He took her to the tree his mother and the Sachem had used for their shooting practice, observing absently that they—or someone—had been at it again, for the torn corner of a pink calico handkerchief flapped from a nail, the lower edges ragged and singed brown. There was a bench, though, and he sat Silvia down and sat beside her, his shoulder touching hers while she wept, shaking with it.

She stopped after a few minutes, and sat still, twisting the wet handkerchief between her hands.

“I keep trying to think of a way,” she said thickly. “But I can’t.”

“A way to—?” he began cautiously. “To let the girls stay wi’ their father?”

She nodded, slowly. Her eyes were fixed on the ground, where the thin snow was trampled and footmarks had scuffed through it, leaving a moil of dirt, snow, and slicks of half-frozen meltwater.

“But I can’t,” she said again, and blew her nose. Ian disliked the painful look of the wet handkerchief applied to her raw, red nose, and handed her a dry though paint-stained one from his sleeve. “Two of my daughters are his—but I have three. Even if—”

Ian made a small noise in his throat, and she looked at him sharply.

“What?”

“I’m sure he’d ha’ told ye himself, were ye on speaking terms,” Ian said. “But Thayendanegea told me this morning, that he has two wee bairns wi’ the woman he … ehm …” She’d have found out anyway, he argued silently, and she would, but he still felt like a guilty toad, a feeling not improved by the look of naked betrayal on her face.

“Does it help, to curse aloud?” she said at last.

“Well … aye. It does, a bit. Ye dinna ken any curses, though, do ye?”

She frowned, considering.

“I do know some words,” she said. “The men who … came to my house would often say wild things, especially if they’d brought liquor or … or if there was more than one, and they … quarreled.”

“Mac na galladh,” he muttered.

“Is that a Scottish curse?” she asked, and sat up straighter, the handkerchief still twisted in her hands. “Perhaps I should find it easier to say bad words in another language.”

“Nay, Gàidhlig cursing’s a different thing. It’s … well, ye make a curse for the occasion, ye might say. We really dinna have bad words, but ye might say something like, ‘May worms breed in your belly and choke ye on their way out.’ That’s no a very good one,” he said apologetically. “Just on the spur o’ the moment, ken? Uncle Jamie can turn a curse would curl your hair, without even thinkin’ about it, but I’m no that good.”

She made a small hough sound that wasn’t close to a laugh, but wasn’t crying, either.

“What was that thee said, then?” she asked, after a moment’s silence. “In Gaelic.”