“Another few months o’ this,” Lizzie said darkly, looking down at Rodney, who was nursing fiercely at her breast, tiny fists clenched with effort, “and I shall be able to do the same. I’ll tell Jo and Kezzie to fetch me back some hoops when they sell their hides, aye?”

In the midst of the laughter at this, the sound of a knock at the front door passed unnoticed—or would have, if not for Jemmy and Aidan, who had been playing in Jamie’s study, rushing into the kitchen to tell us about it.

“I’ll get it.” Bree set down her darning, but I was already on my feet.

“No, I’ll go.” I waved her back, picked up a candlestick, and went down the dark hallway, heart beating fast. Visitors after dark were almost always an emergency of one kind or another.

So was this one, though not any kind I might have expected. For a moment, I didn’t even recognize the tall woman who stood swaying on the stoop, white-faced and gaunt. Then she whispered, “Frau Fraser? I may—may I komm?” and fell into my arms.

The noise of it brought all the young women rushing to help, and we had Monika Berrisch—for it was indeed Mr. Wemyss’s putative bride—laid on the settle, covered with quilts, and plied with hot toddy in nothing flat.

She recovered quickly—there was nothing wrong with her, really, save exhaustion and hunger—she said she hadn’t eaten in three days—and within a short time, was able to sit up eating soup, and explain her astonishing presence.

“It wass my husband’s sister,” she said, closing her eyes in momentary bliss at the aroma of split-pea soup with ham. “She did not want me, effer, and when her husband had the bad accident and lost his wagon, so there was not so much money to keep us all, she did not want me more.”

She had, she said, yearned for Joseph, but had not had either the strength nor yet the means to withstand her family’s opposition and insist upon returning to him.

“Oh?” Lizzie was examining her in a close, but not unfriendly manner. “What happpened, then?”

Fraulein Berrisch turned large, gentle eyes on her.

“I could not bear it more,” she said simply. “I wish so much to be with Joseph. My husband’s sister, she wish me to be gone, so she will give a small bit of money. So I came,” she concluded, with a shrug, and took another small, greedy spoonful of soup.

“You … walked?” Brianna said. “From Halifax?”

Fraulein Berrisch nodded, licking the spoon, and put out a foot from under the quilts. Her shoes had worn entirely through at the sole; she had wrapped them with random scraps of leather and strips of fabric torn from her shift, so her feet looked like bundles of filthy rags.

“Elizabeth,” she said, looking earnestly at Lizzie. “I hope you do not mind I komm. Your father—he is hier? I hope so much he does not mind, too.”

“Umm, no,” I said, exchanging a glance with Lizzie. “He isn’t here—but I’m sure that he’ll be delighted to see you!”

“Oh?” Her gaunt face, which had shown alarm at hearing that Mr. Wemyss was not here, grew radiant when we told her where he was.

“Oh,” she breathed, clasping the spoon to her bosom as though it were Mr. Wemyss’s head. “Oh, mein Kavalier!” Beaming with joy, she looked round at all of us—and for the first time, noticed Rodney, snoozing in his basket at Lizzie’s feet.

“But who is this?” she cried, and leaned forward to look at him. Not quite asleep, Rodney opened round, dark eyes and regarded her with a solemn, sleepy interest.

“This is my wee bairnie. Rodney Joseph, he’s called—for my Da, ken?” Lizzie hoisted him out of his basket, chubby knees pulled up under his chin, and laid him gently in Monika’s arms.

She cooed over him in German, face alight.

“Granny lust,” Bree muttered to me, out of the side of her mouth, and I felt laughter bubble up under my stays. I hadn’t laughed since before Malva’s death, and found it balm to the spirit.

Lizzie was explaining earnestly to Monika the estrangement resulting from her unorthodox marriage, to which Monika was nodding, clicking her tongue in sympathetic understanding—and I did wonder how much of it she grasped—and talking baby-talk to Rodney all at once.

“Fat chance of Mr. Wemyss staying estranged,” I said out of the side of my own mouth. “Keep his new wife from her new grandson? Ha!”

“Yes, what’s a little matter of dual sons-in-law?” Bree agreed.

Amy was regarding the tender scene with a slight sense of wistfulness. She reached out and put an arm round Aidan’s skinny shoulders.

“Well, they do say, the more, the merrier,” she said.

86



PRIORITIES

THREE SHIRTS, AN EXTRA PAIR of decent breeches, two pair of stockings, one lisle, one silk—wait, where were the silk ones?

Brianna stepped to the door and called to her husband, who was industriously laying segments of clay pipe into the trench he had dug, assisted by Jemmy and Aidan.

“Roger! What have you done with your silk stockings?”

He paused, frowning, and rubbed his head. Then, handing the shovel to Aidan, he came across to the house, leaping over the open trench.

“I wore them last Sunday to preach, no?” he asked, reaching her. “What did I … oh.”

“Oh?” she said suspiciously, seeing his face change from puzzlement to guilt. “What’s ‘oh’?”

“Ahh … well, you’d stayed to home with Jem and his stomachache”—a tactically helpful ailment, greatly exaggerated in order to keep her from having to sit through two hours of staring and whispering—“so when Jocky Abernathy asked me would I care to go fishing with him …”

“Roger MacKenzie,” she said, fixing him with a look of wrath, “if you put your good silk stockings in a creel full of smelly fish and forgot them—”

“I’ll just nip up to the house and borrow a pair from your Da, shall I?” he said hurriedly. “I’m sure mine will turn up, somewhere.”

“So will your head,” she said. “Probably under a rock!”

That made him laugh, which was not what she had intended, but which had the effect of easing her temper.

“I’m sorry,” he said, leaning forward to kiss her forehead. “It’s probably Freudian.”

“Oh? And what does leaving your stockings wrapped around a dead trout symbolize?” she demanded.

“Generalized guilt and divided loyalties, I imagine,” he said, still joking, but not so much. “Bree—I’ve been thinking. I really don’t think I should go. I don’t need to—”

“Yes, you do,” she said, as firmly as possible. “Da says so, Mama says so, and so do I.”

“Oh, well, then.” He smiled, but she could see the uneasiness under his humor—the more so because she shared it. Malva Christie’s murder had caused an uproar on the Ridge—alarm, hysteria, suspicion, and finger-pointing in every direction. Several young men—Bobby Higgins among them—had simply disappeared from the Ridge, whether from a sense of guilt, or merely from a sense of self-preservation.

There had been accusations enough to go around; even she herself had come in for her share of gossip and suspicion, some of her unguarded remarks about Malva Christie having been repeated. But by far the greatest weight of suspicion rested squarely on her parents.

Both of them were doing their best to go about their daily business, grimly ignoring the gossip and the pointed looks—but it was getting harder; anyone could see that.

Roger had gone at once to visit the Christies—had gone every day since Malva’s death save for his hasty expedition to Halifax—had buried the girl with simplicity and tears—and had since worn himself out with being reasonable and soothing and firm to everyone else on the Ridge. He had immediately put aside his plan to go to Edenton for ordination, but Jamie, hearing of it, had insisted.

“You’ve done everything here you could possibly do,” Brianna said, for the hundredth time. “There’s nothing else you can do to help—and it might be years before you have another chance.”