She was sitting on a rock above him. He wondered if she might yell again or even throw a stone at him to make him go away, but she just watched, waiting. He stopped a yard or two below her. ‘Are you still angry because I left?’

‘No. That wasn’t why I was angry.’

‘I needed time to think, that was all.’ Which was true, though he had also needed Maria — her happiness and Ethelred’s — to make him see what mattered.

‘Maybe you need to think some more,’ she muttered.

‘I don’t understand. May I sit next to you?’

She nodded. He sat on the other side of the rock, close enough to feel her warmth. He didn’t touch her. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you too.’

‘Then what’s wrong?’

She lifted her chin and, for once, looked him straight in the eyes. ‘I love you. But I know as well as you — better than you will ever know — what your life would be if we married. What if someone chains our children, as your wife once chained me?’

He answered honestly. ‘They’d have a white father to protect them. And white relatives.’

‘Are you sure? Your father looked at me as if I were a maggot in a sheep’s rear end, and once he got used to me being there he didn’t look at me at all.’ She faltered. ‘I have a good life here, with the McKenzies. I’m not marrying at all unless I know there’ll be a good life for my children.’

‘Very well.’ He met her gaze, then took her hands. ‘I’ll write to my father and my brother-in-law, and maybe to a friend too. If they will accept you — any of them — will you marry me?’ He knew what Ethelred’s answer would be: he only needed one loving response.

It should have been a moment of joy. But her face was twisted with sadness, with a hundred might-have-beens when she answered, ‘All right, Horatio Clancy. If just one of your family says they’ll accept me and our children, I will marry you.’

Chapter 47

Chapter 47

Fried Green Taties

Boil 6 large potatoes. Fry 180g chopped cabbage with 100g chopped onion tops in butter. When the veg are soft, mash them, mix with 2 eggs, salt and pepper to taste, then clean the pan, dry it, and fry the lot in more butter till browned on one side, then on the other. Good dripping can be used instead of butter.

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, 1986

SCARLETT

Dear Jed and Sam and Mattie and Leafsong and everyone — because my hands are tired from too much report writing, so you are all going to get only the one letter from me this week,