“She’s no a coonhound, though I suppose she wouldna pass one up. What did ye want her to hunt for, Sassenach?” Jamie asked, smiling. “Truffles?”

“You need a pig for that, don’t you? And speaking of pigs … Jemmy! Germain! Keep an eye out for pigs, and watch Mandy!” The boys were squatting by a pine tree, picking bits of bark shaped like puzzle pieces off it, but at my call they looked vaguely round.

“Where is Mandy?” I shouted.

“Up there!” Germain called, pointing upslope. “With Fanny.”

“Germain, Germain, look, I got a thousand-legger! A big one!”

At Jem’s call, Germain instantly lost interest in the girls and squatted beside Jem, scrabbling dried leaves out of the way.

“Had I better go look, do you think?” I asked. “Millipedes aren’t venomous, but the big centipedes can have a nasty bite.”

“The lad can count,” Jamie assured me. “If he says it’s got a thousand legs, I’m sure it does—give or take a few.” He gave a short whistle and the dog looked up, instantly alert.

“Go find Frances, a nighean.” He flung out an arm, pointing uphill, and the dog barked once, agreeably, and bounded up the rocky slope, yellow leaves exploding under her eager feet.

“Do you think she—” I began, but before I could finish, I heard the girls’ voices above, mingled with Bluey’s excited yaps of greeting. “Oh. She does know who Frances is, then.”

“Of course she does. She kens all of us now—but she likes Frances best.” He smiled a little at the thought. It was true; Fanny adored the dog and spent hours combing her fur, taking ticks out of her ears, or curled up by the fire with a book, Bluebell comfortably snoring on her feet.

“Why do you always call her Frances?” I asked curiously. “Everybody else calls her Fanny—she calls herself that, for that matter.”

“Fanny is a whore’s name,” he replied tersely. Seeing my look of astonishment, though, his expression relaxed a bit. “Aye, I ken there are respectable women wi’ that name. But Roger Mac tells me Cleland’s novel is still in print in your time.”

“Cleland’s … oh, John Cleland, you mean—Fanny Hill?” My voice rose slightly, less in surprise that the famously pornographic Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure was still going strong 250 years on—some things never go out of style, after all—than at the fact that he’d been discussing it with Roger.

“And he tells me the word is a … vulgarism … for a woman’s privates,” he added, frowning.

“Well, it will be,” I admitted. “Or for someone’s bottom, depending whether you come from Britain or America. But it hasn’t got that meaning now, does it?”

“No,” he admitted reluctantly. “But still—Lord John told me once that ‘Fanny Laycock’ is a cant term for whore.” His brow furrowed. “I did wonder—her sister gave her name as Jane Eleanora Pocock. I thought it maybe wasna her real last name, but more a—a—”