Corporal Jackson was asleep now, too; I’d looked in twice before going to bed, and finding him the last time wakeful, feverish, and in what hospital personnel tactfully call “discomfort,” had given him a tea of willow bark and valerian, with a few drops of laudanum. His face was slack and calm, mouth a little open, breathing with a slight congestive sound. I put both hands gently on his leg; one below the plaster dressing, a thumb on the pulse in his ankle, and the other on his thigh. His flesh was still noticeably warm, but not alarmingly so. I could feel the pulse of his femoral artery, slow and strong, and felt my own pulse in the fingertips of the hand on his ankle. I stood still, breathing slowly, and felt the pulses equalize between my hands.

The slow beat of the mingled pulses made me think suddenly of Roger’s throat—and of Brianna’s heart. And then of William. So she’d met her brother, at last.

That thought made me smile and at the same time experience a deep pang of regret. I’d have given a great deal to see that meeting.

From John’s carefully composed letter, it had been clear that that meeting was what he really wanted. Not that he wouldn’t want to help Bree to a fat commission, or have her there for the sake of her own company—but I recognized the commission as being merely the shimmering fly on the surface of his pond. Jamie, who probably knew John a lot better than I did, quite clearly saw that, too—and yet he’d simply picked up the baited hook, examined it, and then deliberately swallowed it.

Yes, he’d needed guns, urgently. Yes, he wanted to restore Germain to his parents. To some extent, he probably also wanted Roger to be ordained. But I knew what he wanted most, and knew that John wanted it just as badly. They wanted William to be happy.

Clearly, neither one was in a position to help William come to terms with the fact that they’d both lied to him. Let alone help him pick up the pieces of his identity. Nobody could do that but William. But Brianna was a part of his identity and possibly something for him to hang on to while he fitted the rest of his life together.

Even more than I would have wanted to see the meeting between William and Bree—each knowing who the other was—I longed to see Jamie’s face watching such a meeting.

I shook my head and let the vision fade, listening to Corporal Jackson’s body and the whisper of sand through the hourglass (Agnes and Fanny were meant to change places every two hours, but neither one could stay awake that long), letting the peace of the night surgery flow into me. And from me, with luck, into the young man under my hands. I’d thought him older when I first saw him, but with the lines of tension, fear, and pain smoothed out of his face, it was clear that he wasn’t more than twenty-five.