“I heard them singing,” she said. “In the church, with Roger Mac. Some of the Wilsons and Mr. Greig and his brother came down to listen to him preach—I think you were gone that day, so you wouldn’t have heard them—but after the sermon, Roger Mac asked Mr. Greig if he knew …” She shook her head. “I can’t even say the name, but it was a song in Gaelic, and they sang it, all of them, and they were beating their hands on the benches like drums and—the whole church … it was …” She looked at me, helpless to explain, but I could see the light in her face. “Alive.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry I missed that.”

“If Cyrus comes to visit me, maybe some of his family will come down and sing again,” she said. “Besides,” she added, a slight shadow crossing her face, “with Germain and Jemmy gone, Cyrus will be somebody to talk to, whether he understands me or not.”

HER MENTION OF Germain made me slightly wary, and I went to find Jamie, who was repairing the barn wall where Clarence, in a fit of pique, had kicked it and broken one of the boards.

“Do you think maybe you should talk to Hiram before Cyrus comes?” I said. “I mean, naturally, we don’t want to tell anyone about … where Fanny came from. But if Cyrus were to—er—make any, um, inappropriate moves toward her … she might—feel obliged to respond?”

He’d sat back on his heels to listen to me, and at this, he laughed and stood up, shaking his head.

“Nay bother, Sassenach,” he said. “He’ll not lay a finger on the lass, or Hiram will break his neck, and Hiram will ha’ told him so.”

“Well, that’s reassuring. Do you think perhaps you should drop a word in his ear yourself? As Fanny’s loco parentis, I mean?”

“Locum,” he said, “and no. I’ll just bid him welcome and terrify him wi’ my presence. He won’t dare breathe on her, Sassenach.”

“All right,” I said, still a little dubious. “I think she believed us—believed you—when we told her we didn’t expect her to become a whore, but … she spent half her life in a brothel, Jamie. Even if she wasn’t … participating, her sister was, and Fanny surely knew everything that was going on. That sort of experience leaves a mark.”

He paused, head bent, looking down at the ground, where a small pile of fresh mule apples marked Clarence’s mood.

“Ye healed me of something a good deal worse, Sassenach,” he said, and touched my hand gently. He’d touched me with his right hand, the maimed one.

“I didn’t,” I protested. “You did that yourself—you had to. All I did was … er …”

“Drug me wi’ opium and fornicate me back to life? Aye, that.”

“It wasn’t fornication,” I said, rather primly—though my hand turned, my fingers lacing tight with his. “We were married.”