“I’m fine,” I said, and I laughed. Let my forehead fall against his chest and breathed for a moment, feeling all my pieces come to rest, whole again, as the enchantment of the last hour faded into peace.

“Jamie,” I said, a few moments later, raising my head. “What color is my hair?”

This was an absurd question; it was the depth of the night and we were standing in a pitch-black forest. But he made a small noise of appraisal and lifted my chin to look.

“All the colors o’ the earth,” he said, and smoothed the hair from my face. “But here, all about your face—it’s the color of moonlight, mo ghràidh.”

55

The Venom of the North Wind

RACHEL WOKE SUDDENLY, COMPLETELY alert but with no idea what had woken her. She moved, turning her head to see if Ian was awake. He was; his hand clamped across her mouth and she froze. It was dark in the cabin, but there was light enough from the banked fire for her to see his face, eyes dark with warning.

She blinked, once, and with a tiny nod he removed his hand. He lay quite still and so did she, though her heart thumped hard enough that she thought it would wake Oggy, snuggled between them.

Thumping hard enough that she couldn’t hear anything, either—Ian was listening, though. His long body hadn’t moved, and yet he seemed to have coiled up, somehow, like a snake gathering itself. She shut her eyes, concentrating.

There had been wind all night; berries from the big red cedar that guarded the house had been thumping on the roof at intervals. But Ian would have recognized that sound …

Suddenly Ian moved, rising onto one elbow; she heard him breathe in, sharply, and by reflex did the same. Tobacco. In the next instant, he’d slid out of bed and padded naked to the door.

She let out her breath with a sense of relief; a friend, then. Soft voices on the porch, then Ian stuck his head back in, smiled briefly at her, and snatching a folded blanket from the top of the chest closed the door behind him.

Oggy, disturbed by the sense of movement, stirred and made snuffling noises. She rose with haste in order to make use of the chamber pot before he roused all the way; he wasn’t a patient child.

Her shawl round her shoulders and the baby at her breast, she stole up to the window by the door. It was covered with an oiled hide, tacked down against drafts, so she couldn’t see anything, but sounds came through from the porch fairly well.

Not that it did her much good. The visitors—she made out at least two different voices, besides Ian’s—were Indians, and speaking in their own language. Perhaps Standing Heron Bradshaw and a friend from the Cherokee villages, come to help hunt the catamount that had been seen near the creek. That was a merciful thought; the more men there were, the safer they’d be. Presumably.