Oddly, the feeling of someone standing behind me had vanished when I came into the house.

I picked the book up to close it, and glanced inside as I did so. Chapter 16, said the title at the top of the page. Partisan Bands.

I fetched the big creamware bowl Jamie had brought me from Salem and took it outside, not glancing at the book—now properly closed on the desk—but well aware of it.

Jamie began the winnowing, taking a handful from the basin, pouring the mix of peanuts and debris from one hand to the next and back again, letting the bits of shell and skin fly away as the heavier peanuts dropped with a small ting-ting-ting! into the bowl. The wind was strong enough—it would be too strong in a bit, and start blowing away the nuts as well. I sat down on the ground by the bowl and began to pick out any last fragments of shell that had fallen with the cleaned nuts.

“You’ve read the book, then?” I asked after a moment, and he nodded, not looking at me. “What do you think of it?”

He made another Scottish noise, shook the last of the peanuts clinking into the bowl, and sat down on the grass beside me.

“I think the bastard wrote it for me, is what I think,” he said bluntly.

I was startled. “For you?”

“Aye. He’s talking to me.” He raised one shoulder, self-conscious. “Or at least I think he is. Between the lines. I mean … it might only be as I’m losin’ my mind. That’s maybe more likely. But …”

“Talking to you … as in, the, um, text seems personally relevant?” I asked carefully. “It couldn’t help but be, could it? Given where and when we are just now, I mean.”

He sighed and twitched his shoulders, as though his shirt was too tight—which it wasn’t; it was billowing over his shoulders like a sail in the wind. I hadn’t seen him do that in a long time, and a crawling anxiety tightened my chest.

“He’s—it’s—” He shook his head, looking for words. “He’s talking to me,” he repeated doggedly. “He kens who I am—who I am,” he said with emphasis and looked at me, his eyes dark blue. “He kens it’s the Scotsman that took his wife from him and he’s talkin’ directly to me. I can feel him, as if he stood behind me, whispering in my ear.” I flinched, violently, and he blinked, startled.

“That sounds … unpleasant,” I said. The tiny hairs prickled along my jaw.

The corner of his mouth turned up. He stopped what he was doing and took my hand, and I felt better.

“Well, it’s a mite unsettling, Sassenach. I dinna mind it, exactly—I mean, surely to God he has the right to say things to me if he likes. It’s only … why?”