Jamie was on his feet at once. He pulled the finger from its resting-place with a moist, sucking noise, then tilted back Ian’s head, peering urgently up his nose with his one good eye.

“Bring a light, Sassenach, will ye?”

There was a candlestick on the table, but I knew from experience that the only likely effect of using a candle to look up someone’s nose was to set their nose hairs on fire. Instead, I bent and pulled my medical kit out from under the settle where I had stowed it.

“I’ll get it,” I said, with the confidence of one who has removed everything from cherry pits to live insects from the nasal cavities of small children. I drew out my longest pair of thin forceps, and clicked the slender blades together in token of assurance. “Whatever it is. Just keep quite still, Ian.”

The whites of Ian’s eyes showed briefly in alarm as he looked at the shining metal of the forceps, and he looked pleadingly at Jamie.

“Wait. I’ve a better idea.” Jamie laid a quelling hand on my arm for an instant, then disappeared out the door. He thundered downstairs, and I heard a sudden burst of laughter from below, as the door to the taproom opened. The sound was as suddenly cut off as the door closed, like the valve on a faucet.

“Are you all right, Ian?” There was a smear of red on his upper lip; his nose was beginning to bleed, aggravated by his jabbings and pokings.

“Well, I do hope so, Auntie.” His original jubilation was beginning to be replaced by a certain expression of worry. “Ye dinna think I can have pushed it into my brain, do ye?”

“I think it very unlikely. What on earth—”

But the door below had opened and closed again, spilling another brief spurt of talk and laughter into the stairwell. Jamie took the stairs two at a time and popped back into the room, smelling of hot bread and ale, and holding a small, battered snuffbox in his hand.

Ian seized on this with gratitude and, sprinkling a quick pinch of black, dusty grains on the back of his hand, hastily inhaled it.

For an instant, all three of us held breathless—and then it came, a sneeze of gargantuan proportions that rocked Ian’s body back on its stool, even as his head flew forward—and a small, hard object struck the table with a ping! and bounced off into the hearth.

Ian went on sneezing, in a fusillade of hapless snorts and explosions, but Jamie and I were both on our knees, scrabbling in the ashes, heedless of filth.

“I’ve got it! I think,” I added, sitting back on my heels and peering at the handful of ashes I held, in the midst of which was a small, round, dust-covered object.

“Aye, that’s it.” Jamie seized my neglected forceps from the table, plucked the object delicately from my hand, and dropped it into my glass of water. A delicate plume of ash and soot floated up through the water to form a dusty gray film on the surface. Below, the object glittered up at us, serene and glowing, its beauty at last revealed. A faceted clear stone, the color of golden sherry, half the size of my thumbnail.

“Chrysoberyl,” Jamie said softly, a hand on my back. He looked at Mandy’s basket, the silky black curls lifting gently in the breeze. “D’ye think it will serve?”

Ian, still wheezing and watery-eyed, and with a red-stained handkerchief pressed to his much-abused proboscis, came to look over my other shoulder.

“Half-wit, is it?” he said in tones of deep satisfaction. “Ha!”

“Wherever did you get that? Or rather,” I corrected myself, “who did you steal it from?”

“Neil Forbes.” Jamie picked the gem up, turning it gently over in his fingers. “There were a good deal more o’ the Chowder Society than there were of us, so we ran down the street and round the corner, down between the warehouses there.”

“I kent Forbes’s place, aye, because I’d been there before,” Ian put in. One of Mandy’s feet was sticking up out of the basket; he touched the sole of it with a fingertip, and smiled to see her toes extend in reflex. “There was a great hole in the back where someone had broken down the wall, just covered over with a sheet of canvas, nailed over it, like. So we pulled it loose and ducked inside.”

Where they had found themselves standing next to the small enclosed space Forbes used for an office—and for the moment, deserted.

“It was sitting in a bittie wee box on the desk,” Ian said, coming to look proprietorially at the chrysoberyl. “Just sitting there! I’d just picked it up to look at, when we hear the watchman coming. So—” He shrugged and smiled at me, happiness momentarily transforming his homely features.

“And you think the watchman won’t tell him you were there?” I asked skeptically. The two of them could scarcely be more conspicuous.

“Oh, I imagine he will.” Jamie bent over Mandy’s basket, holding the chrysoberyl between thumb and forefinger. “Look what Grandda and Uncle Ian have brought ye, a muirninn,” he said softly.

“We decided that it was a small enough ransom to pay for what he did to Brianna,” Ian said, sobering somewhat. “I expect Mr. Forbes may feel it reasonable, too. And if not—” He smiled again, though not with happiness, and put his hand to his knife. “He’s got another ear, after all.”

Very slowly, a tiny fist rose through the netting, fingers flexing as they grasped at the stone.

“Is she still asleep?” I whispered. Jamie nodded, and gently withdrew the stone.

On the far side of the table, the fish stared austerely at the ceiling, ignoring everything.

116



THE NINTH EARL

OF ELLESMERE

July 9, 1776

THE WATER WON’T BE COLD.”

She’d spoken automatically, without thinking.

“I shouldn’t think that will matter much.” A nerve jumped in Roger’s cheek, and he turned away abruptly. She reached out, touching him delicately, as though he were a bomb that might explode if jarred. He glanced at her, hesitated, then took the hand she offered him, with a small, crooked smile.

“Sorry,” he said.

“I’m sorry, too,” she said softly. They stood close together, fingers knotted, watching the tide recede across the narrow beach, a fraction of an inch uncovered with each lap of the tiny waves.

The flats were gray and bleak in the evening light, pebble-strewn and rust-stained from the peaty waters of the river. With the tide going out, the harbor water was brown and feculent, the stain reaching past the ships at anchor, nearly to the open sea. When it turned, the clear gray water of the ocean would flow in, sweeping up the Cape Fear, obliterating the mudflats and everything on them.

“Over there,” she said, still softly, though there was no one near enough to hear them. She tilted her head, indicating a group of weathered mooring posts driven deep into the mud. A skiff was tied to one; two of the pirettas, the four-oared “dragonflies” that plied the harbor, to another.

“You’re sure?” He shifted his weight, glancing up and down the shore.

The narrow beach fell away into cold pebbles, exposed and gleaming with the leaving of the tide. Small crabs skittered hastily among them, not to waste a moment’s gleaning.

“I’m sure. People in the Blue Boar were talking about it. A traveler asked where, and Mrs. Smoots said it was the old mooring posts, near the warehouses.” A torn flounder lay dead among the rocks, white flesh washed clean and bloodless. The small busy claws picked and shredded, tiny maws gaped and gulped, pinching at morsels. She felt her gorge rise at the sight, and swallowed hard. It wouldn’t matter what came after; she knew that. But still …

Roger nodded absently. His eyes narrowed against the harbor wind, calculating distances.

“There’ll be quite a crowd, I expect.”

There already was one; the turn of the tide wouldn’t be for an hour or more, but people were drifting down to the harbor in twos and threes and fours, standing in the lee of the chandlery to smoke their pipes, sitting on the barrels of salt fish to talk and gesture. Mrs. Smoots had been right; several were pointing out the mooring posts to their less knowledgeable companions.