“Thee is compassionate. Kind. And fearless,” she said, watching Jenny come down, half-sliding and grabbing branches to keep erect.

Her mother-in-law’s head turned sharply, eyes wide.

“Fearless?” she said, incredulous. “Me?” She made a noise that Rachel would have spelled as “Psssht.” “I’ve been scairt to the bone since I was ten years old, a leannan. But ye get used to it, ken?” She took back the basket, and Rachel hoisted Oggy, whose weight had doubled the moment he fell asleep, into a more secure position.

“What happened when thee was ten?” she asked, curious.

“My mother died,” Jenny answered. Her expression and voice were both matter-of-fact, but Rachel could hear bereavement in it, plain as the high, thin call of a hermit thrush.

“Mine died when I was born,” Rachel said, after a long pause. “I can’t say that I miss her, as I never knew her—though of course …”

“They say ye canna miss what ye never had, but they’re wrong about that one,” Jenny said, and touched Rachel’s cheek with the palm of her hand, small and warm. “Watch where ye’re walkin’, lass. It’s slick underfoot.”

“Yes.” Rachel kept her eyes on the ground, striding wide to avoid a muddy patch where a tiny spring bubbled up. “I dream, sometimes. There’s a woman, but I don’t know who she is. Perhaps it’s my mother. She seems kind, but she doesn’t say much. She just looks at me.”

“Does she look like ye, lass?”

Rachel shrugged, balancing Oggy with a hand under his bottom.

“She has dark hair, but I can’t ever remember her face when I wake up.”

“And ye wouldna ken what she looked like, alive.” Jenny nodded, looking at something behind her own eyes. “I kent mine—and if ye ever want to know what she looked like, just go and have a keek at Brianna, for she’s Ellen MacKenzie Fraser to the life—though a wee bit bigger.”

“I’ll do that,” Rachel assured her. She found her new cousin-in-law slightly intimidating, though Ian clearly loved her. “Scared, though—and thee said thee has been frightened ever since?” She didn’t think she’d ever met someone less frightened than Janet Murray, whom she’d seen only yesterday face down a huge raccoon on the cabin’s porch, driving it off with a broom and a Scottish execration, in spite of the animal’s enormous claws and menacing aspect.

Jenny glanced at her, surprised, and changed the heavy basket from one arm to the other with a small grunt as the trail narrowed.

“Oh, no scairt for myself, a nighean, I dinna think I’ve ever worrit about bein’ killed or the like. No, scairt for them. Scairt I wouldna be able to manage, to take care o’ them.”

“Them?”

“Jamie and Da,” Jenny said, frowning a little at the squashy ground under her feet. It had rained hard the night before, and even the open ground was muddy. “I didna ken how to take care of them. I kent well I couldna fill my mother’s place for either one. See, I thought they’d die wi’out her.”