“Friends of thine?” she said mildly.

“Ye might say so.” He stepped out in front of his wife, smiling at the . . . well, he wasn’t sure what they were just now, but they weren’t wee lassies any longer.

He’d thought they were boys when he’d met them: a pair of feral Dutch orphans named—they said—Herman and Vermin, and they thought their last name was Kuykendall. In the event, they’d turned out to be in actuality Hermione and Ermintrude. He’d found them a temporary refuge with . . . oh, Christ.

“God, please, no!” he said in Gaelic, causing Rachel to look at him in alarm.

Surely they weren’t still with . . . but they were. He saw the back of a very familiar head—and a still more familiar arse—over by the pickle barrel.

He glanced round quickly, but there was no way out. The Kuykendalls were approaching fast. He took a deep breath, commended his soul to God, and turned to his wife.

“Do ye by chance recall once tellin’ me that ye didna want to hear about every woman I’d bedded?”

“I do,” she said, giving him a deeply quizzical look. “Why?”

“Ah. Well . . .” He breathed deep and got it out just in time. “Ye said ye did want me to tell ye if we should ever meet anyone that I . . . er—”

“Ian Murray?” said Mrs. Sylvie, turning round. She came toward him, a look of pleasure on her rather plain, bespectacled face.

“Her,” Ian said hastily to Rachel, jerking his thumb in Mrs. Sylvie’s direction before turning to the lady.

“Mrs. Sylvie!” he said heartily, seizing her by both hands in case she might try to kiss him, as she had occasionally been wont to do upon their meeting. “I’m that pleased to see ye! And even more pleased to present ye to my . . . er . . . wife.” The word emerged in a slight croak, and he cleared his throat hard. “Rachel. Rachel, this is—”

“Friend Sylvie,” Rachel said. “Yes, I gathered as much. I’m pleased to know thee, Sylvie.” Her cheeks were somewhat flushed, but she spoke demurely, offering a hand in the Friends’ manner rather than bowing.

Mrs. Sylvie took in Rachel—and Oglethorpe—at a glance and smiled warmly through her steel-rimmed spectacles, shaking the offered hand.

“My pleasure entirely, I assure you, Mrs. Murray.” She gave Ian a sidelong look and a quivering twitch of the mouth that said as clearly as words, “You? You married a Quaker?”

“It is him! Toldja so!” The Kuykendalls surrounded him—he didn’t know how they managed it, there being only two of them, but he felt surrounded. Rather to his surprise, one of them seized him by the hand and wrung it fiercely.

“Herman Wurm,” he—he?—told Ian proudly. “Pleased to meetcha again, sir!”

“Worm?” Rachel murmured, watching them in fascination.

“Aye, Herman, I’m that fettled to see ye doing so . . . er . . . well. And you, too . . .” Ian extended a cautious hand toward what used to be Ermintrude, who responded in a high-pitched but noticeably gruff voice.

“Trask Wurm,” the youth said, repeating the vigorous handshake. “It’s German.”

“ ‘Wurm,’ they mean,” Mrs. Sylvie put in, pronouncing it “Vehrm.” She was pink with amusement. “They couldn’t ever get the hang of spelling ‘Kuykendall,’ so we gave it up and settled for something simpler. And as you’d made it quite clear that you didn’t want them to become prostitutes, we’ve reached a useful understanding. Herman and Trask provide protection for my . . . establishment.” She looked directly at Rachel, who went a shade pinker but smiled.

“Anybody messes with the girls, we’ll take care of him right smart,” the elder Wurm assured Ian.

“It’s not that hard,” the other said honestly. “Break just one of them bastards’ noses with a hoe handle and the rest of ’em settle right down.”

* * *

THERE WERE A dozen or so milch goats to choose from in the shed, in varying states of pregnancy. The Higginses had a good billy, though, so I needn’t trouble about that. I chose two friendly young unbred nannies, one all brown, the other brown and white, with an odd marking on her side that looked like the rounded fit of two jigsaw-puzzle pieces, one brown and one white.

I pointed out my choices to the young man in charge of the livestock and, as Jenny was still deliberating over her own choice, stepped outside to look over the chickens.

I had some hopes of spotting a Scots Dumpy but found only the usual run of Dominiques and Nankins. Well enough of their kind, but I thought I must wait until Jamie had time to build a chicken coop. And while we could lead the goats home easily enough, I wasn’t going to carry chickens for days.

I came out of the chicken yard and looked about, slightly disoriented. That’s when I saw him.

At first, I had no idea who he was. None. But the sight of the big, slow-moving man froze me in my tracks and my stomach curled up in instant panic.

No, I thought. No. He’s dead; they’re all dead.

He was a sloppily built man, with sloping shoulders and a protruding stomach that strained his threadbare waistcoat, but big. Big. I felt again the sense of sudden dread, of a big shadow coming out of the night beside me, nudging me, then rolling over me like a thundercloud, crushing me into the dirt and pine needles.

Martha.

A cold swept over me, in spite of the warm sunshine I stood in.

“Martha,” he’d said. He’d called me by his dead wife’s name and wept into my hair when he’d finished.

Martha. I had to be mistaken. That was my first conscious thought, stubbornly articulated, each word spoken aloud inside my mind, each word set in place like a little pile of stones, the first foundation of a bulwark. You. Are. Mistaken.

But I wasn’t. My skin knew that. It rippled, a live thing, hairs rising in recoil, in vain defense, for what could skin do to keep such things out?

You. Are. Mistaken!

But I wasn’t. My breasts knew that, tingling in outrage, engorged against their will by rough hands that squeezed and pinched.

My thighs knew it, too; the burn and weakness of muscles strained past bearing, the knots where punches and brutal thumbs left bruises that went to the bone, left a soreness that lingered when the bruises faded.

“You are mistaken,” I said, whispering but aloud. “Mistaken.”

But I wasn’t. The deep soft flesh between my legs knew it, slippery with the sudden helpless horror of recollection—and so did I.

* * *

I STOOD THERE hyperventilating for several moments before I realized that I was doing it, and stopped with a conscious effort. The man was making his way through the cluster of livestock sheds; he stopped by a pen of hogs and leaned on the fence, watching the gently heaving backs with an air of meditation. Another man employed in the same recreation spoke to him, and he replied. I was too far away to hear what was said, but I caught the timbre of his voice.

“Martha. I know you don’t want to, Martha, but you got to. I got to give it to you.”

I was not going to be bloody sick. I wasn’t. With that decision made, I calmed a little. I hadn’t let him or his companions kill my spirit at the time; whyever would I let him harm me now?

He moved away from the pigs, and I followed him. I wasn’t sure why I was following him but felt a strong compulsion to do so. I wasn’t afraid of him; logically, there was no reason to be. At the same time, my unreasoning body still felt the echoes of that night, of his flesh and fingers, and would have liked to run away. I wasn’t having that.

I followed him from pigs to chickens, back again to the pigs—he seemed interested in a young black-and-white sow; he pointed her out to the swineherd and seemed to be asking questions, but then shook his head in a dejected fashion and walked away. Too expensive?

I could find out who he is. The thought occurred to me, but I rejected it with a surprising sense of violence. I didn’t bloody want to know his name.

And yet . . . I followed him. He went into the main building and bought some tobacco. I realized that I knew he used tobacco; I’d smelled the sour ash of it on his breath. He was talking to the clerk who measured out his purchase, a slow, heavy voice. Whatever he was saying went on too long; the clerk began to look strained, his expression saying all too clearly, “We’re done here; go away. Please go away . . .” And a full five minutes later, relief was just as clearly marked on the clerk’s face as the man turned away to look at barrels full of nails.

I’d known from what he said to me that his wife was dead. From his appearance and the way he was boring everyone he talked to, I thought he hadn’t found another. He was plainly poor; that wasn’t unusual in the back-country. But he was also grubby and frayed, unshaven, and unkempt in a way that no man who lives with a woman normally is.

He passed within a yard of me as he went toward the door, his paper twist of tobacco and his bag of nails in one hand, a stick of barley sugar in the other. He was licking this with a large, wet tongue, his face showing a dim, vacant sort of pleasure in the taste. There was a small port-wine stain, a birth-mark, on the side of his jaw. He was crude, I thought. Lumpish. And the word came to me: feckless.

Christ, I thought, with a mild disgust, this mingled with an unwilling pity that made me even more disgusted. I had had some vague thought—and realized it only now—of confronting him, of walking up to him and demanding to know whether he knew me. But he had looked right at me as he passed me, without a sign of recognition on his face. Perhaps there was enough difference between what I looked like now—clean and combed, decently dressed—and what I had looked like the last time he had seen me: filthy, wild-haired, half naked, and beaten.

Perhaps he hadn’t really seen me at all at the time. It had been full dark when he came to me, tied and struggling for breath, trying to breathe through a broken nose. I hadn’t seen him.

Are you sure it’s really him? Yes, I bloody was. I was sure when I heard his voice and, even more so, having seen him, felt the rhythm of his bulky, shambling body.

No, I didn’t want to speak to him. What would be the point? And what would I say? Demand an apology? More than likely, he wouldn’t even remember having done it.

That thought made me snort with a bitter amusement.

“What’s funny, Grand-mère?” Germain had popped up by my elbow, holding two sticks of barley sugar.

“Just a thought,” I said. “Nothing important. Is Grannie Janet ready to go?”

“Aye, she sent me to look for ye. D’ye want one of these?” He generously extended a stick of candy toward me. My stomach flipped, thinking of the man’s large pink tongue lapping his treat.

“No, thank you,” I said. “Why don’t you take it home for Fanny? It would be wonderful exercise for her.” Clipping her frenulum hadn’t miraculously freed her speech, or even her ability to manipulate food; it just made such things possible, with work. Germain spent hours with her, the two of them sticking out their tongues at each other, wiggling them in all directions and giggling.

“Oh, I got a dozen sticks for Fanny,” Germain assured me. “And one each for Aidan, Orrie, and wee Rob, too.”

“That’s very generous, Germain,” I said, slightly surprised. “Er . . . what did you buy them with?”

“A beaver skin,” he replied, looking pleased with himself. “Mr. Kezzie Beardsley gave it to me for taking his young’uns down to the creek and minding ’em whilst he and Mrs. Beardsley had a lie-down.”

“A lie-down,” I repeated, my mouth twitching with the urge to laugh. “I see. All right. Let’s find Grannie Janet, then.”

* * *

IT TOOK NO little time to get organized for the journey back to the Ridge. It was a two-day ride; on foot, with goats, it would likely take four. But we had food and blankets, and the weather was fine. No one was in a hurry—certainly not the goats, who were inclined to pause for a quick mouthful of anything in reach.

The peace of the road and the company of my companions did a great deal to settle my disturbed feelings. Rachel’s imitation over supper of Ian’s expressions on suddenly meeting Mrs. Sylvie and the Wurms did even more, and I fell asleep by the fire within moments of lying down, and slept without dreaming.