“Traveling,” he said. “Traveling? Ye mean to—to—” The thought of his sister, small, elderly, and stubborn as an alligator sunk in the mud, marching north through two armies, in dead of winter, beset by brigands, wild animals, and half a dozen other things he could think of if he’d time for it …

“I do.” She gave him a look, indicating that she didn’t mean to bandy words for long. “Where Young Ian goes, Rachel says she’s goin’, too, and that means so does the wee yin. Ye dinna think I mean to leave my youngest grandchild to the mercies of bears and wild Indians, do ye? That’s a rhetorical question,” she added, with a pleased air of having put a stop to him. “That means I dinna expect ye to answer it.”

“Ye wouldna ken a rhetorical question from a hole in the ground if I hadna told ye what one was!”

“Well, then, ye should recognize one when it bites ye on the nose,” she said, sticking her own lang neb up in the air.

“I’ll go and talk to Rachel,” he said, eyeing her. “Surely she’s better sense than to—”

“Ye think I didn’t? Or Young Ian?” Jenny shook her head, half admiringly. “It would be easier to move yon wee mountain there”—she nodded at the bulk of Roan Mountain, looming dark green in the distance—“than to get that Quaker lass to change her mind, once it’s made up.”

“But the bairn—!”

“Aye, aye,” she said, a little irritably. “Ye think I didna mention that? And she did squinch her eyes a bit. But then she said to me, reasonable as Sunday, would I let my husband go alone seven hundred miles to rescue his first wife, and her wi’ three pitiable bairns—one of whom might just possibly be Ian’s?—and that’s the first I heard of it, too,” she added, seeing his face. “I see her point.”

“Jesus.”

“Aye.” She stretched herself, groaning a little, and shook her skirts, which were thick with foxtails by now. Jamie could feel the prick of them through his stockings, dozens of tiny needles. The thought of Jenny’s going was a dirk right through his heart. It hurt to breathe.

He knew she could tell; she didn’t look at him but coiled up the pearl rosary neatly and, taking his hand, dropped it into his palm.

“Keep it for me,” she said, matter-of-factly, “and if I dinna come back, give it to Mandy, when she’s old enough.”

“Jenny …” he said softly.

“See, when ye come to reckon your life,” she said briskly, stooping to pick up the goat’s rope, “ye see that it’s the bairns are most important. They carry your blood and they carry whatever else ye gave them, on into the time ahead.” Her voice was perfectly steady, but she cleared her throat with a tiny hem before going on.