Sarah drew breath in deeply and slowly to try to calm herself; failing to do so, she let it out in a groan and pushed her ledger back on the desk. “Let’s stop. I’m too tired for any more of it tonight,” she said.

Floyd looked over at her, his mind still on the figures he had been checking. When his sight registered her, his face relaxed. He nodded. “Go to bed,” he said. “It won’t seem so bad in the morning.”

“It will seem just as bad in the morning,” she said irritably. “And I don’t want to go to bed, for I shan’t sleep much anyway.” She rose from her chair and went to a sideboard that held glasses, a couple of stone jugs, and several decanters. “Have a glass of wine with me, unless you want to go. I know you’re tired too, and with more reason than I, for you’ve been in the fields all day.”

“I’ll have a glass,” he said.

She poured claret generously into two glasses, handing one to Floyd and sitting down with the other on the desk before her. After a glance at the ledger, she closed it. “A dollar for three pounds of rice! Coffee not to be had and flour out of sight! And the war going for only two months. What will we do if it lasts a year?”

“We’ll get used to corn bread with everything. ‘It crumbles and don’t sop the syrup good as biscuits do!’ But it’s filling.”

“Who were you imitating?” she asked sharply.

“All of them.” He sipped from his glass.

“The people don’t understand it.” She shrugged. “I don’t either. Ships run the blockade into Savannah every day, but ordinary provisions are hard to find and too dear to buy when you can find them.”

Floyd took a folding knife from his pocket, opened a small blade and began to whittle a turkey quill. “We’ll manage. Remember, England wants our cotton, so England will keep the ports open.”

She sighed and drank from her glass. “I wish I were over there right now, or anywhere but here!”

He laughed. “No, you don’t. Give you your choice of the world, and you’d pick this little wart on it.”