“Dinna fash, a nighean. After that, the captain has a choice, doesn’t he? Get me off the Ridge—and good luck to him if that’s his choice—or try to take me over the Line and through the Cherokee lands to get to Ferguson—wherever that poor bastard is now. And while Cunningham’s friends have friends among the Cherokee—so do I, and if Aaron Cloudtree either found Scotchee Cameron or spoke of the matter to anyone else—and I’d wager my best stockings that he did; ye can tell he’s a blabbermouth—the captain might have a good deal more trouble in taking me anywhere than he might think.”

“Oh, good,” she said, and the line between her brows eased a bit. “So after you start a small war over the Treaty Line, the captain will just have to kill you all by himself.”

Jamie shrugged. He hadn’t thought that far, but it didn’t matter.

“He can try.”

She didn’t look much less worried, but she smiled at him, despite herself. Seeing that made him want suddenly and urgently to have her, and it plainly showed on his face, for her smile deepened—though her sidewise glance at the door convinced him that she wasn’t going to let him bend her over the table and try to finish before wee Aggie came in.

“After Lodge, then,” he said, grinning at her.

She took a deep breath and nodded.

“After Lodge,” she said, trying to sound as certain as he did.

I WAS THUMBING through my Merck, roaming from pleural disorders and the use of thoracentesis to a gripping account of inflammation of the rectal mucosa, but while my cerebellum could be coaxed into a momentary distraction, my brain stem, spinal cord, and sacral nerves were having none of it. If I’d had a tail, it would have been pressed tight between my legs, and small jolts of something between electricity and nausea spurted unexpectedly through my abdomen.

The girls knew that something was afoot. They’d been silent as mice at supper, gazing as though hypnotized at Jamie. I’d been likewise hypnotized, watching him dress afterward.

I’d stayed to help clear the table, put away the remnants and orts from the meal, and smoor the fire in the kitchen hearth, and when I came up to our bedroom, I found him facing away from me, on the far side of the room. He didn’t turn round; I thought perhaps he hadn’t heard me come in. His face was reflected in the window he stood in front of, but I could see that he wasn’t looking at his reflection.