Her brows—thick for a woman—rose.

“You recall her very well,” she said, with no tone of judgment. “Have you ever drawn, or painted, yourself?”

“No,” he said, startled. “I mean—I had a drawing master when I was a child. Why?”

She smiled a little, as though harboring a secret.

“Our grandmother was a painter. I was thinking you might have … inherited something from her. Like I did.”

The thought made his hands curl, with a slight shock that went through the muscles of his forearms. Our grandmother …

“Jesus,” he said.

“She looked a lot like me,” Brianna said casually, and reached to open the door for him. “And you. That’s where we got the nose.”

121

The Quality of Mercy

Fraser’s Ridge

I WAS IN THE surgery, sorting seeds and enjoying the satisfaction of successful hoarding, when I heard a tentative knock at the front door. The door itself was open, to let fresh air flow through the house, and normally whoever was at the door would have called out. I heard faint whisperings and the shuffle of feet outside, but no one called, and I poked my head out to see who the visitors might be.

To my surprise, there was quite a crowd on the porch; a number of women and children, who all stirred with alarm at seeing me. One woman seemed to be the leader; she plucked up her courage and stepped forward and I saw that it was Mrs. MacIlhenny. Mother Harriet, she was called by everyone: white-haired, widowed three times, and mother to thirteen children and untold quantities of grandchildren.

“By your leave, a bhana-mhaighister,” she said, her voice hesitant, “might we speak with Himself?”

“Er …” I said, disconcerted. “I— Yes of course. I’ll just … tell him you’re here. Ah … won’t you … come in?”

I sounded nearly as hesitant as she did, and for the same reason. There were five women besides Mother Harriet: Doris Hallam, Molly Adair, Fiona Leslie, Annie MacFarland, and Gracie MacNeil. All of them were wives or mothers of tenants Jamie had excommunicated, and it was reasonably clear why they’d come. They’d brought nearly twenty children with them, from ten-year-old girls with their hair neatly braided to skirt-clinging toddlers and babes in arms, all scrubbed within an inch of their lives; the smell of lye soap rose off them in an almost-visible cloud.

Jamie was sitting at his desk with a quill in his hand when I came in, closing the door of the study behind me. He glanced toward the door; the whispering and shushing was clearly audible.

“Is that who I think it is?”

“Yes,” I said. “Five of them. With their children. They want to speak with you.”

He said something under his breath in Gaelic, rubbed his hands hard over his face, and sat up straight in his chair, squaring his shoulders.

“Aye. Let them come in, then.”