Beyond that, though … nothing more was said in the Book (for he couldn’t help thinking of it as that) regarding Locke until a skirmish at a place called Colson’s Mill in the following year. Kings Mountain lay between now and then, casting its long shadow in his direction. And Jamie couldn’t leave the Ridge undefended for any great span of time, regardless. He knew there were still Tories amongst his tenants, and he thought of Nicodemus Partland. He’d heard of no further attempts, but was well aware that almost anything—or anyone—could come over the Cherokee Line without his knowing.

He sighed, tucked the letter into his pocket, and, unable to sit still with his thoughts, walked up the hill to Claire’s garden, not meaning to tell her about Locke’s letter and his thoughts—just wanting the momentary comfort of her presence.

She wasn’t there, and he hesitated inside the gate, but then closed it after him and walked slowly toward the row of hives. He’d built a long bench for her, and there were nine hives now on it, humming peacefully in the autumn sun. Some of them were the coiled-straw skeps, but Brianna had built three boxes, too, with wooden frames inside and a sort of drain to make harvesting the honey easier.

Something was in the back of his mind, a poem Claire had told him once, about nines and bees. Only a bit of it had stuck: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, and live alone in the bee-loud glade. The number nine always made him wary, owing to his meeting with an old Parisian fortune-teller.

“You’ll die nine times before your death,” she’d told him. Claire had tried, now and then, to reckon the times he should have died but hadn’t. He seldom did, having a superstitious fear about attracting misfortune by dwelling on it.

The bees were about their business. The air was full of them, the late sun catching their wings and making them glisk like sparks among the green of the garden. There were some tattered sunflowers along one wall, their seeds like gray pebbles, along with sedum and cosmos. Purple gentians—he recognized those, because Claire made an ointment out of them that she’d used on him more than once, and had brought some back from Wilmington and coddled it here in a sandy spot she’d made for it. He’d dug the sand for her and smiled at the pale splotch of soil among the darker loam. The bees seemed to be liking the goldenrod—but Claire said they were hunting mostly in the woods and meadows now.