French?

What could Fraser possibly know already, perched up there in his mountainous lair? Granted, the man wrote—and presumably received—letters, but given the dramatic circumstances of his resignation of his field general’s commission at Monmouth, John rather doubted that Jamie was exchanging daily notes with George Washington, Horatio Gates, or any other American commander privy to such intelligence.

But what if he did know that Admiral d’Estaing and his navy of frogs might possibly be hopping up onto the beaches of Charles Town or Savannah within a few weeks?

He’d played chess with Jamie Fraser for years and had considerable respect for the man’s abilities. Best sacrifice that particular pawn, then, to draw him away from the lurking knight …

No, wait. He paused, frowning at the half-written sentence. What if someone who was not James Fraser happened to get their hands on this missive? And here he was, putting unequivocally sensitive information directly into the hands of the rebels.

“Well, that won’t do …”

“What won’t do? And why aren’t you dressed?” Hal had come in, unnoticed, and was peering at himself in the large looking glass that reflected the French doors at the far side of the study. “Why am I bleeding?” He sounded rather startled.

John took a moment to obliterate the line about the French with a quick swath of ink, then rose to inspect his brother, who was in fact oozing blood from a deep scrape just in front of his left ear. He was trying to stop the blood getting onto his stock, but didn’t appear to have a handkerchief available for the purpose. John reached into the pocket of his banyan and gave Hal his.

“It doesn’t look like a shaving cut. Were you fencing without a mask?” This was intended to be a joke—Hal had never even tried one of the new wire masks, as he seldom used a sword these days unless he meant to kill someone with it, and thought it would be rank cowardice to fight a duel hiding behind a mask.

“No. Oh … I recall. I was just turning in to the street when a young lad shot out of the alley, and two soldiers just behind him shouting, ‘Stop, thief!’ One of them knocked into me and I hit the corner of that church. Didn’t realize I’d hurt myself.” He pressed the handkerchief to his face.

The scrape must have been painful—but he believed Hal hadn’t felt it. Hal was Hal—which meant that he either was oblivious to physical circumstance in times of stress, or pretended to be, to much the same effect. And he was most assuredly under stress these days.

John took the handkerchief back, dipped it into the cup of wine he’d been sipping, and pressed it to the wound again. Hal grimaced slightly, but took hold of the cloth himself.

“Wine?” he asked.

“Claire Fraser,” John replied, with a shrug. His ex-wife’s notions of medicine occasionally made sense, and even army surgeons would wash a wound with wine, now and then.

“Ah.” Hal had experienced Claire Fraser’s medical attentions at close range, and merely nodded, pressing the stained handkerchief to his cheek.

“Why ought I to be dressed?” John asked, glancing sidelong at his unfinished letter. He was debating whether to tell Hal what he intended. His brother had an unusually penetrating mind, when he was in the mood, and he knew Jamie Fraser quite well. On the other hand, there were things in John’s own relationship—such as it was—with Jamie Fraser that he would just as soon not have his brother penetrate.

“I’m meant to be meeting Prévost and his staff in half an hour, and you’re meant to be with me. Didn’t I tell you?”

“No. Is my function purely ornamental, or shall I go armed?”

“Armed. Prévost wants to discuss bringing Maitland’s troops up from Beaufort,” Hal said.

“You expect this discussion to be acrimonious?”

“No, but I may add my own bit of acrimony to the meeting. I don’t like the men sitting about here with nothing to occupy them save drink and the local whores.”

“Oh.” John felt a momentary tightness in his chest at mention of whores, but Hal’s face showed no sign that the word had brought Jane Pocock to mind. John dug his dagger, pistol, and shot pouch out of his chest and laid them on the bed, next to his clean white stockings. “Very well, then.”

He dressed, more or less efficiently, and handed Hal his leather stock, turning round so his brother could fasten it at the back. His hair hadn’t yet grown past his shoulders; Hal brushed the stubby tail that passed for a queue irritably aside.

“Haven’t you found a new valet yet?”

“Haven’t time to train one.” He could feel Hal’s warm breath and cool fingers on the back of his neck, and found the touch soothing.

“What’s keeping you so busy?” Hal’s voice was sharp; he was under strain.

“Your daughter-in-law, my son, my presumed son, your son, and, you know, minor bits of regimental business.” He turned round to face Hal, dropping the chain of his gorget over his head. Hal had the grace to look slightly abashed, though he snorted.

“You need a valet. I’ll find you one. Come on.”

Prévost’s headquarters were in a large mansion on the edge of St. James Square, no more than a ten-minute walk, and the day was fine. It was warm and sunny, with a light breeze blowing toward the sea, and it was also Market Day. The brothers Grey made their way along Bay Street toward the City Market, through a throng of people and the bracing smells of vegetables and fresh fish.

“Here’s a question for you,” John said, dodging a woman with a tray of dripping oysters suspended from her neck and a bucket of beer in each hand. “You know Jamie Fraser. Do you think he’d be susceptible to money?”

Hal frowned.

“In what way? Everyone’s susceptible to money, under the right circumstances. I assume you don’t mean bribery.”

“No. In fact, I’m concerned that what I’m proposing to him shouldn’t strike him as bribery.”

Hal’s brows went up in surprise. “What the devil do you want him to do?”

“Give his assent—and encouragement—to the idea of his daughter coming to Savannah in order to paint a portrait. I’ve said I’d make sure she’s decently paid for it, but I—”

“A portrait of you?” Hal gave him an amused glance. “I’d like to see it. A present for Mother, or are you courting?”

“I hadn’t had either of those prospects in mind. The portrait isn’t to be of me, in any case; Alfred Brumby wants a picture made of his new wife.”

Hal grinned. “The fair Angelina?”

John smiled, too. Young Mrs. Brumby was good-looking, but there was something about her that simply made people want to laugh.

“If anyone is capable of capturing Mrs. Brumby’s ineffable nature on canvas, it might be Brianna MacKenzie.”

“But that’s not why you want to lure the young woman out of her aerie, is it? There must be other portrait painters in the colony of Georgia, surely?”

They were approaching Prévost’s headquarters; the shouts and measured thuds of drilling came faintly through the morning mist from the open ground at the end of Jones Street. Redcoats were beginning to thicken in the crowd of people thronging up Montgomery Street.

“You mistake my purpose,” John said, turning sideways to allow a hurrying lady with wide panniers, a parasol, two servants, and a small dog to pass him. “Your pardon, madam … And I hope Jamie Fraser does as well.”

Hal glanced sharply at him but was prevented from speaking by the passage of two tanner’s lads, scarves wrapped round their faces and carrying an enormous basket between them, from which the eye-watering reek of dog ordure emerged like an evil djinn.

Hal apparently had got a lungful of the stuff, and coughed until his eyes watered. John eyed him; his brother was prone to attacks of wheezing and shortness of breath. In this instance, though, he got control of himself, spat several times, pounded his chest with a fist, and shook himself, breathing heavily.

“What … purpose?” he said.

“I mentioned my son? Brianna Fraser is William’s half sister.”

“Oh. So she would be. I hadn’t thought of that.” Hal adjusted his hat, disarranged by the coughing fit. “He’s not met her?”

“Briefly, a few years ago—but he had no notion who she was. I know the young woman quite well, however, and while she is quite as obstinate as either one of her parents, she has a kind heart. She would be curious about her brother—and if there’s anyone who could talk sensibly to him about his … difficulties … it would likely be her.”

“Hmph.” Hal considered that for a few steps. “Are you sure that’s wise? If she’s Fraser’s daughter—wait, you said ‘both her parents.’ Is she also Claire Fraser’s daughter?”

“She is,” John said, in a tone indicating that this was probably all his brother required to know about Brianna. Apparently it was, for Hal laughed.

“She may persuade him to turn his coat and fight for the rebels, might she not?”

“If there is one trait that Jamie Fraser has succeeded in passing to all his offspring,” John said dryly, “it’s stubbornness. Forceful as she is, I doubt she could persuade William of anything whatever.”

“Then—”

“I want him to stay,” John blurted. “Here. At least until he’s made up his mind. About everything.” “Everything” encompassing William’s paternity, his career with the army, his title, and the estates to whose control he had just ascended, having reached his majority.

“Oh.” Hal stopped dead, looking at his brother, then glanced down the street. Prévost’s headquarters stood at the far corner, a large gray house with the normal trickle of officers and civilians going in and out under the eyes of the two soldiers guarding the door.

Hal took John’s arm and pulled him into the side street, less crowded.

John’s heart was thumping. He hadn’t articulated his fears, even to himself, but the letter to Jamie had brought them clearly to the surface of his mind.

Hal looked at him, one dark brow arched.

John closed his eyes and took a breath deep enough to keep his voice level.

“I have dreams,” he said. “Not every night. Often, though.”

“Of William.” It wasn’t a question, but John nodded and opened his eyes. Hal’s face was attentive, his eyes direct and bloodshot. “Dead?” Hal asked. “Lost?”

John nodded again, wordless. He cleared his throat, though, and found a few.

“Isobel told me that he was lost once, at Helwater, when he was three or so—wandering alone in a fog on the fells. Sometimes I see that. Sometimes … other things.”

William had always told him stories, written him letters. Of being trapped in Quebec during a long, cold winter. Hunting, lost overnight, feet freezing, the eerie light of the Arctic sky thrumming overhead, falling through ice into dark water … To William, this was mere adventure, and John enjoyed hearing about it—but in the dark of his dreams, such things came back twisted, cold as ghosts and filled with foreboding.

“And battle,” Hal said, almost under his breath. He was leaning back against the brick wall of a tavern, his eyes on the polished toes of his boots. “Yes. You see those things when you’re a father. Even when you’re not asleep.”

John nodded but didn’t say anything. He felt a bit better, to have spoken. Of course Hal thought such things. Henry badly wounded in battle, and Benjamin … He thought of William, digging up a grave in the dark, expecting to find his cousin’s body …. He’d dreamed of digging up a grave himself, and finding William in it.

Hal heaved a sigh and straightened up.

“Tell Fraser that William is here,” he said quietly. “Just mention it, casually. Nothing more. He’ll send the girl.”

“You think so?”

Hal glanced at him and took his elbow, steering him out of the alley.

“You think he cares less about William than you do?”

42 Sasannaich Clann Na Galladh!

JAMIE READ THE LETTER through twice, his lips tightening at the same place, halfway down the first page—and then again, at the end. It wasn’t actually unusual for him to react to one of John’s letters that way, but when he did, it was normally because it held unwelcome news of the war, of William, or of some incipient action on the part of the British government that might be about to result in Jamie’s imminent arrest or some other domestic inconvenience.

This, however, was the first letter John had sent in nearly two years—since before Jamie’s return from the dead to find me married to John Grey, and before he had punched John in the eye as a result of this news and inadvertently caused his lordship to be arrested and nearly hanged by the American militia. Well, turnabout was fair play, I supposed ….

No point in putting it off.

“What does John have to say?” I asked, keeping my voice pleasantly neutral. Jamie glanced up at me, snorted, and took off his spectacles.

“He wants Brianna,” he said shortly, and pushed the letter across the table to me.

I glanced involuntarily over my shoulder, but Bree had gone to the springhouse with a box of freshly made goat’s cheeses. I pulled my spectacles out of my pocket.

“I take it you noticed that last bit?” I said, glancing up when I’d finished reading.

“‘My son William has resigned his Commission and is presently staying with me in Savannah, making use of his new-found Leisure to contemplate his Future, as he has now attained his Majority’? Aye, I did.” He glared at the letter, then at me. “Contemplate his future? What is there to contemplate, for God’s sake? He’s an earl.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to be an earl,” I said mildly.

“It’s not something ye’ve got a choice about, Sassenach,” he said. “It’s like a birthmark; ye’re born with it.”

He was frowning down at the letter, lips tight.

I gave him an exasperated look, which he sensed, for he glanced up and raised his brows at me.

“What are ye giving me that sort of look for?” he demanded. “It’s not my f—” He stopped, almost in time.

“Well, let’s not say ‘fault’—nobody’s blaming you, but—”

“Nobody but William. He’s blaming me.” He exhaled through his nose, then took a breath and shook his head. “And no without reason. See, this is why I didna want Brianna telling him! If he’d never seen me nor found out the truth, he’d be in England right now, takin’ care of his lands and tenants, happy as a—” He stopped, groping.

“Clam?” I suggested. “What makes you think he isn’t happy at the moment? Perhaps he just hasn’t been able to arrange passage back to England yet.”

“Clam?” He looked at me for an instant, brows raised, then dismissed all clams with an abrupt gesture. “I wouldna be happy in his position, and I dinna see how an honorable man could be.”

“Well, he is very like you.” I was hoping to keep the conversation focused on William, and avoid notice of John, but I should have known that was futile. He snatched up the letter, crumpled it, and threw it into the fire with a very rude Gaelic expression.

“Mac na galladh! First he takes my son, then he swives my wife, and now he’s tryin’ to suborn my daughter!”

“Oh, he is not!” I’d been keeping a lid on my own temper, but the flames of rage curling round the edges of the room were getting too warm; I was growing brown and crispy. “He just wants Bree to go and talk to her brother! Can’t you see that, you bloody … Scot?”

That stopped him for an instant, and I saw a startled spark of amusement in his eyes, though it didn’t reach his mouth. He did breathe, though, that was an improvement.

“Talk to her brother,” he repeated. “Why? Does he think Brianna will sing my praises to such an extent that William will forget that I’m the reason he’s a bastard? And even if he decided to forgive me for that, it wouldna help him settle his mind to be an earl.” He snorted. “Left to the influence of that den o’ snakes, I’d no be surprised if Brianna ended up sailing off to England wi’ them to paint portraits of the Queen.”

“I have no idea what John thinks,” I said evenly. “But since he says ‘contemplate his future,’ I assume that he means William has doubts. Brianna is an outsider in this; she’d have a different perspective on things. She could listen without getting personally involved.”

“Ha,” he said. “That lassie is personally involved in every damned thing she touches. She gets it from you,” he added, with an accusing look at me.

“And she doesn’t give up on anything she’s made up her mind to do,” I said, settling back in my chair and folding my hands in my lap. “She gets that from you.”

“Thank you.”

“It wasn’t necessarily a compliment.”

That did get the breath of a laugh, though he stayed on his feet. He’d gone the color of the tomatoes in my garden at the height of his speech, but this was fading back to his normal ruddy bronze. I relaxed a little, too, and took a breath.

“You know one thing about John, though.”

“I ken a number of things about him—most of which I wish I didn’t. Which one thing d’ye mean?”

“He knows your daughter loves you. And that no matter what she and William have to say to each other, that will be part of the conversation.”

He blinked, disconcerted.

“I—well, aye, maybe … but—”

“Do you think he cares for William any less than you do?”

The atmosphere had cooled, and I could feel my heart rate slowing down. Jamie had turned his back and was leaning on the mantelpiece, looking into the fire. The letter had burned but was still visible, a curled black leaf on the hearth. The fingers of his right hand tapped slowly against the stone.

At last he sighed and turned round.

“I’ll talk to Brianna,” he said.

“DID YOU TALK to Brianna yet?” I asked, the next day.

“I will,” he said, with some reluctance, “but I’m no going to tell her about William.”

I was sniffing cautiously at the stew I’d made for dinner, but desisted in order to look sideways at him. “Why on earth not?”

“Because if I did, she’d go because she thought I wanted her to, even if she otherwise wouldna go at all.”

That was probably true, though I personally didn’t see anything wrong with asking her to do something Jamie wanted done. He plainly did, though, so I nodded agreeably and held out the spoon to him.

“Taste that, will you, and tell me if you think it’s fit for human consumption.”

He paused, spoon halfway to his mouth.

“What’s in it?”

“I was hoping you could tell me. I think it might possibly be venison, but Mrs. MacDonald didn’t know for sure; her husband came home with it from a trip to the Cherokee villages and it didn’t have any skin on it, and he said he’d been too drunk when he won it in a dice game to have asked.”

Eyebrows raised as high as they’d go, he sniffed gingerly, blew on the spoonful of hot stew, then licked up a small taste, closing his eyes like a French dégustateur judging the virtues of a new Rhône.

“Hmm,” he said. He lapped a little more, though, which was encouraging, and finally took a whole bite, which he chewed slowly, eyes still closed in concentration.

Finally he swallowed, and opening his eyes said, “It needs pepper. And maybe vinegar?”

“For taste, or disinfection?” I asked. I glanced at the pie safe, wondering whether I could scrabble together sufficient remnants from its contents for a substitute dinner.

“Taste,” he said, leaning past me to dip the spoon again. “It’s wholesome enough, though. I think it’s wapiti—and meat from a verra old, tough buck. Is it not Mrs. MacDonald who thinks you’re a witch?”

“Well, if she does, she kept it to herself when she brought me her youngest son yesterday, with a broken leg. The older son brought the meat this morning. It was quite a large chunk of meat, regardless of origin. I put the rest in the smokehouse, but it smelled a little odd.”

“What smells odd?” The back door opened and Brianna came in, carrying a small pumpkin, Roger behind her with a basket of collard greens from the garden.

I raised a brow at the pumpkin—too small for pie making, and very much too green, and she shrugged.

“A rat or something was gnawing at it when we went into the garden.” She turned it to display fresh tooth marks. “I knew it would go bad right away if we left it—if the rat didn’t come right back and finish it off—so we brought it in.”

“Well, I’ve heard of fried green pumpkin,” I said, dubiously accepting the gift. “This is already rather an experimental meal, after all.”

Brianna looked at the hearth and took a deep, cautious sniff.

“It smells … edible,” she said.

“Aye, that’s what I said,” Jamie said, waving aside the possibility of wholesale ptomaine poisoning with one hand. “Sit down, lass. Lord John’s sent me a wee letter and he’s mentioning you.”

“Lord John?” One red brow arched, and her face lighted up. “What does he want?”

Jamie stared at her.

“Why would ye think he wants something from ye?” he asked, wary but curious.

Brianna swept her skirt to one side and sat down, pumpkin still in one hand, and extended a hand to Jamie, palm up.

“Lend me your dirk for a minute, Da. As for Lord John, he doesn’t do social chat. I don’t know whether he wants something from me, but I’ve read enough of his letters to know that he doesn’t bother writing unless he’s got a purpose.”

I snorted slightly and exchanged a look with Jamie. That was completely true. Granted, his purpose was occasionally just to warn Jamie that he was risking his head, his neck, or his balls in whatever rash venture John thought he might be involved in, but it definitely was a purpose.

Bree took the proffered dirk and began to slice the small pumpkin, spilling glistening clumps of tangled green seeds onto the table.

“So?” she said, eyes on her work.

“So,” Jamie said, and took a deep breath.

THE FRIED GREEN pumpkin was indeed edible, though I wouldn’t say much more for it than that.

“Needs ketchup” was Jemmy’s comment.

“Aye,” his grandfather agreed, chewing gingerly. “Walnut ketchup, maybe? Or mushroom.”

“Walnut ketchup?” Jemmy and Amanda burst into giggles, but Jamie merely eyed them tolerantly.

“Aye, ye wee ignoramuses,” he said. “Ketchup’s any relish ye put on your meat or vegetables—no just that tomato mash your mam makes for ye.”

“What does walnut ketchup taste like?” Jem demanded.

“Walnuts,” Jamie said, unhelpfully. “Wi’ vinegar and anchovies and a few other things. Hush now; I want to be speaking wi’ your mother.”

While the children and I cleared the table, Jamie laid out Lord John’s proposal, in detail, for Brianna. Careful, I noted, to keep his own feelings out of the matter.

“Ye can take a bit of time to think, a nighean,” he said, finishing up. “But it’s growing late in the year for a long journey. If ye go … ye may well not be able to come back until the spring.”

Brianna and Roger exchanged a long look, and I felt a twinge of the heart. I hadn’t thought of that, but he was right. Snow-choked passes cut off the high mountains from the low country as effectively as a thousand-foot stone wall.

Brianna was nodding, though.

“We’ll do it,” she said simply.

“We?” said Roger, but he smiled.

“Are ye sure?” Jamie asked, and I saw the fingers of his right hand flutter briefly at the edge of the table.

“If you’re going to buy a lot of guns, you probably need to get your gold and whisky to the coast,” Bree pointed out reasonably. “Lord John’s offering me an assured safe-conduct pass—and armed escort, if I want it, which I don’t—to go there.” She lifted a shoulder. “What could be easier?”

Jamie lifted a brow. So did Roger.

“What?” she demanded, looking from one to the other. Jamie made a slight Scottish noise and looked away. Roger drew a deep breath as though about to speak, then let it out again.

“Ye’re thinking of hiding six casks of whisky and five hundred pounds in gold in your wee box of paints?” Jamie said.

“Under the noses of your armed guards,” Roger added, “who will presumably be British soldiers, charged, among other things, with the arrest of, of—”

“Moonshiners,” I said.

Jamie raised his other brow.

“Really,” I said. “The notion being that people with illegal stills operate them largely at night, I suppose.”

“Well, I do have a plan,” Brianna said, with some asperity. “I’m going to take the kids with me.”

“Wow!” said Jemmy. Amanda, having no idea what was being discussed, loyally chirped “Wow” as well, which made Fanny and Germain laugh.

Jamie said something under his breath in Gaelic. Roger didn’t say it, but might as well have had the words “God help us all” tattooed on his forehead. I felt similarly, but for once, I thought I’d concealed my sentiments better than the men, who weren’t trying to conceal theirs at all. I wiped my face with a towel, and started slicing the apple-and-raisin pie for dessert.

“Possibly there are a few refinements that could be added,” I said, as soothingly as possible, my back safely turned. “Why don’t we talk about it when the children are in bed.”

WE’D SHOOED ALL the children upstairs to bed and Jamie had brought down a bottle of the JFS. Aged seven years in sherry casks, it may not have been quite worth its weight in gold, but it was still an invaluable aid to conferences with a strong potential for going sideways.

He poured each of us a large tot and, sitting down himself, raised a hand for silence while he took a mouthful, held it for a long moment, then swallowed and sighed.

“All right,” he said, lowering his hand. “What is it ye have in mind, then, mo nighean ruadh?”

Roger gave a mild snort of amusement at hearing him call Brianna “my redhaired lass,” and I smiled into my whisky. It neatly carried the simultaneous implications that whatever she had in mind was likely reckless to an alarming degree—and that her propensity for such recklessness had likely come from her redheaded sire.

Bree picked that one up, too, raised her ruddy brows, and lifted her cup to him in toast.

“Well,” she said, having taken and savored her own first sip. “You need to get guns and horses.”

“I do,” Jamie said patiently. “The horses will be no great matter, though, so long as we do it carefully. I can get them from the Cherokee.”

She nodded and flipped a hand in acceptance of that.

“All right. The guns—you actually have two problems there, don’t you?”

“I’d be happy if it were only two,” he said, taking another sip. “Which problems d’ye mean, lass?”

“Buying the guns—oh, I see what you mean about more than two problems. But putting that aside for a minute: you need to buy the guns, and then you need to get them back here. Do you have an idea where you’re going to get them, by the way?”

“Fergus,” Jamie said promptly.

“How?” I asked, staring at him.

“He’s in Charles Town,” he said. “The Americans hold the city, under General Lincoln. And where there’s an army, there are guns.”

“You’re planning to steal guns from the Continental army?” I blurted. “Or make Fergus do it, which is even worse?”

“No,” he said patiently. “That would be treason, aye? I’m going to buy them from whoever is stealing them. Someone always is. Fergus will likely ken who the local smugglers are, already, but if not, I’ve considerable faith that he can find out.”

“It’ll cost a pretty price,” Roger said, lifting a brow.

Jamie grimaced, nodding. “Aye. I’ve kept that gold safe all these years for the time it should be needed for the cause of revolution—and … now it is.”

“Okay,” Bree said patiently. “Let’s say that Fergus can get hold of guns for you, one way or another. If he has to pay for them”—here Jamie smiled, despite the seriousness of the conversation—“then you need to get the gold to him, and someone then needs to bring the guns back. Sooo …” She took a deep breath and glanced at Roger, then stuck up a thumb.

“One. Now the harvest is in, we need to get Germain home to his family in Charleston as soon as we can; he’s dying to see his mother and his new baby brothers. Two”—the index finger rose—“Lord John wants me to come paint a portrait in Savannah, for which I’ll get paid in actual money, which we need for things like clothes and tools. And three …” She raised the middle finger, and without looking at Roger said, “Roger needs to be ordained. The sooner the better.”

Jamie turned his head to look at Roger, who had flushed deeply at this.

“Well, you do,” Bree said to him. Without waiting for an answer, she turned back to Jamie and laid both hands flat on the table.

“So I write back to Lord John right away, and tell him I’ll do it, and I don’t need guards, thank you, but Roger is traveling with me and we’re bringing the kids. Because if we don’t make it back before snowfall,” she explained, turning her face to me, “it could be five or six months before we saw them again. And,” she added, looking squarely at Jamie, “I think they’ll be safer going with us than staying here. What if Captain Cunningham’s friends decide to come back and bring a militia through the Ridge, and loot and burn this house while they’re at it?”

The blunt question gave me a shock, and clearly unsettled both Jamie and Roger, too. Jamie cleared his throat carefully.

“Ye think I’d be taken unawares?” he asked mildly.

“No, I think you’d clean their clocks,” she said, half-smiling. “But that doesn’t mean I want the kids in the middle of that kind of fight, especially without me and Roger here to keep them out of the line of fire.”

Her hands were still flat on the table, and so were Jamie’s, and I saw the echo in their flesh—his hands large and battered, the knuckles enlarged by work and by age, one finger missing and the others scarred but still holding a long-fingered, powerful grace—the same grace, unmarred and smooth-skinned, but likewise powerful, in Brianna’s.

“So,” she said, taking a breath, “I tell Lord John I’ll do it but that we’ll come through Charleston first so that Roger can check into whatever else he needs to do for ordination and to get Germain back to his family.

“Lord John likes Germain,” she continued, smiling despite the seriousness of the situation. “He’ll want to help. So I ask him to send me a passport or whatever you call it these days, signed by his brother. An official letter that gives us free passage, without interference, through roads and cities held by the British army. We’ll be an innocent minister’s family with three kids and traveling under the protection of the Duke of Pardloe, who’s the colonel of whatever his regiment is. What are the odds of anybody strip-searching us?”

Jamie’s brows drew together and I could see that he was reckoning those odds and, while still not liking them, was obliged to admit that it was a plan.

“Aye, well,” he said reluctantly. “That might work, for getting the gold to Fergus—and I can maybe arrange something for the whisky. There’s always sauerkraut. But I’m no having ye come back with a load of contraband muskets in your wagon. Ordained minister or no,” he added, raising an eyebrow at Roger. “I’ve called on God for a good deal of help in my life, and got it, but I’m no asking Him to save me—or you—from my own foolishness.”

“I’m with ye on that one,” Roger assured him. “How long would it take, d’ye think, to get a reply from his lordship, with the clearance papers?”

“Maybe two or three weeks, if the weather holds.”

“Then we’ll have time to think what to do with the guns, always assuming we get them.” Roger lifted his hitherto untasted cup and clinked it against mine. “Here’s to crime and insurrection.”

“Did you say sauerkraut?” Brianna asked.

43 The Men Ye Gang Oot With

OVER THE NEXT FEW weeks, the different approaches to God on offer at the Meeting House collected their own adherents. Many people attended more than one service, whether from an eclectic approach to ritual, indecision, a desire for society if not instruction—or simply because it was more interesting to go to church than it was to sit at home piously reading the Bible out loud to their families.

Still, each service had its own core of worshippers who came every Sunday, plus a varying number of floaters and droppers-in. When the weather was fine, many people remained for the day, picnicking under the trees, comparing notes on the Methodist service versus the Presbyterian one. And—being largely Highland Scots possessed of strong personal opinions—arguing about everything from the message of the sermon to the state of the minister’s shoes.

Rachel’s Meeting attracted fewer people and many fewer arguments, but those who came to sit in silence and in company to listen to their inner light came every week, and little by little, more came.

It wasn’t always completely silent—as Ian noted, the spirit had its own opinions, and some meetings were very lively—but I thought that for a number of the women, at least, the opportunity to just sit down for an hour in a quiet place was worth more than even the most inspired preaching or singing.

Jamie and I always attended all three services, both because the landlord couldn’t be seen to show partiality, even if the Presbyterian minister was his own son-in-law and the Quaker—presider? instigator? I wasn’t sure what one might call Rachel, other than perhaps the speck of sand inside a pearl—his niece by marriage. And because it allowed him to keep his thumb firmly on the pulse of the Ridge.

After each of the morning services, I would take up my station under a particular huge chestnut tree and run a casual clinic for an hour or so, dressing minor injuries, looking down throats, and offering advice along with a surreptitious (because it was Sunday, after all) bottle of “tonic”—this being a concoction of raw but well-watered whisky and sugar, with assorted herbal substances added for the treatment of vitamin deficiency, alleviation of toothache or indigestion, or (in cases where I suspected its need) a slug of turpentine to kill hookworms.

Meanwhile, Jamie—often with Ian at his elbow—would wander from one group of men to another, greeting everyone, chatting, and listening. Always listening.

“Ye canna keep politics secret, Sassenach,” he’d told me. “Even if they wanted to—and they mostly don’t want to—they canna hold their tongues or disguise what they think.”

“What they think in terms of political principle, or what they think of their neighbors’ political principles?” I asked, having caught the echoes of these discussions from the women who formed the major part of my pastoral Sunday surgery.

He laughed, but not with a lot of humor in it.

“If they tell ye what their neighbor thinks, Sassenach, it doesna take much mind reading to ken what they think.”

“Do you think they know what you’re thinking?” I asked, curious. He shrugged.

“If they don’t, they soon will.”

TWO WEEKS LATER, when Captain Cunningham had finished the final prayer, but before he could dismiss his congregation, Jamie rose to his feet and asked the captain’s permission to address the people.

I saw Elspeth Cunningham’s back—always straight as a pine sapling—go rigid, the black feathers on her churchgoing hat quivering in warning. Still, the captain didn’t have much choice, and with a fair assumption of graciousness, he stepped back and gestured Jamie to take the floor.

“Good morn to ye all,” he said, with a bow to the congregation. “And I ask your pardon—and Captain Cunningham’s”—another bow—“for needing to disturb your peace of mind on a Sunday. But I’ve had a wee note this week that’s disturbed my own peace of mind considerably, and I hope ye’ll give me the opportunity to share it with ye.”

A murmur of agreement, puzzlement, and interest passed through the room. Along with a subterranean rumble, barely felt, of apprehension.

Jamie reached into his coat and removed a folded note, with a broken candle-wax seal that had seeped grease into the paper, so that the shadows of words showed through as he unfolded it. He put on his spectacles and read it aloud.

As he read, I had the oddest feeling of déjà vu. A sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, and the ripple of gooseflesh up my arms. The room was hot and moist as a Turkish bath, but I felt as though I stood in a cold, empty room, with an icy Scottish rain beating at the window, hearing words of inescapable doom.

“No. Oh, God, no …” I hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but it escaped my lips, though only in a whisper that made the people to each side of me glance sideways, then hastily away, as though I had suddenly sprouted leprosy. Jamie finished:

There was a moment of ringing silence, and then Jamie folded the note and spoke before the reaction of the crowd could erupt.

“I shallna tell ye the name of the gentleman who sent me this letter, for he is a gentleman known to me by name and reputation and I will not endanger him. I believe that what he says is true.”

People were stirring all around me, but I sat frozen, staring at him.

No. Not again. Please, not again …

But you knew, the reasonable part of my mind was saying. You knew it was coming back. You knew he couldn’t get out of the way—and he wouldn’t, even if he could …

“I ken very well that some here profess loyalty to the King. Ye’ll all ken that I do not. Ye’ll do as your conscience bids ye—and so will I.” He met the eyes of men here and there in the audience, but avoided looking at Captain Cunningham, who stood, quite expressionless, to one side.

“I willna drive any man from his land for what he believes.” Jamie stopped for a moment, took his glasses off, and looked directly from face to face to face before continuing. I knew he was looking at the men he knew to be professed Loyalists, and repressed the urge to look round.

“But this land and its tenants are mine to protect, and I will do that. I’ll need help in this endeavor, and to that end, I will be raising a militia. Should ye choose to join me, I will arm ye, feed ye on the march, and provide mounts for those men who may not have one.”

I could feel Samuel Chisholm—aged eighteen or so—sitting next to me, stiffen and move his feet slightly under him, plainly deciding whether to leap to his feet and volunteer on the spot. Jamie saw him move and lifted his hand slightly, with a brief smile.

“Those who wish to join me today—come and speak wi’ me outside. Those who wish to think on the matter may come to my house at any time. Day or night,” he added, with a wry twist of the mouth that made a few people titter nervously.

“Your servant, sir,” he said, turning to a stone-faced Captain Cunningham, “and I thank ye for your courtesy.”

He walked steadily down the aisle between the benches, put down a hand to me and pulled me up, gave me his arm, and we walked briskly out, leaving a dropped-pin silence behind us.

HE DID THE same thing at the Presbyterian service, Roger standing gravely behind him, eyes cast down. Here, though, the audience was prepared—everyone had heard what had happened at the Methodist service.

No sooner had he finished speaking than Bill Amos was on his feet.

“We’ll ride with ye, Mac Dubh,” he said firmly. “Me and my lads.”

Bill Amos was a handsome, black-haired, solid man, both physically and in terms of character, and there were murmurs of agreement among the people. Three or four more men rose on the spot to pledge themselves, and I could feel the hum of excitement stirring the humid air.

I could feel the sense of cold dread among the women, too. Several of them had spoken to me during my surgery between the services.

“Can ye no persuade your man otherwise?” Mairi Gordon had asked me, low-voiced and looking round to be sure she wasn’t overheard. “I’ve only my great-grandson, and I’ll be left alone to starve if he’s kilt.” Mairi was near my own age and had lived through the days after Culloden. I could see the fear at the back of her eyes, and felt it, too.

“I’ll … talk to him,” I said awkwardly. I could—and I would—try to persuade Jamie not to take Hugh Gordon, but I knew quite well what his answer would be.

“We won’t let you starve,” I said, with as much confidence as I could muster. “No matter what.”

“Aye, well,” she’d muttered, and let me dress the burn on her arm in silence.

The sense of excitement followed us out of the church. Men were clustering around Jamie; other men were in their own clusters, under the trees, in the shadow of the pines. I looked, but didn’t see Captain Cunningham among them; perhaps he knew better than to declare himself openly.

Yet.

The coldness I had felt in church was a shifting weight in my belly, like a pool of mercury. I went on talking pleasantly with the women and children—and the occasional man with a crushed toe or a splinter in his eye—but I could feel what was happening, all too clearly.

Jamie had split the Ridge, and the fracture lines were spreading.

He’d done it on purpose and from necessity, but that didn’t make the fact of it easier to bear. In the space of three hours, we had gone from a community—however contentious—to openly opposing camps. The earthquake had struck and the aftershocks would continue. Neighbors would be no longer neighbors, but stated enemies.

War had been declared.

USUALLY, PEOPLE WOULD mill slowly after church, groups forming and splitting and re-forming as friends were greeted, news exchanged, cloths spread, food unpacked, conversation rising under the trees like the comforting buzz of a working hive.

Not today.

Families drew in upon themselves, friends who found themselves still on the same side sought each other out for reassurance—but the Ridge had split, and its shattered pieces drifted slowly away along the forest paths, leaving the hot, thick air to settle on the vacant church, empty of peace.

My last patient, Auld Mam, who had (she said) a rheum in her back, was led away by one of her daughters, clutching a bottle of extra-strong tonic, and I heaved a deep, unrefreshing breath and started putting away my instruments and supplies. Bree had taken the children home—plainly there was to be no picnic lunch under the trees on this Sunday—but Roger was still standing outside the church with Jamie and Ian, the three of them talking quietly.

The sight gave me some comfort. At least Jamie wasn’t alone in this.

Ian nodded to Roger and Jamie and went off toward his own house, waving briefly to me in farewell. Jamie came down to me, still talking to Roger.

“I’m sorry, a mhinistear,” he was saying, as they came within earshot. “I wouldna have done it in kirk, but I had to reach the Loyalists at the same time as the rebels, ken? And most of them dinna come to Lodge anymore.”

“Nay bother, man.” Roger patted him briefly on the back and smiled. It was a slightly forced smile, but genuine for all that. “I understand.” He nodded to me, then turned back to Jamie.

“Do you plan to go to Rachel’s Meeting, too?” He was careful to keep any sort of edge out of his voice, but Jamie heard it anyway.

“Aye,” he said, straightening himself with a sigh. Then, seeing Roger’s face, he made a small, wry grimace. “Not to recruit, a bhalaich. To sit in the silence and ask forgiveness.”

44 Beetles with Tiny Red Eyes

WILLIAM HAD, OUT OF what even he would admit to himself in the depths of his heart was simple obstinacy (though he passed it off to his conscience as honesty and pride—of a shockingly republican nature, but still pride), taken up residence in a small shedlike house on the edge of the marshes with John Cinnamon. Lord John had—without comment—given him a room at Number 12 Oglethorpe Street, though, and he often slept there when he had come for supper. He had also continued wearing the clothes in which he had arrived in Savannah, though Lord John’s manservant took them away every night and brushed, laundered, or mended them before returning them in the morning.

On this particular morning, though, William woke to the sight of a suit of dark-gray velvet, with a waistcoat in ochre silk, tastefully embroidered with small beetles of varying colors, each with tiny red eyes. Fresh linen and silk stockings were laid out alongside—but his ex-army kit had disappeared, save for the disreputable boots, which stood like a reproach beside his washstand, their scuffs and scars blushing through fresh blacking.

He paused for a moment, then put on the banyan Papa had lent him—fine-woven blue wool, comforting on a chilly morning as it had rained in the night—washed his face, and went down to breakfast.

Papa and Amaranthus were at the table, both looking as though they’d been dug up, rather than roused, from bed.

“Good morning,” William said, rather loudly, and sat down. “Where’s Trevor?”

“Somewhere with your friend Mr. Cinnamon,” Amaranthus said, blinking sleepily. “God bless him. He came by looking for you, and as you were still sunk in hoggish slumber, he said he would take Trevor for a walk.”

“The little fiend yowled all night long,” Lord John said, shoving a pot of mustard in William’s direction. “Kippers coming,” he added, evidently in explanation of the mustard. “Didn’t you hear him?”

“Unlike some people, I slept the sleep of the just,” William said, buttering a piece of toast. “Didn’t hear a sound.”

Both relatives eyed him beadily over the toast rack.

“I’m putting him in your bed tonight,” Amaranthus said, attempting to smooth her frowsy locks. “See how justified you feel around dawn.”

A smell of smoky-sweet bacon wafted from the back of the house, and all three diners sat up involuntarily as the cook brought in a generous silver platter bearing not only bacon, but also sausages, black pudding, and grilled mushrooms.

“Elle ne fera pas çuire les tomates,” his lordship said, with a slight shrug. She won’t cook tomatoes anymore. “Elle pense qu’elles sont toxiques.” She thinks they’re poisonous.

“La facon dont elle les cuits, elle a raison,” Amaranthus muttered, in good but oddly accented French. The way she cooks them, she’s right. William saw his father raise a brow; evidently he hadn’t realized that she spoke French at all.

“I, um, saw the garments you kindly had prepared for me,” William said, tactfully diverting the conversation. “I’m most appreciative, of course—though I don’t think I shall have occasion to wear them at present. Perhaps—”

“Gray will suit you very well,” Lord John said, looking happier when Moira came in and set down a glass of what smelled like coffee with whisky in it next to him. He nodded toward Amaranthus, seated across from William. “Your cousin embroidered the beetles on the waistcoat herself.”

“Oh. Thank you, cousin.” He bowed to her, smiling. “By far the most fanciful waistcoat I’ve ever owned.”

She straightened up, looking indignant, and pulled her wrapper tight across her bosom.

“They aren’t fanciful at all! Every single one of those beetles is to be found in this colony, and all of them are the right colors and shapes! Well,” she added, her indignation subsiding, “I’ll admit that the red eyes really were a touch of fancy on my part. I just thought the pattern required more red than a single ladybird beetle would provide.”

“Entirely appropriate,” Lord John assured her. “Haven’t you ever heard of licencia poetica, Willie?”

“William,” William said coolly, “and yes, I have. Thank you, coz, for my charmingly poetical beetles—have they names?”

“Certainly,” Amaranthus said. She was perking up, under the influence of tea and sausages; there was a tinge of pink in her cheeks. “I’ll tell you them later, when you’re wearing it.”

A slight but unmistakable frisson went through William at that “when you’re wearing it,” together with an instantaneous vision of her slender finger slowly moving from beetle to beetle, over his chest. He wasn’t imagining it; Papa had glanced sharply at Amaranthus when she said it. There was no sign of intentional flirtation on her face, though; her eyes were fixed on the steaming dish of kippers as it was set down before her.

William took a dollop of mustard and pushed the pot over to her.

“Beetles and finery notwithstanding,” he said, “I can’t be wearing gray velvet breeches to clear out a shed with Cinnamon, which is my chief errand today.”

“Actually not, William,” said Lord John, lending his name the lightest touch of irony. “Your presence is required at luncheon with General Prévost.”

William’s kipper-loaded fork stopped halfway to his mouth.

“Why?” he asked warily. “What the devil has General Prévost got to do with me?”

“Nothing, I hope,” his father said, reaching for the mustard. “He’s a decent soldier, but what with a heavy Swiss accent and no sense of humor, having a conversation with him is like pushing a hogshead of tobacco uphill. However …” Lord John added, peering over the table. “Do you see the pepper pot anywhere? … However, he’s entertaining a party of politicals from London at present, and a couple of Cornwallis’s senior officers have come down from South Carolina to meet them.”

“And …?”

“Aha—got you!” Lord John said, lifting a napkin and discovering the pepper pot under it. “And I hear that one Denys Randall—alias Denys Randall-Isaacs—is to be one of the party. He sent me a note this morning, saying that he understood you were staying with me, and would I be so kind as to bring you with me and Hal to lunch, he having procured an invitation for you.”

IT WAS HOT and muggy, but clouds were gathering overhead, casting a welcome shade.

“I doubt it will rain before teatime,” Lord John said, glancing up as they left the house. “Do you want a cloak for the sake of your new waistcoat, though?”

“No.” William’s mind was not on his clothes, fine as they were. Nor was it really on Denys Randall; whatever Randall had to say, he’d hear it soon enough. His mind was on Jane.

He’d avoided walking down Barnard Street since he and Cinnamon had reached Savannah. The garrison headquarters was in a house on Barnard, no more than half a mile from Number 12 Oglethorpe Street. Across the square from headquarters was the commander’s house, a large, fine house with an oval pane of glass set in the front door. And growing in the center of the square was a huge live oak, bearded with moss. The gallows tree.

His father was saying something, but William wasn’t attending; he dimly felt Lord John notice and stop talking. They walked in silence to Uncle Hal’s house, where they found him waiting, in full dress uniform. He eyed William’s suit and nodded in approval, but didn’t say anything beyond, “If Prévost offers you a commission, don’t take it.”

“Why would I?” William replied shortly, to which his uncle grunted in a way that probably indicated agreement. His father and uncle walked together behind him, giving his longer stride room.

They hadn’t managed to hang Jane. But they’d locked her in a room in the house with the oval window, overlooking the tree. And left her alone, to wait out her last night on earth. She’d died by candlelight, cutting her wrists with a broken bottle. Choosing her own fate. He could smell the beer and the blood; saw her face in the guttering light of that candle, calm, remote—showing no fear. She’d have been pleased to know that; she hated people to know she was afraid.

Why couldn’t I have saved you? Didn’t you know I’d come for you?

They passed under the branches of the tree, boots shuffling through the layers of damp leaves knocked down by the rain.

“Stercus,” Uncle Hal said behind him, and he turned, startled.

“What?”

“What, indeed.” Uncle Hal nodded at a small group of men coming from the other side of the square. Some of them were dressed as gentlemen—perhaps the London politicals—but with them were several officers. Including Colonel Archibald Campbell.

For an instant, William wished John Cinnamon was at his back, rather than his father and uncle. On the other hand …

He heard his father snort and Uncle Hal make a grim sort of humming noise in his throat. Smiling a little, William strode purposefully up to Campbell, who had paused to say something to one of the gentlemen.

“Good day to you, sir,” he said to Campbell, and moved purposefully toward the door, just close enough to Campbell to make him step back automatically. Behind him, he heard Uncle Hal say—with exquisite politeness—“Your servant, sir,” followed by his father’s cordial, “Such a pleasure to see you again, Colonel. I hope we find you well?”

If there was a reply to this pleasantry, William didn’t hear it, but given the expression on Campbell’s face—crimson-cheeked and small blueberry eyes shooting daggers at the Grey party—he gathered there had been one.

Feeling much better, William waited for Uncle Hal to come up and manage the introductions to General Prévost and his staff, which he did with a curt but adequate courtesy. He gathered that there was no love lost between Prévost and his uncle but that they acknowledged each other as professional soldiers and would do whatever was necessary to address a military situation, without regard to personalities.

He shook hands with Prévost, looking covertly to see if the scar was visible. Papa had said Prévost was called “Old Bullet Head” as the result of having his skull fractured by a bullet that struck him in the head at the Battle of Quebec. To his gratification, he could see it: a noticeable depression of the bone just above the temple, showing as a hollow shadow under the edge of Prévost’s wig.

“My lord?” said a voice at his elbow as he went in to the reception room, where the guests were assembling to be given sherry and savory biscuits to prevent starvation before the luncheon should be served.

“Mr. Ransom,” William said firmly, turning to see Denys Randall, uniformed and looking much more soigné in his toilet than on previous meeting. “Your servant, sir.”

He looked back and saw that Campbell’s party had come in but that Uncle Hal and his father had in the meantime somehow contrived to flank Prévost, behaving as though they were part of the official receiving line, greeting each of the London politicals—several of whom Uncle Hal appeared to know—with effusive welcome before Campbell could introduce them.

Smiling, he turned back to Denys.

“Any word of my cousin?”

“Not directly.” Randall snagged two glasses of sherry from a passing tray and handed one to William. “But I do know the name of the British officer who received the original letter with the news of your cousin’s death.”

“Colonel Richardson?” William asked, disappointed. “Yes, I know that.” But Denys was shaking his head.

“No. The letter was sent to Richardson by Colonel Banastre Tarleton.”

William’s sherry went down sideways and he choked slightly.

“What? Tarleton received the letter from the Americans? How? Why?” William’s last meeting with Ban Tarleton had ended with a pitched fight—on the battleground at Monmouth—over Jane. William was reasonably sure he’d won.

“I would really like to know that,” Denys replied, bowing to a gentleman in blue velvet across the room. “And I sincerely hope you’ll find out and tell me. Meanwhile, have you heard anything of our friend Ezekiel Richardson?”

“Yes, but probably nothing very helpful. My—father received a letter from a sailing captain of his acquaintance, who mentioned casually that he’d seen Richardson on the docks in Charles Town.”

“When?” Denys betrayed no open excitement at the news, but cocked his head like a terrier wondering whether he had just heard the scrabbling of a gopher underground.

“The letter was dated a month ago. No telling whether the captain saw the fellow then or sometime before. No hint that Schermerhorn—that’s the captain—knows that Ezekiel Richardson is a turncoat, by the way, so I suppose he wasn’t in uniform. Not an American uniform, I mean.”

“Nothing else?” The terrier was disappointed, but perked up again at William’s next bit of information.

“Apparently Richardson was with a gentleman named Haym. But he didn’t say anything about what they were doing, or who Haym might be.”

“I know who he is.” Denys kept control of his expression, but his interest was plain.

The conversation was interrupted at this point by the banging of a small gong and the butler’s announcement that luncheon was served, and he found himself separated as another acquaintance hailed Denys.

“All right, Willie?” His father popped up beside him as he made his way through the double doors of the reception room into a generous hall with a fantastic floorcloth of painted canvas, done in simulation of the mosaic of a Roman villa. “Has he found out anything about Ben?”

“Not much, but there may be something.” He hastily conveyed the gist of his conversation with Randall.

“He says he knows the man Richardson was seen with in Charles Town. Haym.”

“Haym?” Uncle Hal had caught up with them in time to hear this, and lifted an eyebrow at the name.

“Possibly,” said William. “You know him?”

“Not to say ‘know,’” his uncle said with a shrug. “But I have heard of a rich Polish Jew named Haym Salomon. I can’t think what the devil he’d be doing in Charles Town, though—the last I heard of him, he’d been sentenced to death as a spy, in New York.”

LUNCHEON WAS TEDIOUS, with small patches of aggravation. William found himself seated between a Mr. Sykes-Hallett, who seemed to be a Member of Parliament from someplace in Yorkshire, judging from his incomprehensible accent, and a slender, stylish gentleman in a bottle-green coat called Fungo (or possibly Fungus), who burbled about the brilliance of the Southern Campaign (about which he plainly knew nothing, nor did he notice the stony looks of the soldiers seated near him) and kept addressing William as “Lord Ellesmere,” though he’d been tersely invited to stop.

William thought he caught a sympathetic look from Uncle Hal at the adjoining table, but wasn’t sure.

“Do I understand correctly that you have resigned your commission, Lord Ellesmere?” the green fungus asked, between nibbles of poached salmon. “Colonel Campbell said that you had—some trouble about a girl? Mind, I don’t blame you a bit.” He raised a hair-thin eyebrow in a knowing fashion. “A military career is well enough for men who have capacity but no means—but I understand that you fortunately do not require to make your way in life at the cost—at least the potential cost—of your blood?”

William had been raised to exercise courtesy even in adverse circumstances, and thus merely took a forkful of the rabbit terrine and put it into his mouth instead of stabbing Fungo in the throat with it.

Now, had it been Campbell … but it wasn’t really Campbell’s malice that troubled him. He hadn’t realized how much it would bother him, not being a soldier anymore. He felt like an imposter, an interloper, a useless and despised lump, sitting here among soldiers in a waistcoat covered with fucking beetles, for God’s sake!

It was a large gathering, some thirty men, two-thirds of them in uniform, and he could feel the lines drawn between the civilians and the soldiers, clearly. Respect, certainly—but respect with an underlying scorn—on both sides.

“What a charming waistcoat, sir,” said the man across the table, smiling. “I admit to a great partiality for beetles. I had an uncle who collected them—he left his collection to the British Museum when he died.”

The man’s name was Preston, William thought—second secretary to the undersecretary of war, or something. Still, he wasn’t either sneering or leering; he had a strong though rather homely face, with a large, crooked nose that bore a pair of pince-nez, and obviously intended nothing more than friendly conversation.

“My cousin embroidered them for me, sir,” William said, with a slight bow. “Her father is a naturalist, and she assures me that they’re completely correct—save for the eyes, which were her particular fancy.”

“Your cousin?” Preston glanced at the next table, where Papa and Uncle Hal were engaged in conversation with Prévost and his two principal guests, a minor nobleman sent as a representative of Lord George Germain, the secretary of state for the colonies, and a dressy Frenchman of some sort. “Surely it is not the duke who is a naturalist. Oh—but of course, the uncle must be on your mother’s side?”

“Ah. No, sir, I have misled you. She is my cousin’s widow, my uncle’s daughter-in-law.” He tilted his head in the direction of Uncle Hal. “Her husband died as a prisoner of war in New Jersey, and she and her young son have taken refuge with … us.”

“My profound sympathies to the young woman, my lord,” Preston said, looking genuinely concerned. “I suppose her husband was an officer—do you know his regiment?”

“Yes,” William said, letting the “my lord” pass. “The Thirty-fourth. Why?”

“I am a very junior under-undersecretary of the War Office, my lord, charged with overseeing the support of our prisoners of war. Pitifully meager support, I am afraid,” he added, with a tightening of the mouth.

“In most cases, all I can do is to solicit and organize help from churches and compassionate Loyalists in the vicinity of the prisons. The Americans are so straitened in their means that they can scarce afford to feed their own troops, let alone their prisoners, and I blush to say that the same is often very nearly true of the British army as well.”

Preston sat back as two footmen arrived with the soup. “This is not the time or the place for such discussions,” Preston said, peering round a bowl descending in front of him. “But if you should be at leisure later, my lord, I should be most grateful if you would tell me what you can about your cousin and the conditions in which he was held. If—if it is not too painful,” he added hastily, with another glance at Uncle Hal.

“I should be happy to,” William said, taking up his silver soup spoon and essaying the lobster bisque. “Perhaps … we might meet at the Arches this evening? The Pink House, you know. I shouldn’t want to cause my uncle distress.” He glanced at Uncle Hal, too—his uncle appeared to be experiencing indigestion, whether of a physical or spiritual nature, and Papa was regarding his soup with a very fixed expression.

“Of course.” Mr. Preston glanced quickly at the duke and lowered his voice. “I—hesitate to ask, but do you think that your father might perhaps accompany you later? His experience with prisoners was of course some time ago, but—”

“Prisoners?” William felt something small and hard bob in his midsection, as though he’d inadvertently swallowed a golf ball. “My father?”

Mr. Preston blinked, taken back.

“Forgive me, my lord. I had thought—”

“That doesn’t matter.” William waved a hand. “What did you mean, though; his experience with prisoners?”

“Why—Lord John was the governor of a prison in Scotland, perhaps … twenty, twenty-five, perhaps … years ago? Now, what was the name … oh, of course. Ardsmuir. You did not know that? Dear me, I do beg your pardon.”

“Twenty-five years ago,” William repeated. “I—suppose some of the prisoners might have been Jacobite traitors, from the Rising?”

“Oh, indeed,” Mr. Preston said, looking happier now that it seemed William was not offended. “Most of them, as I recall. I have written one or two small books on the subject of prison reform, and the handling of the Jacobite prisoners comprised a significant portion of my researches. I—could tell you a bit more about it, perhaps … this evening? Shall we say at ten o’clock?”

“Charmed,” William said cordially, and put the spoon full of cold soup into his mouth.

45 Not Quite like Leprosy

LORD JOHN LIFTED A spoonful of hot soup and held it suspended to cool, not removing his gaze from the gentleman sitting across the table from him, next to Prévost. He could feel Hal vibrating next to him and wondered briefly whether to spill the soup on Hal’s leg, as a means of getting him out of the dining room before he said or did something injudicious.

Their erstwhile stepbrother, who had just been introduced to them as the Cavalier Saint-Honoré, couldn’t help but be aware of their reaction to his presence, but he preserved a perfect sang-froid, letting his gaze pass vacantly over the brothers Grey, meeting neither one’s eyes. He was chatting to Prévost in Parisian French, and so far as Grey could tell, was actually pretending to be a Frenchman, damn his eyes!

Percy. You … you … Rather to his surprise, he was unable to apply a suitable epithet. He neither liked nor trusted Percy—but once he had loved the man, and he was sufficiently honest with himself as to admit it.

Percival Wainwright—his real name was Perseverance, but John was willing to wager that he was the only person on earth who knew that—was looking well, and well turned out, in an expensive and fashionable suit of puce silk with a striped waistcoat in pale blue and white. He still had delicate, attractive features with soft brown eyes, but whatever he had been doing of recent years had given him a new firmness of expression—and new lines bracketing his mouth.

“Monsieur,” John said to Percy directly, and bowing to him, continued in French. “Allow me to introduce myself—I am Lord John Grey, and this”—he nodded toward Hal, who was breathing rather noisily—“is my brother, the Duke of Pardloe. We are honored by your company, but find ourselves curious as to what … stroke of fortune should have brought you here.”

“A votre service,” Percy replied, with an equally civil bow. Did John imagine the spark in his eye? No, he did not, he concluded, and he casually let his hand fall on his brother’s knee, squeezing in a manner intended to suggest that one word out of Hal and he’d be limping for hours.

Hal cleared his throat in a menacing tone, but likewise bowed, not taking his eyes off Percy as he did so.

“I am here at the invitation of Mr. Robert Boyer,” Percy said, switching to English with a slight French accent. He tilted his head slightly, indicating a portly gentleman at a neighboring table whose wine-colored suit was the exact shade of the burst blood vessels in his bulbous nose. “Monsieur Boyer owns several ships and holds contracts with both the Royal Navy and the army, for the supplying of victuals and other necessaries. He has some matters of importance to discuss with the major general and thought that I might be of some small help with … details.”

The spark grew more pronounced, but Percy luckily refrained from anything overt, given that Hal was staring holes in his striped waistcoat.

“Indeed,” John said casually, in English. “How interesting.” And with the briefest of dismissive nods to Percy, he let go of Hal’s knee and turned to his partner to the right, this being Mrs. Major General Prévost. Madam General was obviously used to being the only female at military dinners and seemed startled to be spoken to.

John engaged her in descriptions of her garden and which plants were growing well at the moment and which ones were not. This occupied relatively little of his attention, unfortunately; he could hear Hal, behind him, talking to his other partner, a much-decorated but elderly and torpid colonel of artillery, who was stone deaf. Hal’s half-shouted queries were punctuated by small, jibing remarks under his breath, aimed at Percy, who so far had ignored them.

Feeling his joints knot with the urgent need to do something, and unable to kick Percy under the table or give Hal a jolt in the ribs with his elbow, John pushed back his chair and rose abruptly.

He headed for the discreet screen in the corner of the dining room that hid the pisspots from view, but the warm tidal reek of the urine of numerous lobster-eaters hit him in the face and he veered away, going out through the open French doors into the fresh air of the garden. It had been raining, but the downpour had stopped, and water dripped from every tree and shrub.

He felt as though there had been an iron band round his chest that broke as he left the house, and he breathed deep, refreshing gulps of cool, rain-washed air. His face felt hot, and he swiped a hand through the wet leaves of a hydrangea bush and wiped cold water over his face.

“John,” said a voice behind him. He stiffened, but didn’t turn around.

“Go away,” he said. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

There was a faint snort in reply.

“I daresay,” said Percy, in his normal English accent. “And I can’t say I blame you. But I’m afraid you’ll have to, you know.”

“No, I won’t.” John turned, meaning to push past Percy and go back inside, but Percy seized his arm.

“Not so fast,” he said. “Buttercup.”

John’s spinal column reacted much faster than his conscious mind. Both stomach and balls contracted with a force that made him gasp, before his mind managed to inform him that the bloody man really had just used his nom de guerre. The very secret code name under which he had labored—for three mortal years—in London’s Black Chamber.

He became aware that he was staring at Percy with his mouth open, and closed it. Percy smiled, a little tremulously. The façade of the arrogant, elegant Frenchman had dropped away, and it truly was Percy. His dark curls were hidden under the smooth, powdered wig, but the eyes were as they’d always been—dark, soft, and holding promise. Of various kinds.

“Don’t tell me,” John said, surprised that his own voice sounded normal. “Monsieur Citròn?”

“Yes.”

Percy’s voice was husky, though John couldn’t have said with what emotion. Humor, fear, excitement, lust …? The last thought made him shake off Percy’s grasp and take a step back.

“How bloody long did you know?” he demanded. “Monsieur Citròn” had been his opposite number, in France’s equivalent to the Black Chamber. All countries had one, though the names varied. The underground hive where worker bees gathered the pollen of intelligence, grain by grain, and painstakingly turned it into honey—or poison.

Percy shrugged.

“I’d been working for the Secret du Roi for about two years, before they gave you to me. It took me another six months to discover who you really were.”

Not for the first time, John wished he had Jamie Fraser’s ability to make glottal noises that made clear his state of mind without the nuisance of finding words. But he was an Englishman, and therefore found some.

“Are you working for Hirondelle now?” he demanded. The Secret du Roi—Louis XV’s private spy ring—had not quite perished with the death of the King, but in the manner of such things had quietly been absorbed into a more officially recognized body. He had himself escaped the clutches of Hubert Bowles, head of London’s Black Chamber, some years ago, and had left the world of official secrets behind with the relieved sense of one being fished out of a noisome bog on the end of a rope.

Percy raised one shoulder briefly, smiling.

“If I were still true to La Belle France—and her masters—you couldn’t tell whether I was telling you the truth about that or not, could you?”

John’s heart was beginning to slow down, but that “if” sped it up like a kicked horse. He didn’t reply at once, though. He took time to look Percy up and down, deliberately.

“It’s not quite like leprosy, you know,” Percy said, bearing this scrutiny with visible amusement. “Treason doesn’t show that easily.”

“The devil it doesn’t,” John said, but more for something to say than because it was true. “Are you actually telling me that you have—or are about to,” he added, with a hard look to Percy’s very expensive Parisian finery, “part company with your ‘special interests’ in France?” Including whoever you were working for in the Black Chamber? I wonder.

“Yes. I haven’t done it quite yet, because—” He glanced involuntarily over his shoulder, and John gave a short laugh.

“Wise of you,” he said. “So you’re wanting to prepare a soft landing on this side before you jump. And you thought you’d start with me?” There was enough spin on that question as to take the skin off Percy’s hand if he tried to catch it.

He didn’t catch it and he didn’t duck, either. Just stood and let it pass, regarding Grey with his soft, dark eyes.

“You saved my life, John,” he said quietly, looking at him. “Thank you for that; I hadn’t the chance to say so at the time.”

John flipped a hand dismissively, though his chest had tightened at Percy’s words. He’d suppressed everything at the time and he didn’t want it back now, twenty years later. Any of it.

“Yes. Well …” He turned slightly; Percy was standing between him and the terrace with the French doors.

“So I thought that you might possibly be willing to do me a much less dangerous favor.”

“Think again,” John advised him briefly, and, stepping round his erstwhile lover, walked rapidly away.

He heard nothing behind him; no protest, no offers, no calling of his name. At the open French doors, he glanced involuntarily behind him.

Percy was standing by the hydrangea bush. Smiling at him.

46 By the Dawn’s Early Light

THE SUN WAS WELL above the horizon when William came ambling slowly down Oglethorpe Street toward his father’s house. He’d had a long, fascinating—and very enlightening—conversation with Christopher Preston, about the Crown’s treatment of prisoners, prisoner-help societies, prison hulks … and Ardsmuir Prison. In the fullness of time, he might need to have a talk with Lord John. But not just … this … minute.

He wasn’t drunk, but wasn’t yet quite sober, either. One of his pockets sagged heavily and jingled when he touched it. He had a vague memory of playing cards with Preston and some friends of his—at least this experience seemed to have ended better than the last time he’d got blind drunk, ended up penniless, and … met Jane again.

Jane.

He hadn’t meant to call her to mind, but there she was, vivid, drawn on the surface of his mind with a sharp-pointed quill. The first time he’d met her—and the second. The shine of her hair and the smell of her body, close in the dark.

He stopped and leaned heavily on the iron fence surrounding a neighbor’s front garden. The scent of flowers and new-turned soil was fresh as the morning air on his face, the breath of the distant river and its marshes soothing, with its sense of flowing water, soft black silt, and lurking alligators.

The unexpected thought of alligators made him laugh, and he rubbed a hand over his rasping whiskers, shook his head, and turned in to Papa’s gate. He sniffed the air expectantly, but he was early; he could smell smoke from the kitchen fire, but no bacon. Voices, though … He wandered round the side of the house, intending to see whether he might charm Moira the cook into giving him a bit of toasted bread or some cheese to ease the pangs of starvation ’til something more substantial was ready.

He found Moira in the kitchen garden, pulling onions. She was talking to Amaranthus, who had evidently been gathering as well; she carried a trug that held a large mound of grapes and a couple of pears from the small tree that grew near the cookhouse. With an eye for the fruit, he strode up and bade the women good morning. Amaranthus gave him an up-and-down glance, inhaled as though trying to judge his state of intoxication from his aroma, and with a faint shake of the head handed him a pear.

“Coffee?” he said hopefully to Moira.

“Well, I’ll not be saying there isn’t,” she said dubiously. “It’s left from yesterday, though, and strong enough to take the shine off your teeth.”

“Perfect,” he assured her, and bit into the pear, closing his eyes as the luscious juice flooded his mouth. He opened them to find Amaranthus, back turned to him, stooping to look at something on the ground among the radishes. She was wearing a thin wrapper over her shift, and the fabric stretched neatly over her very round bottom.

She stood up suddenly, turning round, and he at once bent toward the ground she’d been looking at, saying, “What is that?” though he personally saw nothing but dirt and a lot of radish tops.

“It’s a dung beetle,” she said, looking at him closely. “Very good for the soil. They roll up small balls of ordure and trundle them away.”

“What do they do with them? The, um, balls of ordure, I mean.”

“Eat them,” she said, with a slight shrug. “They bury the balls for safekeeping, and then eat them as need requires—or sometimes they breed inside the larger ones.”

“How … cozy. Have you had any breakfast?” William asked, raising one brow.

“No, it isn’t ready yet.”

“Neither have I,” he said, getting to his feet. “Though I’m not quite as hungry as I was before you told me that.” He glanced down at his waistcoat. “Have I any dung beetles in this noble assemblage?”

That made her laugh.

“No, you haven’t,” she said. “Not nearly colorful enough.”

Amaranthus was suddenly standing quite close to him, though he was sure he hadn’t seen her move. She had the odd trick of seeming to appear suddenly out of thin air; it was disconcerting, but rather intriguing.

“That bright-green one,” she said, pointing a long, delicate finger at his middle, “is a Dogbane Leaf Beetle, Chrysosuchus auratus.”

“Is it, really?”

“Yes, and this lovely creature with the long nose is a billbug.”

“A pillbug?” William squinted down his chest.

“No, a billbug,” she said, tapping the bug in question. “It’s a sort of weevil, but it eats cattails. And young corn.”

“Rather a varied diet.”

“Well, unless you’re a dung beetle, you do have some choice in what you eat,” she said, smiling. She touched another of the beetles, and William felt a faint but noticeable jolt at the base of his spine. “Now here,” she said, with small, distinct taps of her finger, “we have Ash Borer, a Festive Tiger Beetle, and the False Potato Beetle.”

“What does a true potato beetle look like?”

“Very much the same. This one’s called a False Potato Beetle because while it will eat potatoes in a pinch, it really prefers horse nettles.”

“Ah.” He thought he should express interest in the rest of the little red-eyed things ornamenting his waistcoat, partially to repay her kindness in embroidering them but more in hopes that she’d go on tapping them. He was opening his mouth to inquire about a large cream-colored thing with horns when she stepped back in order to look up into his face.

“I heard my father-in-law talking to Lord John about you,” she said.

“Oh? Good. I hope they’d a fine day for it,” he said, not really caring.

“Speaking of False Potato Beetles, I mean,” she said. He closed his eyes briefly, then opened one and looked at her. She was perfectly solid, not wavering in the slightest.

“I know I’m a trifle the worse for drink,” he said politely. “But I don’t think I resemble any sort of potato beetle, regardless of my uncle’s opinion.”

She laughed, showing very white teeth. Maybe she didn’t drink coffee …

“No, you don’t,” she assured him. “The dichotomy just reminded me of what Father Pardloe was saying—that you wanted to renounce your title, but couldn’t.”

He felt suddenly almost sober.

“Really. Did you happen to overhear the reason?”

“No,” she said. “And it’s not my business, is it?”

“Evidently you think it is,” he said. “Or why are you mentioning it?”

She bent and plucked a small bunch of grapes out of the trug, offering it to him. Moira, he noticed, had gone about her business.

“Well, I thought that if that’s truly the case … I might be able to suggest something.”

With an odd sense of exhilaration, he took the grapes and asked, “Such as?”

“Well,” she said, as reasonably as though she were describing the eating habits of a firefly, “it’s quite simple. You can’t renounce your title, but you could hand it on. Abdicate in favor of your heir, I mean.”

“I haven’t an heir. Are you suggesting—”

“Yes, exactly.” She nodded approvingly at him. “You marry me and as soon as I have a son, you can give him your title, and either retire into private life and breed dachshunds or perhaps pretend to commit suicide and go off to become anyone you like.”

“Leaving you—”

“Leaving me as the dowager countess of whatever your estate is called, I forget. That might be slightly better than being the Duke of Pardloe’s penurious daughter-in-law, mightn’t it?”

He took a deep breath. Coffee was indeed on the wind, and so was bacon, but he’d suddenly lost interest in food. He stared at her. She cocked one smooth blond eyebrow.

“And what if your next child is a daughter?” he said, to his own surprise. “And the one after that? It seems to me that I should be in substantial danger of ending with a—a—hareem of girls, all in need of dowries and marriages, and myself still a bloody earl.”

Her brow wrinkled slightly.

“What’s a hareem?”

“It’s what Arab sheiks do to leaven the monotony of marriage, or so I’m told. Polygamy, I mean.”

“Surely you don’t mean to imply that you think being married to me would be boring, William.” The shadow of a dimple flickered in her cheek. “But as for hareems, nonsense. You needn’t marry me straight off, you know. We’d give it a go, and if the result is male, then you marry me, acknowledge the child, and—” She gave a flick of her hand in a silent “voilà.”

“I don’t believe I am having this conversation,” he said, shaking his head violently. “I really don’t. But for the sake of argument, just what the devil do you propose doing if the result, as you so casually put it, is female?”

She pursed her lips and turned her head to one side, considering.

“Oh, I can think of a dozen things at least. The simplest would be for me to go abroad at the first suggestion of pregnancy—I should do that in any case, as we wouldn’t be married yet—and pretend to be a wealthy widow. Then—”

William uttered a noise that he’d meant to be a laugh, and she raised a palm to suppress him, continuing serenely, “And then, if the child were to be a girl, I should simply come back with the little darling (for I’m sure any child of yours would be adorable, William) and announce that a good friend of mine had died in childbed and that I had adopted her daughter, out of charity, of course, but also to give my darling Trevor a sister.”

She lowered the palm and widened her eyes at him.

“That’s one way. I can think of others, if you—”

“Please don’t.” He didn’t know whether to laugh, shout at her, eat a grape, or just leave. Before he could decide, she’d done her illusion again and was pressed lightly against him, her hands on his shoulders, face beguilingly turned up.

“But you see,” she said reasonably, “there isn’t really any risk. To you, I mean. And you might”—her hand cupped his cheek, brief and cool as rain, and her forefinger traced his lips—“just possibly enjoy it.”

47 Tace Is the Latin for a Candle

JOHN HAD KNOWN THEY’D have to talk about Percy, but he’d succeeded in avoiding Hal until the next day, by the simple expedient of leaving his coat and gorget with Prévost’s cook and going down to the harbor while Hal was still talking to Old Bullet Head. There he hired a boat to take him fishing in the marshes. His guide, a local by the name of Lapolla, was very knowledgable, and John came in after dark, smelling of mud and marsh grass, with a sack full of redfish and a large, horrible thing called a horseshoe crab, which they had discovered—fortunately dead—on a tiny islet composed entirely of oyster shells.

He had eaten some of his fish, broiled over a fire on the beach and utterly delicious. Then, slightly drunk, he had stolen into Hal’s room around midnight and left the dead crab on the bedside table beside his sleeping brother, as a symbolic comment on the situation.

What with one thing and another, though, he didn’t encounter a conscious Hal until late the next afternoon, following a harrowing tea party at the home of a Mrs. Tina Anderson, who, while herself a tall, statuesque blond beauty possessed of great charm, was also possessed of a horde of chattering friends who had descended on him en masse, affectionately clinging to his sleeve or fingering his gold braid while expressing their gratitude for the army’s presence and their admiration of the courageous soldiers who were saving them—apparently—from mass rapine.

“It was like being pecked to death by a flock of small parrots,” he told Hal. “Screeching, and feathers everywhere.”

“Never mind parrots,” Hal said shortly. He’d been out himself, to a more formal—and doubtless less noisy—gathering at the home of a Mrs. Roma Sars, where he’d talked to some of the politicals who’d been at Prévost’s luncheon.

“I was hoping to talk to Monsieur Soissons and find out how the devil bloody Percy comes to be here, when he’s supposed to be dead—or at least decently pretending to be—but Soissons wasn’t in the way,” Hal replied shortly. He’d got his stock off, and the dark-red mark across his neck suggested that he’d been choking back words of one kind and another all afternoon. “Where was it you said you’d met the fellow last?”

John undid his own leather stock and closed his eyes, sighing with relief.

“I met him at the American camp in a place called Coryell’s Ferry, just before Monmouth. I told you about that.”

Hal wiped his face with a discarded towel, evidently used previously for blacking boots, and tossed it into the corner.

“And how the devil did he come to be there, for that matter?”

John shook his head. What did it matter now, after all? Still, he wasn’t going to explain just how it was that Percy had escaped being hanged for the crime of sodomy; he’d rather Hal didn’t expire of apoplexy just yet.

“About how you got yourself arrested by the Americans, escaped, and showed up after the battle in camp with a homicidal Mohawk Indian purporting to be James Fraser’s nephew? More or less,” Hal said, and a corner of his mouth twitched. “Mostly less, I imagine. You didn’t mention Percy, at any rate.”

John blinked in a noncommittal sort of way and tilted his head toward the door. Brisk footsteps were coming down the corridor; doubtless Hal’s valet, coming to extract Hal from the bondage of his dress uniform.

To his surprise, however, the footsteps belonged to William, mildly disheveled but evidently sober.

“I need to find Banastre Tarleton,” he said, without preamble. “How do you suggest I do that?”

“What d’you want him for?” Hal inquired, sitting down in a wooden chair. “And if you want help, turnabout’s fair play—help me get these bloody boots off. They’re John’s, and they’re killing me.”

“It’s not my fault you’ve got bunions,” John said. “Totally fitting for an infantry commander, though, you’ll admit. No one can say you don’t do your job thoroughly.”

Hal gave him a mildly evil look, then put his hands on William’s head to brace himself as William wrestled one boot loose.

“Do you know where Tarleton is?” he asked John, who shook his head.

“Neither do I,” Hal said, addressing the cowlick on top of William’s head, which swirled neatly clockwise before sticking up. Just like his father’s, John thought.

“Clinton’s chief clerk would know,” Grey said, and cleared his throat. “His name’s Ronson—Captain Geoffrey Ronson, if you please.”

“Fine.” William jerked the boot off and nearly shot backward off the campaign chest he was sitting on. He tossed the muddy boot on the hearth rug and inspected his chest, to be sure his beetles had suffered no damage. “Where the devil is Sir Henry keeping himself these days?”

“New York, for the moment,” Hal said, sticking out his other foot. “I’d bet reasonable money that Tarleton is still with him. Tarleton’s cavalry riders were Clinton’s new toy at Monmouth, and I doubt he’s had all his fun with them yet.”

William grunted as the second boot came off, and laid it with its fellow on the rug.

“So, shall I write to Tarleton directly, care of Sir Henry?”

John and Hal exchanged glances.

“I think I would,” Hal said, with a slight shrug. “Just don’t put anything in the letter that you don’t want the world to know about. Some clerks are discreet and a hell of a lot of them aren’t.”

“Speaking of which,” John said, eyeing his son. “Would it be indiscreet of us to ask why you want to find Banastre Tarleton?”

William shook his head, then smoothed the dislodged cowlick back into the dark mass of his hair.

“Denys Randall told me at the luncheon yesterday that it was Ban Tarleton who first got the letter from Middlebrook Encampment about Ben dying there. He evidently gave it to Ezekiel Richardson, and thus—” He made a spiraling gesture indicating the letter’s eventual arrival to Hal’s hand. “So I want to know why Tarleton got it, and how.”

“Very reasonable,” Hal agreed. “But I doubt it’ll be that easy.” He lowered his brows and stared at William, very directly. “What I tell you goes no further, William. Not to your Indian friend, your lover—if you have one, and no, I don’t want to know—or anyone else.”

William refrained from rolling his eyes, but only just. John looked down to hide a smile.

“Tace is the Latin for a candle,” William said obligingly, and laid a hand over his mouth. “My lips are sealed.”

Hal snorted, but nodded.

“Right. Sir Henry is tired of making feints at the Americans around New York and Virginia. He wants a bold stroke, and he’s got his eye upon Charles Town. If he hasn’t already left New York to go take it from the Americans, he will, within the next few months.”

“Who told you that?” John asked, surprised.

“Three different men at luncheon, all of whom begged me to keep it quiet.”

“I see what you mean about discretion, Uncle,” William said, openly amused.

“I,” said Hal coldly, “am the Colonel of His Majesty’s Forty-sixth Regiment of Foot. You are …” His voice trailed off as he gazed at William, bareheaded and slightly rumpled in his civilian finery, but still with the straight-backed bearing of a soldier.

I don’t suppose that will ever leave him, John thought. It hasn’t left his father.

“… not a serving officer at the moment,” Hal finished, choosing to be tactful for once.

William nodded agreeably.

“That’s fortunate, isn’t it?” he said. “As you aren’t my commanding officer, you can’t forbid me to go look for Tarleton if I like.”

48 A Face in the Water

“FANNY AND CYRUS SITTING in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g,” Roger said as he came into the surgery. I laughed, but looked guiltily over my shoulder.

“They’d better not be. Jamie’s roaming about like a wolf, seeking whom he may devour.” Cyrus was a very tall, very thin lad from one of the fisher-folk families, though I didn’t know which one. He’d sat down next to Fanny at church one Sunday and had been appearing now and then near her like a tall, bashful ghost. I’d never heard him speak and wondered whether he had any English. Fanny’s Gaelic was so far limited to commonplaces like, “Pass me a bannock, please,” and the Lord’s Prayer, but I supposed they might be of an age where young people are naturally tongue-tied in each other’s presence.

“They’re not,” Roger assured me. “I just saw them on the creek bank, sitting a decorous two feet apart, Cyrus with his hands folded so tight in his lap that he must be cutting off the circulation. Who’s Jamie seeking to devour, and why?”

“He got a letter from Benjamin Cleveland, signed by two other landowners over the mountain in Tennessee County, as well. They’re pestering Jamie to commit his militia and come join them in ‘rooting out the vile root of tyranny’—which I take to mean going round the neighbors and, if they’re Loyalists, hauling them out and beating them, taking their stock, burning their buildings, hanging them, or doing other antisocial things to discourage them.”

Roger’s laughter disappeared.

“Mr. Cleveland’s prose style leaves a bit to be desired,” he said. “‘Rooting out the root,’ I mean—but at least he’s clear about it.”

“So is Jamie,” I said, and resumed pounding the roots in my mortar with somewhat more force than necessary. “Meaning he’s damned if he’ll do it but he can’t just tell them to go directly to hell without passing Go. If he did, the only thing stopping them from adding the Ridge to their visiting list would be distance.”

“How far is it from here to Tennessee County?” Roger asked, uneasy. “Some way, surely?”

I stopped pounding long enough to shrug and wipe the forming sweat off my forehead with my sleeve.

“Roughly three or four days’ ride. With good weather,” I added, with a glance at the window, which showed sunshine streaming over the blooming grass.

“And, um … there’s Captain Cunningham and his Loyalist friends to be considered, too, I suppose?”

“Oh, God,” I said. “Yes, rather the local worm in the apple, isn’t he? On the other hand,” I added judiciously, “he’s probably Jamie’s best excuse for not joining our friend Benjamin on his bloodthirsty rounds—the notion that Jamie has to stay here on the Ridge in order to keep his own Loyalists in line. Which might actually be true, come to think of it.”

“I suppose so. What is that?” he asked, nodding at the mortar, purely for distraction.

“Echinacea,” I said. “It’s a bit early, but I need it. You dig the roots in autumn, because that’s when the plant starts storing its energy in the root; it doesn’t need to keep flowers and leaves going.

“You realize,” I added, pausing for breath, “that distance notwithstanding, the only things keeping Nicodemus Partland’s thugs—I mean, it must be him, mustn’t it?—from going through the Ridge like a dose of salts are you and Jamie?”

Roger looked as though he wasn’t surprised to hear that but was still discomfited.

“Aye,” he said slowly. “Ye can see it in Lodge. Ye know it’s not done to talk politics or religion there? Equality, Fraternity, et cetera?”

“So I’ve heard.” I’d slowed down a little in my pounding, and gave him a wry smile. “I always assumed that was a custom more honored in the breach, though. Um … knowing what people are like, I mean.” Men, I meant, and he noticed, giving me back the wry smile. He tilted a hand to and fro in equivocation.

“The Lodge members mostly keep to the letter of the law there—but what happens in practice is that some men just stop coming, if they’ve got substantial differences.”

I stopped pounding and looked at him. “That’s why Jamie always goes on Tuesdays—he’s staked the Lodge out as his territory?”

“Yes and no. He’s modest about it, but he is the Worshipful Master. And frankly, any place with him in it tends to be his territory.”

That made me laugh, and I picked up a bottle of beer from the counter, took a swig, and offered it to him.

“But?” I said.

He nodded and took the bottle.

“But. He encourages everyone to come, regardless, and he keeps the peace—in Lodge, where he can do it without it being overtly about politics. But as ye say … in the breach. Men do talk, and even if they’re not talking about politics, it’s easy enough to tell who’s who. And after a point—most of the committed Loyalists stopped coming.”

“They’re gathering at the captain’s house?” I guessed, and he nodded. That gave me a qualm.

“How many?”

“Twenty or so. Most of the Ridge folk are on our side, though the larger part of them would really just rather be left alone and no be bothered.”

“I can’t say I blame them,” I said dryly. A high, thin scream came from the window and I turned sharply but relaxed again almost at once.

“Mandy and Orrie Higgins are collecting leeches for me, with Fanny,” I said, waving at the window. “They keep putting them on each other. Speaking of that—” I leaned back a little, looking him over. “Were you looking for Jamie, or do you need medical attention?”

He smiled, recalled to his mission.

“The latter—but it’s no for me. I was just visiting the Chisholms and as I was leaving, I stopped to talk to Auld Mam—she was sitting on a bench outside smoking her pipe, so I sat down and chatted a bit.”

“That must have been fun.”

“Well, up to a point. But then she told me that whenever she goes to the privy, her womb falls out into her hand, and would I ask ye if there’s anything to be done about it.”

He flushed a little and I stifled a laugh.

“Let me think that one over. I’ll go up and talk to her tomorrow. Meanwhile, would you go fish Mandy and Orrie out of the creek, and find out if Cyrus is staying for supper?”

AS HE WALKED down toward the creek, he saw Jem, Germain, Aidan, and a few of the other boys from uphill, carousing through the woods, brandishing sticks at each other, slashing them like swords and pretending to fire them as muskets, shouting “Bang!” at random intervals.

“It’s all fun and games until somebody loses an eye,” he murmured, hearing Mrs. Graham’s admonition from his youth. No point in rounding up that lot and lecturing them, though. Beyond the fact that they were boys, there was a colder fact, too: said boys were only a few years away from being able to ride with a militia or join the army.

And the bloody war was heading in their direction, fast.

“Seventeen eighty-one, though,” he said, and crossed his fingers. “Yorktown happens in October of 1781. Two bloody years. But only two bloody years.” Surely they could make it that far?

The sight of Mandy and Orrie in the creek, sopping wet, covered with mud and waterweed, and chattering happily as a pair of titmice, eased his mind a bit—and so did the sight of Fanny and Cyrus, who had now moved closer together.

Cyrus, more than a foot taller than Fanny, was doing his best to arch over and look at what she was showing him without accidentally touching her. Roger cleared his throat, not wanting to startle them, and Cyrus snapped rigidly upright.

“It’s all right, a charaid,” Fanny told him, pronouncing “a charaid” very carefully—and very wrongly. Roger smiled, and saw Cyrus do so, too, though he tried to hide it. “It’s only Roger Mac.”

“True,” Roger said amiably, smiling down at them. “Mrs. Claire only wants to know will ye stay to dinner, a bhalaich?”

Cyrus had gone pink in the ears at being discovered so close to Fanny, and had in consequence lost all his English, but replied in Gaelic that he thanked the mistress and would like nothing better, but that his brother Hiram had told him to be back before nightfall, and it was a long walk.

“Aye, then. Oidhche mhath.”

He noticed, as he turned away, that Fanny had brought out her small roll of personal treasures to show Cyrus; his eye caught the gleam of a pendant in the grass, and Fanny had her hand half shielding an unfolded paper with some sort of drawing, as though to keep it from his eyes. Ah, must be the picture of her dead sister; Bree had described it to him. Cyrus must be well in with a chance, then, if Fanny was sharing that with the lad.

“Godspeed, a bhalaich,” he said, mostly to himself, and smiled.

Smiled not only out of a general benevolence toward the young lovers, but because Fanny’s drawing had reminded him of the reason for that benevolence.

Roger touched the pocket of his breeches, feeling the crackle of paper and the small hardness of the broken wax seal. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe it. He had, after all, been expecting it—or something like it. But there’s a difference between thinking you understand something, and then holding the reality in your hand and realizing that maybe you don’t. But realizing also that what you don’t yet understand may be the most important thing you ever do.

A faint sound of screeching made him turn his head, fatherly instincts at once focused—but Mandy’s piercing complaint left off almost at once, as she pushed Orrie, who fell backward into the water—not for the first time.

Well, maybe the second most important thing, he thought, smiling a little. His adoptive father—who had been, in fact, his great-uncle—had been a Presbyterian minister, and had never married—though ministers were allowed to marry, and generally encouraged to do so, as their wives could be a help on the organizing side of a congregation.

He’d never asked the Reverend why he hadn’t married—nor had he ever wondered, until now. Maybe it had been as simple as not meeting the right person and being unwilling to settle for simple companionship. Maybe as simple as a feeling that it would be difficult to balance a commitment to God with the commitment to a wife and children.

Ye gave me the wife and children first, he thought in the general direction of God. So I’m thinking Ye maybe don’t want me to ditch them in order to do whatever else Ye’ve got in mind.

Whatever else. That was the reality he had in his pocket, still hidden for the moment. A letter from the Reverend David Caldwell—a friend and a very senior Presbyterian elder. He had performed the marriage ceremony for Roger and Bree and helped a great deal in preparing Roger for his first go at ordination. It was both a comfort and a joy to know that Davy Caldwell still thought he could do it.

There is a Presbytery set for a General Assembly in Charles Town, to take place in May of next Year. I will of course speak in your Behalf, as regards Acceptance of your Seminary Record and previous Qualification for Ordination. It would be as well, though, were you to form some Connection with a Few of the Elders who will take part in the Presbytery before you meet them more formally in Charles Town—as a man might use both Buttons and Belt to keep his Breeches up.

The Reverend Caldwell’s words still made him smile. But under the humor and the sense of gratitude to Davy Caldwell was a sense of … what? He’d no notion what to call it, this strange flutter in his chest, a not unpleasant hollowness in the belly—anticipation, but worse, as though he were standing on the edge of a precipice, about to jump, without knowing whether he’d soar or crash on the rocks below. He was under no illusions about the rocks. But he had dreams of flying.

The Reverend had had a yellowed copy of that poem pinned to the huge corkboard in his office for as long as Roger could remember—and for the first time, it now occurred to him that perhaps the Reverend had kept it in memory of Roger’s father, who’d died, like the poet, flying a Spitfire in the war. Or so he’d thought.

He touched his pocket again, with a brief prayer for his father’s soul—wherever it was—and another for the Reverend Caldwell and his kindness.

Bobby Higgins had brought him Caldwell’s letter, having picked it up in Cross Creek, and he’d tucked it in his pocket and gone to do chores, wanting to be alone when he read it, which he did in the company of Clarence the mule and two inquisitive horses.

Roger knew about the Presbytery of Charles Town. He’d written to Caldwell about his prospects of ordination some time ago and had mentioned casually that he and his family would be stopping in Charles Town in a month or so, to return Germain to the bosom of his family. He hadn’t mentioned the need to get their hands on guns for Jamie. He was still trying not to think about that.

He thought maybe he’d walk up to the Meeting House in order to sit and think about the other prospect before him, but that seemed still too public, and instead he crossed the creek at the stepping-stones and turned up the hill behind the house, meaning to climb up to the Green Spring. But Claire’s garden was at hand, and on impulse he opened the gate and, finding no one there, walked in.

He seldom came to the garden and was struck at once by the early-autumn scent of it, so different from the pure tang of the woods. The air smelled of fresh-dug earth and composted manure, the bitter scent of turnip tops and cabbages and pungent onions, with through it all a wafting smell of late flowers, stronger than the sweet, heady scents of high summer, with faint odors of resin and anise.

Claire had planted sunflowers, thick against one wall of the palisades, and at the sunflowers’ feet, coneflowers—he could tell those, they stuck up in the middle—and goldenrod, and a lot of other flowers he couldn’t name, but liked. There were pretty purple ones he thought were cosmos, with tiny white-and-yellow butterflies flitting through them, and some that were red and yellow; he’d have to ask her.

“For the bees,” she’d said, telling everyone about them at dinner.

The bees were enjoying themselves now among the flowers; he could hear their hum, like the vibration of a loose, plucked string.

“Hey,” he said to them, suddenly but softly. “I’ve had a letter from Davy Caldwell. I think it’s on. I think—I hope—I’m going to be ordained. A Minister of Word and Sacrament, that’s what they—we—call it. Presbyterians, I mean,” he added, assuming that these might be Catholic bees and thus unfamiliar.

He didn’t suppose that “ordained” meant anything to a bee. They all hatched out of their wax cells with an unshakable sense of their purpose in life, after all; no need of decision or ceremony. It felt good to say it out loud, though.

“Ordained,” he repeated. “I’ll be going to Charles Town, to ease the way. Ye like to know things like that, Claire says. Brianna and the kids are going, too; they’d like to see the ocean, walk barefoot on the beach.” If there aren’t a lot of British warships floating in the water … “And then we’ll go on to Savannah. Brianna’s going to paint someone’s portrait.”

The sound of children yelling and laughing down by the creek came to him faintly, as soothing as the hum of the bees, and he felt as though he could stand here forever, in a state of happy peace.

Then there was a sudden, much louder screech, and he forgot peace instantly. He leapt to his feet, searching for the direction of the scream, heard it again, and shot out of the garden as though the sound had been a fork jabbed into his back.

He saw it at once as he burst through the trees onto the creek bank—a square of white, floating, swirling, in the middle of the creek. The wind had maybe taken it—

But before he could reach the edge of the stream, Cyrus’s long body launched itself from the opposite shore and crashed into the water, arm outstretched, and he saw Cyrus’s enormous hand close on the sodden paper in the instant before both were submerged.

“No!” Fanny was screaming. “No! No! No!” She had blundered into the stream, too, and was trying vainly to reach Cyrus and the paper, but the water was deeper here and was pulling at her skirts and she was staggering, shoes slipping in the mud and slime of the streambed.

Roger kicked off his own shoes, waded out, and grabbed Fanny around the waist.

“It’s all right,” he was saying urgently, dragging the girl through the current toward shore. “It will be all right!” But Fanny, who knew perfectly well that it wouldn’t be, went on shrieking, struggling mindlessly to reach the last remnant of her sister.

Dear Lord, show me what to do … What was there to do? he wondered. He set Fanny down, and the girl sank to her knees, curled up like a dying leaf, and went dead silent, bar great shuddering gasps for air.

“Daddy, Daddy!” Mandy, who was strictly forbidden to cross the creek alone, had just skipped over the stones like a cricket and now grabbed Roger’s leg, whimpering in panic.

Voices from uphill. The boys had heard the screaming and were running through the—oh, bloody hell—

“Get out of the garden!” Roger bellowed. The crunching noises of feet through turnips ceased instantly, and he dismissed the potential damage from his mind, needing all his attention to detach Mandy from his soggy leg while trying to say comforting things to Fanny.

Fanny was breathing like a winded horse. Worried that she might hyperventilate and pass out, Roger squatted down next to her and laid a hand on her narrow, heaving back.

“Fanny,” he said gently, “you’re soakin’ wet. Come inside. We’ll get ye some dry clothes and something hot to drink.” He put an urging hand under Fanny’s elbow, trying to get her to rise, but Fanny pressed her crossed arms tighter against her curled body and shook her head. The deep gasping had lessened, though, beginning to give way to sobs.

Squelching noises announced the hesitant approach of Cyrus, and Roger looked up at him, tall, gangly, and dripping, his face dead white.

“Mistress …” he said, and swallowed, having no idea how to go on.

“It’s no your fault, a bhalaich,” Roger began, but Cyrus shook off the halting words and collapsed to his knees in front of Fanny.

“Mistress …” he said again, tentative. Fanny ignored him completely, but he reached out his closed hand and opened it slowly under her nose.

The paper was little more than a soggy, crumpled ball in his palm. Roger heard him swallow again.

Fanny made a sound as though he’d driven a spike into her belly, snatched the remnant of paper from him, and cradled it against her chest, sobbing as though her heart would break.

I suppose it already is broken, poor little thing …

“Mo chridhe bristeadh,” Cyrus whispered, his face crumpled with misery. “B’fhearr gu robh mi air bathadh mus do thachair an cron tha seo ort.” Shattering is my heart. I would that I had drowned before I allowed such evil to come upon you.

Fanny made no answer and wouldn’t move. Roger exchanged a helpless look with Cyrus, but before he could try again to move Fanny, the boys had arrived, full of shocked questions. Germain had the flannel cloth with the rest of Fanny’s treasures, picked up from the creek bank and bundled in his hand.

“Cousin …?” he said tentatively, his hand with the bundle hovering between Fanny and Roger. Fanny didn’t move to take it, so Roger nodded at him.

“Thanks, Germain. Take it to the house, will ye?” He rose, his knees stiff, cold wet stockings puddling round his ankles. “Jem? Take Mandy and the boys and go along to the house with Germain. We’ll … be up directly.”

The boys all nodded, round-eyed with concern, and left with Mandy, glancing over their shoulders and beginning to murmur to one another.

Cyrus was beginning to shiver, the cold wind passing through the wet thin cloth of his shirt and breeks. Roger put a hand on his bent head—even kneeling, his head reached well above Roger’s waist.

“It will be all right,” he said in Gaelic. “You did no wrong. Go home now.”

Cyrus looked up at Roger, then helplessly at Fanny’s bowed head. After a moment, he nodded jerkily, got up, and bowed to her before turning and walking slowly away, glancing back, his face full of trouble.

Roger sighed, and after a moment’s hesitation, he sat down on the ground and gathered Fanny into his arms. He rocked the girl slowly, patting her back as though she were a small child. He felt like a bystander in a place where a bomb has just exploded, and neither ambulance nor police have yet arrived.

Ambulance and police … aye, that would be Claire and Jamie, he thought with a tinge of wry amusement. Calling for one or the other of the Frasers had in fact been his first impulse, once he got Fanny out of the creek. But Jamie had gone to Salem, and Claire had said she was going to look at a case of what might be chicken pox at the MacNeills’. And if you came right down to it … neither of them could really help in this situation. Whereas, maybe … just maybe …

He took a deep breath, hugged Fanny tight, then set her down and stood up. Fanny was shivering by this time, hard enough that the sobs had stopped, though tears were still flowing and her eyes were swollen.

“Come with me,” Roger said firmly, reaching for her hand. “Brianna can maybe fix this.”

ROGER’S ONLY THOUGHT when he’d said “fix this” was a fuzzy notion of Sellotape, this succeeded by a dubious notion of drying the paper and stitching the drawing together like a sampler. Brianna, luckily, had a better idea.

“It’s a nice, heavy rag paper,” she observed, laying the still-damp pieces of the drawing on the kitchen table and smoothing them. “Must have been, to last so long. How long do you think Fanny’s had it?”

“Two years, maybe?” Roger hazarded a guess. “Her sister was seventeen or so when she died, and Fanny says this was done when she was ten, so Jane would have been maybe fifteen. Can you copy it, do ye think?”

“Yes, and I will. But Fanny will want the original, too. For emotional reasons.”

Roger nodded. “Aye. What can you do about it, then?”

“Oh, just mend the tear.”

“Ye really are going to sew it together? I thought of that, but—”

“Well, that’s actually not a bad idea,” she said, looking as though she wanted to laugh but refraining from doing it out of politeness. “But I’m pretty sure Fanny wouldn’t want her poor sister to look like Frankenstein’s monster, even if she doesn’t know what that is.”

“What is that?” Fanny hovered in the doorway, looking uneasy. She’d been stripped, dried, and dressed in a fresh shift and stockings and, with her flushed cheeks and wavy, drying dark hair, looked like a small, disheveled angel recently rescued from badgers.

“It’s just a novel,” Bree said, and smiled. “I’ll tell you the story later, if you want. Here, come and look.”

Fanny came to the table, her head turned half away, not really wanting to see the ruined drawing. Then she saw the paper screen that Bree had fetched from the pantry—a rectangular wooden frame, with a very fine screen made of muslin from which threads had been pulled to create a grid, this tacked to the sides of the frame—and curiosity overcame her reluctance.

“It’s a clean tear—that’s lucky.” Brianna touched the torn edge of one half with a gentle finger. “See how it’s frayed along the edge? Paper is made of fibers, and if you were to soak a sheet of paper in water for a long time, do you know what you’d get?”

“A handful of soggy fibers?” Roger guessed.

“Pretty much. So—” She’d brought in a box of her paper-making supplies and now took from this a large cloth bag, bulging with …

“Is that cotton?” Fanny asked, fascinated by the fuzzy white blobs that poked out of the small heap of fabric scraps and something that looked—to Roger’s jaundiced eye—like handfuls of scraggy blond hair pulled out of someone’s head.

“Some of it. And flax that’s been hatcheled. And some paper scraps and bits of decayed rag. So we start with a handful of fibers, finely ground.” She laid her paper-making screen on the table, took up a small corked bottle, and carefully spread a line of what looked like carpet sweepings across the middle of the screen. “That’s going to be my patch. Now we lay the pieces down on top of that …”

One by one, Roger handed her the halves of the drawing and she carefully fitted the torn edges as closely together as she could manage.

“It’s a good thing it was drawn with a graphite pencil,” she observed. “Ink or charcoal or watercolor, and we’d be out of luck. As it is …” She’d brought down something that looked like a photographer’s finishing tray as well: a shallow box with raised sides, the seams sealed with pitch. Holding her breath, she lifted the paper screen and slowly lowered it into the tray.

“Water, please, nurse,” she murmured, reaching out a hand toward the big mulberry-colored pitcher that sat on the sideboard, always full of clean water. Roger edged off the bench—leaving a small puddle on the floor, he saw—and fetched it.

She sprinkled water carefully over the drawing until it was quite saturated—“So it will stick to the screen and not float,” she explained—and then poured more water into the tray, letting it rise until it just covered the sheet of paper.

“All right.” She set down the heavy pitcher with a small sigh of relief. “Now we let it soak for … oh, twenty-four hours should be plenty. That will dissolve the fiber of the drawing paper, which will then bond with the fiber of the patch—while not disturbing the lines of the drawing.” Roger saw her cross her fingers briefly behind her back. She smiled at Fanny.

“So then we press it, dry it, and we’ll essentially have a new sheet of paper—but with your drawing just like it is.”

Fanny had been watching the pouring with the hypnotized gaze of a frozen rabbit watching a fox, but with Brianna’s words, she looked up and let her breath out in a huge “Ohhhhh!”

“Oh, thank you! Thank you so much!” She pressed her palms against her cheeks, gazing at the drawing as though it had suddenly come to life.

And Roger had the sudden feeling that it had. To this point, he’d seen it purely as something Fanny valued, without really noticing the drawing itself. Now he saw it.

Whoever had drawn it had been a talented artist—but the girl on the page had been something special in herself. Beautiful, yes, but with a sense of … what? Vitality, attraction—but she also gave off an air of challenge, he thought. And while the beautiful mouth and sidelong glance offered a seductive half smile, they communicated also determination—and a sense of simmering rage that raised the hairs on Roger’s nape.

He remembered that this girl had killed a man with her own hands, and with premeditation.

To save her little sister from a fate she knew too well.

He wondered briefly whether the man who had drawn her that night at the brothel had then taken her, knowing what he was buying, and perhaps relishing it. He instantly suppressed the visions conjured up by the thought, though there was no suppressing the thought itself.

Fanny was standing next to him, still looking at the last physical remnant of her sister. He put an arm around her shoulders, gently, and thought to the girl whose face glimmered in the water, her memory surviving wreck and dissolution, Don’t worry. We’ll see that she’s safe, no matter what. I promise you.

49 Your Friend, Always

50 Sunday Dinner in Salem

ROGER WAS STRUGGLING TO fit an iron hoop around the top of a large, potbellied, elderly keg that had been rebuilt, evidently having exploded at some time in the recent past from the internal pressure of decaying penguins, judging by the faint but evil smell that seeped from the stained wood. The weather was cool, but the sun was high and sweat was collecting in his eye sockets and prickling his scalp.

It was nearly lunchtime, but he had no appetite. He was getting dizzy from holding his breath. Nonetheless, he looked up hopefully when he heard footsteps coming down the trail from the springhouse. It wasn’t Bree or Fanny with a welcome sandwich and bottle of ale, though. It was his father-in-law, two large stoneware crocks clasped in his arms.

“They’ll smell ye comin’ a mile away,” Jamie remarked with approval, sniffing. He set down the crocks, from which a strong smell of sauerkraut was rising like some powerful Germanic genie, and glanced at the recalcitrant hoop. He squatted by the barrel, embraced it gingerly, and, turning his face away, squeezed as hard as he could, pressing the aged staves inward enough that the hoop could be hastily pressed down into place.

“Heugh!” he said, gasping as he stood up. “Spoilt fish?”

“At least.” Roger rose to his feet and stretched his back, groaning. “I don’t suppose that’s going to improve the smell much,” he said, nodding at the new keg.

“Well, it will still smell like sauerkraut,” Jamie said, unlidding one of the crocks. “But cabbage will mostly damp other smells, so the fish—or whatever it was—willna be so bad. Besides, Claire says your nose gets used to anything and then ye willna be bothered about it.”

“Oh, does she?” Roger muttered. His mother-in-law was not the one who was going to travel three hundred miles with a wagonload of reeking barrels and three children shouting, “Pee-yew!” all the way to the coast.

“Ronnie says the other two barrels were used for salt pork and blood sausage, he thinks. Ye’ll just smell like Sunday dinner in Salem,” his father-in-law said callously. “Is this one ready?”

“Aye.” Roger picked at a splinter in his thumb, watching covertly as Jamie peered into the depths of the barrel. He was rather proud of his work—and work it had been, too: fitting a false second bottom to the barrel, with just enough space for a thin—but rich—layer of gold underneath, and fitting it closely enough that it was unlikely to come loose if someone threw it on the ground.

“Oh, that’s braw!” Still peering inside, Jamie picked the barrel up, weighed it in his hands, and dropped it experimentally. It landed with a solid thud, upright. Jamie looked inside, looked up, and smiled. “Sound as a nut, Roger Mac.”

“Aye, well, Brianna helped me—with the template, I mean. And Tom MacLeod gave her the wood.”

“She didna tell him what for, I hope,” Jamie said, but with no real fear that she might have.

“She said she told him she thought of making a cradle for the Ogilvys.” Young Angus and his wife were expecting their first child, and thus were now the recipients of outgrown baby smocks, spare clouts, dummies, suckling bottles, and any amount of probably unwanted advice.

Jamie nodded in approval, and without further ado poured a pale-green cascade of fragrant sauerkraut into the barrel.

“Ye’ll need to be moving it to and fro, when ye travel,” he said, in answer to Roger’s unspoken thought that Jamie might have waited until the barrel was loaded onto the wagon before adding twenty pounds of fermented cabbage to the weight. “Best to try it whilst ye’re alone, in case anything’s like to come loose, aye?”

Another voluminous splash, and the sauerkraut oscillated gently three inches below the wood scar that showed where the lid would fit.

They stood looking thoughtfully into the aromatic mass, and the same notion occurred to both. He felt Jamie twitch, just as he himself thought that they’d best check to see if the false bottom had come loose under the force of the deluge. Jamie was already reaching for a suitable stick, which he handed Roger.

Roger probed the depths of the barrel, smiling a bit. It always gave him a wee sense of warmth when he suddenly shared an unspoken thought with someone. It happened now and then with Bree, once in a while with Claire—but surprisingly often with Jamie. Perhaps it was just that they’d worked often together, knew each other’s physical ways.

“Right, then. All sound.” Roger threw away the wet stick, picked up the lid and pressed it down into place, banged it tight with a mallet, and they finished the job with a final hoop. Crude, but effective.

Jamie stood back, nodding as he rolled down his shirtsleeves.

“Ken, if there’s the slightest danger, leave the barrels and run for it,” he said. “Ye’ll not have any trouble on the way—bar bandits,” he added as an afterthought. “Lord John’s wee pass should see ye safe through anything else. But when ye get to Charles Town …” He lifted one shoulder, and Roger’s stomach tightened.

Aye, Charles Town. Jamie had written—in a cipher that fascinated Roger—to Fergus, who would have something planned by the time they arrived—but what?

Jamie wasn’t concerned with Charles Town, though.

“See what Fergus has in mind; he’s a daring wee snipe, but he’s a father of five now, so he’s no as reckless as he used to be. But when ye come to Savannah,” he began, but then stopped, frowning. Whatever he was thinking, though, Roger wasn’t divining it.

“There’s a soldier called Francis Marion,” Jamie said abruptly. “A Continental officer. Claire said he’s known in—your time. The Swamp Fox, she said. He’s no called that just now,” he added hastily, “but if ye might have heard of him?”

“I have,” Roger said slowly. “But that name is virtually all I know. Is he in Savannah?”

Jamie nodded, looking easier.

“I had a letter last week, from a man I know. News, aye? And he told about the British garrison in Savannah—I’d asked, since the lass means to go there—and he said that this Marion had mentioned to him that Benjamin Lincoln had it in mind to come down from Charles Town and make a try at taking Savannah. And, ehm …” Jamie’s eyes were firmly fixed on a puddle of sauerkraut juice. Oh, so here was the slippery bit. It came out in a rush.

“Yon Randall said in his book that the Americans would attack Savannah in October—this year,” he added, with a direct look at Roger. “The Americans willna succeed, but Marion will be there.”

“And … you want me to talk to him?” The sweat was drying now, and the wind was cold through his shirt.

“If ye would. The thing is, Marion’s had a great deal of experience wi’ militias.”

“Like you haven’t?” Roger said.

Amusement flickered across Jamie’s face, but he shook his head. “I havena had any experience in lending a militia I’ve gathered and command to the Continental army. Marion’s done that several times, from what the letter says, and I want to ken if he has any sage advice wi’ regard to dealing with … certain officers.”

“Who’s a bastard and who’s not, ye mean? That would be a help—but will ye likely have a choice?”

“All officers are bastards,” Jamie said dryly. “They have to be. So am I. Some ye can trust, though, and some ye can’t. From what I hear, Marion might be one to trust.”

“I see.” And you want a friend in the army before you go to them. A man to help you test the waters before you commit yourself. Or, maybe, to warn you off.

“That’s your choice, isn’t it?” Roger continued. “Whether to commit your—our—militia to fight with the army—or go it alone, like Cleveland and Shelby.”

“They’re not alone,” Jamie corrected. “The Overmountain men have each other to call upon in case of need. But each man keeps his own command. That’s no the way of it in the army.”

Jamie’s hair had come loose on one side; he pulled off the lacing and retied it, squinting his eyes against the wind. There was a late summer storm coming; you could see one approaching for miles, here in the mountains, and the dark clouds were massing fast over Roan Mountain.

“The choice,” Jamie said, still looking at the oncoming weather, “is whether to keep the militia close, to protect the Ridge—so far as that’s possible—or to go out, to seek battle wi’ the British. If we do that, then we can decide how best to go about it.”

Roger contemplated that one for a few moments.

“‘To be, or not to be?’” he asked. “‘Whether ’tis nobler in the mind,’ and all that? Because that’s what you—we—are doing, no? We act or we don’t.” He glanced at Jamie, who was giving a good impression of a coiled spring, and smiled. “Get on wi’ ye; you couldna stay out of a fight if someone paid ye to do it.”

Jamie had the grace to laugh at that, though he looked self-conscious.

“Aye. But there is Captain Cunningham. He might get his guns one of these days, and then what?”

“Well, it wouldna be good,” Roger admitted. “But he’s not going to attack the Ridge and start burning down his neighbors’ cabins, is he? I mean … he lives here.”

“True.”

“So the Americans are going to what—lay siege to Savannah?”

“So he says. Randall. But they willna succeed.” There was something odd in Jamie’s voice every time he said that name. No wonder if there was, but Roger couldn’t say exactly what it was: not doubt, not hate, not—not quite—fear …

“Ye think it’s safe, though, for Bree and the kids to be in Savannah while this is going on?”

Jamie shrugged and picked up his discarded jacket.

“The Americans willna take the town, and Brianna will be under Lord John Grey’s protection inside it.”

“And ye trust him. Lord John, I mean.”

It wasn’t a question and Jamie didn’t answer it, but asked another.

“Do ye trust Randall?”

Roger drew in air between his teeth, but nodded.

“About the battles and so on? Aye, I do. I mean—to him it was history; it happened. And to everyone else in the time he published that book. He couldna very well say, ‘This battle happened on this date,’ when it really happened on that date—or didna happen at all. Because there’d be a great many other historians—and publishers, for that matter—who knew that it did. If the book was full of … misinformation, let us say, it would never have got published. I mean—academic publishers check the manuscripts of books they publish.”

They stood a little in silence, watching the storm come in. Roger would find Francis Marion, and, God willing, Fergus would find guns. But Roger found his thoughts sliding away from hard decisions and slippery realities toward his own more imminent personal prospects.

He was wondering whether Bree might possibly be pregnant, and if so, how she might respond to the smell of Sunday dinner in Salem.

51 Wheels within Wheels

“WHAT WAS IT YOUR mam said to your da about this expedition?” Roger rolled up his breeches to mid-thigh, eyeing the wagon wheel whose rim protruded from the burbling middle of a small creek.

“It’s too deep,” Brianna said, frowning at the rushing brown water. “You’d better take your breeches off. And maybe your shirt, too.”

“That’s what she said? Though she’s likely right about it being too deep …”

Brianna made a small, amused snort. He’d taken off his shoes, stockings, coat, waistcoat, and neckcloth, and looked like a man stripped to fight a serious duel.

“The good news is that with a current like that, you won’t get leeches. What she said to Da—or what she quoted herself as having said, which isn’t necessarily the same thing—was: ‘You’re telling me that you mean to turn a perfectly respectable Presbyterian minister into a gunrunner, and send him in a wagon full of dodgy gold and illegal whisky to buy a load of guns from an unknown smuggler, in company with your daughter and three of your grandchildren?’”

“Aye, that’s the bit. I was expecting it to be more fun …” Reluctantly, he shucked his breeks, tossing them onto the shoes and stockings. “Maybe I shouldn’t have brought you and the kids. Germain and I would have had a great adventure by ourselves.”

“Yes, that’s what I was afraid of.” She looked over her shoulder, up the steep bank that the wagon had nearly fallen over when the wheel came off. It was much too close to the edge for comfort, and she’d sent the kids off to the other side of the road to collect firewood, in hopes that that would keep them off the wagon and out of trouble.

She had one eye on Roger and one ear out for cries of alarm from above; part of her mind was calculating how long it might take her to fix the wheel, if it came out of the creek intact—if it wasn’t, they’d be here overnight—and a few brain cells were idly listing what food they had, just in case. But the major part of her attention was focused on her chest.

Flutter.

Thump … thump … thump … thump

Flutter

Not now! she thought fiercely. “I do not have time for this.”

“Time for what?” Roger looked over his shoulder, one foot in the rushing water and his shirt fluttering coquettishly in the breeze, affording her brief but entertaining glimpses of his bottom.

“All of this,” she said, rolling her eyes and gesturing up at the half-collapsed wagon on the road and the voices of children, then down at the small box of tools at her feet. “Go on, you’ll freeze standing there.”

“Oh, and I won’t, submerged in the nice warm water …” He squared his shoulders and edged into the creek, feeling his way over the stony bottom, the water rising past his knees.

Flutter. Flutterflutterflutterflutter

Thump.

She sat down suddenly, put her head on her knees, and breathed, long, forceful breaths. Vagal maneuvers, try that. What was it called …? Valsalva maneuver, that was it. She held the last breath and pushed down with her abdominal muscles, as hard as she could, and held it to the count of ten, feeling her heart slow and thump harder.

Good …

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump …

Roger had reached the wheel and was gripping the rim, half-squatting to get a good purchase. This improved the view, and she sat back, breathing gingerly. Listening.

I’m so tired of listening. Just … just quit it, will you?

The wheel lifted suddenly from its rocky bed and Roger slipped amid the stones and fell to one knee, whooping as the water surged up to his chest.

“Jesus Effing Christ on bread!”

“Oh, no!” But she was laughing, though trying not to, and hastily kicking off her own shoes and stockings, she kirtled up her skirts and waded in to help. The water was cold, but luckily the wheel was intact, and Roger was able to turn and thrust it far enough toward her that she could get a one-handed hold and keep it from getting away while he stood up and got a better grip from his side.

The wheel was a full three feet in diameter, heavy and awkward, but the iron tyre-rim had kept the wheel from shattering.

“One huge blessing!” she said, raising her voice over the sound of the water. “It’s not broken!”

He nodded, still breathless, and grabbing the rim with both hands took the wheel from her and waded ashore, dragging it up the bank. He dropped it and sat down, breathing hard. So did she.

Flutterflutterflutterflutterflutterflutter …

She gasped for breath, and floating spots flashed in the corners of her eyes.

“Jesus, Bree—are ye all right?” His hand was gripping her wrist; she turned her own hand and grabbed his tight.

Flutterflutterflutterflutter …

“I—oh … yes, I’m—I’m fine.” She forced herself to take a deep breath and pushed down. And once more, her heart stopped fluttering, though the slower beat was still ragged.

Thump. Thump-thump-bump. Thump. Pause. Thump-thump.

“Like hell ye are. Ye’re white as milk. Here, put your head between your knees.”

She resisted his push on the back of her neck, waving him off.

“No. No, it’s okay. Just—felt a little faint for a minute. Probably low blood sugar, we haven’t eaten anything since breakfast.”

He took his hand away, slowly, looking at her with intense concern. And suddenly she realized that she’d have to tell him. It wasn’t going away, and she didn’t want him worrying every time it happened.

The cool wind on her face was reviving her, and she turned to him, brushing wisps of hair out of her mouth.

“Roger. I—I have to tell you something.”

He stared at her, frowning a little, and then suddenly his face changed. A light came into his eyes, a dawning sense of eagerness.

“You’re pregnant? God, Bree, that’s wonderful!”

THE MOMENTARY SHOCK rendered her speechless for a second. Then it exploded in her chest, in a burst of fury that drowned any thought of her heart.

“You—you—how fucking dare you?” Some vestigial thought of the kids above kept her from shrieking, and the words emerged in a strangled snarl. Her intent showed clearly; Roger’s eyes sprang wide and he grabbed her arm.

“I’m sorry,” he said, low-voiced and even. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

She struggled for a moment, wanting the simple relief of violence, but he wouldn’t let go, and she stopped and sat there, tears spurting as the only means of releasing the pressure.

He let go of her arm and put his own around her shoulders. She felt the cold of his wet shirt and skin, the sogginess of her own hems, but the heat of fear and frustration rose in her like steam.

She clung to Roger’s arm as though it were a handy tree root in a flood. She was sobbing and urgently trying not to at the same time, afraid the clench of emotion would seize her heart and throw it into commotion again, but unable to hold out anymore against the need to let go, to tell him everything.

“I’m s-sorry,” she kept gasping, and he clutched her tighter to him, rocking her a little, rubbing her back with his free hand.

“No, I’m sorry,” he said into her hair. “Bree, forgive me. I didn’t mean to—I really didn’t mean—”

“Doh,” she said thickly, and sat back a little from him, wiping her knuckles under her streaming nose. “You don’t—it’s nod you. I know you want another baby, but—”

“Not if you don’t,” he assured her, though she could hear the longing in his voice. “I wouldn’t risk you, Bree. If you’re afraid, if you—”

“Oh, God.” She waved a hand to stop him. She’d stopped sobbing and was just huddled in his arms, breathing. Her heart was beating. Normally.

“Lub-dub,” she said. “Lub-dub, lub-dub … that’s what textbooks say a heartbeat sounds like. But it doesn’t, really.”

Momentary silence. He stroked her hair, cautiously.

“No?”

“No.” She took a deep, free breath, feeling it go all the way to her fingertips. “And no, I’m not crazy, either.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” He released her gently and looked searchingly into her face. “Are ye all right, Bree?” He looked so anxious that she nearly started crying again, out of remorse.

“Sort of …” She gulped, sniffed, and made a huge effort to sit up straight and get hold of herself. At this point, she realized that Roger was sitting beside her in nothing but his wet-tailed shirt and she started to laugh, but caught herself, fearing that it might all too easily become hysterics.

“Put on your pants and I’ll tell you everything,” she said, straightening her shoulders.

“Mummeeeeeee!” Mandy was calling from the edge of the roadway above, waving her arms. “Mummy, we’re hunnnnngry!”

“I’ll get them something,” Roger said, hastily reassuming his breeches. “You wash your face and … drink water. Take it easy and I’ll be right back.”

He scrambled up the bank, calling for Jem and Germain, and after a minute, she’d pulled herself together enough to do as he’d said—wash and have a drink of water. The water from the stream was good: cold and fresh, with a faint spicy taste of watercress, and having something—even water—in her stomach seemed to settle her.

Thump. Thump. Thump. True, there was a lesser thump following the main one, but it was the solid, reassuring rhythm of the thump that gave her—well, gave her heart. She smiled at the thought and wiped her wet hands through her hair, which had come loose from its ribbon.

She was kneeling on the grass beside the wheel when Roger came down again, bearing gifts in the form of two boiled eggs, a chunk of dry bread rubbed with olive oil and garlic, and a bottle of ale. She started with the ale.

“It’s not so bad,” she said, nodding at the wheel. “One of the sawed felloes came loose, but it’s not broken. I can fit it back and put a wire screw in—”

“To hell with the wheel,” he said, though mildly. “Eat an egg and tell me what’s going on.” His face showed nothing but concern, but the set of his shoulders said he wouldn’t leave it.

She took a long drink of ale for fortitude, stifled a belch, and told him.

“I keep thinking that it will just go away. That once it stops, it won’t happen again. But I keep listening for it, on edge … and then it doesn’t happen for a week, two weeks, three … and I’ve started to relax and then wham! There it is again.” She looked up at him apologetically. “I’m sorry I fell apart. But you know, it’s kind of like pregnancy—there’s this thing inside you, part of you, but you can’t control it and it just takes your body and … does things with it.” She glanced down and began picking fragments of eggshell out of the grass.

“And it might kill you,” she said, very softly. “Though Mama says it’s not life threatening—except for the maybe-giving-you-a-stroke thing.”

“Leave those—eggshells are part of the landscape.” He took her unresisting hand and kissed it gently. “Do you have willow bark with you?”

“Yes. Mama made up a kit for me.” She smiled a little, despite the situation, and gestured up the hill, toward the lopsided wagon. “In my bag. Twenty-four packets of willow bark, each good for a three-cup brew. She thought that would last me until we got to Charleston.

“One more thing,” she said, and took a deep, snuffling breath. Her nose was beginning to clear and she could breathe again.

“Aye?”

“Pregnancy and this—heart thing. Mama says that it’s like a lot of other things—pregnancy might make it go away, either temporarily or even permanently. But it might also make it a lot worse.” She blew her nose on a wet handkerchief. “And she didn’t say this, but I thought of it later—what if it’s something … I mean, Mandy’s heart. Did I—give that to her?”

“No,” he said firmly. “No, we know that’s a common birth defect. Patent ductus arteriosus, your mum said. You didn’t cause it. Though …”

She wanted to believe him, but the doubts and thoughts she’d been suppressing for the last few months were all bubbling out.

“Your great-whatever-grandfather. Buck. He had something wrong with his heart, didn’t he?”

Roger’s face went momentarily blank.

“Aye, he did,” he said slowly. “But it—I mean, it seemed to be an effect of coming through the stones.” His hand went to his own chest, unconsciously, and he rubbed it slowly. “He was having an … attack, a seizure … right when we came through. But then it got better—and then it got much worse later. That’s when we met Hector McEwan.”

Her breathing was a lot easier. There was something about logical thought that short-circuited emotion. Maybe that’s why people said you should count to ten when you were upset …

“I wish I’d asked him more about it,” she said. “But”—she touched her own chest, where her twitchy heart was presently beating quietly—“I wasn’t having anything like this at the time.”

She could see that he didn’t want to say it, but she could tell what he was thinking, because it was the logical conclusion and she was thinking it, too.

“Maybe it—the damage, if that’s what it is—gets worse, the more often you do it? Travel, I mean?”

“God, I don’t know.” He glanced up the hill. The kids’ voices were fainter; they were off in the woods on the other side of the road. “It doesn’t seem to have hurt Jem, or … or me. Or your mother. But—it only just occurred to me: your mother traveled through the stones while she was pregnant with you. Maybe that …?” He touched her chest, gently.

“Too small a sample size.” She laughed, shakily. “And I didn’t travel with Mandy. Don’t worry. Mama said the odds of someone my age and my state of health having a stroke were infinitesimal. As for pregnancy …”

“Bree.” He stood and pulled her to her feet, facing him. “I meant it, m’aoibhneas. I’d never risk your life, your health—or your happiness.” He tilted his head so they were forehead-to-forehead, eye-to-eye, and he felt her smile. “D’ye not know how much you mean to me?” he said. “Let alone the kids. For that matter … do ye really think I’d risk you dying on me and leaving me wi’ those wee fiends?”

She laughed, though he could see the tears still glimmering at the corners of her eyes. She squeezed his hands, hard, then let go and dug for a handkerchief in her pocket.

“‘M’aoibhneas’?” she asked, shaking the handkerchief out and wiping her nose with it. “I don’t know that one. What does it mean?”

“Joy,” he said gruffly, and cleared his throat. “My joy.” He nodded at the wheel and its sprung tyre. “What is it they say? Happiness is someone who can mend ye when you’re broken?”

IT TOOK LESS than an hour to mend the wheel—so far as she could do that.

“It really needs a blacksmith to put fresh rivets in the tyre,” she said, rising from a squat by the freshly attached wheel. “All I had was flat-headed tacks for the felloes and a couple of really crude screws and some wire, but—”

“We’ll drive slowly,” Roger said. He shaded his eyes, judging the height of the sun. “There’s a good three hours of daylight left. And I think there’s a place called Bartholomew, or Yamville, or something like that on this road. Might be big enough to boast a blacksmith.”

The kids had exhausted themselves running up and down the trace, playing tag and hide-and-seek while she was mending the wheel. A solid lunch of cold boiled potatoes (remarkably good with a little salt and vinegar) and eggs, with a good dollop of sauerkraut for vitamin C, and apples to finish off—they had a bag of small greenish-yellow apples, sweet but tart—and Mandy was out cold, curled up in the wagon bed with her head on a sack of oats, and Jem and Germain yawning beside her but determined not to fall asleep and miss anything.

Roger felt much the same. The trace had widened into an actual road, but there was no one on it; they hadn’t passed or met anyone in the last two hours, and the horses had slowed, so the forest passed quietly, tree by tree, rather than the jolting green blur of the earlier part of the journey. It was soothing, hypno … hyp—

“Hey!” Brianna grabbed his arm, startling him back into wakefulness. By reflex, he hauled back on the reins and the horses stopped, snorting, their sides slicked with sweat.

“You’d be dead on your feet, if you were standing up,” she said, smiling. “You crawl in back with Mandy for a while. I’ll drive.”

“Nah, I’m fine.” He resisted her attempt to take the reins from him, but in the process he lost control of his face and yawned so widely that his ears roared with the sound of distant surf and his eyes watered.

“Go,” she said, gathering the reins up neatly and twitching them across the horses’ backs, clicking her tongue before he could argue. “I’m fine. Really,” she added more softly, looking at him.

“Aye. Well … maybe just for a bit.” He couldn’t bring himself to leave her alone on the bench, though, and groped under it for the big canteen. He splashed water into his face, drank a little, and put the plug back in, feeling slightly more alert.

“What else have ye got in your magic bag?” he asked, having spotted the canvas rucksack under the bench next to the canteen. “Besides your tea?”

“Some of my small tools,” she replied, glancing at the bag. “And a good thing, too. A few books—presents, and a few toys for Mandy, and the Grinch book I made for her. She wanted to bring Green Eggs and Ham, but that wouldn’t do.”

Roger smiled at the thought of the Brumbys and their society friends spotting the big bright-orange book. Bree was slowly working on handmade approximations of some of the other Dr. Seuss books, with her own whimsical versions of the drawings and as much of the original verse as she and Claire could remember between them. They were by no means as eye-catching as the real thing, but also much less likely to cause more than a smile or a puzzled frown, should anyone look through one.

“And what if you meet a printer in Savannah, who catches sight of it and wants to publish the book?” he asked, trying to sound no more than mildly curious. He’d almost got over worrying about exposing bits of future culture to the eighteenth century, but it still gave him an uneasy feeling at the back of his neck, as though the Time Police might be lying in wait to spot Horton Hears a Who! and denounce them. To whom? he wondered.

“I guess it would depend how much he offered me,” she said lightly. She felt his resistance, though, and transferred the reins to her left hand in order to pat his.

“Historical friction,” she said. “There are all kinds of things—ideas, machines, tools, whatever—that were—are, I mean—discovered more than once. Mama said the hypodermic needle was independently invented by at least three different people, all around the same time, in different countries. But other things are invented or discovered and they just … sit. No one uses them. Or they’re lost, and then found again. For years—centuries, sometimes—until something happens, and suddenly it’s the right time, and whatever it is comes suddenly into its own, and spreads, and it’s common knowledge.

“Besides,” she added practically, nudging the bag with her foot, “what harm could it do to loose a bastardized version of The Cat in the Hat on the eighteenth century?”

He laughed in spite of his uneasiness.

“Nobody would print that one. A story showing children being deliberately disobedient to their mother? And not suffering Dire Consequences for doing it?”

“Like I said. Not the right time for a book like that,” she said. “It wouldn’t … stick.”

She’d got over the emotional breakdown altogether now—or at least that’s what she looked like. Long red hair spilling loose down her back, face animated but not troubled, her eyes on the road and the horses’ bobbing heads.

“And then I have Jane,” she said, nodding at the bag and lowering her voice. “Speaking of dire consequences, poor girl.”

“Ja—oh, Fanny’s sister?”

“I mended the drawing, but I promised Fanny that I’d paint Jane, too,” Bree said, and frowned a little. “Make her more permanent. And Lord John says Mr. Brumby is providing me with the best painting supplies that money and a solid Tory reputation can buy in Savannah. I couldn’t persuade Fanny to let me take her drawing, but she did let me copy it so I’d have something to work from.”

“Poor girl. Girls, I should say.” Claire had told Brianna, after the uproar over Fanny’s getting her monthly, what had happened to Jane, and Bree had told him.

“Yes. And poor Willie, too. I don’t know if he was in love with Jane or just felt responsible for her, but Mama said he showed up at her funeral in Savannah, looking awful, with that huge horse. He gave Da the horse, for Fanny—he’d already given Fanny to him, to take care of—and then he just … left. They haven’t heard anything about him since.”

Roger nodded, but there wasn’t much to say. He’d met William, Ninth Earl of Ellesmere, once, several years before, for roughly three minutes, on a quay in Wilmington. A teenager then, tall and thin as a rail—and with a striking resemblance to Bree, though he was dark-haired—but with a lot more confidence and bearing than he’d have expected from someone that age. He supposed that was one of the perquisites of being born (at least theoretically) to the hereditary aristocracy. You really did think the world—or a good part of it—belonged to you.

“Do you know where she was buried? Jane?” he asked.

She shook her head. “In a private cemetery on an estate outside the city, is all. Why?”

He lifted one shoulder, briefly. “I thought I’d maybe pay my respects. So I could tell Fanny I’d gone and said a prayer for her sister.”

She glanced at him, soft-eyed.

“That’s a really good thought. I tell you what: I’ll ask Lord John where it is—Mama said he arranged for Jane to be buried, so he’ll know where. Then you and I can go together. Do you think Fanny would like it if I made a sketch of the grave? Or would that be too—upsetting?”

“I think she’d like it.” He touched her shoulder, then smoothed the hair back from her face and bound it with his handkerchief. “You wouldn’t have anything edible in that bag, would you?”

52 Ripe for the Harvest

“WHAT ARE OUR CHOICES?” I asked, trying to sound calmly objective.

Jamie sighed and set down the ledger.

“I can ignore Cleveland’s letter—including his spelling. Like the last one. Nobody kens I’ve had it but you and Roger Mac and the tinker who brought it. Fat Benjie willna wait long for my answer; he’ll have his harvest in soon, and he’s hot to be about his hunting before the weather turns.”

“That would buy us a little time, at least.”

One corner of his mouth turned up.

“I like the way ye say ‘us,’ Sassenach.”

I flushed a little. “I’m sorry. I know it’s you that has to do the dirty work. But—”

“I wasna joking, Sassenach,” he said softly, and smiled at me. “If I get torn limb from limb doin’ this, who’s going to stitch me back together, if not you?”

“Don’t even joke about being torn limb from limb.”

He looked at me quizzically, then nodded, accepting it.

“Or … I can send back an answer tellin’ him I have my hands full wi’ the local Loyalists and I daren’t leave them loose to cause mischief on the Ridge. And that, Sassenach, is more than halfway true, but I dinna think I want either to say such a thing to Cleveland—nor do I want to put my name to such a thing on paper. Say I did write that—and that someone amongst Cleveland’s acquaintance then takes it into his head to send my wee note to the newspapers in Cross Creek?”

That was a good point, and my stomach curled a little. Putting his name to any sort of political document these days could be essentially painting a target on his back. On all our backs.

“Still … it’s not as though anyone in western North Carolina has any doubts as to your loyalties,” I objected. “I mean, you were one of Washington’s field generals.”

“Aye, I was,” he said cynically. “‘Were’ being the significant word. Half the folk who ken I was a general—for the span of a month or so—also think that I’m a traitorous poltroon who abandoned my men on the battlefield. Which I did. It wouldna surprise any of them to hear I’d turned my coat red.”

And joining the Overmountain men to harass and murder Loyalists would go some way toward restoring his reputation as a dyed-in-the-wool patriot, I supposed.

“Oh, nonsense.” I got up and came behind him, putting my hands on his shoulders and squeezing. “No one who knows you would think that for a moment, and I’d be willing to bet that most people in North Carolina never heard of Monmouth and haven’t got even the slightest idea that you fought there—let alone what really happened.”

What really happened. True, he technically had deserted his men on the field in order to keep me from bleeding to death—even though the battle had ended, and the men in question were all county militias whose enlistment was already up or due to be up the next day. Only the fact that he had formally resigned his commission—in writing, such as it was—at that point had kept him from being court-martialed. That, and the fact that George Washington was so furious with Charles Lee’s behavior on the field at Monmouth that he was unlikely to turn on Jamie Fraser—a man who had followed him through those fields and fought alongside his men with courage and gallantry.

“Take three deep breaths and let them go; your shoulders are hard as rocks.”

He obediently complied with this instruction, and after the third breath bent his head so I could knead the back of his neck, as well as his shoulders. His flesh was warm, and touching him gave me a reassuring sense of solidity.

“But what I likely will do,” he said into his chest, “is to send Cleveland and the others each a bottle o’ the two-year-old whisky, along wi’ a letter saying that my barley’s just been cut and I canna leave it to rot, or there’ll be no whisky next year.”

That made me feel considerably better. The Overmountain men were rebels, and some—like Cleveland—might be bloodthirsty fanatics, but I was sure that all of them had their priorities straight when it came to whisky.

“Excellent thought,” I said, and kissed the back of his neck. “And with luck, we’ll have an early winter with a lot of snow.”

That made him laugh, and the tightness in my lower back relaxed, though my hands felt empty when I took them away.

“Be careful what ye wish for, Sassenach.”

The light of the setting sun was behind him now, his profile black in silhouette. I caught the glint of light on the bridge of his long, straight nose as he turned his head, and the graceful curve of his skull—but what caught at my heart was the back of his neck.

He ran a hand beneath the tail of his hair, lifting it casually as he scratched his head, and the sun shone pure and white as bone through the tiny hidden hairs that ran down the ridge of muscle there.

Only an instant, and he pulled loose his ribbon and shook out his hair over his shoulders, a fading, still-dark mass of bronze and silver, sparking in the sun, and it was gone.

JAMIE’S NOLLE PROSEQUI to Benjamin Cleveland’s cordial invitation to come hunt Loyalists was evidently acceptable, for no further missives followed—and no one came by to set fire to our crops, either. That was just as well, as Jamie’s statement that his barley had been cut was anticipating the reality by a couple of weeks.

Now, though, the barley lay in sheaves in the fields and was being stuffed into sacks and hauled away for threshing and winnowing as fast as the available field hands—Jamie, me, Young Ian, Jenny and Rachel, and Bobby Higgins and his stepson Aidan—could manage. After a grueling day of working the harvest, we would stagger back to the house, eat whatever I had managed to put together in the morning—generally a stew made of greasy beans, rice, and anything else I could find in the bleary gray light of dawn—and fall into bed. Except Jamie.

He would eat, lie down before the hearth for one hour, then get up, dash cold water in his face, pull on the least filthy of his two work shirts, and go out to meet the militia in the big clearing below the house. He would set Bobby to drilling whoever had shown up, while he talked with the newcomers, persuading them to join, sealing their engagement with a silver shilling (he had sixteen left, hidden in the heel of one of his dress boots) and the promise of a mount and a decent gun. Then he would take over the drilling, as the light gradually seeped out of the land, drawn up into the last brilliance of the sky, and when the sun finally disappeared he would stagger up to bed and—with luck—get his boots off before collapsing facedown beside me.

Other men needed to tend to their harvest and butchering as well, though, so the attendance was spotty—and would be, he’d told me, until mid-October.

“By which time, I might possibly have a few horses and rifles in hand to give them.”

“I hope Mr. Cleveland’s friends all have harvests to look after, too,” I said, crossing the fingers of both hands.

He laughed and poured a ewer of water over his head, then set it down and stood for a moment, hands braced on the washstand, head down, dripping into the basin—and all over the floor.

“Aye,” he said, into the dark cavern of his long, wet hair. “Aye, they do.” He didn’t straighten up immediately, and I could see the depth of each slow breath as it swelled his back. Finally, he stood up straight and, shaking his head like a wet dog, took the linen towel I offered him and wiped his face.

“Cleveland’s rich,” he said. “He’s got servants to mind his fields and his stock and let him play hangman. I dinna have that luxury, thank God.”

53 First Foot

ON SEPTEMBER 16, OUR front door closed for the first time. It was a thing of beauty, solid oak, planed and sanded smooth as glass. Jamie and Bobby Higgins had put in the hinges and hung the door before lunch, and had finished installing the knob, lock, and mortise plate (the lock purchased at hideous expense from a locksmith in Cross Creek) just before sunset. Jamie swung the door closed with an impressive thud and threw the bolt with a ceremonious flourish, to the applause of the assembled family—which at the moment included Bobby and his three sons, invited to share supper with us and provide a little company for Fanny, as she missed Germain, Jem, and Mandy cruelly.

We’d laid wagers over supper as to who might be the first person to knock at our new front door, with guesses ranging from Aodh MacLennan (who spent more time with us than with his own family—“Why would he bother to knock, Sassenach?”) to Pastor Gottfried—an outsider at twenty to one, as he lived in Salem. At dawn the next morning, Jamie had drawn the bolt and gone out to tend the stock, but now we were finishing our noon meal, and no strange step had ventured yet upon our virgin threshold.

I was peering into the depths of my cauldron to see how much soup was left, repressing an urge to declaim the witches’ speech from Macbeth—largely because I couldn’t remember any more of it than “Double, Double, toil and trouble,” with scanty additional recollections of eyes of newt and toes of frog—when suddenly a measured bam-bam-bam echoed through the house.

“Eee!” Orrie leapt up—spilling his soup—but Aidan, Rob, and Fanny were all faster, and hit the hall at a dead heat, squabbling over who should answer the door.

“The manners of you, ye wee gomerels,” Jamie said mildly, coming up behind them. He grabbed both boys by the shoulders and pushed them aside. “And you, too, Frances, what are ye thinking, scrabbling wi’ the lads?” Fanny blushed and gave way, allowing him the honor of answering his own front door.

I’d come out into the hall, curious to see who our caller was. Jamie was so tall that I couldn’t see past him, but I heard him greet whoever it was in Gaelic, with a formal honorific. He sounded surprised.

I was surprised, too, when he stepped back and gestured Hiram Crombie into the hall.

Hiram lived toward the west end of the cove, well down the slope, and usually ventured away from his own neck of the woods only to come to church of a Sunday. I didn’t think he’d ever come to the house before.

A spare, dour-looking man, he was the de facto headman of the village of fisher-folk who had emigrated, en masse, from the far north near Thurso, to settle at the Ridge. I looked automatically over my shoulder for Roger; the fisher-folk were all rock-ribbed Presbyterians, who tended to keep to themselves; Roger was probably the only person in the household who could be thought of as being on truly cordial terms with Hiram—though Mr. Crombie would at least speak to me, after the events surrounding his mother-in-law’s funeral.

Roger was gone, though. And it appeared that, in fact, Hiram had things other than religion on his mind.

He’d doffed his hat—his good hat, I saw—when he came in, and gave me a small nod of acknowledgment, then cast a glance at the knot of children, blinked without changing expression, and turned to Jamie.

“A word with ye, a mhaighister?”

“Oh. Aye, of course, Mr. Crombie.” He stepped back and gestured toward the door of his study—known to all and sundry as the speak-a-word room. He met my eyes as he followed Hiram into the study, and gave me a wide-eyed shrug in response to my questioning look. Hell if I know, it said.

I SHOOED THE children off to the creek to look for crawdads, leeches, cress, and anything else that seemed useful, and retired into my surgery, seizing the rare moment of leisure to ramble through the pages of my precious new Merck Manual, keeping one ear out in case Jamie wanted anything for Hiram.

One of the unusual accoutrements of my new surgery was a cane-bottomed rocking chair. Jamie had made it for me—in the evenings, over a period of months—from ashwood, with rockers of rock maple, and got Graham Harris, the local expert, to cane the bottom, assuring me that the chair would outlast me and any number of subsequent generations, rock maple being called that because it was hard as stone. The chair was remarkably helpful for soothing babies or small, wiggly children that I wanted to examine—and just as helpful for calming my own mind when I had to retreat from the stresses of daily life, in order to avoid throttling people.

At the moment, though, I was content in mind and body, and absorbed in finding out what the modern treatment for interstitial cystitis might be.

Granted, there was nothing I could actually do with much of the information—no one on the Ridge ate spicy food to start with, but my chances of talking any of them out of using tobacco, alcohol, or raisins were low. As for drugs, the only applicable substance I had was my reliable willow-bark tea. Beyond curiosity, though, there was somehow a great comfort in the sense of authority in the book; the feeling that there was someone—many someones—who had blazed a trail for me; I wasn’t completely alone in the daily struggle between life and death.

I’d felt such reassurance for the first time when I, a fledgling nurse, was given a copy of the U.S. Army’s Handbook for the Sanitary Troops by a Yank medic I’d met during my first posting during the War. My War, as I always thought of it.

That’s what the Yanks called us—the enlisted medical support—the sanitary troops. After the first week in a field hospital, I wanted to laugh (when I wasn’t crying with my head under a pillow) at the name, but it wasn’t wrong. We were fighting with everything we had, and cleanliness was not the least of our tools.

Nor was it now the least of mine.

The amount of water needed by the average man daily for drinking purposes varies according to the amount of exercise he takes and the temperature of the atmosphere; a fair average is three or four pints in addition to that which he takes in food. On the march the amount is limited by the capacity of the canteen to about one quart, and this quantity should be very carefully husbanded.

A water is said to be potable when it is fit to drink. A potable water is an uncontaminated water; no matter how clear, bright, and sparkling a water may be, it is not potable if it is so situated that it can be fouled by fecal matter, urine, or the drainage from manured lands. There is a very common error that all spring water is pure; many springs, especially those which are not constantly flowing, draw their water from surface sources.

I should copy that out in my own casebook, I thought, glancing toward the big black book on the shelf above the leech jars. It was a comforting thought, that someday that casebook, too, might give a sense of authority to another physician, arming them with the gift of my own experience, my own knowledge.

I flipped Merck’s pages slowly, and paused, my eye caught by the heading Malaria. Was there anything new in the treatment of malaria? I’d seen Lizzie Beardsley two weeks ago, and she’d assured me that she’d taken the Jesuit bark that Mrs. Cunningham had given me … but she was pale and her hands trembled when she changed the diaper on little Hubertus, and when I pressed her, she’d admitted to feeling “a bit dizzy, now and then.”

“Small wonder,” I muttered to myself. The eldest of her four children was not quite five, and while one of the Beardsley boys—well, one of her husbands, why not be blunt about it?—was usually at home to be doing the outside chores while the other hunted or fished or ran traplines, Lizzie did virtually all of the heavy household work, alone, while nursing a new infant and feeding and minding the others.

“Enough to make anyone dizzy,” I said out loud. Being in the Beardsley cabin for more than a few minutes made me dizzy.

I could hear noises, voices in the hallway. Mr. Crombie had done his business with Jamie, then. They sounded cordial enough …

Who would read my writings? I wondered. Not only the casebook, but the small book of domestic medicine that I’d had published in Edinburgh two years before? That one had a number of helpful remarks on the importance of handwashing and cooking one’s food thoroughly—but the casebook had more valuable things: my notes on the production of penicillin (crude as my efforts were), drawings of bacteria and pathogenic microorganisms with a brief exegesis on Germ Theory, the administration of ether as an anesthetic (rather than an internally applied remedy for seasickness, its principal use at the moment), and …

“Oh, there ye are, Sassenach.” Jamie’s head poked into the surgery, wearing an expression that made me shut Merck abruptly and sit up.

“What on earth’s happened?” I said. “Is something wrong with one of the Crombies?” I was making a quick mental inventory of my first-aid kit as I got to my feet, but Jamie shook his head. He came all the way in and shut the door carefully behind him.

“The Crombies are thriving,” he assured me. “And so are all the Wilsons and the Baikies. And the Greigs, too.”

“Oh, good.” I sank back into my rocking chair. “What did Hiram want, then?”

“Well,” he said, with a resumption of the odd expression, “Frances.”

“SHE’S TWELVE, FOR God’s sake!” I said. “What do you mean, he wants permission for his brother to court her? What brother, for that matter? I didn’t think he had one.”

“Oh, aye. Half brother, I should ha’ said. Cyrus. The tall one that looks like a stem of barley gone to seed. They call him a’ Chraobh Ard. D’ye not have anything drinkable in here, Sassenach?”

“That one,” I said, pointing at a black bottle with a menacing skull-and-crossbones marked in white chalk. “It’s rhubarb gin. A’ Chraobh Ard?” I smiled, despite the situation. The young man in question—and he was a very young man; I didn’t think he could be more than fifteen himself—was indeed very tall; he topped Jamie by an inch or two—but spindly as a willow shoot.

“What can Hiram be thinking?” I asked. “His brother surely isn’t old enough to marry anybody, even if Fanny was, which she isn’t.”

“Aye.” He picked up a cup from the counter, looked suspiciously into it, and smelled it before putting it down and pouring a measure of gin into it. “He admits as much. He says that Cyrus saw the lassie at kirk and would like to come a-visiting—in an official way, ken?—but Hiram doesna want his attention to be misunderstood or taken for disrespect.”

“Oh, yes?” I got up and poured a small splash of gin for myself. It had a lovely fragrance to match its flavor—sweet but with a noticeably tart edge. “What does he really have in mind?”

Jamie smiled at me and clicked the rim of his wooden cup with mine.

“The militia. Other things, too, but it’s mostly that.”

That was a surprise. While Hiram was, like every other fisherman I had known, tough as nails, I’d never known him or any other of the Thurso men to take up arms, beyond occasionally shooting game. As for riding horses …

“See, Captain Cunningham has been preaching about the war again, and he’s makin’ Hiram uneasy in his mind.”

“Has he, indeed?” What with one thing and another, I hadn’t gone to the captain’s Sunday services of late. But I knew he was a Loyalist—and there was that man, Partland, who had tried to bring him rifles. “Do you think he’s planning to raise his own militia? Here?” That would be more than awkward.

“I don’t think so,” Jamie said slowly, frowning into his gin. “The captain has his limits, but I think he’s wise enough to ken that he does have them. But yon friends of his … Granger and Partland. If they had it in mind to raise a unit of Loyalist militia—and they do—he’d likely support them. Tell his congregation about it, I mean, and urge the suitable men to turn out.”

It was odd, I thought, that while whisky warmed the body, gin seemed to cool it. Or perhaps it was the talk of militias that was giving me a chilly feeling on the back of the neck.

“But surely Hiram’s not going to listen to Captain Cunningham, is he? I mean, the captain isn’t strictly speaking a Papist, but from Hiram’s point of view, Methodists likely aren’t that much better.”

“True.” Jamie licked the corner of his mouth. “And I doubt he’s gone to many of Cunningham’s sermons himself. But a few of the Thurso folk do, of course.”

“For entertainment?” I smiled. While both Roger and the captain had small but devoted congregations, there were not a few of the Ridge inhabitants who would come to listen to anyone willing to get up and talk, and who sat through all of the Sunday services, including Rachel’s meetings, later comparing critical opinions of each preacher’s remarks.

“Aye, mostly. The captain’s no so good as a Punch-and-Judy show—or even as good as Roger Mac—but he’s something to listen to and talk about. And Hiram’s cousins have been talking. He doesna like it.”

“And so … he wants his half brother to court Fanny?” I shook my head. Even with a solid half ounce of rhubarb gin under my belt, I didn’t see the connection.

“Well, it’s no really about Frances, ken.” He picked up the gin bottle and smelled it thoughtfully. “Rhubarb, ye say. If I drink more of this, will it give me the shits?”

“I don’t know. Try it and see,” I advised him, holding out my own cup for more. “What is it about, then, and why is Fanny involved?”

“Well, it’s a tie—no a formal one, of course—but a link betwixt Hiram and me. He sees well enough where things are going, and it will be easier, when the time comes, for him to go with me, and bring some of his men along, if there’s a … friendly feeling between the families, aye?”

“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.” I took a minute to contemplate that. “You can’t really be considering marrying Fanny off to the Crombies! It may be war, but it isn’t the War of the bloody Roses, with dynastic marriages right and left. I mean, I’d hate to see you end up in a butt of malmsey with a red-hot poker up your arse, like the Duke of Clarence.”

That made him laugh, and the knot forming under the gin in my stomach relaxed a little.

“Not yet, Sassenach. No, and I willna let Cyrus trouble Fanny—or even talk to her formally, if she mislikes the notion. But if the lassie doesna mind him visiting—and he is a sweet-tempered lad—then … aye, it might help Hiram when I need to ask him to ride with me and bring his men.”

I tried to envision Hiram Crombie riding into battle at Jamie’s side—and surprisingly, found it not all that far-fetched. Bar the riding part … the Thurso people did of course have the occasional mule or nag for transport, but on the whole, they were deeply suspicious of horses and preferred to walk. I supposed they could be infantry …

“But I dinna mean Frances to be made uneasy,” he said. “I’ll talk to her—and you should, too, like women, ken?”

“Like women, forsooth,” I murmured. But he was right. Fanny knew much, much more of the risks of being a woman than the average twelve-year-old did, and while I doubted that Cyrus would be any sort of threat to her, I must reassure her that this proposition was entirely hers to decline.

“All right,” I said, still a bit reluctant. “Do you know anything about Cyrus, other than his being tall?”

“Hiram spoke well of the lad. Paid him what I think was a verra high compliment.”

“What’s that?”

Jamie tossed off the rest of his gin, belched slightly, and set down his cup.

“He says Cyrus thinks like a fish.”

RATHER TO MY surprise, Fanny didn’t seem averse to Cyrus visiting more formally, when I carefully broached the subject with her.

“He doesn’t really speak any English, though,” she said thoughtfully. “A lot of the people up at that end of the cove don’t, Germain told me.”

Germain was right; many of the fisher-folk spoke only Gaelic; it was one reason why they remained as a tight-knit group, somewhat separate from the other residents of the Ridge.

“I’m learning the Gàidhlig,” she assured me, pronouncing it correctly. “And I suppose I’d learn more from Cyrus.”

“Why?” I asked, rather astonished. “I mean—what makes you want to learn Gaelic?”

She flushed a little but didn’t look away or down. That strong sense of self-possession was one of the things that occasionally made Fanny a little unnerving.

“I heard them singing,” she said. “In the church, with Roger Mac. Some of the Wilsons and Mr. Greig and his brother came down to listen to him preach—I think you were gone that day, so you wouldn’t have heard them—but after the sermon, Roger Mac asked Mr. Greig if he knew …” She shook her head. “I can’t even say the name, but it was a song in Gaelic, and they sang it, all of them, and they were beating their hands on the benches like drums and—the whole church … it was …” She looked at me, helpless to explain, but I could see the light in her face. “Alive.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry I missed that.”

“If Cyrus comes to visit me, maybe some of his family will come down and sing again,” she said. “Besides,” she added, a slight shadow crossing her face, “with Germain and Jemmy gone, Cyrus will be somebody to talk to, whether he understands me or not.”

HER MENTION OF Germain made me slightly wary, and I went to find Jamie, who was repairing the barn wall where Clarence, in a fit of pique, had kicked it and broken one of the boards.

“Do you think maybe you should talk to Hiram before Cyrus comes?” I said. “I mean, naturally, we don’t want to tell anyone about … where Fanny came from. But if Cyrus were to—er—make any, um, inappropriate moves toward her … she might—feel obliged to respond?”

He’d sat back on his heels to listen to me, and at this, he laughed and stood up, shaking his head.

“Nay bother, Sassenach,” he said. “He’ll not lay a finger on the lass, or Hiram will break his neck, and Hiram will ha’ told him so.”

“Well, that’s reassuring. Do you think perhaps you should drop a word in his ear yourself? As Fanny’s loco parentis, I mean?”

“Locum,” he said, “and no. I’ll just bid him welcome and terrify him wi’ my presence. He won’t dare breathe on her, Sassenach.”

“All right,” I said, still a little dubious. “I think she believed us—believed you—when we told her we didn’t expect her to become a whore, but … she spent half her life in a brothel, Jamie. Even if she wasn’t … participating, her sister was, and Fanny surely knew everything that was going on. That sort of experience leaves a mark.”

He paused, head bent, looking down at the ground, where a small pile of fresh mule apples marked Clarence’s mood.

“Ye healed me of something a good deal worse, Sassenach,” he said, and touched my hand gently. He’d touched me with his right hand, the maimed one.

“I didn’t,” I protested. “You did that yourself—you had to. All I did was … er …”

“Drug me wi’ opium and fornicate me back to life? Aye, that.”

“It wasn’t fornication,” I said, rather primly—though my hand turned, my fingers lacing tight with his. “We were married.”

“Aye, it was,” he said, and his mouth tightened, as well as his grip. “It wasna only you I was swiving, and ye ken that as well as I do.”

If I did, it wasn’t anything I was ever going to admit, let alone discuss, and I let it lie.

“But I grant ye, neither of us could do the like for Frances. Maybe Cyrus can—by not touchin’ her.” He kissed my hand, let it go, and bent to pick up his hammer.

OF COURSE I had seen Cyrus Crombie before, at church, but beyond a second glance at his height hadn’t really taken notice of him. Jamie had arranged for him to come to the house later in the week with a couple of cousins, to help with the framing for the third story—and be formally presented to Fanny.

And so it was that two days later, I climbed to the precarious top of the house, where the third floor was slowly taking shape amid the creaking and flapping of rope, wood, and canvas.

“I’m amazed that you aren’t seasick,” I said, finding Jamie in the act of measuring along one edge of the lofty platform that would someday be an attic, making chalk marks that were probably less random than they looked.

“I likely would be, if I thought about it,” he said absently. “What brings ye up here, Sassenach? It’s early for dinner.”

“True. I did bring you food, though.” I dug in my pocket and brought out a bread roll stuffed with cheese and pickle. “You need to eat more. I can see all your ribs,” I added disapprovingly.

I could, too; he’d taken off his shirt to work, and the shadows of his ribs showed clearly in his back, beneath the faded network of his scars.

He merely grinned at me, but rose and took the roll, taking a large bite of it in the same movement.

“Taing,” he said, swallowing, and nodded to the air behind me. “There he is.”

I turned to look. Sure enough, Cyrus Crombie was coming down the path behind the house. Tall Tree, forsooth. He had an explosion of light-brown curls that hung to his shoulders, and an apprehensive expression.

“Aren’t some more of the Crombies meant to come, too?” I asked.

“Aye, they will. I imagine he’s come a wee bit early, in order to have a word in—well, not quite private, but without Hiram breathin’ down his neck—with Fanny. Brave of him,” he added with approval.

“Should I go down? To chaperone?” I asked, watching the boy. He’d paused by the well and was taking a roll of cloth from the bag at his belt.

“Nay, Sassenach. I told my sister what was a-do; she’ll keep an eye on them without scarin’ the shit out of Cyrus.”

“You think I would?”

He laughed and popped the last bite of roll into his mouth, chewed and swallowed. I caught a waft of piccalilli and cheese, and my own stomach gurgled in anticipation.

“I do. D’ye not ken that all the fisher-folk still think ye’re next door to a witch, if not a bean-sithe outright? Even Hiram makes the horns behind your back when he comes near ye.”

I wasn’t at all sure how I felt about that. It was true that I had inadvertently raised Hiram’s mother-in-law from the dead at her funeral; though she’d died more permanently a few minutes later, she’d had time to denounce Hiram for not paying for a sufficiently lavish funeral—but I’d thought the effect might have worn off by now.

“Who was it who tried to build a tower to heaven and came to a bad end?” I asked, dismissing the matter of my public image for the moment and peering over the edge of the platform.

“The men of Babel,” he said, rummaging in his pocket for a scrap of paper and a pencil. “I dinna think they were expecting company, though. Just showin’ off for the sake of it. That sort of thing always gets ye in trouble.”

“If we have enough company to justify this”—I waved at the long expanse of rough flooring—“we’ll already be in trouble.”

He paused and looked at me. He was thin and worn, his skin reddened and burnt across forearms and shoulders, wisps of ruddy hair flying in the wind, and his eyes very blue.

“Aye,” he said mildly. “We will be.”

The gurgling in my stomach changed its tune slightly. The third floor was meant to be attics—in part, for storage, or to provide rooms for a housekeeper, should I ever find one again—but also to provide a place of refuge for tenants who might need it. In case …

Jamie’s attention had shifted, though, and he was craning his neck to look over the edge. He beckoned to me, and I crossed to him. Below, Cyrus Crombie had opened the roll of fabric and had laid out his tools—mallet, chisel, and knife—on the rim of the well. He’d drawn up the bucket and now dipped his fingers into the water and sprinkled it on the tools. I could see that he was saying something, but he wasn’t speaking loudly, and I couldn’t hear above the whine of the wind.

“He’s blessing his tools?” I asked, looking at Jamie, who nodded.

“Aye, of course.” He seemed pleased. “Presbyterians may be heretics, Sassenach, but they still believe in God. I’d best go down now, and bid him welcome.”

54 Moonrise

I WAS STARTLED FROM a solid sleep by Jamie exploding out of bed beside me. This wasn’t an uncommon occurrence, but as usual, it left me sitting bolt upright amid the quilts, dry-mouthed and completely dazed, heart hammering like a drill press.

He was already down the stairs; I heard the thump of his bare feet on the last few treads—and above that sound, frenzied pounding on the front door.

I shook my head violently and flung off the covers. Him or me? was the first coherent thought that formed out of the fog drifting through my brain. Night alarms like this might be news of violence or misadventure, and sometimes of a nature that required all hands, like a house fire or someone having unexpectedly met with a hunting panther at a spring. More often, though …

I heard Jamie’s voice, and the panic left me. It was low, questioning, with a cadence that meant he was soothing someone. Someone else was talking, in high-pitched agitation, but it wasn’t the sound of disaster.

Me, then. Childbirth or accident? My mind had suddenly resurfaced and was working clearly, even while my body fumbled to and fro, trying to recall what I had done with my grubby stockings. Probably birth, in the middle of the night … But the uneasy thought of fire still lurked on the edge of my thoughts.

There was an obituary with my name on it, and Jamie’s, claiming that we had perished in a fire that consumed our house. The house had burned, and we hadn’t, but any hint of fire raised the hairs on my scalp.

I had a clear picture in my mind of my emergency kit and was grateful that I’d thought to refurbish it just before supper. It was sitting ready on the corner of my surgery table. My mind was less clear about other things; I’d put my stays on backward. I yanked them off, flung them on the bed, and went to splash water on my face, thinking a lot of things I couldn’t say out loud, as I could hear Fanny’s feet now scampering across the landing.

I reached the bottom of the stairs belatedly, to find Fanny with Jamie, who was talking with a young girl not much more than Fanny’s age, standing barefoot, distraught, and wearing nothing more than a threadbare shift. I didn’t recognize her.

“Ach, here’s Herself now,” Jamie said, glancing over his shoulder. He had a hand on the girl’s shoulder, as though to keep her from flying away. She looked as if she might: thin as a broomstraw, with baby-fine blond hair tangled by the wind, and eyes looking anxiously in every direction for possible help.

“This is Agnes Cloudtree, Claire,” he said, nodding toward the girl. “Frances, will ye find a shawl or something to lend the lass, so she doesna freeze?”

“I don’t n-need—” the girl began, but her arms were wrapped around herself and she was shivering so hard that her words shook.

“Her mother’s with child,” Jamie interrupted her, looking at me. “And may be having a bit of trouble with the birth.”

“We c-can’t p-pay—”

“Don’t worry about that,” I said, and, nodding to Jamie, took her in my arms. She was small and bony and very cold, like a half-feathered nestling fallen from a tree.

“It will be all right,” I said softly to her, and smoothed down her hair. “We’ll go to your mother at once. Where do you live?”

She gulped and wouldn’t look up, but was so cold she clung to me for warmth.

“I don’t know. I m-mean—I don’t know how to say. Just—if you can come with me, I can take you back?” She wasn’t Scottish.

I looked at Jamie for information—I’d not heard of the Cloudtrees; they must be recent settlers—but he shook his head, one brow raised. He didn’t know them, either.

“Did ye come afoot, lassie?” he asked, and when she nodded, asked, “Was the sun still up when ye left your home?”

She shook her head. “No, sir. ’Twas well dark, we’d all gone to bed. Then my mother’s pains came on sudden, and …” She gulped again, tears welling in her eyes.

“And the moon?” Jamie asked, as though nothing were amiss. “Was it up when ye set out?”

His matter-of-fact tone eased her a little, and she took an audible breath, swallowed, and nodded.

“Well up, sir. Two handbreadths above the edge of the earth.”

“What a very poetic turn of phrase,” I said, smiling at her. Fanny had come with my old gardening shawl—it was ratty and had holes, but had been made of thick new wool to start with. I took it from Fanny with a nod of thanks and wrapped it round the girl’s shoulders.

Jamie had stepped out onto the porch, presumably to see where the moon now was. He stepped back in and nodded to me.

“The brave wee lass has been abroad in the night alone for about three hours, Sassenach. Miss Agnes—is there a decent trail that leads to your father’s place?”

Her soft brow scrunched in concern—she wasn’t sure what “decent” might mean in this context—but she nodded uncertainly.

“There’s a trail,” she said, looking from Jamie to me in hopes that this might be enough.

“Take Clarence,” he said to me, over her head. “The moon’s bright enough. I’ll go with ye.” And I think we’d best hurry, his expression added. I rather thought he was right.

CLARENCE WAS NOT enthused at being rousted from his sleep, nor about carrying two people, even if one was a starveling girl. He kept huffing and snorting irascibly, walking slowly and blowing out his sides every time I tried to nudge him into speed with my heels. Jamie had taken Fanny’s enormous mare, Miranda, she being of a stolid, amiable temperament and stout enough to bear his weight. She wasn’t all that pleased by the nocturnal expedition, either, but plodded obligingly through the groves of aspen and larch, poplar and fir, up the steep, narrow trail that led toward the top of the Ridge.

Clarence followed her rather than be left behind, but he wasn’t in any hurry about it and I kept losing sight of the shadowy mass of horse and man—and with them, any notion of where the trail was. I wondered how on earth the girl had found her way to us through dark and bramble; her legs and arms were scratched and there were leaves and pine needles in her hair; she smelled of the forest.

The moon was well up the sky by now, a lopsided, tricky lump of a moon that made it just possible to perceive deceptive openings in the forest, without actually being bright enough to see anything more than three feet away.

I had Agnes perched in front of me, her shift rucked up and pale white legs like mushroom stems dangling in the darkness to either side. I wondered whether she had left home in a panic—or whether perhaps the grubby shift was her only garment. It smelled faintly of cooking grease and singed cabbage.

“Tell me about your mother, Agnes,” I said, giving Clarence a solid kick in the ribs. He twitched his ears in annoyance, and I desisted. He was a good mule, but not above decanting a rider who aggravated him. “When—about—did her pains begin?”

She was a little less frightened, now that she had obtained the help she sought, and gradually grew calmer as she answered my questions.

Mrs. Cloudtree (was there a Mr. Cloudtree in residence? Yes, there was, though her body stiffened when she mentioned him) was near to her time (good, not a premature birth), though she’d thought it might be as much as another two or three weeks (maybe a little early, then … but even so, the baby should have a reasonable chance …).

Her mother’s pains had come on about midday, Agnes said, and her mother hadn’t thought it would take long: Agnes had come within four hours of the waters breaking, and each of her little brothers even faster. (Good, Mrs. Cloudtree was a multigravida. But in that case, she should have delivered fairly quickly and without complications … and plainly she hadn’t …)

Agnes couldn’t explain quite what the trouble was, other than a longer-than-usual labor. But she knew there was trouble, and that interested me.

“It’s not …,” she said, pulling the old shawl tighter round her shoulders and turning her head in an effort to see my face, make me understand. “Something’s different.”

“Something feels wrong to you?” I asked, interested.

She shook her head dubiously. “I don’t know. I helped, last time, when Georgie was born. And I was there when Billy came …. I was too little to help, then, but I could see everything. This is just … different.” I heard her swallow, and patted her shoulder.

“We’ll be there soon,” I said. I wanted to assure her that everything would be all right, but she knew better, or she wouldn’t have come running through the dark, looking for help. I could only hope that nothing irretrievable had happened at the Cloudtrees’ cabin in the meantime.

I glanced up, looking for the moon. I’d never managed to shift my sense of time to stars and planets, rather than the clock, and so was obliged to calculate time, rather than know it, as Jamie did. The moon was a ghostly galleon … drifted through my head. Could be, I thought, spotting it momentarily through a break in the dark, fragrant firs surrounding us. And a highwayman came riding … came riding …

I knew all I could know at this point; it was time to stop thinking. Every birth was different. And every death. The thought spoke itself inside my mind before I could stop it, and a shiver ran through me.

I asked a few questions about Agnes’s family, but she had withdrawn into her own anxiety and wasn’t disposed to talk much further. Beyond the information that they had built their present cabin in the early summer, I gained little knowledge of the Cloudtrees beyond their names: Aaron, Susannah, Agnes, William, and George.

At the top of the Ridge, Jamie halted at the edge of the Bald, as folk called the high, treeless meadows on the upper slopes of the mountain. As usual, there was a stiff wind blowing on the Bald, and the shawl I’d pulled over my head was snatched back and my hair with it, whipping free in the breeze. Jamie dropped Miranda’s reins, and she immediately lowered her head and began to munch grass.

Jamie dismounted and came to take Clarence’s bridle. Out from under the trees now, I could see him plainly by the moonlight; he was smiling up at me, watching as my hair was lifted straight up off my scalp.

“Dinna take flight just yet, Sassenach. I’ll need Miss Agnes to guide us from here,” he said, and reached up a hand to her. “Will ye come over to me, lass?”

I felt her stiffen, but after a moment’s hesitation she nodded and slid off Clarence. Clarence grunted and turned smartly round, obviously thinking that now we’d got rid of the girl, it was time to go home.

“Think again,” I told him, reining his head hard round. A short battle of wills followed, this resolved by Miranda and her riders moving off with the slow implacability of a steamroller. Clarence snorted and brayed after her, but she didn’t turn back, and after a moment’s fuming, he snapped into a tooth-jarring trot and plunged after her. A quarter of an hour later, we crossed the Cherokee Line. A white blaze, briefly showing by moonlight, marked one of the witness trees that marked the Treaty Line.

The moon was high overhead, and the trees open enough for me to see Jamie glance back over his shoulder. I raised my hand in a small wave of acknowledgment; I’d noticed. A premature birth might not be all Agnes’s family was risking, settling on Indian land. I was glad that Jamie had insisted on coming; he spoke enough Cherokee to get along, if that should become necessary.

The journey took no little time, as Agnes needed to come out into the open now and again to get her bearings—she could read stars, she said matter-of-factly—but within an hour, we saw the dim glow of a cabin’s windows, covered by oiled hide.

I slid off Clarence and pulled down the bag that held my kit.

“I’ll mind the horses,” Jamie said, coming up to take Clarence’s reins. “Ye’ll need to hurry, I expect?”

Agnes was already at the door, fluttering like a frantic moth, and even from where we stood, I could hear the deep, guttural noises of a woman deep in labor.

The door opened suddenly inward, and Agnes fell over the threshold. A tall, dark figure yanked her to her feet and slapped her across the face.

“Where the hell you been, girl!”

Clarence’s ears went straight up at the gunshot sound, and when this was succeeded at once by the high-pitched shrieking of small children, he turned around and trotted off into the forest.

“You bloody idiot!” I shouted at him. “Come back here!”

“Ifrinn!” Jamie dived past me and ran after the mule, saving the rest of his breath for the chase.

“Who the damnation are you?”

I turned to see a young Cherokee man standing in the flickering light of the doorway, glaring at me. He was leaning on the doorframe, his long hair disheveled and blood on his shirt.

I took a deep breath, straightened my spine, and walked up to him.

“I, sir,” I said, “am the midwife. Do please go and sit down.” I didn’t wait to see if he obeyed this injunction; I had work to do.

My patient was sitting on a crudely made birthing chair near the hearth, collapsed forward, arms dangling and her dark-blond hair nearly black at the roots with sweat, the ends dripping over her immense belly. Two little boys, of perhaps five and three, clung to one of her legs, howling. Her legs and feet were grossly swollen.

“Come here, Billy.” Agnes, her face dead white save for the scarlet palm print on her cheek and her voice no more than a squeak, took the bigger of the boys by his collar and pulled him away. “Georgie, you come, too—come, I said!” The fright in her voice stirred them, and they turned and clung to her, whimpering. Agnes looked at me, her eyes huge in mute appeal.

“It will be all right,” I said to her, softly, and squeezed her arm. “Take care of the little ones. I’ll see to your mama.”

I knelt down and looked up into the woman’s face. A bloodshot blue eye stared back at me through the snarled wet hair. An eye glazed with exhaustion—but still an intelligent, conscious eye; she saw me.

“My name is Claire,” I said, and laid a hand on her belly. She was wearing a filthy shift, so transparent with sweat that her protuberant navel showed through it. “I’m a midwife. I’ll help you.”

“Jesus,” she whispered, whether in prayer or from simple astonishment, I couldn’t tell. Then her face clenched into a knot and she curled over her belly with a bestial noise.

I kept my hand on her, but bent down to one side and peered up through the hollow of the birthing stool. A narrow slice of pale crown showed for an instant as she pushed, then disappeared.

I felt the spurt of excitement that always came with imminent birth, and my hand tightened on her belly. Another spurt came, this one of sudden fear.

Something bloody was wrong. I couldn’t tell what, but something was very wrong. I straightened up, and as the pain released its grip, I rose and took the woman by her shoulders, helping her to sit up. There were no towels to hand; I lifted my skirt and wiped her face with my petticoat.

“How long have you been pushing?” I asked.

“Too long,” she said tersely, and grimaced. I bent and looked again, and without her shadow obstructing the situation, I saw that she was dead right. The perineum was nearly purple and very swollen. That was it: the child was stuck, the crown of its head battering with each spasm, but not able to come further.

“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” I said, and both her eyes popped open in astonishment. “Never mind,” I said. “When it lets go”—for the next pain was coming, I could see it in her face—“lean back against the wall.”

Her husband—I assumed that must be the man who’d slapped Agnes—seemed to have gone outside and was apostrophizing the night in an incoherent mix of Cherokee and English.

“Right,” I said, as calmly as possible, and put off my cloak and shawl. “Let’s just see what we have here, shall we, Susannah?”

There were splashes of blood on the dirt floor, but it was dark, with large, visible clots—just bloody show. She wasn’t hemorrhaging, though there was a slick of blood on her thighs. Her waters had broken some time earlier; it was hot and the small room smelled like a Jurassic swamp, fecund and reeking.

The contractions were coming every minute, powerful ones. I had only moments between them in which her belly relaxed enough for me to palpate it, but on the second try I thought I felt … the muscles of her belly tightened like an iron band, and I counted under my breath, hands still on her. Relaxation … I knew where the head was, was the child facing backward? I pressed hard on the relaxed belly, trying to find the curve of the spine …

“Ngg!”

“It will be all right. Count with me, Susannah … one, two …”

“Rrrrggh!”

I counted silently. Twenty-two seconds and the contraction eased. Spine … there was the blunt point of an elbow, and there, a curve that had to be the child’s spine … only it wasn’t.

“Bloody fucking hell,” I said, and Susannah made a noise that might have been a groan or an exhausted laugh. The rest of my attention was focused on the thing under my hand. It wasn’t the curve of a spine, nor yet of buttocks. It was the curve of another head.

It vanished with a new contraction, but I kept my hand doggedly on the spot, and as soon as the spasm waned, I felt frantically, to and fro. My first panicked thought—a memory of a double-headed infant, seen in a jar of spirits of wine—disappeared, succeeded by something that was partly relief, partly new alarm.

“It’s twins,” I said to Susannah. “Did you know that?”

She shook her head to and fro, slow as an ox.

“Thought … maybe. You … sure?”

“Oh, yes,” I said, in a tone that made her laugh again, though the sound was cut off abruptly by the next contraction.

The relief caused by the thought that we probably weren’t dealing with a gross deformity was fading fast, replaced by the next thought—if the first baby wasn’t moving, it was perhaps caught in an umbilical cord, possibly dead, or entangled with its twin in some fashion.

Further palpations, pushing when I thought I had an idea what I was pushing on, groping for a mental picture of what might be going on inside … but even the best midwife can tell only so much, and the only thing I was reasonably sure about was that the placenta—one placenta, or two? If it was one, it might rip loose with the first birth and then we’ll have an abruption that will kill the mother—hadn’t yet detached, though given the position of the baby’s head, there could easily be gallons of blood backed up behind the infant …. No. I looked up at Susannah’s face. No, if she were hemorrhaging, she’d be white and losing consciousness. As it was, she was bright red and clearly still fighting.

But we didn’t have much time. Two umbilical cords, either of which could be wrapped around a neck, or slip down between the child and the pelvic bones and be crushed with a contraction, starving one child of oxygen … and that was the least of it …

My mind ran rapidly down the list of potential problems—some I could dismiss on the grounds of what I could see and feel, some (like the faint horror of its being conjoined twins) I could dismiss on grounds of high odds against, others, on grounds that I couldn’t do a thing about them, even if I knew what was going on. That still left a few to be worried about.

And the child was not moving. It was alive; I could feel a pulse when I got my fingertips briefly on the head. And it was oriented properly, facedown; I could feel the biparietal sutures in the skull. But it wasn’t moving!

My shoulders ached, and so did my hips and knees, from kneeling on the dirt floor so long, but I felt it dimly, an irrelevant observation. I had one hand in her vagina, the other on her belly, probing through the wall of skin and muscle, feeling for some pattern in the tangle of tiny limbs. Susannah’s sweat was slick and hot under my hands—that was good, the wetness helped me feel movements …. The contraction came on with a force that smashed my fingers between skull and pelvis and made Susannah scream and me bite my lip not to.

Such force, in a woman who’d already given birth three times, should have shot the baby out like a greased pig. It hadn’t, and now I was sure what was wrong.

“The twins are tangled together,” I said, as calmly as I could. I pressed her stomach and felt movement—one twin, at least, was still alive. I was drenched with sweat and my mouth was dry. Someone had set a cup of water near me; I hadn’t noticed. I picked it up and drank, to get enough moisture to say what had to be said next.

“Susannah,” I said, leaning forward to look into her eyes. “The babies can’t get out. I can’t get them out. If we keep doing this, they’ll die—and you might die, too.” Easily. I took a deep breath; her hand had come down to rest on mine, atop her rigid belly.

“Wait,” she whispered, and clenched my hand as we all rode the next contraction. When it relaxed, she was panting, but squeezed my hand lightly and let go. “What … else?” she said, between gasps.

“I can cut you open and take the babies out,” I said. “It will be awful and it will be painful, but—”

“It can’t be worse’n this,” she said, and then did laugh, hoarse as a crow. I lowered my head and rested my forehead for a moment against her belly, controlling my own emotions, preparing myself. “Will I die, then?” she said, her voice quite matter-of-fact.

“Very likely,” I said, straightening up and matching her tone. I wiped a sleeve across my face and shoved the loose hair out of my eyes. “But it might save the babies. I’ll do my best.”

She nodded, and clutched my shoulder fiercely as the next contraction came on.

“Save ’em,” she said, as soon as it passed, and dropped her head, breathing like a winded horse.

The energy of emergency flooded me and I stood up, looking about the cabin for the first time. It was tiny and sparsely furnished, with one bedstead and a pallet rolled up at the foot. A table and benches—and a cauldron on the fire, steaming, thank God. And much to my surprise, Jamie, calmly unrolling the bundle that held my surgical knives on the table.

“Where did you come from?” I said. And added, glancing round the cabin, “Where’s Mr. Cloudtree?”

“Cold as a dead trout,” he said, nodding toward the half-open door. “Drunk, I mean.” I caught a glimpse of a small white face through the gap—Agnes, eyes huge with fear. “Mind your brothers, lass,” he said calmly to her. “It will be all right.”

I made what I hoped was a smile toward Agnes and stepped closer to the table. I started pulling things out of my kit as fast as I could.

“Did you hear what I said to her?” I asked, low-voiced, with a nod at Mrs. Cloudtree’s grunting form.

“I did,” he said, equally low-voiced, “and so did the wee lass.” He glanced at the door; Agnes was still there. When she saw me looking, she sidled in.

“The boys are asleep with Pa in the shed,” she said in a rush. “I can help, please let me help!”

“Agnes?” said Susannah faintly, raising her head. Before I could say anything, Agnes had shot to her mother’s side and was hugging her round the shoulders. Tears were pouring down her face, but she was saying, “It’ll be all right, Ma, Mr. Fraser says so.”

Susannah raised one arm as though it weighed a ton and slowly pushed back her sopping hair with her wrist to fix an eye on Jamie.

“You say so, Mr …. Fraser?”

“Aye, I do,” he said.

She went purple and bit her lip, breathing heavily through her nose, head hanging. When the pain let go, she raised it as though it were as heavy as the big iron cauldron.

“Your wife says … I’m gonna die.”

“Aye, well, I’ve got more faith in her than she does, but I suppose it’s your choice who to believe.” He glanced at me, hands half-curled for action. “What d’ye want to do, Sassenach?”

“She needs to be lying down.” My mind was made up and I already had what I needed laid out on the bench. “Can you get her onto the bed? Quickly.”

Susannah had been panting, eyes closed. At this, her eyes sprang open and she straightened, clutching her belly.

“Not the bed! You ain’t gonna spoil my good featherbed! Gaaaarrg!” She curled up like a shrimp again. Agnes was breathing so hard I thought she might faint, but no time to worry about it.

“The floor, then,” I said briefly. “Hurry. Stand back, Agnes!”

Between us, Jamie and I heaved her up, turned her, and laid her down as carefully as we could. She was tremendously heavy, very ungainly, and slick with sweat, though, and came down on the pounded dirt with a solid bump, at which she uttered a wild cry and Jamie said something very blasphemous in Gaelic.

“Bloody hell,” I said, under my breath, and reaching for the bottle of dilute alcohol, I pushed the soggy folds of her shift up and sloshed it over the huge belly, fish white and striped with purple-red stretch marks.

“All right,” I said, and snatched the heaviest of my surgical scalpels. “Jamie, hold her—oh, you’ve got her, good.” Muttering “Jesus, Mary, and Bride, bloody help me …” I laid the blade at the base of her navel.

But before I could make the incision, she screamed as though the touch of cold metal had been a cattle prod, jerked her knees up, then drove her heels down into the dirt, arched her back, thumped down again, and …

“What the devil’s that?” Jamie said, trying to look over the obstruction of Mrs. Cloudtree’s belly.

“It’s a head,” I said. “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ. Push, Susannah!”

She hadn’t waited for instructions. With a ferocious noise, she pushed, and the baby did shoot out like a greased pig. I caught him—was it a him? Yes, it was—in my apron. I thumbed his nose and mouth clear, turned him over, and thumped his wet back lightly. The tiny buttocks squeezed together in protest, relaxed and let out a small spurt of dark fecal matter, but he was making regular huffing noises, sounding much like his mother, though not nearly as loud.

“Agnes!” I shouted. She was already at my shoulder as I turned and I detached my apron, wrapped it hastily round the infant, and thrust him into her arms.

“Shall I cut the cord, Sassenach?” Jamie was squatting by my other side, sgian dubh in hand.

“Yes,” I said breathlessly, and forgot about it, thrusting my hand into the birth canal, hoping for another head.

No such luck. Limbs everywhere, in the tight, slippery dark. I closed my eyes to see better, feeling urgently for a foot. Just one, I prayed. Just one foot … And then a powerful contraction came on, quite different, like an ocean wave rolling through Susannah’s body, but slowly enough that I managed to get my hand out of the way. And there it was. A tiny foot, its limp toes tinged with unearthly blue.

“Bloody, bloody, bloody …” I realized that I was muttering senseless things and clamped my jaw tight. I knew it was too late, but there was nothing else to be done. Once more I reached up, fumbling into the dark, and this time found the other foot without trouble. Without trouble because the baby wasn’t moving.

A sense of remoteness came over me, and I closed my eyes and swallowed, feeling the solid stillness of a tiny body come into my hands. They call it stillbirth because it is. Not because the child is dead, but because everything—everything—goes quiet. A tiny, still girl. I knew she was gone, but stubbornness made me lift her and try to push breath into the still lungs, my fingers on the tiny chest, hoping against hope … but she was gone.

And yet the vivid joy of the first birth was still fizzing through my body—I could hear the baby yelling his indignation, and Susannah’s breath, a deep, slow panting, low voices and the crackle of the fire, the bubbling of water in the cauldron—but all of it was wrapped in silence, the beating of my own heart all I felt. It was peace, a deep peace, not yet sorrow, and I held the tiny body, and used my hem to wipe her—yes, her—tiny face, eyes closed, never to open. A moment longer, and then I placed her on a clout that Agnes had brought, and turned to take care of her mother.

“You have a son, Susannah,” I said softly. “Agnes—bring him, will you?” She did, biting her lip in concentration, not to drop him. He was a good size, considering his prematurity and the fact that he was a twin, but still weighed less than five pounds. I set him on Susannah’s chest and her arm came slowly up to hold him, cupping his head.

“It’ll be all right, darlin’,” she said to him, her voice ragged and deep from screaming. “Don’t take on, now.” Her eyes were closed, but she spoke to me. “The other one?”

“I’m sorry,” I said softly, and squeezed her hand. “You have a son.”

She drew a breath that went all the way down to her ravaged womb.

“Thank you, ma’am,” she whispered.

The little boy was still making noises like an angry hornet, but she moved him to her breast and thumbed the nipple into his mouth, and the noise stopped abruptly.

Sweat was stinging my eyes, running down my neck. I sat back on my heels and wiped my face on my skirt. Susannah made a deep gasping sound and the swollen leg pressing against my shoulder stiffened. The afterbirth was coming; I took hold of the umbilical cord, this still attached to the still body on the hearth, and the placenta, quite large, tumbled out like a deer’s liver, dark and bloody. Susannah grunted again, and the second placenta slithered out.

“All right,” I said, gathering myself. “Agnes—put a quilt over your mother. Susannah, I’m going to knead your belly, to help your womb contract and make the bleeding stop. It—” I had turned to find a menstrual cloth from my kit, and as I turned back, I saw Jamie. He was on his knees on the hearth, looking down at the dead little girl, with an expression on his face that stopped my heart.

He looked up, feeling my glance, and we read the name in each other’s face.

Faith. I nodded, my throat closing with a grief as sharp as it had been when I lost her. Jamie bowed his head, and reaching out, touched the tiny, wrinkled body, his hand nearly covering her. A tear fell and glistened on the back of his hand, another on the curve of her forehead, red in the firelight.

Moved by the deepest of memories, I leaned over and picked her up, holding her against my breast, tiny head cupped in my hand. In an instant, I was holding my lost daughter, grief knifing through me. I closed my eyes, knowing I had to put her down, had to go about my job, but unable to let her go, feeling the slow beating of my heart against the fading warmth of her fragile skin.

I couldn’t let her go. I couldn’t let Faith go; they had taken her from my arms, finally. Left me empty, alone, in that place of cold stone.

Snot was running down my face, tickling my lip, and I rubbed at it with my sleeve, still holding the child to my breast, listening to my heart break again.

“Let me take her, Sassenach,” Jamie whispered, and held out his hands.

I swallowed hard. I had to let her go.

“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t.” And bowed my head over the little girl I’d lost, rocking back and forth on my knees, feeling my heart beat, in chest and ears and fingertips, trying to make up for the heart that would never beat again.

I didn’t know how long it was that I stayed there, curled around the child, trying futilely to give her my heat, my life. There was nothing sudden, no sound, no movement. But in the midst of the searing grief, I slowly realized … something. It didn’t happen; it was already there. But I hadn’t felt it and now I did.

“Claire?” Jamie’s hand touched my shoulder and I seized it with my free hand and held on. Warmth, strength.

“Stay,” I said, to him and to her, breathless. “Stay.”

My heart. I was still feeling it, distinctly, slow and regular. I let go of Jamie’s hand, but he didn’t take it away. Holding the baby in one arm, I laid my other hand on her back, feeling. No sensation, nothing I could really say I felt—but there was something there.

I pressed lightly on her back, waited for the space of a breath, pressed again. And again. Hearing my own heartbeat in my ears, in the pulse of my blood. Pressed my heartbeat into her back, into her chest where it pressed against me.

Push.

My fingers were warm, and so was the child. The fire, I thought dimly. Crackle of fire and the sound of my heart. Thup-tup, thup-tup, thup-tup … And suddenly I heard Roger, telling me what Dr. McEwan had done, a hand on Buck’s breast, tapping slowly and patiently, over and over, in the rhythm of a beating heart.

Thup-tup … thup-tup … thup-tup …

There were more sounds in the room now, soft voices, the spitting of a cracking log, the wind under the eaves of the roof, the rushing sound of pines and the sloshing of water. Movement, warmth, life. Jamie’s hand, solid on my shoulder. I heard it all, I felt it all, but it was removed from me, happening in another world. All I was, was the sound of a heartbeat.

And in some enormity of time, I knew that there were two of us in that sound, a sharing of the beat of a heart, the knowledge of life. My finger tapping, slow and sure.

Thup-tup … thup-tup …

Malva … I saw her in my mind’s eye, dead in the garden, and the smell of blood and the scent of birth. The tiny boy I’d taken from her body, barely alive. A blue spark in my hands, that dwindled and died.

A blue spark. I saw it, saw it and looked deep into it, willing it to stay, holding it safe in the palms of my hands.

Thup … My finger stilled, and the small sound answered.

Tup.

I gradually became aware of my own breath, and after that, felt the solidness of Jamie and realized that he was holding me upright, an arm around my middle, his other hand on my breast, above the baby’s head. I lifted my own head, nearly blind from the brilliant darkness I’d been in, and saw the silhouette of a girl against the fire, her body dark and thin through the white of her shift.

“I cut the cord for you, Mrs. Fraser,” Agnes said. “And I kneaded Mam’s belly like she told me. Do you want a cup of cider? Pa drank all the beer.”

“She would, lass,” Jamie said, and gently let me go. “But first bring a wee blanket for your sister, aye?”

IT WAS DARK outside; the moon had set and dawn was some way off. It was cold, but the cold didn’t touch me.

I’d let him take the baby, at last. Felt his hands on mine as he took her, warm and sure, his face filled with light. He’d knelt carefully and given the baby to Susannah, placing his hand on the child in benediction.

Then he’d stood and wrapped me in my cloak and walked me outside. I couldn’t feel the ground beneath my feet, or see the forest, but the cold air smelled of pine and lay like a balm on my heated skin.

“All right, Sassenach?” he whispered. I seemed to be leaning against him, though I didn’t remember doing it. I’d lost track of where my body began and ended; the pieces seemed to be floating about in a loose sort of cloud of exaltation.

I felt Jamie’s hands tremble a little as he touched my face. From exhaustion, I thought. The same small, constant quiver seemed to be running through me from crown to sole, like a low-voltage current of electricity.

In fact, I’d passed clear through exhaustion and out the other side, as one does sometimes in moments of great effort. You know that your bodily energy has been used up, and yet there’s a supernatural sense of mental clarity and a strange capacity to keep moving, but at the same time, you see it all simultaneously, from outside yourself and from your deepest core—the usual intervening layers of flesh and thought have become transparent.

“I’m fine,” I said, and I laughed. Let my forehead fall against his chest and breathed for a moment, feeling all my pieces come to rest, whole again, as the enchantment of the last hour faded into peace.

“Jamie,” I said, a few moments later, raising my head. “What color is my hair?”

This was an absurd question; it was the depth of the night and we were standing in a pitch-black forest. But he made a small noise of appraisal and lifted my chin to look.

“All the colors o’ the earth,” he said, and smoothed the hair from my face. “But here, all about your face—it’s the color of moonlight, mo ghràidh.”

55 The Venom of the North Wind

RACHEL WOKE SUDDENLY, COMPLETELY alert but with no idea what had woken her. She moved, turning her head to see if Ian was awake. He was; his hand clamped across her mouth and she froze. It was dark in the cabin, but there was light enough from the banked fire for her to see his face, eyes dark with warning.

She blinked, once, and with a tiny nod he removed his hand. He lay quite still and so did she, though her heart thumped hard enough that she thought it would wake Oggy, snuggled between them.

Thumping hard enough that she couldn’t hear anything, either—Ian was listening, though. His long body hadn’t moved, and yet he seemed to have coiled up, somehow, like a snake gathering itself. She shut her eyes, concentrating.

There had been wind all night; berries from the big red cedar that guarded the house had been thumping on the roof at intervals. But Ian would have recognized that sound …

Suddenly Ian moved, rising onto one elbow; she heard him breathe in, sharply, and by reflex did the same. Tobacco. In the next instant, he’d slid out of bed and padded naked to the door.

She let out her breath with a sense of relief; a friend, then. Soft voices on the porch, then Ian stuck his head back in, smiled briefly at her, and snatching a folded blanket from the top of the chest closed the door behind him.

Oggy, disturbed by the sense of movement, stirred and made snuffling noises. She rose with haste in order to make use of the chamber pot before he roused all the way; he wasn’t a patient child.

Her shawl round her shoulders and the baby at her breast, she stole up to the window by the door. It was covered with an oiled hide, tacked down against drafts, so she couldn’t see anything, but sounds came through from the porch fairly well.

Not that it did her much good. The visitors—she made out at least two different voices, besides Ian’s—were Indians, and speaking in their own language. Perhaps Standing Heron Bradshaw and a friend from the Cherokee villages, come to help hunt the catamount that had been seen near the creek. That was a merciful thought; the more men there were, the safer they’d be. Presumably.

She was just about to go and check the porridge in the pot, in case the visitors needed breakfast, when she heard a word that froze her in her tracks and made her squeeze Oggy so hard that he emitted a small, surprised hoof! and stopped feeding for an instant.

He latched on to her breast again with instant ferocity, but she barely noticed. Not Cherokee. Not at all. They were Mohawk, and the word that had caught her ear was “Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa.”

SHE DIDN’T WAIT to put the child down or dress. When she stepped out onto the porch, the boards were icy under her bare feet, and the light was just beginning to fade into view. So were the interested faces of not two but three Mohawks, all of whom looked at her and nodded politely.

One of them said something that made Ian cough and glance sideways at her. He was wearing the blanket wrapped about his waist, and the sight of his bare chest, the nipples gone small and hard with cold, made her own nipples do something in sympathy that made Oggy choke and cough, spluttering milk all down the front of her shift. The Indians looked away as though nothing had happened.

“Thy friends are welcome, Ian,” she said, trying not to grit her teeth. She smiled at them. “Will they eat with us?”

They understood English, for all three at once went into the cabin. Ian made to follow them, and she grabbed his arm with her free hand.

“What’s happened?” she said, low-voiced.

“A massacre,” he said, and she saw now that he was upset, his face tight with worry. “There was an attack on a settlement—only a few houses, but all Whigs. It was Joseph Brant and some of his men. But then some fighters from Burk Hollow made a raid on a Mohawk settlement. In revenge.” He tried to turn toward the door, but she tightened her grip enough to stay him, not caring if she bruised him.

“Thy wife?” she said. “I see they came to give thee news of her. Was she in that settlement? Does she live?”

He didn’t want to answer, but to his credit, he did.

“I dinna ken. She was alive, when Looks at the Moon saw her—but that was near five months ago.” His eyes shifted past her and she knew he was looking toward the peak of the distant mountain, where a faint dusting of snow had appeared a week before. Works With Her Hands—and her children—were far to the north. How far? she wondered, and drew the shawl over Oggy’s round, bare head.

LOOKS AT THE MOON swallowed the last of his turkey hash and gave a loud belch of appreciation in Rachel’s direction, then handed her his plate before resuming the story he had been telling between bites. Fortunately, it was mostly in Mohawk, as the parts that had been in English appeared to deal with one of his cousins who had suffered following an encounter with an enraged moose.

Rachel took the plate and refilled it, envisioning the light of Christ glowing within their guests. Owing to an orphaned and penurious childhood, she had had considerable practice in such discernment and was able to smile pleasantly at Moon as she placed the newly filled plate at his feet, not to interrupt his gesticulations.

On the good side, she reflected, glancing into the cradle, the men’s conversation had lulled Oggy into a stupor. With a glance that caught Ian’s eye, and a nod toward the cradle, she went out to enjoy a mother’s rarest pleasure: ten minutes alone in the privy.

Emerging relaxed in body and mind, she was disinclined to go back into the cabin. She thought briefly of walking down to the Big House to visit Claire, but Jenny had gone down herself when it had become apparent that the newly arrived Mohawks would spend the night at the Murrays’ cabin. Rachel was very fond of her mother-in-law, but then she adored Oggy and loved Ian madly—and she really didn’t want the company of any of them just now.

THE EVENING WAS cold, but not bitter, and she had a thick woolen shawl. A gibbous moon was rising amid a field of glorious stars, and the peace of heaven seemed to breathe from the autumn forest, pungent with conifers and the softer scent of dying leaves. She made her way carefully up the path that led to the well, paused for a drink of cold water, and then went on, coming out a quarter hour later on the edge of a rocky outcrop that gave a view of endless mountains and valleys, by day. By night, it was like sitting on the edge of eternity.

Peace seeped into her soul with the chill of the night, and she sought it, welcomed it. But there was still an unquiet part of her mind, and a burning in her heart, at odds with the vast quiet that surrounded her.

Ian would never lie to her. He’d said so, and she believed him. But she wasn’t fool enough to think that meant he told her everything she might want to know. And she very much wanted to know more about Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa, the Mohawk woman Ian had called Emily … and loved.

So now she was perhaps alive, perhaps not. If she did live … what might be her circumstances?

For the first time, it occurred to her to wonder how old Emily might be, and what she looked like. Ian hadn’t ever said; she hadn’t ever asked. It hadn’t seemed important, but now …

Well. When she found him alone, she would ask, that’s all. And with determination, she turned her face to the moon and her heart to her inner light and prepared to wait.

IT WAS MAYBE an hour later when the darkness near her moved and Ian was suddenly there beside her, a warm spot in the night.

“Is Oggy awake?” she asked, drawing her shawl around her.

“Nay, lass, he’s sleeping like a stone.”

“And thy friends?”

“Much the same. I gave them a bit of Uncle Jamie’s whisky.”

“How very hospitable of thee, Ian.”

“That wasna exactly my intention, but I suppose I should take credit for it, if it makes ye think more highly of me.”

He brushed the hair behind her ear, bent his head, and kissed the side of her neck, making his intention clear. She hesitated for the briefest instant, but then ran her hand up under his shirt and gave herself over, lying back on her shawl beneath the star-strewn sky.

Let it be just us, once more, she thought. If he thinks of her, let him not do it now.

And so it was that she didn’t ask what Emily looked like, until the Mohawks finally left, three days later.

IAN DIDN’T PRETEND not to know why she asked.

“Small,” he said, holding his hand about three inches above his elbow. Four inches shorter than I … “Neat, with a—a pretty face.”

“If she is beautiful, Ian, thee may say so,” Rachel said dryly. “I am a Friend; we aren’t given to vanity.”

He looked at her, his lips twitching a little. Then he thought better of whatever he’d been about to say. He closed his eyes for an instant, then opened them and answered her honestly.

“She was lovely. I met her by the water—a pool in the river, where the water spreads out and there’s not even a ripple on the surface, but ye feel the spirit of the river moving through it just the same.” He’d seen her standing thigh-deep in the water, clothed but with her shirt drawn up and tied round her waist with a red scarf, holding a thin spear of sharpened wood and watching for fish.

“I canna think of her in—in her parts,” he said, his voice a little husky. “What her eyes looked like, her face …” He made an odd, graceful little gesture with his hand, as though he cupped Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa’s cheek, then traveled the line of her neck and shoulder. “I only—when I think of her—” He glanced at her and made a hem noise in his throat. “Aye. Well. Aye, I think of her now and then. Not often. But when I do, I only think of her as all of a piece, and I canna tell ye in words what that looks like.”

“Why should thee not think of her?” Rachel said, as gently as she could. “She was thy wife, the mother of—of your children.”

“Aye,” he said softly, and bent his head. Emily had borne him one stillborn daughter and miscarried two more babes. Rachel thought she might have chosen her place better; they were in the shed that served as a small barn and there was a farrowing sow in a pen right in front of them, a dozen fat piglets thrusting and grunting at her teats, a testament to fecundity.

“I need to tell ye something, Rachel,” he said, raising his head abruptly.

“Thee knows thee can tell me anything, Ian,” she said, and meant it, but her heart meant something different and began to beat faster.

“The—her—Emily’s children. I told ye I’d met them when I saw her last. The two young ones—she had those by Sun Elk, but the eldest, the boy …” He hesitated. “She asked me to name the baby—that’s a great honor,” he explained, “but something made me name the boy, instead. I called him Swiftest of Lizards—he was catching lizards when I met him, catching them in his hand. We—got on,” he said, and smiled briefly at the memory.

“I’m sorry, Rachel, I ken ye’ll think that’s wrong, but I’m no sorry I did it.”

“I see …” she said slowly, though she didn’t. She was beginning to have a hollow feeling in her middle, though. “So what thee is telling me is—”

“I think he’s maybe mine,” Ian blurted. “The boy. He would ha’ been born about the right time, after I left. The thing is … ken, I told ye the Mohawk say that when a man lies with a woman, his spirit fights with hers?”

“I wouldn’t say they’re wrong, but—” She flapped a hand, interrupting herself. “Go on.”

“And if his spirit conquers hers, she’ll get wi’ child.” He put his arm round her, his hand big and warm on her elbow. “So maybe Auntie Claire was wrong about the things in the blood—I mean, our wee man is fine. Maybe it was Emily’s blood that … aye, well …” He bent his head and rested it on hers, so they stood forehead-to-forehead, eye-to-eye.

“I dinna ken, Rachel,” he said quietly. “But—”

“We have to go,” she said, though her heart had gone so small she could barely feel its beating. “Of course we must go.”

56 Thee Would Make a Good Friend

“THEE WOULD MAKE A good Friend, thee knows,” Rachel remarked, holding back a laurel branch for her mother-in-law, who was burdened by a large basket of quilting. Rachel herself was burdened with Oggy, who had fallen asleep in the sling she carried him in.

Janet Murray gave her a sharp look and made what Claire had privately described to Rachel as a Scottish noise, this being a mingled snort and gargling sound that might indicate anything from mild amusement or approval to contempt, derision, or impending forcible action. At the moment, Rachel thought her mother-in-law was amused, and smiled herself.

“Thee is forthright and direct,” Rachel pointed out. “And honest. Or at least I suppose thee to be,” she added, slightly teasing. “I can’t say I have ever caught thee in a lie.”

“Wait ’til ye’ve kent me a bit longer, lass, before ye make judgments like that,” Jenny advised her. “I’m a fine wee liar, when the need arises. What else, though?” Her dark-blue eyes creased a little—definitely amusement. Rachel smiled back and thought for a moment, threading her way over a steep patch of gravel where the trail had washed out, then reaching back to take the basket.

“Thee is compassionate. Kind. And fearless,” she said, watching Jenny come down, half-sliding and grabbing branches to keep erect.

Her mother-in-law’s head turned sharply, eyes wide.

“Fearless?” she said, incredulous. “Me?” She made a noise that Rachel would have spelled as “Psssht.” “I’ve been scairt to the bone since I was ten years old, a leannan. But ye get used to it, ken?” She took back the basket, and Rachel hoisted Oggy, whose weight had doubled the moment he fell asleep, into a more secure position.

“What happened when thee was ten?” she asked, curious.

“My mother died,” Jenny answered. Her expression and voice were both matter-of-fact, but Rachel could hear bereavement in it, plain as the high, thin call of a hermit thrush.

“Mine died when I was born,” Rachel said, after a long pause. “I can’t say that I miss her, as I never knew her—though of course …”

“They say ye canna miss what ye never had, but they’re wrong about that one,” Jenny said, and touched Rachel’s cheek with the palm of her hand, small and warm. “Watch where ye’re walkin’, lass. It’s slick underfoot.”

“Yes.” Rachel kept her eyes on the ground, striding wide to avoid a muddy patch where a tiny spring bubbled up. “I dream, sometimes. There’s a woman, but I don’t know who she is. Perhaps it’s my mother. She seems kind, but she doesn’t say much. She just looks at me.”

“Does she look like ye, lass?”

Rachel shrugged, balancing Oggy with a hand under his bottom.

“She has dark hair, but I can’t ever remember her face when I wake up.”

“And ye wouldna ken what she looked like, alive.” Jenny nodded, looking at something behind her own eyes. “I kent mine—and if ye ever want to know what she looked like, just go and have a keek at Brianna, for she’s Ellen MacKenzie Fraser to the life—though a wee bit bigger.”

“I’ll do that,” Rachel assured her. She found her new cousin-in-law slightly intimidating, though Ian clearly loved her. “Scared, though—and thee said thee has been frightened ever since?” She didn’t think she’d ever met someone less frightened than Janet Murray, whom she’d seen only yesterday face down a huge raccoon on the cabin’s porch, driving it off with a broom and a Scottish execration, in spite of the animal’s enormous claws and menacing aspect.

Jenny glanced at her, surprised, and changed the heavy basket from one arm to the other with a small grunt as the trail narrowed.

“Oh, no scairt for myself, a nighean, I dinna think I’ve ever worrit about bein’ killed or the like. No, scairt for them. Scairt I wouldna be able to manage, to take care o’ them.”

“Them?”

“Jamie and Da,” Jenny said, frowning a little at the squashy ground under her feet. It had rained hard the night before, and even the open ground was muddy. “I didna ken how to take care of them. I kent well I couldna fill my mother’s place for either one. See, I thought they’d die wi’out her.”

And you’d be left entirely alone, Rachel thought. Wanting to die, too, and not knowing how. It does seem much easier for men; I wonder why? Do they not think anyone needs them?

“Thee managed, though,” she said, and Jenny shrugged.

“I put on her apron and made their supper. That was all I kent to do. Feed them.”

“I’d suppose that was the most important thing.” She bent her head and brushed the top of Oggy’s cap with her lips. His mere presence made her breasts tingle and ache. Jenny saw that, and smiled, in a rueful sort of way.

“Aye. When ye ha’ bairns, there’s that wee time when ye really are all they need. And then they leave your arms and ye’re scairt all over again, because now ye ken all the things that could harm them, and you not able to keep them from it.”

Rachel nodded, and they made their way in silence—though a close, listening sort of silence—through the little oak wood and round the edge of the smaller hayfield, to the growth of aspens where the cabin stood.

She had thought she’d leave it to Ian to tell his mother, but the mood between them was one of love, and the spirit moved her to speak now.

“Ian means to go to New York,” she said. Oggy was stirring, and she hoisted him to her shoulder, patting his firm little back. “To satisfy himself regarding the welfare of—the … er … his …”

“The Indian woman he was wed to?” Jenny said bluntly. “Aye, I thought he’d want to, when I heard about the massacre.”

Rachel didn’t waste time asking how Jenny had heard about it. The Mohawks had stayed three days, and news of any kind seeped through the Ridge like indigo dye through a wet cloth.

“I will go with him,” she said.

Jenny made a noise that might be spelled glarmph, but nodded.

“Aye. I thought ye might.”

“You did?” Rachel was surprised—and perhaps a little affronted. She had expected shock and argument, attempted dissuasion.

“He’s told ye about his dead bairns by her, I expect?”

“He did, yes, before we wed.” Oggy’s live weight in her arms was a double blessing; she knew how much Ian had feared never being able to sire a live child.

Jenny nodded.

“He’s an honest man. And kind, to boot, but I doubt he’ll ever make a decent Friend.”

“Well, so do I,” Rachel admitted. “And yet miracles happen.”

That made Jenny laugh. She stopped at the edge of the porch and put down her basket in order to scrape the mud from the soles of her shoes, then held Rachel’s elbow to balance her while she did the same.

“Fearless, ye said,” Jenny said, meditatively. “Friends are fearless, are they?”

“We don’t fear death, because we think our lives are lived only in preparation for eternal life with God,” Rachel explained.

“Well, if the worst thing that can happen to ye is death, and ye’re no afraid of that … well, then.” Jenny shrugged. “I suppose ye’re right.” Her face crinkled suddenly and she laughed. “Fearless. I’ll need to think on that one for a bit—get used to it, ken. Still—” She lifted her chin, indicating Oggy, who had roused at the scent of home and was rooting sleepily at Rachel’s breast.

“Do ye not fear for him? Takin’ him all that way through a war?”

She didn’t add, “Wouldn’t losing him be worse than death?” but she didn’t need to.

Rachel unfastened her blouse and put Oggy to suck, drawing in her breath as he seized her nipple, then relaxing as her milk let down. Jenny was waiting for her, eyes fixed on Oggy’s head. Rachel spoke evenly.

“Would thee let thy husband go alone seven hundred miles to rescue his first wife and her three children—one of whom might just possibly be his?”

Jenny’s mouth opened, but apparently there were no Scottish sounds appropriate to the occasion.

“Well, no,” she said mildly. “Thee has a point.”

57 Ready for Anything

HE’D HAVE TO TELL her, and sooner rather than later. At least he’d got a plan made, whether she liked it or not.

It was raining, and the solid drops pounded the tin roof of the goat shed like gunfire. Ian ducked inside to find his mother milking one of the nannies and singing a waulking song called “Mile Marbhaisg Air A’ Ghaol” at the top of her lungs. She glanced up at him, nodded to indicate that she’d be with him in a wee bit, and went on singing “A Thousand Curses on Love” and milking.

The goats looked up at him, too, but recognized him and went on munching their grass with nothing more than the twitch of an ear. They seemed to be enjoying the song; they weren’t agitated by the rain—or the thunder, in the distance but growing steadily louder. His mother stripped off the udder with a wee flourish and concluded with “A’ Ghaol!” Ian applauded, which startled all the goats into a belated chorus of mehhhs.

“Hark at ye, ye wee gomerel,” his mother said, but in a tolerant tone. She rose, loosed the goat from the stanchion, and picked up the brimming pail. “Here, carry this into the house, but tell Rachel not to churn it ’til the storm passes—I dinna ken if she knows ye mustn’t churn during thunder; the butter won’t come.”

“I think she kens well enough that ye dinna want to stand on the front stoop doin’ it while the rain’s pissing down, even if ye weren’t like to be struck by lightning.”

“Piff,” she said, and pulled her shawl up over her head. No sooner had she done so, though, than the rain changed abruptly to hail. “A Mhoire Mhàthair!” she said, making the horns. “Dinna go out there now, ye’ll be brained.”

She might have added something about the quality of his brain, but it was impossible to hear a word. Hailstones the size of pig’s knuckles were thundering on the tin roof, bouncing and rolling on the green grass outside the open shed. He set the pail down by the wall, where it wouldn’t be kicked over, and, raising a brow at his mother, crossed his arms and leaned against one of the timbers, prepared to wait. He’d worked himself up for this and he wasn’t doing it over again. Do it and have done; there wasn’t time to haver.

The goats, goatlike, wandered over to him and began to nose him familiarly for anything loose, but aside from his shirttail, which he’d already gathered up in his hand, there was nothing to attract them. Despite the open front of the shed and the cold breath of the passing storm, it was pleasantly warm amongst the inquisitive, hairy bodies, and he felt his anxiety over the coming conversation subsiding a bit.

His mother came over to stand by the goat nosing his buttocks and stood gazing contentedly out at the storm, scratching the goat between the ears. It was a fine view, to be sure; she’d chosen the site for her goat shed and he’d built it so she could look out through a wide gap in the trees and see Roan Mountain in the distance, very dramatic at the moment, its top disappearing into lowering black clouds that sparked and spat lightning. As they watched, a huge thunderbolt split both sky and air and he and the goats all jerked back at the dazzling crash.

As though the lightning had been a signal, though, the hail abruptly stopped, and the rain resumed, more quietly than before.

“It looks like the MacKenzies’ badge, no?” his mother remarked, nodding at the distant mountain. “Fires all over it.” There were in fact three small plumes of smoke rising from the lower slopes, where the lightning had struck something flammable. Nay bother; with this much rain, they wouldn’t burn long enough to matter.

“I’ve never seen a MacKenzie badge,” he said. “A mountain, is it? With fires?”

She glanced up at him, momentarily surprised, but then nodded. “Aye, I was forgetting. All that was gone before ye could walk.” Her mouth tightened, but only for a moment. “Did your da ever tell ye the Murrays’ motto?”

“Aye, but I dinna remember much … something about fetters, was it?”

“Furth, Fortune, and Fill the Fetters,” she said succinctly. “Go ye out, and make sure to come back wi’ gold and captives.”

That made him laugh.

“A warlike lot, were they? The auld Murrays?”

She shrugged. “Not as I ever noticed, but ken, your da did go for a mercenary when he was a young man. And your uncle Jamie, too.” Her mouth twitched. “I’m sure Jamie’s telt ye the Fraser motto, more than once. Je suis prest?”

“He has.” Ian smiled, a little ruefully. “I am ready.”

His mother smiled at that, glancing up at him. The shawl had slipped back to her shoulders, and her bound hair glowed like polished steel in the rain-light.

“Aye. Well, there’s a second Murray motto—the first was made by the Duke of Atholl, bloodthirsty auld creature—but the second one’s better: Tout prest.”

“Quite ready? Or ready for anything?”

“Both. I thought o’ that, now and then, whilst they were gone away to France. Je suis prest … Tout prest. And every night, I’d pray to the Virgin that they were. Ready, I mean.” She fell silent, her hand resting on the goat’s brown-and-white head.

He’d not find a better moment. He coughed.

“As for bein’ ready, Mam …” She caught the note in his voice and looked at him sharply.

“Aye?”

“I’ve spoken to Barney Chisholm. Ye’ll be welcome to stay wi’ him and Christina, while—whilst we’re gone. Rachel and me,” he added, swallowing. “We’re going up into the North, to see about—about—”

“Your Indian wife?” she asked dryly. “Dinna trouble yourself; I’ve already asked the MacDonald lassies to care for the goats.”

“You … what?” He felt as though she’d stuck out a foot and hooked his legs out from under him. She gave him a look of mild exasperation.

“Ye dinna think I’d let Rachel follow ye alone through a war, and her wi’ that lolloping great bairn of yours?”

“But …” The words died in his throat. He kent his mother well enough to see that she meant it. And no matter what the Frasers said their motto was, he kent fine that it might as well have been Stubborn as a Rock. He’d seen that look on Uncle Jamie’s face often enough to recognize it now.

“Besides,” she added, pushing the goat’s nose away from the fringe of her shawl, “I dinna suppose ye’ll find much gold wi’ the Mohawk, but I’d just as soon ye didna end up in fetters yourself in a redcoat prison.”

There wasn’t much to do but laugh. He had one last try, though, just so he could tell his da he had.

“D’ye think Da would let ye go do such a daft thing?”

“I dinna see that he’d have much room to talk,” she said, with a one-shouldered shrug. “Here, take this one.” She handed over the full pail and bent for the other one. “Besides, he wouldna try to stop me; wee Oggy’s his blood, as much as mine. Ian Mòr will be right there wi’ me, all the way.”

Ian swallowed a wee lump in his throat, but felt curiosity along with remembered grief.

“Ye feel Da by ye?” he asked. “I—do. Sometimes.”

His mother gave him the second pail and opened the gate across the front of the shed. The rain had let up and the air shimmered round them, silver in the grayness.

“Ye dinna stop loving someone just because they’re deid,” she said reprovingly. “I canna suppose they stop lovin’ you, either.”

“HOW OLD IS thy mother?” Rachel said to Ian. “I’d welcome her company, and to have help with the bairn would be a great relief, but thee knows better than I do what such a journey may be like.”

Ian grinned, not at the question, but at the way she said “bairn,” hesitating for an instant before saying it, as though afraid it might get away before she could clap a lid over it.

“I dinna ken for sure,” he said, in answer to her question. “She’s two years the elder of Uncle Jamie, though.”

“Oh.” Her face eased a bit at that.

“And it’s barely a year since she left Scotland and came wi’ Uncle Jamie, all the way across the ocean, and then makin’ their way hundreds of miles cross-country to Philadelphia. This journey may be a bit longer,” he coughed a little, thinking and just a bit more dangerous, “but we’ll have good horses and enough money for inns, where there are any.

“Besides,” he said, shrugging. “She says she’s comin’ with us. So she is.”

58 Telling Beads

JAMIE DIDN’T BOTHER WALKING softly. Bears weren’t afraid of anything. And it would likely be chance alone that determined who saw whom first.

The shadows that overlay the trail to the upper meadow they called Feur-milis were still black with the night’s cold. The yellowing trees that edged the path were slick and heavy with last night’s rain, and Jamie had pulled his plaid up over his head to keep the drips out. Old and worn as his plaid was, it was still warm and still shed water. I should have told Claire I want to be buried in it if a bear gets the better of me; it’ll be cozy against the grave-damp.

But then he thought of Amy Higgins, and crossed himself. He came out of the shadows into the high meadow, misty in the early morning. Three does grazing on the far side looked up at him, startled by the intrusion, then disappeared with a crash of shrubbery.

That answered one question, then: no bears were nearby. At this time of year, a bear likely wouldn’t bother with deer—the streams teemed with fish and the woods were still full of everything a bear thought tasty, from grubs and mushrooms to bee trees full of honey (and he did hope his present quarry might have found one of those recently; it gave a faint soft smell to the grease)—but deer had very set opinions of carnivores in general, and didn’t pause to reckon the odds when one showed up.

He quartered the meadow, then walked slowly round the edge looking for bear sign, but found nothing more than a crumbled pile of old droppings under a pine and claw marks on a big alder—made recently, but the sap had dried hard. Jo had seen a bear in the meadow five days ago, he said; clearly it hadn’t been back since.

Jamie stood still for a moment, lifting his face to the breeze that stirred the grass tops. A faint tang on the air: not bear. A buck deer close by, not yet in full rut, but interested in the does.

More crashing made him turn, but the eager chorus of mehh-hhs told him who it was long before his sister came up over the lip of the trail with four young nanny goats on a long rope. She had a gun over her shoulder and was looking keenly round.

“And what d’ye mean to do wi’ that, a phiuthair?” he asked conversationally. She hadn’t seen him in the shadows and swung round, startled, the fowling piece pointed straight at him.

He took a hasty step to the side, just in case it should be loaded.

“Dinna shoot, it’s me!”

“Gomerel,” she said, lowering her gun. “What d’ye mean, what do I mean to do with it? How many things can ye do with a gun?”

“Well, if ye’re after bear, I think your piece might give him a nosebleed, but not much more,” he said, nodding at the gun in her hand. His own rifle was still slung on his shoulder, loaded and primed. Not that it would likely stop a charging bear, but if the creature was only suspicious, a shot might make it keep its distance.

“Bear? Oh, is that what ye’re up to. Claire wondered.” She loosed the eager goats, and they dived headfirst into the thick grass like ducks in a millpond.

“Did she, then.” He kept his voice casual.

“She didna say so,” his sister said frankly. “But she saw your gun was gone, while we were makin’ breakfast, and she stopped dead, only for an instant.”

His heart squeezed a little. He hadn’t wanted to wake Claire when he left in the dark, but he should have told her last night that he meant to see if he could get upon the trail of the bear Jo Beardsley had seen. There’d been little time for hunting while they worked to get the roof raised before winter—they needed the meat and grease badly. Besides, they had only a few quilts and one woolen trade blanket he’d got from a Moravian trader. A good bear rug would be a comfort to Claire in the deep cold nights; she felt the cold more now than the last time they’d spent a winter on the Ridge.

“She’s all right,” his sister added, and he felt her interested gaze on his own face. “She only wondered, ken.”

He nodded, wordless. It might be a wee while yet before Claire could wake to find him gone out with a gun and think nothing of it.

He took a breath and saw it wisp out white, vanishing instantly, though the new sun was already warm on his shoulders.

“Aye, and what are ye doing up here, yourself? It’s a far piece to walk for forage.” One of the goats had come up for air and was nosing the hanging end of his leather belt in an interested manner. He tucked it up out of reach and kneed the goat gently away.

“I’m fattening them to stand the winter,” she said, nodding at the nosy nanny. “Maybe breed them, if they’re ready. They like the grass better than the forage in the woods, and it’s easier to keep an eye on them.”

“Ye ken well enough Fanny would mind them for ye. Is wee Oggy drivin’ ye mad?” The baby had vigorous lungs. You could hear him at the Big House when the wind was right. “Or are ye drivin’ Rachel mad yourself?”

“I like goats,” she said, ignoring his question and shoving aside a pair of questing lips nibbling after the fringe of her shawl. “Teich a’ ghobhair. Sheep are goodhearted things, when they’re not tryin’ to knock ye over, but they’re no bright. A goat has a mind of its own.”

“Aye, and so do you. Ian always said ye liked the goats because they’re just as stubborn as you are.”

She gave him a long, level look.

“Pot,” she said succinctly.

“Kettle,” he replied, flicking a plucked grass stem toward her nose. She grabbed it out of his hand and fed it to the goat.

“Mmphm,” she said. “Well, if ye must know, I come up here to think, now and then. And pray.”

“Oh, aye?” he said, but she pressed her lips together for a moment and then turned to look across the meadow, shading her eyes against the slant of the morning sun.

Well enough, he thought. She’ll say whatever it is when she’s ready.

“There’s a bear up here, is there?” she asked, turning back to him. “Shall I take the goats back down?”

“Not likely. Jo Beardsley saw it a few days ago, here in the meadow, but there’s no fresh sign.”

Jenny thought that over for a moment, then sat down on a lichened rock, spreading her skirts out neatly. The goats had gone back to their grazing, and she raised her face to the sun, closing her eyes.

“Only a fool would hunt a bear alone,” she said, her eyes still closed. “Claire told me that last week.”

“Did she?” he said dryly. “Did she tell ye the first time I killed a bear, I did it alone, with my dirk? And she hit me in the heid wi’ a fish whilst I was doin’ it?”

She opened her eyes and gave him a look.

“She didna say a fool canna be lucky,” she pointed out. “And if you didna have the luck o’ the devil himself, ye’d have been dead six times over by now.”

“Six?” He frowned, disturbed, and her brow lifted in surprise.

“I wasna really counting,” she said. “It was only a guess. What is it, a ghràidh?”

That casual “Oh, love,” caught him unexpectedly in a tender place, and he coughed to hide it.

“Nothing,” he said, shrugging. “Only, when I was young in Paris, a fortune-teller told me I’d die nine times before my death. D’ye think I should count the fever after Laoghaire shot me?”

She shook her head definitely.

“Nay, ye wouldna have died even had Claire not come back wi’ her wee needle. Ye would have got up and gone after her within a day or two.”

He smiled.

“I might’ve.”

His sister made a small noise in her throat that might have been laughter or derision.

They were silent for a moment, both with heads lifted, listening to the wood. The dripping had ceased now, and you could hear a treepie close by, with a call exactly like a rusty hinge opening. Then there was a loud quah-quah as a bird called from somewhere behind him, and he saw Jenny look up over his shoulder wide-eyed.

“Is that a magpie?” she said. In the Highlands, you always listened for magpies, because they were omen birds—and if you heard one, you hoped to hear another. One for sorrow … two for mirth …

“No,” he said, reassuring. “I dinna think there are proper magpies in these mountains. That’s no but a kind of yaffle. Aye—see him there?” He nodded, and she looked over her shoulder to the grayish bird with a scarlet slash at its throat, clinging to a swaying pine branch, a beady eye fixed on the ground.

Jenny relaxed and drew breath, and, taking up the conversation where she’d left it, asked, “D’ye hold it against me, that I made ye marry Laoghaire?”

He gave her a look.

“What makes ye think ye could make me do anything I didna want to, ye wee fussbudget?”

“What the devil is a fussbudget?” she demanded, frowning up at him.

“A bag of nuisance, so far as I can tell,” he admitted. “Jemmy calls Mandy that.”

A sudden dimple appeared near Jenny’s mouth, but she didn’t actually laugh. “Aye,” she said. “Ye ken what I mean.”

“I do,” he said. “And I don’t. Hold it against ye, I mean. She didna actually kill me, after all.”

One of the goats squatted, a few feet away, and let fall a dainty shower of neat black pellets. They steamed briefly, and he caught the oddly pleasant warm scent for an instant before it vanished in the chill.

“I wonder how it is goats are so neat about it,” Jenny said, watching, too. “Compared with coos, I mean.”

“Och, ye’d want to be asking Claire about that,” he told her. “If it’s a matter of innards, she kens nearly as much as God about it.”

Jenny laughed, and he realized belatedly that he’d seen no goat droppings at all in his survey of the meadow. She hadn’t been bringing her nannies up here regularly, then. And therefore … she’d come after him a-purpose. She had a thing to tell him, maybe, in private.

He cleared his throat and touched his chest, where the wooden rosary hung beneath his shirt.

“Pray, ye said. D’ye want to tell the beads together, then? Like we used to?”

She looked surprised, and for a moment dubious. But then made up her mind and nodded, reaching into her pocket.

“Aye, I would. And since ye mention … there was a thing I meant to ask ye, Jamie.”

“Aye, what?”

To his surprise, she drew out a string of gleaming pearls, the gold crucifix and medal bright in the rising sun.

“Ye brought your good rosary?” he asked. “I didna ken that—thought ye’d have left it for one of your lasses.” “Good” was putting it lightly. That rosary had been made in France and likely cost as much as a good saddle horse—if not more. It was their mother’s rosary—Brian had given it to Jenny when he’d given Ellen’s pearl necklace to Jamie.

His sister grimaced and looked halfway apologetic. “If I gave it to any one o’ them, the others would take it amiss. I dinna want them to be fighting over such a thing.”

“Aye, you’re right about that.” He squatted down by her, reached out a finger, and gently touched the softly bumpy little beads; it was made of Scotch pearls, like the necklace he’d given Claire. “Where did Mam get it, d’ye know? I never thought to ask, when I was wee.”

“Well, ye wouldn’t, would ye? When ye’re wee, Mam and Da are just Mam and Da, and everything’s just what it’s always been.” She gathered the beads up into the palm of her hand, shoogling them into a little pile. “I do ken where this came from, though; Da told me when he gave it to me. D’ye think that doe’s comin’ in heat?” She squinted suddenly at one of the nanny goats, who had raised her head and let out a long, piercing bleat. Jamie gave the animal an eye.

“Aye, maybe. She’s waggling her tail. But it’s maybe just she smells the buck deer in yonder grove.” He lifted his chin at the grove of sugar maples, gone half scarlet already, though none of the leaves had fallen. “It’s early for rut, but if I can smell him, so can she.”

His sister lifted her face to the light breeze and breathed in deep. “Aye? I dinna smell anything, but I’ll take your word. Da always said ye had a nose like a truffle pig.”

He snorted.

“Aye, right. So what did Da say to you, then? About Mam’s rosary.”

“Aye, well. He was jealous, he said. She wouldna ever say who’d sent her the necklace, ken.”

“Oh, aye—do you know?”

She shook her head, looking interested. “You do?”

“I do. A man named Marcus MacRannoch—one of her suitors from Leoch, and a gallant man; he’d bought them for her, hoping to wed her, but she saw Da and was awa’ with him before MacRannoch could speak to her. He said—well, Claire said he said,” he corrected, “that he’d thought of them so often round her bonnie neck, he couldna think of them anywhere else, and so sent them to her for a wedding present.”

Jenny rounded her lips in interest.

“Oo, so that’s the way of it. Well, Da kent it was another man, and as I say, he said he was jealous—they hadna been marrit long, and he maybe wasna quite sure she thought she’d made a good bargain, takin’ up wi’ him. So he sold a good field—to Geordie MacCallum, aye?—and gave the money to Murtagh, to go and buy a wee bawbee for Mam. He meant to give it her when the babe was born—Willie, aye?” She lifted the crucifix and kissed it gently, in blessing of their brother.

“God only kens where Murtagh got this—” She poured the rosary from one hand to the other, with a slithering sound. “But the words on the medal are French.”

“Murtagh?” Jamie glanced at the beads and furrowed his brow a bit. “But Da must ha’ kent how he felt about her—about Mam.”

Jenny nodded, rubbing a thumb over the crucifix and the beautifully sculpted, tortured body of Christ. The yaffle called, faint and distant, beyond the maple grove.

“He could see I thought the same thing—why would he send Murtagh on such an errand? But he said he hadna meant to, only he’d told Murtagh what was in his mind, and Murtagh asked to go. Da said he didna want to let him, but he couldna very well go off himself and leave Mam about to burst with Willie and not even a solid roof over her head yet—he’d laid the cornerstones and started the chimneys, but nay more. And—” She lifted one shoulder. “He loved Murtagh, too—more than his ain brother.”

“God, I miss the old bugger,” Jamie said impulsively.

Jenny glanced at him and smiled ruefully. “So do I. I wonder sometimes if he’s with them now—Mam and Da.”

That notion startled Jamie—he’d never thought of it—and he laughed, shaking his head. “Well, if he is, I suppose he’s happy.”

“I hope that’s the way of it,” Jenny said, growing serious. “I always wished he could ha’ been buried with them—wi’ the family—at Lallybroch.”

Jamie nodded, his throat suddenly tight. Murtagh lay with the fallen of Culloden, burnt and buried in some anonymous pit on that silent moor, his bones mingled with the others. No cairn for those who loved him to come and leave a stone to say so.

Jenny laid a hand on his arm, warm through the cloth of his sleeve.

“Dinna mind it, a bràthair,” she said softly. “He had a good death, and you with him at the end.”

“How would you know it was a good death?” Emotion made him speak more roughly than he meant, but she only blinked once, and then her face settled again.

“Ye told me, eejit,” she said dryly. “Several times. D’ye not recall that?”

He stared at her for a moment, uncomprehending.

“I told ye? How? I dinna ken what happened.”

Now it was her turn to be surprised.

“Ye’ve forgotten?” She frowned at him. “Aye, well … it’s true ye were off your heid wi’ fever for a good ten days when they brought ye home. Ian and I took it in turn to sit with ye—as much to stop the doctor takin’ your leg off as anything else. Ye can thank Ian ye’ve still got that one,” she added, nodding sharply at his left leg. “He sent the doctor away; said he kent well ye’d rather be dead.” Her eyes filled abruptly with tears, and she turned away.

He caught her by the shoulder and felt her bones, fine and light as a kestrel’s under the cloth of her shawl.

“Jenny,” he said softly. “Ian didna want to be dead. Believe me. I did, aye … but not him.”

“No, he did at first,” she said, and swallowed. “But ye wouldna let him, he said—and he wouldna let you, either.” She wiped her face with the back of her hand, roughly. He took hold of it and kissed it, her fingers cold in his hand.

“Ye dinna think ye had anything to do with it?” he asked, rising to his feet and smiling down at her. “For either of us?”

“Hmph,” she said, but she looked modestly pleased.

The goats had moved away a little, brown backs smooth amid the tussocked grass. One of them had a bell; he could hear the small clank! of it as she moved. The yaffles had moved off as well—he caught the flash of scarlet as one flew low across the field and disappeared into the black mouth of the trail.

He let a moment go by, two, and then shifted his weight and made a small menacing noise in the back of his throat.

“Aye, aye,” Jenny said, rolling her eyes at him. “Of course I’ll tell ye. I had to fettle my mind, first, ken?” She rearranged her skirts and settled herself more firmly. “Aye, then—this is the way of it. As ye told it to me, at least.

“Ye said”—her brows drew together with the effort of careful remembrance—“that ye’d fought your way across the field in a fury and when ye stopped because ye had to breathe, you—you were … dismayed … to find ye weren’t dead yet.”

“Aye,” he said softly, and with a deep sense of fear, felt the day well up in him. Cold, it had been bitter cold in the wind and rain, but he’d been ablaze with the fighting; he hadn’t felt it ’til he stopped. “What then? That’s what I dinna ken …”

She drew a deep, audible breath.

“Ye were behind the government lines. There were cannon behind ye—pointing the other way, aye? Toward … our men.”

“Aye. I could see—I could … see them. Lying dead and dying, in windrows.”

“Windrows?” She sounded a little startled, and he looked down, still feeling the chill of Culloden in his hands and feet.

“They fell by lines,” he said, his own voice sounding remote and reasonable, detached. “The English guns, the muskets—they’ve a range of … I dinna mind it now, but that’s where we fell, at the end of that range. There were men blown up and crushed by the cannon, but most of it was the muskets. Bayonets later—I heard that, didna see.” He swallowed, and keeping his voice steady asked, “What did I say happened then?”

She exhaled through her nose, and he saw she had closed her hand on the rosary, clenching it as though to draw strength from the beads.

“Ye said ye couldna think what to do, but there was a cannon nearby and the crew had their backs to ye. So ye turned to go after the nearest man—but there was a knot of redcoats between you and the cannon, and when ye wiped the sweat out of your eyes, ye saw one of them was Jack Randall.” Her free hand made an unobtrusive sign of the horns, then folded into a fist.

He remembered. Remembered and felt a lurch in his wame as the image he’d seen in dreams met and merged with memory.

“He saw me,” he whispered. “He stood stock-still and so did I. The shock of it—I couldna make myself move.”

“And Murtagh …” Jenny’s voice came soft.

“I sent him back,” he whispered, seeing his godfather’s face, creased in stubborn refusal. “I made him go. Made him take Fergus and the others—I said he must see them safe to Lallybroch, because … because …”

“Because ye couldn’t,” she said, low-voiced.

“I couldn’t,” he said, and swallowed the growing lump in his throat.

“But he was there, ye said,” Jenny prompted after a moment. “On the field. Murtagh.”

“Aye. Aye, he was.” He’d seen the sudden movement, a jerk of the frozen scene before him, and lifted his eyes from Jack Randall’s face to look, and saw Murtagh running …

And once more the dream came down on him and he was in it. Cold. So cold the voice froze in his throat, rain and sweat plastering wet cloth to his body and the icy wind cutting through his bones as easily as through his clothes. He tried—he had tried—to call out, to stop Murtagh before he reached the English soldiers. But it would have taken more than muskets and British cannon to stop Murtagh FitzGibbons Fraser, let alone Jamie’s voice, and he didn’t stop, bounding over the tumps of the moor grass, water bursting like broken glass under his feet as he went.

“Captain Randall spoke to ye, ye said …”

“Kill me.” He heard his own voice whisper the words. “He asked me to kill him.”

My heart’s desire. The words lay like drops of lead in his ear. The wind had been whistling past his head, whipping the hair out of its binding and across his face. But he’d heard that, he knew he had, he hadn’t dreamed it …

But his eyes had been on Murtagh. There was movement, confusion, someone came toward him, he saw the dark blade of a bayonet, wet with rain or blood or mud, and he pushed it aside and suddenly it was a fight, with two of them pulling at him, bashing, trying to knock him down.

A sudden sound surprised him and he opened his eyes, disoriented, and realized that he’d made the noise, it was the sound he’d made when something took his left leg out from under him, a grunt of impact, impatience, he had to get up …

“And Captain Randall reached down to ye, then, where ye lay on the ground …”

“And I had my dirk in my hand and I—” He broke off and looked down at his sister, urgent. “Did I kill him? Did I say I did?”

She was watching him closely, a look of deep concern on her face. He made an impatient gesture, and she gave him a reproving look. No, she wouldn’t lie to him, he kent better than that …

“Ye said ye did. Ye said it over and over …”

“I said I killed him, over and over?”

Despite herself, she gave a small shudder. “No. That it was hot. The—his—blood. ‘Hot,’ ye kept saying, ‘God, it was so hot …’”

“Hot.” For a moment, that made no sense, and then he caught a glimpse of it: the dim sense of darkness leaning over him, the brush of wet wool across his face, effort, so much effort to raise his arm one more time, trembling, he saw drops of clean rain run down the blade, over his shaking hand, and effort, pushing, pushing up and the thick resisting, rasping cloth, momentary hardness, push, God damn it, then a deep, startling heat that had spilled over his frozen hand, his wind-chilled arm. He’d been desperately grateful for the warmth, he remembered that—but he could not remember the blow itself.

“Murtagh,” he said, and the sense of blood-heat left him as suddenly as it had come, the chilly wind in his ears. “Did I say what happened to Murtagh?” He gave a sigh of pain, exasperation, desolation. “Why would ye not go when I told ye, ye scabbit auld bugger?”

“He did,” Jenny said, unexpectedly. “He took the men as far as the road and set them on their way. They said so, when they came back to Lallybroch. But then he went back—for you.”

“For me.” He didn’t have to close his eyes now, he saw it; he’d felt it in his own back, seeing the jolt of Murtagh’s knife, up hard, aiming for the captain’s kidney. Randall had dropped like a rock—hadn’t he? But then how was he standing later … and then the others were all on them.

He’d been knocked flat onto his face and someone had stepped on his back, kicked him in the head, a gun-butt had struck him in the ribs and knocked his breath out … There was shouting all around and the sense of ice was creeping up his body—of course, he’d been badly wounded but hadn’t known it, was slowly bleeding to death. But all he could think of was Murtagh, that he must reach Murtagh … He’d crawled. He remembered seeing the water come up between his fingers as his hand pressed down and the tough black prickle of wet heather as he grasped it, pulling himself along … his kilt was soaked from falling, heavy and dragging between his legs, hindering …

“I found him,” he said, and took a breath that shook in his lungs. “Something happened—the soldiers were gone, I dinna ken how long it took—from one breath to the next, is how it felt.” His godfather had been lying a few yards away from him, curled up like a babe asleep. But he hadn’t been asleep—nor dead. Not yet. Jamie’d gathered him up into his arms, seen the terrible dented wound that had caved in his temple, the blood pumping black from a gash in his neck. But seen too the beauty, the lightening of Murtagh’s face as he opened his eyes to see Jamie holding him.

“He told me that it didna hurt to die,” Jamie said. His voice was hoarse and he cleared his throat. “He touched my face and said not to be afraid.”

He’d remembered that—but now he remembered, too, the sense of sudden, overwhelming peace. The lightness. The exultation that had come back so strangely in his dream. Nothing mattered any longer. It was over. He’d bent his head and kissed Murtagh’s mouth, laid his own forehead against the bloody, tangled hair, and given up his soul to God.

“But—” He opened his eyes—didn’t recall closing them—and turned to Jenny, urgent. “But he came back! Randall. He wasna dead, he came back!”

Black, a black thing, man-shaped, upright against a sky gone white and blind. Jamie’s hands curled into fists, so sudden the nails bit his palms.

“He came back!”

Jenny didn’t speak and didn’t move, but her eyes were fixed on him, urging him silently to remember. And he did.

His limbs had gone weak and he’d lost the feeling in his leg altogether. Without meaning it, he’d fallen to the ground, losing his hold on Murtagh’s body. Was lying flat on his back, still able to feel the rain on his face but nothing else, his sight gone. He didn’t care about the black man, about anything. The peace of death was upon him. Pain and fear had gone and even hate had seeped away.

He’d closed his eyes again now, seeing it, and imagined that he felt Murtagh’s hand, hard and callused, still holding his as they lay on the ground.

“Did I kill him?” he whispered, more to himself than to Jenny. “I did … I ken I did … but how …”

The blood. The hot blood.

“The blood—it spilled down my arm, and then I … I wasna there anymore. But when I woke, my eyes were sealed shut wi’ dried blood and that’s what made me think I was dead—I couldna see anything but a sort of dark-red light. But then later I couldna find a wound on my head. It was his blood blinding me. And he was lyin’ on me, on my leg—”

He’d opened his eyes, still explaining it to himself, and found that he was sitting on the ground, the callused hand clinging tight to his was his sister’s, and tears were running silently down her face as she watched him.

“Och,” he said, and rising to his knees gathered her off her rock and into his arms. “Dinna weep, a leannan. It’s over.”

“That’s what you think, is it?” she said, voice muffled in his shirt. She was right, he knew that. But she held him tight. And slowly, slowly the morning came back.

They sat for a little while, not speaking. The sun had come well above the treetops by now, and while the air was still fresh and sweet, there was no longer any chill in it.

“Aye, well,” he said, at last, standing up. “Do ye still want to pray?” For she still held the pearl rosary, dangling from one hand. He didn’t wait for her reply but reached into his shirt and drew out the wooden rosary that he wore about his neck.

“Oh, ye’ve got your old beads after all,” she said, surprised. “Ye didna have your rosary in Scotland, so I thought ye’d lost it. Meant to make ye a new one, but there wasna time, what with Ian …” She lifted one shoulder, the gesture encompassing the whole of the terrible months of Ian’s long dying.

He touched the beads, self-conscious. “Aye, well … I had, in a way of speaking. I … gave it to William. When he was a wee lad, and I had to leave him at Helwater. I gave him the beads for something to keep—to … remember me by.”

“Mmphm.” She looked at him with sympathy. “Aye. And I expect he gave them back to ye in Philadelphia, did he?”

“He did,” Jamie said, a bit terse, and a wry amusement touched Jenny’s face.

“Tell ye one thing, a bràthair—he’s no going to forget you.”

“Aye, maybe not,” he said, feeling an unexpected comfort in the thought. “Well, then …” He let the beads run through his fingers, taking hold of the crucifix. “I believe in God, the Father Almighty …”

They said the Creed together, then the Our Father, and the three Hail Marys, and the Glory Be.

“Joyful or Glorious?” he asked, fingers on the first bead of the decades. He didn’t want to do the Sorrowful Mysteries, the ones about suffering and crucifixion, and he didn’t think she did, either. A yaffle called from the maples, and he wondered briefly if it was one they’d already seen, or a third. Three for a wedding, four for a death …

“Joyful,” she said at once. “The Annunciation.” Then she paused, and nodded at him to take the first turn. He didn’t have to think.

“For Murtagh,” he said quietly, and his fingers tightened on the bead. “And Mam and Da. Hail Mary, full o’ grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, Amen.” Jenny finished the prayer and they said the rest of the decade in their usual way, back and forth, the rhythm of their voices soft as the rustle of grass.

They reached the second decade, the Visitation, and he nodded at Jenny—her turn.

“For Ian Òg,” she said softly, eyes on her beads. “And Ian Mòr. Hail Mary …”

The third decade was William’s. Jenny glanced at him when he said so, but only nodded and bent her head.

He didn’t try to avoid thinking of William, but he didn’t deliberately call the lad to mind, either; there was nothing he could do to help, until or unless William asked for it, and it would do neither of them good to worry about what the lad was doing, or what might be happening to him.

But … he’d said “William,” and for the space of an Our Father, ten Hail Marys, and a Glory Be, William must perforce be in his mind.

Guide him, he thought, between the words of the prayer. Give him good judgment. Help him to be a good man. Show him his way … and Holy Mother … keep him safe, for your own Son’s sake … “World without end, Amen,” he said, reaching the final bead.

“For all those to hame in Scotland,” Jenny said without hesitation, then paused and looked up at him. “Laoghaire, too, d’ye think?”

“Aye, her, too,” he said, smiling despite himself. “So long as ye put in that poor bastard she’s married to, as well.”

For the last decade, they paused for a moment, eyeing each other.

“Well, the last was for the folk in Scotland,” he said. “Let’s do this one for the folk elsewhere—Michael and wee Joan and Jared, in France?”

Jenny’s face grew momentarily soft—she’d not seen Michael since Ian’s funeral, and the poor lad had been shattered, his young wife suddenly dead, a child gone with her—and then his father. Jenny’s mouth trembled for an instant, but her voice was clear and the sun lay soft on the white of her cap as she bent her head. “Our Father, who art in heaven …”

There was silence when they finished—the sort of silence a wood gives you, made of wind and the sounds of drying grass and of trees shedding leaves in a yellow rain. The goat’s bell clanked on the far side of the meadow, and a bird he didn’t know chattered to itself in the maple grove. The buck deer was gone; he’d heard it leave sometime while he was praying for William, and he’d wished his son good fortune in the hunt.

Jenny drew breath as though to speak, and he lifted a hand; there was something in his mind and he’d best say it now.

“What ye said about Lallybroch,” he began, a little awkwardly. “Dinna be worrit about it. If ye should die before me, I’ll see to it that ye get home safe, to lie wi’ Ian.”

She nodded thoughtfully, but her lips were pursed a little, as she held them when thinking.

“Aye, I ken ye would, Jamie. Ye dinna need to go to great lengths about it, though.”

“I don’t?”

She blew air out through her lips, then set them firmly.

“Well, see, I dinna ken where I might be, come the time. If it’s here, then o’ course—”

“Where the devil else might ye be?” he demanded, with the dawning realization that she couldn’t have come up here to tell him about Murtagh, because she hadn’t known he needed telling. So—

“I’m going wi’ Ian and Rachel to find his Mohawk wife,” she said, as casually as she might have said she was off to pull turnips.

Before he could find a single word, she held up the rosary in front of his face. “I’m leavin’ this with you, ken—it’s for Mandy, just in case I dinna come back. Ye ken well enough what sorts of things can happen when ye’re traveling,” she added, with a small moue of disapproval.

“Traveling,” he said. “Traveling? Ye mean to—to—” The thought of his sister, small, elderly, and stubborn as an alligator sunk in the mud, marching north through two armies, in dead of winter, beset by brigands, wild animals, and half a dozen other things he could think of if he’d time for it …

“I do.” She gave him a look, indicating that she didn’t mean to bandy words for long. “Where Young Ian goes, Rachel says she’s goin’, too, and that means so does the wee yin. Ye dinna think I mean to leave my youngest grandchild to the mercies of bears and wild Indians, do ye? That’s a rhetorical question,” she added, with a pleased air of having put a stop to him. “That means I dinna expect ye to answer it.”

“Ye wouldna ken a rhetorical question from a hole in the ground if I hadna told ye what one was!”

“Well, then, ye should recognize one when it bites ye on the nose,” she said, sticking her own lang neb up in the air.

“I’ll go and talk to Rachel,” he said, eyeing her. “Surely she’s better sense than to—”

“Ye think I didn’t? Or Young Ian?” Jenny shook her head, half admiringly. “It would be easier to move yon wee mountain there”—she nodded at the bulk of Roan Mountain, looming dark green in the distance—“than to get that Quaker lass to change her mind, once it’s made up.”

“But the bairn—!”

“Aye, aye,” she said, a little irritably. “Ye think I didna mention that? And she did squinch her eyes a bit. But then she said to me, reasonable as Sunday, would I let my husband go alone seven hundred miles to rescue his first wife, and her wi’ three pitiable bairns—one of whom might just possibly be Ian’s?—and that’s the first I heard of it, too,” she added, seeing his face. “I see her point.”

“Jesus.”

“Aye.” She stretched herself, groaning a little, and shook her skirts, which were thick with foxtails by now. Jamie could feel the prick of them through his stockings, dozens of tiny needles. The thought of Jenny’s going was a dirk right through his heart. It hurt to breathe.

He knew she could tell; she didn’t look at him but coiled up the pearl rosary neatly and, taking his hand, dropped it into his palm.

“Keep it for me,” she said, matter-of-factly, “and if I dinna come back, give it to Mandy, when she’s old enough.”

“Jenny …” he said softly.

“See, when ye come to reckon your life,” she said briskly, stooping to pick up the goat’s rope, “ye see that it’s the bairns are most important. They carry your blood and they carry whatever else ye gave them, on into the time ahead.” Her voice was perfectly steady, but she cleared her throat with a tiny hem before going on.

“Mandy’s the farthest out, aye?” she said. “As far as I can reach. The youngest girl of Mam’s blood. Let her take it on, then.”

He swallowed, hard.

“I will,” he said, and closed his hand over the beads, warm from his sister’s touch, warm with her prayers. “I swear, sister.”

“Well, I ken that, clot-heid,” she said, smiling up at him. “Come and help me catch these goats.”