“Yes, they are,” she assured him. “Roger’s probably hammering things and Jem’s helping him and Mandy’s getting in the way. As for what we’re doing here …” The day and the joy of reunion had let her ignore the recent past, but the ultimate need of explanation brought the enormity of it all suddenly crashing in upon her.

“Dinna fash, cousin,” Ian said swiftly, seeing her face. “It’ll bide. D’ye think ye recall how to shoot a turkey? There’s a band o’ them struttin’ to and fro like folk dancing Strip the Willow at a ceilidh, not a quarter mile from here.”

“Oh, I might.” She’d propped the gun against the cliff face while she drank; the deer’s fall had knocked it over and she picked it up, checking; the fall had knocked the flint askew, and she reseated it. The thrashing below had stopped, and she could hear her father’s voice, in snatches above the wind, saying the gralloch prayer.

“Hadn’t we better help Da with the deer, though?”

“Ach, it’s no but a yearling buck, he’ll have it done before ye can blink.” Ian leaned out from the ledge, calling down. “I’m takin’ Bree to shoot turkeys, a bràthair mo mhàthair!”

Dead silence from below, and then a lot of rustling and Jamie’s disheveled head poked suddenly up above the rose briers. His hair was loose and tangled; his face was deeply flushed and bleeding in several places, as were his arms and hands, and he looked displeased.

“Ian,” he said, in measured tones, but in a voice loud enough to be easily heard above the forest sounds. “Mac Ian … mac Ian …!”

“We’ll be back to help carry the meat!” Ian called back. He waved cheerily and, grabbing the fowling piece, caught Bree’s eye and jerked his chin upward. She glanced down, but her father had disappeared, leaving the bushes swaying in agitation.

She’d lost much of her eye for the wilderness, she found; the cliff looked impassable to her, but Ian scrambled up as easily as a baboon, and after a moment’s hesitation, she followed, much more slowly, slipping now and then in small showers of dirt as she groped for the holds her cousin had used.

“Ian mac Ian mac Ian?” she asked, reaching the top and pausing to empty the dirt out of her shoes. Her heart was beating unpleasantly hard. “Is that like me calling Jem Jeremiah Alexander Ian Fraser MacKenzie when I’m annoyed with him?”

“Something like,” Ian said, shrugging. “Ian, son of Ian, son of Ian … the notion is to point out ye’re a disgrace to your forefathers, aye?” He was wearing a ragged, filthy calico shirt, but the sleeves had been torn off, and she saw a large white scar in the shape of a four-pointed star on the curve of his bare brown shoulder.

“What did that?” she said, nodding at it. He glanced at it and made a dismissive gesture, turning to lead her across the small ridge.