"Roast-beef hash, by choice," Moss said.

With a snort, Laura got to her feet. Moss stood up, too. As she always did, she consented that he carry the hamper back to the farmhouse. She rubbed that in, too: "I really would have no trouble with it, you know. It's not nearly as heavy as a bale of hay, and I haul those all the time."

"Well, up till you said that, I did feel useful," Moss confessed. "But don't worry about it-you've cured me."

She muttered something under her breath. Moss thought it was Mad Yank again, but couldn't be sure. She hurried on ahead of him and opened the kitchen door. He set the picnic basket on the counter next to the tin sink, which was full of water. She put the dirty dishes and bowls and glasses in the water, saying with her back to him, "They'll be frightful to clean if I let them dry."

"All right," he answered; that was also part of her routine.

When the picnic basket was empty, she turned and took a step toward him. He took a step toward her, too, which brought him close enough to put his arms around her. She was reaching for him, too, her face tilted up, her mouth waiting for his.

The first time that had happened, he'd taken her right there on the kitchen floor. They'd both been mad then. He was sure he'd hurt her, ramming home like a pile driver, again and again. She hadn't acted as if it hurt, though. She'd clawed his back to ribbons and yowled like a cat on a back fence and finally screamed out his name loud enough to rattle the windows. She'd gone without for a long time, and had done her best to make up for it all at once.

They weren't quite so frantic now, but they were hurrying when they went to her bedroom, hurrying when they undressed, hurrying when they lay down together. His hand closed on her breast. He teased her nipple with his thumb and forefinger. She sighed and pulled his head down to follow his fingers. Her breath sighed out. "Oh, Jonathan," she whispered.

She took him in hand, more roughly than any other woman he'd ever known. "Careful there," he gasped, both because he was afraid she'd hurt him and because he'd spurt his seed out onto her breasts and belly if she didn't ease up.

His own hand slid down to the joining of her legs. She was already wet and wanton, waiting for him. A few picnics hadn't come close to fully sating her, not when she hadn't seen her husband since early in the war. He wondered what he would have been like after abstaining for so long. He couldn't imagine. He couldn't come close. He knew women were different, but even so…

She pulled him over onto her. It wasn't the wild bucking and plunging of the first time they'd joined, but it was a long way from calm and sedate and gentle. She bit his shoulder hard enough to make him yelp. His hands dug into her backside, shoving her up as he thrust down. She wrapped her legs around him and did her best to squeeze him breathless.

She squeezed him inside her, too. He groaned and gasped and spent himself at the same instant as she cried out, wordlessly this time. "My God," he said, like a man waking from the delirium of the Spanish influenza. And he had been in a delirium, though one far more pleasant than the influenza brought.

Laura Secord's face was still slack with pleasure; a pink flush mottled her breasts. She shook her head, as if she too were returning to herself. "Which of us is going to the opium den?" she murmured. Before Moss could answer-if, indeed, he'd been able to find anything to say-she got out of bed and squatted over the chamber pot. A doctor friend of Moss' had once told him getting rid of the stuff like that did only a little good, because a woman couldn't get rid of all of it, but he supposed-he hoped-it was better than nothing.

Once that was done, she turned modest again, and dressed quickly and with her back to him. He got into his own clothes. "I'd better head back down to Berlin," he said.

"Empire, you mean," Laura Secord told him.

Moss laughed. They disagreed on so many things… but when their bodies joined, it wasn't sparks flying, it was thunder and lightning. He'd never known nor imagined anything like it. "I still say it's Berlin, and so does everybody else," he answered, "and if you don't like that, you can let me know about it, and maybe I'll come up here and argue about it."

"Would you like to come up here and argue about it next Sunday?" she asked. "You never can tell when the weather in these parts will change, but it should still be good then."

"Next Sunday?" Moss said. "I can do that." His pulse quickened at the thought of it. "As a matter of fact, I can hardly wait."

As the clock in Jeremiah Harmon's drugstore chimed six, Reggie Bartlett put on his coat and hat. "Where's the fire?" the druggist asked him. "Are you going to leave before you get paid?"

"Not likely, boss," Reggie answered. "My wallet's been whimpering at me for the last couple of days. Thank heaven it's finally Friday."

"Well, I've got the prescription a whimpering wallet needs," Harmon said. "Here you are, Reggie." He counted out banknotes, then added a coin. "One week's pay: seventeen dollars and fifty cents."

"Thank you." Bartlett put the notes in his wallet and the coin- he saw it was dated 1909-in his pocket. "And do you know what, boss? I'm happier, I'm a hell of a lot happier, to get this than I was when you paid me millions and millions every week a couple of months ago "

"Of course you are-you're a sensible fellow," Harmon said. "When I paid you millions and millions, three days after you got them they'd be worth even less than they were when I gave them to you. Seventeen-fifty's not a whole lot of money, Lord knows, but it'll still be worth seventeen-fifty next Friday."

"I hope it will, anyhow," Reggie said. "I don't think I'm ready to put any of it in the bank just yet, though. A lot of people who put money in the banks got wiped out after the war."

"And isn't that the sad and sorry truth?" his boss said. "I was lucky, as these things go: I got mine out while it was still worth something, anyhow, and I spent it on whatever I needed then, and ever since I've been living week to week and hand to mouth like everyone else."

"I never had enough in the bank to worry too much about what I lost," Reggie said. "If I can keep my head above water for a little while now…" The new money had been in circulation for six weeks, and was still holding its value against the U.S. dollar and the German mark. Maybe it would go on doing that.

"What do you think of President Burton Mitchel these days?" Harmon asked slyly. "Don't you wish you'd voted Whig in the election last fall?"

"Long as I didn't vote for Jake Featherston, who I did vote for doesn't matter a hell of a lot," Bartlett answered. "And Mitchel's had nothing but good luck since he got the job."

"I wouldn't say the way he got it was good luck," Harmon observed, his voice dry.

"Not for Wade Hampton V, that's for sure," Reggie agreed. "But good luck for the country? I reckon it is. Those wild men in the Freedom Party even got the damnyankees to feel sorry for us when they shot Hampton. Now that we aren't sending every dime in the country up to the USA, all the real money that's been hiding can come out again." He reached into his pocket. He hadn't had a half dollar in there for years. "And besides, Mitchel's got Congress eating out of the palm of his hand. Whatever he wants, they give him. Even the Freedom Party Congressmen have quit arguing with him."

"Maybe it's the sign of a guilty conscience, though I wouldn't have bet they were possessed of any such equipment," Harmon said. "I don't know how long the honeymoon will last, but Mitchel's making the most of it."

"Anything that makes the Freedom Party shut up is good in my book." Reggie touched a finger to the brim of his hat. With September heading into October, he'd traded in his flat-crowned straw for a fedora. "I'll see you tomorrow morning for my half-day."