The sound of small boys yelling in joy drifted across the water, and Fraser turned his head a little, listening. A faint smile touched his mouth, then he looked down into the moving water, seeming to grow still. The ropes of his hair stirred against the sunburned skin of his neck, in the same way that the leaves of the mountain ash moved above.

Roger wanted suddenly to ask Jamie whether he was afraid, but kept silence. He knew the answer, in any case.

It doesn’t matter. He breathed deep, and felt the same answer, to the same question, asked of himself. It didn’t seem to come from anywhere, but was just there inside him, as though he had been born with it, always known it.

It doesn’t matter. You will do it anyway.

They stayed for some time in silence. Jamie cast twice more with the green fly, then shook his head and muttered something, reeled it in, changed it for a Dun Fly, and cast again. The little boys charged past on the other bank, naked as eels, giggling, and disappeared through the bushes.

Really odd, Roger thought. He felt all right. Still having not the slightest idea what he meant to do, exactly, still seeing the drifting cloud coming toward them, and now knowing much more about what lay within it. But still all right.

Jamie had a fish on the line. He brought it in fast, and jerked it shining and flapping onto the bank, where he killed it with a sharp blow on a rock before tucking it into his creel.

“D’ye mean to turn Quaker?” Jamie asked seriously.

“No.” Roger was startled by the question. “Why do you ask that?”

Jamie made the odd little half-shrugging gesture that he sometimes used when uncomfortable about something, and didn’t speak again until he’d made the new cast.

“Ye said ye didna want Brianna to think ye coward. I’ve fought by the side of a priest before.” One side of his mouth turned up, wry. “Granted, he wasna much of a swordsman, the Monsignor, and he couldna hit the broad side of a barn wi’ a pistol—but he was game enough.”

“Oh.” Roger scratched the side of his jaw. “Aye, I take your meaning. No, I can’t fight with an army, I don’t think.” Saying it, he felt a sharp pang of regret. “But take up arms in defense of—of those who need it … I can square that with my conscience, aye.”

“That’s all right, then.”

Jamie reeled in the rest of the line, shook water from the fly, and stuck the hook back into his hat. Laying the line aside, he rummaged in the creel and pulled out a stoneware bottle. He sat down with a sigh, pulled the cork with his teeth, spat it into his hand, and offered Roger the bottle.

“It’s a thing Claire says to me, now and again,” he explained, and quoted: “Malt does more than Milton can, to justify God’s ways to man.”

Roger lifted an eyebrow.

“Ever read Milton?”

“A bit. She’s right about it.”

“Ye ken the next lines?” Roger lifted the bottle to his lips. “Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink, For fellows whom it hurts to think.”

A subterranean laugh moved through Fraser’s eyes.

“This must be whisky, then,” he said. “It only smells like beer.”

It was cool and dark and pleasantly bitter, and they passed the bottle to and fro, not saying much of anything, until the ale was gone. Jamie put the cork thriftily back in, and tucked the empty bottle away in the creel.

“Your wife,” he said thoughtfully, rising and hitching the strap of the creel onto his shoulder.

“Aye?” Roger picked up the battered hat, bestrewn with flies, and gave it to him. Jamie nodded thanks, and set it on his head.

“She has eyes, too.”

52



M-I-C-

FIREFLIES LIT THE GRASS, the trees, and floated through the heavy air in a profusion of cool green sparks. One lighted on Brianna’s knee; she watched it pulse, on-off, on-off, and listened to her husband telling her he meant to be a minister.

They were sitting on the stoop of their cabin as the dusk thickened into night. Across the big clearing, the whoops of small children at play sounded in the bushes, high and cheerful as hunting bats.

“You … uh … could say something,” Roger suggested. His head was turned, looking at her. There was enough light yet to see his face, expectant, slightly anxious.

“Well … give me a minute. I sort of wasn’t expecting this, you know?”

That was true, and it wasn’t. Certainly, she hadn’t consciously thought of such a thing, yet now that he’d stated his intentions—and he had, she thought; he wasn’t asking her permission—she wasn’t at all surprised. It was less a change than a recognition of something that had been there for some time—and in a way, it was a relief to see it and know it for what it was.

“Well,” she said, after a long moment of consideration, “I think that’s good.”

“Ye do.” The relief in his voice was palpable.

“Yes. If you’re helping all these women because God told you to, that’s better than doing it because you’d rather be with them than with me.”

“Bree! Ye can’t think that, that I—” He leaned closer, looking anxiously into her face. “Ye don’t, do you?”

“Well, only sometimes,” she admitted. “In my worse moments. Not most of the time.” He looked so anxious that she reached up and cupped her hand to the long curve of his cheek; the stubble of his beard was invisible in this light, but she could feel it, soft and tickling against her palm.

“You’re sure?” she said softly. He nodded, and she saw his throat move as he swallowed.

“I’m sure.”

“Are you afraid?”

He smiled a little at that.

“Yeah.”

“I’ll help,” she said firmly. “You tell me how, and I’ll help.”

He took a deep breath, his face lightening, though his smile was rueful.

“I don’t know how,” he said. “How to do it, I mean. Let alone what you might do. That’s what scares me.”

“Maybe not,” she said. “But you’ve been doing it, anyway, haven’t you? Do you need to do anything formal about this, though? Or can you just announce you’re a minister, like those TV preachers, and start taking up the collection right away?”

He smiled at the joke, but answered seriously.

“Bloody Romanist. Ye always think no one else has any claim to sacraments. We do, though. I’m thinking I’ll go to the Presbyterian Academy, see what I need to do about ordination. As for taking up the collection—I expect this means I’ll never be rich.”

“I sort of wasn’t expecting that, anyway,” she assured him gravely. “Don’t worry; I didn’t marry you for your money. If we need more, I’ll make it.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Not selling my body, probably. Not after what happened to Manfred.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” he said. His hand came down over hers, large and warm.

Aidan McCallum’s high, piercing voice floated through the air, and a sudden thought struck her.

“Your—your, um, flock …” The word struck her funny bone, and she giggled, despite the seriousness of the question. “Will they mind that I’m a Catholic?” She turned to him suddenly, another thought coming rapidly in its wake. “You don’t—you aren’t asking me to convert?”

“No, I’m not,” he said quickly, firmly. “Not in a million years. As for what they might think—or say—” His face twitched, caught between dismay and determination. “If they’re not willing to accept it, well … they can just go to hell, that’s all.”

She burst out laughing, and he followed her, his laugh cracked, but without restraint.

“The Minister’s Cat is an irreverent cat,” she teased. “And how do you say that in Gaelic?”

“I’ve no idea. But the Minister’s Cat is a relieved cat,” he added, still smiling. “I didn’t know what ye might think about it.”

“I’m not totally sure what I do think about it,” she admitted. She squeezed his hand lightly. “But I see that you’re happy.”

“It shows?” He smiled, and the last of the evening light glowed briefly in his eyes, a deep and lambent green.