“The latter—but it’s no for me. I was just visiting the Chisholms and as I was leaving, I stopped to talk to Auld Mam—she was sitting on a bench outside smoking her pipe, so I sat down and chatted a bit.”

“That must have been fun.”

“Well, up to a point. But then she told me that whenever she goes to the privy, her womb falls out into her hand, and would I ask ye if there’s anything to be done about it.”

He flushed a little and I stifled a laugh.

“Let me think that one over. I’ll go up and talk to her tomorrow. Meanwhile, would you go fish Mandy and Orrie out of the creek, and find out if Cyrus is staying for supper?”

AS HE WALKED down toward the creek, he saw Jem, Germain, Aidan, and a few of the other boys from uphill, carousing through the woods, brandishing sticks at each other, slashing them like swords and pretending to fire them as muskets, shouting “Bang!” at random intervals.

“It’s all fun and games until somebody loses an eye,” he murmured, hearing Mrs. Graham’s admonition from his youth. No point in rounding up that lot and lecturing them, though. Beyond the fact that they were boys, there was a colder fact, too: said boys were only a few years away from being able to ride with a militia or join the army.

And the bloody war was heading in their direction, fast.

“Seventeen eighty-one, though,” he said, and crossed his fingers. “Yorktown happens in October of 1781. Two bloody years. But only two bloody years.” Surely they could make it that far?

The sight of Mandy and Orrie in the creek, sopping wet, covered with mud and waterweed, and chattering happily as a pair of titmice, eased his mind a bit—and so did the sight of Fanny and Cyrus, who had now moved closer together.

Cyrus, more than a foot taller than Fanny, was doing his best to arch over and look at what she was showing him without accidentally touching her. Roger cleared his throat, not wanting to startle them, and Cyrus snapped rigidly upright.

“It’s all right, a charaid,” Fanny told him, pronouncing “a charaid” very carefully—and very wrongly. Roger smiled, and saw Cyrus do so, too, though he tried to hide it. “It’s only Roger Mac.”

“True,” Roger said amiably, smiling down at them. “Mrs. Claire only wants to know will ye stay to dinner, a bhalaich?”

Cyrus had gone pink in the ears at being discovered so close to Fanny, and had in consequence lost all his English, but replied in Gaelic that he thanked the mistress and would like nothing better, but that his brother Hiram had told him to be back before nightfall, and it was a long walk.

“Aye, then. Oidhche mhath.”