“You don’t know that.” She raised up suddenly, looming like an obelisk in silhouette against the pale rectangle of the window. Swinging one leg neatly over his supine body, she slithered down beside him. “It could be me. Or neither of us. Maybe it just isn’t the right time, yet.”

He put an arm around her and hugged her close in answer.

“Whatever the cause, we’ll not blame each other, aye?” She made a small sound of assent and nestled closer. Well enough; there was no way to keep from blaming himself, though.

The facts were clear enough; she’d got pregnant with Jemmy after one night—whether with himself, or Stephen Bonnet, no one knew, but once was all it took. Whereas they’d been trying for the last several months, and Jem was looking more and more like being an only child. Possibly he did lack the vital spark, as Mrs. Bug and her chums speculated.

Who’s your Daddy? echoed mockingly in the back of his mind—in an Irish accent.

He coughed explosively, and settled back, determined not to dwell on that little matter.

“Well, I’m sorry, too,” he said, changing the subject. “Ye’re maybe right about me acting like I’d rather ye cook and clean than mess about with your wee chemistry set.”

“Only because you would,” she said without rancor.

“It’s not so much the not cooking as it is the setting things on fire I mind.”

“Well, you’ll love the next project, then,” she said, nuzzling his shoulder. “It’s mostly water.”

“Oh … good,” he said, though even he could hear the dubious note in his voice. “Mostly?”

“There’s some dirt involved, too.”

“Nothing that burns?”

“Just wood. A little. Nothing special.”

She was running her fingers slowly down his chest. He caught her hand and kissed her fingertips; they were smooth, but hard, callused from the constant spinning she did to help keep them clothed.

“Who can find a virtuous woman?” he quoted, “for her price is far above rubies. She seeketh wool and flax and worketh willingly with her hands. She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple.”

“I would love to find some dye plant that gives a true purple,” she said wistfully. “I miss the bright colors. Remember the dress I wore to the man-on-the-moon party? The black one, with the bands of Day-Glo pink and lime green?”

“That was pretty memorable, aye.” Privately, he thought the muted colors of homespun suited her much better; in skirts of rust and brown, jackets of gray and green, she looked like some exotic, lovely lichen.

Seized by the sudden desire to see her, he reached out, fumbling on the table by the bed. The little box was where she’d thrown it when they came back. She’d designed it to be used in the dark, after all; a turn of the lid dispensed one of the small, waxy sticks, and the tiny strip of roughened metal glued to the side was cool to his hand.

A skritch! that made his heart leap with its simple familiarity, and the tiny flame appeared with a whiff of sulfur—magic.

“Don’t waste them,” she said, but smiled in spite of the protest, delighted at the sight as she’d been when she first showed him what she’d done.

Her hair was loose and clean, just washed; shimmering over the pale round of her shoulder, clouds of it lying soft over his chest, cinnamon and amber and roan and gold, sparked by the flame.

“She does not fear the snow for her household, for all her household are clothed in scarlet,” he said softly, his free hand round her, twining a lock near her face round his finger, twisting the tiny strand as he’d seen her spin yarn.

The long lids of her eyes closed halfway, like a basking cat’s, but the smile remained on that wide, soft mouth—those lips that hurt, then healed. The light glowed in her skin, bronzed the tiny brown mole beneath her right ear. He could have watched her forever, but the match was burning low. Just before the flame touched his fingers, she leaned forward and blew it out.

And in the smoke-wisped dark, whispered in his ear, “The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life. So there.”

22



ENSORCELLMENT

TOM CHRISTIE didn’t come back to the surgery, but he did send his daughter, Malva, to get the ointment. The girl was dark-haired, slender, and quiet, but seemed intelligent. She paid close attention as I quizzed her on the look of the wound—so far, so good, a bit of redness, but no suppuration, no reddish streaks up the arm—and gave her instructions on how to apply the ointment and change the dressing.

“Good, then,” I said, giving her the jar. “If he should begin a fever, come and fetch me. Otherwise, make him come in a week, to have the stitches taken out.”

“Yes, ma’am, I’ll do that.” She didn’t turn and go, though, but lingered, her gaze flickering over the mounds of drying herbs on the gauze racks and the implements of my surgery.

“Do you need something else, dear? Or did you have a question?” She’d seemed to understand my instructions perfectly well—but perhaps she wanted to ask something more personal. After all, she had no mother . .

“Well, aye,” she said, and nodded at the table. “I only wondered—what is it that ye write in yon black book, ma’am?”

“This? Oh. It’s my surgical notes, and recipes … er … receipts, I mean, for medicines. See?” I turned the book round and opened it so that she could see the page where I had drawn a sketch of the damage to Miss Mouse’s teeth.

Malva’s gray eyes were bright with curiosity, and she leaned forward to read, hands carefully folded behind her back as though afraid she might touch the book by accident.

“It’s all right,” I said, a little amused by her caution. “You can look through it, if you like.” I pushed it toward her, and she stepped back, startled. She glanced up at me, a look of doubt wrinkling her brow, but when I smiled at her, she took a tiny, excited breath, and reached out to turn a page.

“Oh, look!” The page she’d turned to wasn’t one of mine, but one of Daniel Rawlings’s—it showed the removal of a dead child from the uterus, via the use of assorted tools of dilatation and curettage. I glanced at the page, and hastily away. Rawlings hadn’t been an artist, but he had had a brutal knack for rendering the reality of a situation.

Malva didn’t seem to be distressed by the drawings, though; she was bug-eyed with interest.

I began to be interested, too, watching covertly as she turned pages at random. She naturally paid most attention to the drawings—but she paused to read the descriptions and recipes, as well.

“Why d’ye write things down that ye’ve done?” she asked, glancing up with raised eyebrows. “The receipts, aye, I see ye might forget things—but why d’ye draw these pictures and write down the bits about how ye took off a toe wi’ the frost-rot? Would ye do it differently, another time?”

“Well, sometimes you might,” I said, laying aside the stalk of dried rosemary I’d been stripping of its needles. “Surgery isn’t the same each time. All bodies are a bit different, and even though you may do the same basic procedure a dozen times, there will be a dozen things that happen differently—sometimes only tiny things, sometimes big ones.

“But I keep a record of what I’ve done for several reasons,” I added, pushing back my stool and coming round the table to stand beside her. I turned another few pages, stopping at the record I kept of old Grannie MacBeth’s complaints—a list so extensive that I had alphabetized it for my own convenience, beginning with Arthritis—all joints, running through Dyspepsia, Earache, and Fainting, and then onward for most of two pages, terminating with Womb, prolapsed.

“Partly, it’s so that I’ll know what’s been done for a particular person, and what happened—so that if they need treatment later, I can look back and have an accurate description of their earlier state. To compare, you see?”