There was a long moment of silence, with that simple declaration hanging in the air.

She did. The two young lieutenants would manage the physical difficulties of travel and provide protection for her and Charles. But she would need help, in caring both for her son’s demanding physical needs and for her own. Granted, she could easily engage a maidservant, but given Agnes’s delicate situation …

No one had mentioned the other aspect of that situation aloud, but Elspeth was more than perceptive enough to have grasped the fact that—everything else quite aside—she was an answer to prayer for Jamie.

I estimated the pregnancy at roughly three months, and it was a matter of weeks, if not days, before Agnes’s situation was known all over the Ridge. And it was, naturally, Jamie’s responsibility as her employer to resolve the situation in some publicly satisfactory manner. Finding the young man responsible and obliging him to marry Agnes would be the usual thing, but under the circumstances … To have your unmarried maidservant growing visibly pregnant in your house—or hastily married off to someone who was patently not the father—was to invite speculation that you had had something to do with her condition. And we’d both been there before …. I shivered, the echo of Malva’s denunciation, “It was him!” ringing in my ears.

“Speaking as Agnes’s … er, other loco parentis …” I said. Jamie and Elspeth both smiled, involuntarily, but I ignored them and pushed on. “I have a small condition to suggest. I’ll help you to persuade Agnes, because I think it’s really the best way of handling her predicament. But if she decides to go with you, I want an assurance that you’ll provide her with an education …”

“Agnes?” Both of them had spoken together, and while Jamie’s intonation indicated doubt and Elspeth’s, amusement, their unanimity did give me a moment’s pause.

“Education to do what, Sassenach?” Jamie asked. “Fanny’s taught her to read, and she can write her name and count to a hundred. What else d’ye think she’d find useful?”

“Well …” It was true that while Agnes was pretty, amiable, kind, and willing, and had a certain shrewd perception born of experience, she wasn’t a natural student. Still, there was no telling what might happen to her, and I wanted her to be … safe.

“She should know enough arithmetic to be able to handle money,” I said, finally. “And she should have a little money to handle. Of her own.”

“Done,” Elspeth said quietly. “My son will settle a modest amount on her, independent of her husband—whoever that turns out to be,” she added, a little bleakly. “And I’ll see to her education myself.”

No one spoke for a moment, and I began to hear the normal sounds of the house, the clumps and squeaks and rattling and barking, and the sound of distant conversation that the tension of our discussion had blocked out.