Mandy was curled up on Myers’s lap at the moment, gazing up at him in wonder—though in her case, I thought it was his massive gray-streaked beard that was interesting her, rather than the story he was telling, which had to do with a case of adultery in Cross Creek last month that had resulted in a duel with pistols in the middle of Hay Street, in which the participants had both missed their opponents but had hit, respectively, a public water butt and a horse hitched to a gig, which had—the wound being minor but startling—caused the horse to run away with Mrs. Judge Alderdyce, who was sitting in the gig while her groom fetched a parcel for her.

“Was the poor lady hurt?” Bree asked, struggling to keep a straight face.

“Oh, no, ma’am,” John Quincy assured her. “Madder ’n a wet hornet, though, and that’s pretty mad. When they stopped the gig and helped her out of it, she stomped right down the street to Lawyer Forbes’s rooms and made him write up a lawsuit ’gainst the man that winged her horse, right that very minute.”

The humor in Bree’s face changed in an instant at the mention of Neil Forbes, who had kidnapped her and sold her to Stephen Bonnet, but I saw Roger lay his hand over hers and squeeze. She sucked in one cheek for a moment, but then turned to him briefly and nodded, relaxing.

“Didn’t she take care of the horse first?” Jemmy asked, openly disapproving.

“Jim-Bob Hooper did,” Myers assured him. “That’s Mrs. Judge’s groom, what had been driving. Bit o’ salve and a nose bag—had the poor beast fixed up peart in no more than a minute.”

Jamie and Jemmy nodded as one, satisfied.

Talk turned back to the cause of the duel, but I didn’t stay to hear it. Fanny had come quietly back and was sitting on the end of a kitchen bench, smiling to herself as she listened to John Quincy talk. I bent to whisper in her ear as I passed.

“Do you know where Germain is?”

She blinked, pulled away from John Quincy’s spell, but answered readily.

“Yes’m. I think he’s on the roof. He said he didn’t want company.”

GERMAIN WAS ON the roof. Huddled up on the floor in our second-floor bedroom lean-to, his knees raised, arms crossed over them, and head buried in his forearms, a dark lump against the paleness of the bedclothes behind him.

The picture of woe—and the picture of someone desperate to be asked what the matter was, in hopes of reassurance. Well, I reflected, as Jenny says—what’s a grannie for, then?

I picked my way carefully round the edge of the floor, clinging to the timber studs for balance and thanking God that it was neither raining nor blowing up a hurricane. In fact, the night was calm and starlit, full of the half-heard susurrus of pine trees and night-going insects.

I eased myself carefully down beside him, hands sweating just a little.