“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.” I took a minute to contemplate that. “You can’t really be considering marrying Fanny off to the Crombies! It may be war, but it isn’t the War of the bloody Roses, with dynastic marriages right and left. I mean, I’d hate to see you end up in a butt of malmsey with a red-hot poker up your arse, like the Duke of Clarence.”

That made him laugh, and the knot forming under the gin in my stomach relaxed a little.

“Not yet, Sassenach. No, and I willna let Cyrus trouble Fanny—or even talk to her formally, if she mislikes the notion. But if the lassie doesna mind him visiting—and he is a sweet-tempered lad—then … aye, it might help Hiram when I need to ask him to ride with me and bring his men.”

I tried to envision Hiram Crombie riding into battle at Jamie’s side—and surprisingly, found it not all that far-fetched. Bar the riding part … the Thurso people did of course have the occasional mule or nag for transport, but on the whole, they were deeply suspicious of horses and preferred to walk. I supposed they could be infantry …

“But I dinna mean Frances to be made uneasy,” he said. “I’ll talk to her—and you should, too, like women, ken?”

“Like women, forsooth,” I murmured. But he was right. Fanny knew much, much more of the risks of being a woman than the average twelve-year-old did, and while I doubted that Cyrus would be any sort of threat to her, I must reassure her that this proposition was entirely hers to decline.

“All right,” I said, still a bit reluctant. “Do you know anything about Cyrus, other than his being tall?”

“Hiram spoke well of the lad. Paid him what I think was a verra high compliment.”

“What’s that?”

Jamie tossed off the rest of his gin, belched slightly, and set down his cup.

“He says Cyrus thinks like a fish.”

RATHER TO MY surprise, Fanny didn’t seem averse to Cyrus visiting more formally, when I carefully broached the subject with her.

“He doesn’t really speak any English, though,” she said thoughtfully. “A lot of the people up at that end of the cove don’t, Germain told me.”

Germain was right; many of the fisher-folk spoke only Gaelic; it was one reason why they remained as a tight-knit group, somewhat separate from the other residents of the Ridge.

“I’m learning the Gàidhlig,” she assured me, pronouncing it correctly. “And I suppose I’d learn more from Cyrus.”

“Why?” I asked, rather astonished. “I mean—what makes you want to learn Gaelic?”

She flushed a little but didn’t look away or down. That strong sense of self-possession was one of the things that occasionally made Fanny a little unnerving.