“I am asking if you would like to walk.”

“With you?”

“I do not think it would cause a scandal.”

“And how,” he asked, “do I accept?”

“Tha,” she said.

“Tha.”

“Tha.”

He accepted.

They walked down the hill towards the sea. As they passed the diggers, Ranald raised a hand, a hook.

“He will take your letter to the boat?” asked Lacroix.

“It will be in Glasgow in two days. If anything can sail in this weather. I suppose they must row when there is no wind.”

As they reached the marram grass above the beach, they turned to walk parallel with the coast. The sun was overhead. Emily wore her hat of Italian straw (it was not in perfect condition but had survived from before the embargo and was Italian in truth rather than merely in style). She wore the green glasses and a dress with sleeves that ended in little frills or flounces above her elbows. They walked between two fields of green oats and came out on to the untilled machair. Moon daisies, buttercups, purple vetch. There were black cattle grazing here, lashing their tails and moving heavily over pools of flowers.

“Do you recognise your old mount?” asked Emily.

“My what?”

“The cow you rode ashore on.”

“Oh no. She was much grander. Horns set with topaz. Emeralds.”

She laughed, then said, “She should not be hard to find again. If you wished to leave.”

The ground was flat or almost flat yet she walked beside him as if picking her way across a marsh. Was fear of blindness her constant thought? And would this Rizzo be able to help her? A surgeon! A sawbones! It was bad enough to have them do your hands like poor Ranald, but to have them come at your eyes!

They walked a quarter-mile in silence. Two boys sitting up on the blackland waved to them and Lacroix waved back.

“Who is it?” she asked.

He told her. “Do you think they will know you?”

“I am sure they do,” she said. “And you also.”

“And when Thorpe arrives,” he said. “What will they make of him?”

“Of Thorpe? They will sit on his hand like sparrows.”

“He has no enemies, then? This marvellous Thorpe.”

“I did not say that.”

“And will there be a happy day with your sister?”

“You mean a wedding?”

“I suppose they must wish it.”

“Why? Because she is carrying his child? We are here, in part, to escape such conventions.”

Lacroix frowned at the flowers. He approved. He disapproved. He had not come across it before, not among polite people.

“Are you such a great believer in marriage, John?”

“Some people must find it pleasant. And society must depend on it in some way.”

“We are born into a world not of our own making,” she said. “We are told we must accept it. But why should we?”