Like a large animal lying in wait, Rachel thought.

She had met them in the yard before the farmhouse, invited them in, and offered them milk and whisky, with little sweet biscuits. Admired Oggy with what seemed great sincerity, and though she had blinked at sight of Rachel’s paint, treated her with a delicate respect, though never quite meeting her eyes.

She was lovely. Dressed in the Mohawk fashion of shirt and trousers of soft deerskin, decorated with a dozen small silver rings, small and still lithe, despite having birthed three living children and Yeksa’a, Ian’s stillborn daughter. Rachel thought they were much of an age, though Works With Her Hands bore the marks of weather and of sorrow in her face. Her eyes were still warm, though, and lively, and she met Ian’s glance often and fully.

The children had come in briefly, brought by an older woman who smiled at Ian. The two youngest, girls of maybe four and two, were lovely, with their mother’s soft dark eyes and solid, handsome faces that perhaps resembled their late father’s. Rachel refrained from looking too closely at the eldest boy—perhaps seven or eight—and successfully fought the temptation to look from the boy’s face to Ian’s.

He resembled his siblings, but didn’t look as much like them as they looked like each other, she thought. His face was lively, but charming rather than beautiful, and his eyes didn’t look like his mother’s. Dark, but with a glint of hazel that the others didn’t have. He was tall for his age, but thin.

“This is my eldest son,” Emily said, introducing the children with a smile of pride. “We call him Tòtis.” Tòtis looked curiously at the visitors, but seemed mostly interested in Oggy and asked his name, in English.

“He hasn’t yet got a real name,” Ian said, smiling down at the boy. “We called him for the governor of Georgia, a man named Oglethorpe, until his proper name should come.”

The children were taken away, and they made conversation over the food. After they had eaten, Works With Her Hands said she must go to the longhouse for a few moments—and invited Ian to come, saying that perhaps it had been a long time since he had been in such a place. She said nothing about Rachel, leaving it to her whether to come, too, but Rachel nodded politely and said she would feed Oggy and then perhaps follow them.

“I confess to curiosity,” she said, smiling directly at Works With Her Hands. “I should like to see the sort of place that my husband called home for so long a time.”

She had a very good idea as to Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa’s motive in inviting Ian to attend her in the longhouse. This was the setting in which Ian had first become attracted to her, the sort of place they had lived in together. The thought made her heart beat faster.

For the first time, she wondered whether Ian had desired her to come with him as a form of protection.