Lacroix leaned at the rail. They were not, he knew, going to come in by the narrow opening the cattle boat had carried him through when he first arrived. They were going further north—were already further north—and would make their entrance through a labyrinth of islets that stood at the mouth of a loch better suited to a vessel the size of the Halcyon. It would make the land journey slightly longer but all distances on the island were small enough. They would sleep at the house, and in the morning . . . what? Leave with what they could carry? Get Ranald to borrow one of the kelper’s carts, return to the coast? If they left before it was light they might even get aboard the Halcyon again. But could so much be done so quickly? One sister pregnant, one blind or as good as. Not to mention Cornelius and the condition he might be in. And something in him jibbed at the thought of running from this Henderson. He was—unless he was already marked down on the muster roll as a deserter—still an officer in His Majesty’s Army, a regiment that thought itself among the best. He had charged French cavalry (only once, but he had done it). He had worn the uniform, the blue and the silver. Yet now he was planning to hide from a man whose idea of valour was the bullying and assault of an unarmed sailor in his house at night.

He found himself wishing—absurdly!—that Thorpe was present. Thorpe might have interesting ideas. And two men could mount guard in a way one could not. Cornelius would be useless, and Ranald, a man with no hands, should be kept well clear of it all. But Thorpe! His opinion of him was that he was a version of the mad cabinet-maker Emily had had for a father, a spouter of cod-wisdoms, a snare for credulous women. Or that was the opinion he would have offered to a stranger. Beneath it—the underweave—was some idea of him as remarkable, someone you gave the first place to, gratefully. A man who did not doubt himself.

They were close now. He went back to Emily, stood her up beside the ratlines. What he saw and recounted, she listened for.

“And are there people, John?”

“People?”

“Yes.”

“Two women in the company of a cow. And there’s a man on the pier. To take our ropes, I suppose. No one else.”