“Thank you.” I sighed in bliss and leaned back against him. “And being an Inverness man, MacDonald thinks this Stuart will have a natural predisposition to employ other Highlanders?”

“That might depend upon whether Stuart’s ever met any of my kin,” Jamie said dryly. “But MacDonald thinks so, aye.” He kissed the top of my head in absent affection, then withdrew his hands and began untying the lace that bound his hair.

“Sit,” I said, stepping out of my fallen stays. “I’ll do it.”

He sat on the stool in his shirt, closing his eyes in momentary relaxation as I unbraided his hair. He’d worn it clubbed in a tight queue for riding, bound up for the last three days; I ran my hands up into the warm fiery mass as it unraveled from its plait, and the loosened waves of it spilled cinnamon and gold and silver in the firelight as I rubbed the pads of my fingers gently into his scalp.

“Gifts, you said. Does the Crown supply these gifts?” The Crown, I had noticed, had a bad habit of “honoring” men of substance with offices that required them to come up with large amounts of their own money.

“Theoretically.” He yawned hugely, broad shoulders slumping comfortably as I took up my hair brush and set about tidying him. “Oh, that’s nice. That’s why MacDonald thinks it a favor; there’s the possibility of doing well in trade.”

“Besides generally excellent opportunities for corruption. Yes, I see.” I worked for a few minutes before asking, “Will you do it?”

“I dinna ken. I must think a bit. Ye were mentioning Wild West—Brianna’s said such a thing, telling me about cowherds—”

“Cowboys.”

He waved off the correction. “And the Indians. That’s true, is it—what she says about the Indians?”

“If what she says is that they’ll be largely exterminated over the next century or so—yes, she’s right.” I smoothed his hair, then sat down on the bed facing him and set about brushing my own. “Does that trouble you?”

His brows drew together a little as he considered it, and he scratched absently at his chest, where the curly red-gold hairs showed at the open neck of his shirt.

“No,” he said slowly. “Not precisely. It’s not as though I should be doing them to death wi’ my own hands. But … we’re coming to it, are we not? The time when I must tread wi’ some care, if I’m to walk betwixt the fires.”

“I’m afraid we are,” I said, an uneasy tightness hovering between my shoulder blades. I saw what he meant, all too clearly. The battle lines were not clear yet—but they were being drawn. To become an Indian agent for the Crown was to appear to be a Loyalist—all very well for the moment, when the Rebel movement was no more than a radical fringe, with pockets of disaffection. But very, very dangerous, as we grew closer to the point where the disaffected seized power, and independence was declared.

Knowing the eventual outcome, Jamie dare not wait too long to ally himself to the Rebel side—but to do so too early was to risk arrest for treason. Not a good prospect for a man who was already a pardoned traitor.

“Of course,” I said diffidently, “if you were to be an Indian agent I suppose you might actually persuade some of the Indian tribes into supporting the American side—or staying neutral, at least.”

“I might,” he agreed, with a certain note of bleakness in his voice. “But putting aside any question as to the honor of such a course—that would help condemn them, no? Would the same thing happen to them in the end, d’ye think, if the English were to win?”

“They won’t,” I said, with a slight edge.

He glanced sharply at me.

“I do believe ye,” he said, with a similar edge. “I’ve reason to, aye?”

I nodded, my lips pressed together. I didn’t want to talk about the earlier Rising. I didn’t want to talk about the oncoming Revolution, either, but there was little choice about that.

“I don’t know,” I said, and took a deep breath. “No one can say—since it didn’t happen—but if I were to guess … then I think the Indians might quite possibly do better under British rule.” I smiled at him, a little ruefully.

“Believe it or not, the British Empire did—or will, I should say—generally manage to run its colonies without entirely exterminating the native people in them.”

“Bar the Hieland folk,” he said, very dryly. “Aye, I’ll take your word for it, Sassenach.”

He stood up, running a hand back through his hair, and I caught a glimpse of the tiny streak of white that ran through it, legacy of a bullet wound.

“You should talk to Roger about it,” I said. “He knows a great deal more than I do.”

He nodded, but didn’t reply, beyond a faint grimace.

“Where do you suppose Roger and Bree went, speaking of Roger?”

“To the MacGillivrays’, I suppose,” he replied, surprised. “To fetch wee Jem.”

“How do you know that?” I asked, equally surprised.

“When there’s mischief abroad, a man wants his family safe under his eye, ken?” He raised one brow at me, and reaching to the top of the wardrobe, took down his sword. He drew it halfway from its scabbard, then put it back and set the scabbard gently back in place, the sword loosened, hilt ready to hand.

He’d brought a loaded pistol upstairs with him; that was placed on the washstand by the window. The rifle and fowling piece too had been left loaded and primed, hanging from their hooks above the hearth downstairs. And, with a small ironic flourish, he drew the dirk from its belt sheath and slid it neatly under our pillow.

“Sometimes I forget,” I said a little wistfully, watching this. There had been a dirk under the pillow of our wedding couch—and under many a one since then.

“Do ye?” He smiled at that; a little lopsidedly, but he smiled.

“Don’t you? Ever?”

He shook his head, still smiling, though it had a rueful tinge.

“Sometimes I wish I did.”

This colloquy was interrupted by a spluttering snort across the hall, followed at once by a thrashing of bedclothes, violent oaths, and a sharp thump! as something—likely a shoe—struck the wall.

“Fucking cat!” bellowed Major MacDonald. I sat, hand pressed across my mouth, as the stomp of bare feet vibrated through the floorboards, succeeded briefly by the crash of the Major’s door, which flung open, then shut with a bang.

Jamie too had stood frozen for an instant. Now he moved, very delicately, and soundlessly eased our own door open. Adso, tail arrogantly Sshaped, strolled in. Magnificently ignoring us, he crossed the room, leapt lightly onto the washstand, and sat in the basin, where he stuck a back leg into the air and began calmly licking his testicles.

“I saw a man once in Paris who could do that,” Jamie remarked, observing this performance with interest.

“Are there people willing to pay to watch such things?” I assumed that no one was likely to engage in a public exhibition of that sort merely for the fun of it. Not in Paris, anyway.

“Well, it wasna the man, so much. More his female companion, who was likewise flexible.” He grinned at me, his eyes glinting blue in the candlelight. “Like watching worms mate, aye?”

“How fascinating,” I murmured. I glanced at the washstand, where Adso was now doing something even more indelicate. “You’re lucky the Major doesn’t sleep armed, cat. He might have potted you like a jugged hare.”

“Oh, I doubt that. Our Donald likely sleeps with a blade—but he kens well enough which side of his bread’s buttered. Ye wouldna be likely to give him breakfast, and he’d skewered your cat.”

I glanced toward the door. The mattress-heaving and muttered curses across the hall had died down; the Major, with the practiced ease of a professional soldier, was already well on his way back to dreamland.

“I suppose not. You were right about his worming his way into a position with the new governor. Which is the real reason for his desire for your political advancement, I imagine?”