“Aye,” Ian said, and laughed a little. “Though I didna take much notice. I had my own bit o’ trouble to settle, with the Abenaki. And I did settle it, too,” he added, grimness coming into his voice. “Your men got one o’ them, but I killed the other in the British camp that night, wi’ his own tomahawk.”

“I hadna heard about that,” Jamie said, surprised. “Ye did it in the British camp? Ye never told me that. How did ye come to be there, for that matter? Last I saw ye was just before the battle, and the next I saw ye, your cousin William was bringin’ what I thought was your corpse into Freehold on a mule.”

And the next time he’d seen William had been in Savannah, when his son had come to ask his help in saving Jane Pocock. They’d been too late. That failure had been neither of their faults, but his heart still hurt for the poor wee lassie … and for his poor lad.

“I dinna mind most o’ that, myself,” Ian said. “I came in wi’ Lord John—we got arrested together—but then I walked out o’ the camp, meanin’ to go find Rachel or you, but I was bad wi’ the fever, the night goin’ in and out around me like as if it was breathin’ and I was walkin’ along through the stars wi’ my da beside me, just talkin’ to him, as if …”

“As if he was there,” Jamie finished, smiling. “I expect he was. I feel him beside me, now and then.” He glanced automatically to his right as he said this, as though Ian Mòr might indeed be there now.

“We were talkin’ o’ the Indian I’d just killed—and I said it put me in mind o’ that gobshite who tried to extort ye, Uncle—the one I killed there by the fire after Saratoga. I said something about how it seemed different, killing a man face-to-face, but I’d thought I ought to be used to such things by now, and I wasn’t. And he said I maybe shouldn’t be,” Ian said thoughtfully. “He said it couldna be good for my soul, bein’ used to things like that.”

“Your da’s a wise man.”

THEY WALKED BACK into town, easy with each other, talking now and then, but not of anything that mattered.

“Ye’ve got all ye need, Ian?” Jamie asked. “For the journey?”

“If I don’t, it’s too late now,” Ian said, laughing.

Jamie smiled, but the words “too late” lingered in the back of his mind. He’d part with the travelers at daybreak, see them onto the Great Wagon Road, and then they’d be gone—God knew for how long.

They were nearly to the Widow Hambly’s house when he stopped, a hand on Ian’s arm.

“I wasna going to ask, and I’m not,” Jamie said abruptly. “Because ye must be free to do whatever ye need to. But I find I must say a thing to ye, before ye go.”