“Jem! There you are!” She scooped him up and buried her face in his hair, which smelled pleasantly of goats, hay, and spicy sausage. He was heavy, and more than solid.

Then Ute McGillivray turned and saw them. Her broad face was creased in a frown, but broke into a beam of delight at seeing them. People turned at her call of greeting, and they were engulfed at once by the crowd, everyone asking questions, expressing gratified surprise at their coming.

A few questions were asked about the Dutch family, but Kenny Lindsay had brought the news of the burning earlier; Brianna was glad of that. People clucked and shook their heads, but by now they had exhausted most of their horrified speculations, and were turning to other matters. The cold of the graves beneath the fir trees still lingered as a faint chill on her heart; she had no wish to make that experience real again by talking about it.

The newly engaged couple were seated together on a pair of upturned buckets, holding hands, faces blissful in the glow of the bonfire.

“I win,” Brianna said, smiling at sight of them. “Don’t they look happy?”

“They do,” Roger agreed. “I doubt Ronnie Sinclair is. Is he here?” He glanced round, and so did she, but the cooper was nowhere in sight.

“Wait—he’s in his shop,” she said, putting a hand on Roger’s wrist and nodding toward the small building on the opposite side of the road. There were no windows on this side of the cooper’s shop, but a faint glow showed round the edge of the closed door.

Roger glanced from the darkened shop to the convivial crowd round the fire; a good many of Ute’s relations had ridden over with the lucky bridegroom and his friends from Salem, bringing with them an immense barrel of black beer, which was adding to the festivities. The air was yeasty with the tang of hops.

By contrast, the cooper’s shop had a desolate, glowering sort of air about it. She wondered whether anyone around the fire had yet missed Ronnie Sinclair.

“I’ll go and have a bit of a blether with him, aye?” Roger touched her back in brief affection. “He could maybe use a sympathetic ear.”

“That and a stiff drink?” She nodded toward the house, where Robin McGillivray was visible through the open door, pouring what she assumed to be whisky for a select circle of friends.

“I imagine he will have managed that for himself,” Roger replied dryly. He left her, making his way around the convivial group by the fire. He disappeared in the dark, but then she saw the door of the cooper’s shop open, and Roger silhouetted briefly against the glow from within, his tall form blocking the light before vanishing inside.

“Wanna drink, Mama!” Jemmy was wriggling like a tadpole, trying to get down. She set him on the ground, and he was off like a shot, nearly upsetting a stout lady with a platter of corn fritters.

The aroma of the steaming fritters reminded her that she hadn’t had any supper, and she made her way after Jemmy to the table of food, where Lizzie, in her role as almost-daughter-of-the-house, helped her importantly to sauerkraut, sausages, smoked eggs, and something involving corn and squash.

“Where’s your sweetheart, Lizzie?” she asked, teasing. “Shouldn’t you be spooning with him?”

“Oh, him?” Lizzie looked like someone recalling a thing of vague general interest, but no immediate importance. “Manfred, ye mean? He’s … ower there.” She squinted against the glow of the fire, then pointed with her serving spoon. Manfred McGillivray, her own betrothed, was with three or four other young men, all with arms linked, swaying to and fro as they sang something in German. They appeared to have trouble remembering the words, as each verse dissolved into giggles and shoving accusations.

“Here, Schätzchen—that’s ‘sweetheart,’ ken, in German,” Lizzie explained, leaning down to give Jemmy a bite of sausage. He snapped the tidbit up like a starving seal and chewed industriously, then mumbled, “Wagga gink,” and wandered off into the night.

“Jem!” Brianna made to go after him, but was hampered by an oncoming crowd headed for the table.

“Ah, dinna fash yourself about him,” Lizzie assured her. “Everyone kens who he is; he’ll come to nay harm.”

She might still have gone after him, save that she saw a small blond head pop up beside Jem’s. Germain, Jem’s bosom friend. Germain was two years older, and had a great deal more worldly knowledge than the average five-year-old, thanks in great part to his father’s tutelage. She did hope he wasn’t picking pockets in the crowd, and made a mental note to frisk him for contraband, later.

Germain had Jem firmly by the hand, so she allowed herself to be persuaded to sit down with Lizzie, Inga, and Hilda, on the bales of straw that had been placed a little way from the fire.

“Und where’s your sweetheart, then?” teased Hilda. “Yon big bonny black devil?”

“Oh, him?” Brianna said, mimicking Lizzie, and they all broke into rather unladylike roars of laughter; evidently the beer had been making the rounds for some time.

“He’s comforting Ronnie,” she said, with a nod toward the darkened cooper’s shop. “Is your mother upset about Senga’s choice?”

“Och, aye,” said Inga, rolling her eyes with great expressiveness. “Should ha’ heard them at it, her and Senga. Hammer and tongs, hammer and tongs. Da went out to the fishing, and stayed awa’ three days.”

Brianna ducked her head to hide a grin. Robin McGillivray liked a peaceful life, something he was never likely to enjoy in the company of his wife and daughters.

“Ah, well,” Hilda said philosophically, leaning back a little to ease the strain of her first pregnancy, which was well advanced. “She couldna really say so much, meine Mutter. Heinrich’s her own cousin’s son, after all. Even if he is poor.”

“But young,” Inga added practically. “Da says Heinrich will have time to get rich.” Ronnie Sinclair wasn’t precisely rich—and he was thirty years older than Senga. On the other hand, he did own both his cooper’s shop and half of the house in which he and the McGillivrays lived. And Ute, having shepherded both her elder daughters to solid marriages with men of property, had obviously seen the advantages of a match between Senga and Ronnie.

“I can see that it might be a little awkward,” Brianna said tactfully. “Ronnie going on living with your family, after—” She nodded at the betrothed couple, who were feeding each other bits of cake.

“Hoo!” Hilda exclaimed, rolling her eyes. “I’m that glad not to be living here!”

Inga nodded vigorous agreement, but added, “Well, but Mutti isna the one to be greetin’ over spilt milk. She’s got an eye out for a wife for Ronnie. Just watch her.” She nodded toward the food table, where Ute was chatting and smiling with a group of German women.

“Who d’ye think it is she has picked out?” Inga asked her sister, eyes narrowed as she watched her mother operate. “That wee Gretchen? Or your Archie’s cousin, maybe? The walleyed one—Seona?”

Hilda, married to a Scot from Surry County, shook her head at this.

“She’ll want a German girl,” she objected. “For she’ll be thinkin’ of what will happen if Ronnie dies, and the wife marries again. If it’s a German girl, chances are Mama can bully her into a new marriage with one of her nephews or cousins—keep the property in the family, aye?”

Brianna listened with fascination as the girls discussed the situation, with perfect matter-of-factness—and wondered whether Ronnie Sinclair had the slightest idea that his fate was being decided in this pragmatic fashion. But he’d been living with the McGillivrays for more than a year, she reasoned; he must have some idea of Ute’s methods.

Thanking God silently that she was not herself compelled to live in the same house with the redoubtable Frau McGillivray, she looked round for Lizzie, feeling a pang of sympathy for her erstwhile bondmaid. Lizzie would be living with Ute, once her marriage to Manfred took place next year.