Nothing could have saved her and we both knew it, but I felt the sting of helplessness and guilt, nonetheless.

Bobby began to cry, in the awful, wrenching way that men do. Brianna had been pale and blotchy with grief and shock; now she flushed, her own eyes welling.

Rachel moved near my shoulder, and next thing I knew, she’d taken Bobby from Bree as easily as she might have accepted a fresh egg in her hand, careful of him, but calm.

“Let us sit with thy wife for a bit,” she said softly, and guided him to a stool. She cast a quick look over her shoulder at Brianna, and nodded to me before sitting down beside Bobby.

I walked Bree out of the surgery and straight out of the house, thinking that she wouldn’t want the other women to see her so distraught. I must give her something for the shock, I thought, but before I could suggest anything, she’d turned and gripped me by the elbow, wet eyes blazing through her tears.

“Da’s gone,” she said. “And he’s taken Roger and Jem and Aidan with him! To hunt that bloody bear!”

“Oh, aye,” Jenny said behind me, before I could speak. She laid a hand on Brianna’s arm and squeezed. “Dinna fash, lass. Jamie’s a hard man to kill, and Ian’s painted his face. And I said the blessing for them both—the one for a warrior goin’ out. They’ll be fine.”

ROGER CAUGHT UP with Jamie and the two boys—he was glad to see that they’d met Germain along the way—just short of the opening to the small gorge where the grapevines grew in abundance. They’d heard him crashing along and had paused to wait for him.

He stopped, breathing heavily, and nodded toward the rocky wall where the vines rippled and quivered in the light breeze. “This is where it happened?” The smell of ripe muscats was strong and sweet above the rough, bitter smell of the leaves, and his stomach growled in response; he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Jamie reached into his sporran and handed him half a crumbling bannock, without comment.

“Farther on, Dad,” Jemmy said. “We were over there, up on top of the cliff. Mam and Mrs. Higgins were down below—see where that big shadow is, that’s where—” He broke off abruptly, stared, then shrieked. “The bear! The bear! There it is!”

Roger dropped the bannock and his staff and seized Jemmy by one arm and Aidan by the collar, dragging them back. Jamie and Ian didn’t move. They looked down the length of the gorge, looked at each other, then shook their heads.

“Dinna fash, a bhalaich,” Jamie said to Aidan, kindly. “It’s no the bear.”

“Ye’re … sure of that, are ye?” Roger felt as though the breath had been knocked out of him. He could see what Jemmy’d seen: a small growth of hemlocks on the left rim of the gorge cast deep shadow over the vines on the right, and something was moving in that shadow.