“Are your ears ringing, Sassenach?” he said, turning and smiling at me. “It’s been some time since I heard so much talk in such a small space.”

“Mm-hmm.” I came and put my arms round his waist, feeling the weight of the day and the evening slip away. “It’s so quiet up here. I can hear the crickets in the honeysuckle round the privy.”

He groaned and rested his chin on top of my head, letting me hold a little of his weight.

“Dinna mention privies. I’m nay more than half done wi’ the one for your surgery. And if we’ve much more company like tonight, I’m going to have to dig another for the house within a month.”

“I know you know that Roger would do it if you asked,” I remarked. “You just won’t let him.”

“Mmphm. He wouldna do it right.”

“Is there an art to digging privies?” I asked this, teasing, because if Jamie was a perfectionist about anything—and in all truth, he was a perfectionist about quite a number of things, nearly all having to do with tools or weapons—it was digging a proper privy. “Wasn’t it Voltaire who said that the perfect is the enemy of the good?”

“Le mieux est le mortel ennemi du bien,” he said. “The best is the mortal enemy of the good. And I’m sure Voltaire never dug a privy in his life. What would he ken about it?” He straightened up and stretched, slowly and luxuriously. “God, I want to lie down.”

“What’s stopping you?”

“I mean to enjoy the anticipation as much as the lyin’ down. Besides, I’m hungry. Have we any food to hand?”

“If none of the children have found it, yes.” I bent and rummaged under the bed, pulling out the basket I’d secreted during the afternoon against just such a contingency. “Cheese and a wedge of apple pie do you?”

He made a Scottish noise indicating thanks and deep contentment and sat down to wade in.

“Germain’s had a letter from Marsali,” I said. The corn husks in the mattress rustled as I sat down beside him. “Did John Quincy tell you?”

“Germain told me,” he said, smiling. “When I went out to tell the bairns to come in, he was out by the well tellin’ Jem and Fanny about his new wee brothers, and his hair standin’ on end with excitement. He said he couldna sleep for wanting to see his folk, so I gave him paper and ink to write his mam a letter.

“Fanny’s helping him wi’ the spelling,” he added, brushing crumbs off his shirt. “Who d’ye think taught her to write? It’s no a skill likely to be of value in a brothel, surely.”

“Someone has to keep the books and write occasional genteel blackmail letters, but perhaps that’s the madam’s job. As for Fanny, she’s never said, but I think it must have been her sister.”

My heart contracted a little at this reminder of Fanny’s recent past. She never spoke of it, or of her sister.