"Really!" Callie favored him with a dry look. "And how do you plan to accomplish an exit, when half the county is loitering below looking for you?"

He returned a sardonic smile. "By the window."

"Oh, of course." She blinked, touching her hand gingerly to the bump on her head. The doctor's probing had only made it worse. She realized that her hair was falling down.

"Are you all right?" he asked. There was a peculiar tautness about his mouth.

"I am excessively put out with you!" she said, taking this as an invitation to vent her spleen. "You started that rout, didn't you? And you had those men helping to let the animals loose! Whatever possessed you to do such a thing? Any number of them might have been hurt or lost. And think of the prize pies!" She paused, her lip trembling. "Someone could have been killed! It was abominable of you."

"I'd not thought of the prize pies, I'll admit."

"Well, you should have. And the preserves and cheeses. I'm sure poor Mrs. Franklin is weeping her heart out right now, after Hubert threw a barrel through her pear tarts. She is a new bride, you know."

"No. I didn't know."

"And you haven't the least regret, have you?" Her resentment grew. "It's all quite a game to you, isn't it? You stroll into some unsuspecting town and cause a riot, and then you can't stay long." She stood up, holding on to the bedpost when the room had a tendency to rotate about her. "You just go away and leave the rest of us to put everything to rights."

"Yes," he said.

The fact that he stood there without defending himself only fed her wrath. "Why did you do it? You didn't warn me. You didn't stop and think. Surely there was some other way to reveal Hubert, something a little less—spectacular! I thought we were to do it on the last day of the fair."

"We were," he said shortly.

"Then why?" she demanded.

His lip curled. "I was angry."

"Angry?" She blinked. "At what?"

"You showed him the pig." There was a note of self-mockery in his voice.

"The pig?" She had no notion what he meant.

"And laughed at what he said. Of course I had to put a stop to that at once."

"The pig? Do you mean that fat sow?"

He gave a slight shrug of assent, like a schoolboy called up on the carpet.

"You started all that—you put us all in danger— because I laughed about a pig? Are you mad?" she exclaimed.

"It was our pig, do you see?" His voice rose to match hers. "God damn it. I haven't asked for much. Give me a goddamned pig at least."

She shook her head, bewildered. "It's not my pig."