“Dirt!” he shouted as loudly as he could. The wee buggers couldn’t have gone far; it took him less than two minutes to fill a bucket.

This call was answered, but not by the boys. A cold shadow fell over him, and he squinted up to see the silhouette of his father-in-law, stooping to grab the handle of the bucket. Jamie strode two paces and flung the dirt onto the slowly mounting heap, then came back, hopping down into the pit to return it.

“A tidy wee hole ye have here,” he said, turning round to survey it. “Ye could barbecue an ox in it.”

“I’ll need one. I’m starving.” Roger wiped a sleeve across his forehead; the spring day was cool and crisp, but he was drenched with sweat.

Jamie had picked up his shovel and was examining the blade with interest.

“I’ve never seen the like. Is it the lass’s work?”

“With a bit of help from Dai Jones, aye.” It had taken roughly thirty seconds’ work with an eighteenth-century shovel to convince Brianna that improvements could be made. It had taken three months to acquire a chunk of iron that could be shaped to her directions by the blacksmith and to persuade Dai Jones—who was Welsh and thus by definition stubborn—into doing it. The normal spade was made of wood, and looked like nothing so much as a roof shingle attached to a pole.

“May I try?” Enchanted, Jamie drove the pointed end of the new spade into the dirt at his feet.

“Be my guest.”

Roger scrambled up out of the deep part of the pit into the shallower end of the kiln. Jamie stood in the part where the fire would go, according to Brianna, with a chimney to be raised over it. Items to be fired would sit in the longer, relatively shallow part of the pit and be covered over. After a week of shoveling, Roger was less inclined to think the distant possibility of plumbing was worth all the labor involved, but Bree wanted it—and like her father, Bree was difficult to resist, though their methods varied.

Jamie shoveled briskly, tossing spadesful of dirt into the bucket, with small exclamations of delight and admiration at the ease and speed with which dirt could be dug. Despite his dim view of the occupation, Roger felt a sense of pride in his wife’s implement.

“First the wee matchsticks,” Jamie said, making a joke of it, “now shovels. What will she think of next?”

“I’m afraid to ask,” Roger said, with a tinge of rue that made Jamie laugh.

The bucket filled, Roger picked it up and took it to empty, while Jamie filled the second. And without spoken agreement, they continued the job, Jamie digging, Roger carrying, finishing in what seemed no time at all.

Jamie climbed out of the pit and joined Roger on the edge, looking down at their handiwork in satisfaction.

“And if it doesna work well as a kiln,” Jamie observed, “she can make a root cellar of it.”

“Waste not, want not,” Roger agreed. They stood looking down into the hole, the breeze chilly through their damp shirts now that they’d stopped moving.

“D’ye think ye might go back, you and the lass?” Jamie said. He spoke so casually that Roger missed his meaning at first, not catching on until he saw his father-in-law’s face, set in the imperturbable calm that—he’d learned to his cost—generally covered some strong emotion.

“Back,” he repeated uncertainly. Surely he didn’t mean—but of course he did. “Through the stones, do you mean?”

Jamie nodded, seeming to find some fascination in the walls of the pit, where drying grass rootlets hung in tangles, and the jagged edges of stones protruded from the patchy damp dirt.

“I’ve thought of it,” Roger said, after a pause. “We’ve thought. But …” He let his voice trail off, finding no good way to explain.

Jamie nodded again, though, as if he had. He supposed Jamie and Claire must have discussed it, even as he and Bree had, playing over the pros and cons. The dangers of the passage—and he did not underestimate those dangers, the more so in light of what Claire had told him about Donner and his comrades; what if he made it through—and Bree and Jem didn’t? It didn’t bear thinking.

Beyond that, if they all survived the passage, was the pain of separation—and he would admit that it would be painful for him, as well. Whatever its limitations or inconveniences, the Ridge was home.

Against those considerations, though, stood the dangers of the present time, for the four horsemen of the apocalypse rode widely here; it was no trick to catch a glimpse of pestilence or famine from the corner of your eye. And the pale horse and its rider were inclined to show up unexpectedly—and often.

But that’s what Jamie meant, of course, he realized belatedly.

“Because of the war, ye mean.”

“The O’Brians,” Jamie said quietly. “That will happen again, ken? Many times.”

It was spring now, not autumn, but the cold wind that touched his bones was the same as the one that had blown brown and golden leaves across the face of the little girl. Roger had a sudden vision of the two of them, Jamie and himself, standing now at the edge of this cavernous hole, like bedraggled mourners at a graveside. He turned his back on the pit, looking instead into the budding green of the chestnut trees.

“Ye know,” he said, after a moment’s silence, “when I first learned what—what Claire is, what we are, all about it—I thought, ‘How fascinating!’ To actually see history in the making, I mean. In all honesty, I maybe came as much for that as for Bree. Then, I mean.”

Jamie laughed shortly, turning round as well.

“Oh, aye, and is it? Fascinating?”

“More than I ever thought,” Roger assured him, with extreme dryness. “But why are ye asking now? I told ye a year ago that we’d stay.”

Jamie nodded, pursing his lips.

“Ye did. The thing is—I am thinking I must sell one or more of the gemstones.”

That brought Roger up a bit. He’d not consciously thought it, of course—but the knowledge that the gems were there, in case of need … He hadn’t realized what a sense of security that knowledge had held, until this moment.

“They’re yours to sell,” he replied, cautious. “Why now, though? Are things difficult?”

Jamie gave him an exceedingly wry look.

“Difficult,” he repeated. “Aye, ye could say that.” And proceeded to lay out the situation succinctly.

The marauders had destroyed not only a season’s whisky in the making, but also the malting shed, only now rebuilding. That meant no surplus of the lovely drink this year to sell or trade for necessities. There were twenty-two more tenant families on the Ridge to be mindful of, most of them struggling with a place and a profession that they could never have imagined, trying merely to keep alive long enough to learn how to stay that way.

“And then,” Jamie added grimly, “there’s MacDonald—speak o’ the devil.”

The Major himself had come out onto the stoop, his red coat bright in the morning sun. He was dressed for travel, Roger saw, booted and spurred, and wearing his wig, laced hat in hand.

“A flying visit, I see.”

Jamie made a small, uncouth noise.

“Long enough to tell me I must try to arrange the purchase of thirty muskets, with shot and powder—at my own expense, mind—to be repaid by the Crown, eventually,” he added, in a cynic tone that made it obvious how remote he considered this eventuality to be.

“Thirty muskets.” Roger contemplated that, pursing his own lips in a soundless whistle. Jamie had not been able even to afford to replace the rifle he had given Bird for his help in the matter of Brownsville.

Jamie shrugged.

“And then there are wee matters like the dowry I’ve promised Lizzie Wemyss—she’ll be wed this summer. And Marsali’s mother, Laoghaire—” He glanced warily at Roger, unsure how much he might know regarding Laoghaire. More than Jamie would be comfortable knowing, Roger thought, and tactfully kept his face blank.

“I owe a bit to her, for maintenance. We can live, aye, with what we’ve got—but for the rest … I must sell land, or the stones. And I willna give up the land.” His fingers drummed restlessly against his thigh, then stopped, as he raised his hand to wave to the Major, who had just spotted them across the clearing.