“… so we parked the kids with Mama and Mrs. Bug, and Marsali and I went to Salem—”

“Marsali? But she couldn’t be riding, surely?” Marsali was enormously pregnant, to the point that merely being around her made him slightly nervous, for fear she might go into labor at any moment.

“She isn’t due for a month. Besides, we didn’t ride; we took the wagon, and traded honey and cider and venison for cheese and quilts and—see my new teapot?” Proud, she waved at the pot, a homely squat thing with a red-brown glaze and yellow squiggly shapes painted round the middle. It was one of the uglier objects he’d ever seen, and the sight of it made tears come to his eyes from the sheer joy of being home.

“You don’t like it?” she said, a small frown forming between her brows.

“No, it’s great,” he said hoarsely. He fumbled for a handkerchief and blew his nose to hide his emotion. “Love it. You were saying … Marsali?”

“I was saying about the water pipes. But—there’s something about Marsali, too.” The frown deepened. “I’m afraid Fergus isn’t behaving very well.”

“No? What’s he doing? Having a mad affair with Mrs. Crombie?”

This suggestion was greeted with a withering look, but it didn’t last.

“He’s gone a lot, for one thing, leaving poor Marsali to mind the children and do all the work.”

“Totally normal, for the time,” he observed. “Most men do that. Your father does that. I do that; had ye not noticed?”

“I noticed,” she said, giving him a faintly evil look. “But what I mean is, most men do the heavy work, like plowing and planting, and let their wives manage the inside stuff, the cooking and the spinning and the weaving, and the laundry, and the preserving, and—well, anyway, all that stuff. But Marsali’s doing it all, plus the kids and the outdoor work, and working at the malting floor. And when Fergus is home, he’s grumpy and he drinks too much.”

This also sounded like normal behavior for the father of three small, wild children and the husband of a very pregnant wife, Roger thought, but didn’t say so.

“I’d not have thought Fergus a layabout,” he observed mildly. Bree shook her head, still frowning, and poured more tea into his mug.

“No, he’s not lazy, really. It’s hard for him, with only one hand; he really can’t handle some of the heavy chores—but he won’t help with the kids, or cook and clean while Marsali does them. Da and Ian help with the plowing, but … And he leaves for days on end—sometimes he’s picking up little jobs here and there, translating for a traveler—but mostly, he’s just gone. And …” She hesitated, darting a look at him as though wondering whether to go on.

“And?” he said obligingly. The tea was working; the pain in his throat was almost gone.

She looked down at the table, drawing invisible patterns on the oak with a forefinger.

“She didn’t say so … but I think he hits her.”

Roger felt a sudden weight on his heart. His first reaction was to dismiss the notion out of hand—but he had seen too much, living with the Reverend. Too many families, outwardly content and respectable, where the wives poked fun at their own “clumsiness,” brushing away concern at black eyes, broken noses, dislocated wrists. Too many men who dealt with the pressures of providing for a family by resorting to the bottle.

“Damn,” he said, feeling suddenly exhausted. He rubbed at his forehead, where a headache was starting.

“Why do you think so?” he asked bluntly. “Has she got marks?”

Bree nodded unhappily, still not looking up, though her finger had stilled.

“On her arm.” She wrapped a hand around her forearm, in illustration. “Little round bruises, like fingermarks. I saw when she reached up to get a bucket of honeycomb from the wagon and her sleeve fell back.”

He nodded, wishing there was something stronger than tea in his mug.

“Shall I talk to him, then, d’ye think?”

She did look up at him then, her eyes softening, though the look of worry remained.

“You know, most men wouldn’t offer to do that.”

“Well, it’s no my idea of fun,” he admitted. “But ye canna let that sort of thing go on, hoping it will cure itself. Someone has to say something.”

God knew what, though—or how. He was already regretting the offer, trying to think what the hell he could say. “So, Fergus, old man. Hear you’re beating your wife. Be a good fellow and stop that, okay?”

He drained the rest of his mug, and got up to look for the whisky.

“We’re out,” Brianna said, seeing his intent. “Mr. Wemyss had a cold.”

He put down the empty bottle with a sigh. She touched his arm delicately.

“We’re invited up to the Big House for supper. We could go early.” That was a cheering suggestion. Jamie invariably had a bottle of excellent single-malt, secreted somewhere on the premises.

“Aye, all right.” He took her cloak from the peg and swung it round her shoulders. “Hey. D’ye think I should mention the business about Fergus to your Da? Or best handle it myself?” He had a sudden, unworthy hope that Jamie would consider it his business and take care of the matter.

That seemed to be what Brianna was afraid of; she was shaking her head, simultaneously fluffing out her half-dried hair.

“No! I think Da would break his neck. And Fergus won’t be any good to Marsali if he’s dead.”

“Mmphm.” He accepted the inevitable, and opened the door for her. The big white house glowed on the hill above them, tranquil in the afternoon light, the big red spruce behind it a looming but benign presence; not for the first time, he felt that the tree was somehow guarding the house—and in his present fragile mental state, found that notion a comfort.

They made a short detour, so that he could properly admire the new pit and be told all about the internal workings of a groundhog kiln. He failed to follow these in any detail, only grasping the notion that the point was to make the inside very hot, but he found the flow of Brianna’s explanation soothing.

“… bricks for the chimney,” she was saying, pointing at the far end of the eight-foot pit, which at present resembled nothing so much as the resting place for an extremely large coffin. She’d made a nice, neat job of it so far, though; the corners were squared as though done with a instrument of some sort, and the walls painstakingly smoothed. He said as much, and she beamed at him, thumbing a lock of red hair behind her ear.

“It needs to be a lot deeper,” she said, “maybe another three feet. But the dirt here is really good for digging; it’s soft, but it doesn’t crumble too much. I hope I can finish the hole before it starts to snow, but I don’t know.” She rubbed a knuckle under her nose, squinting dubiously at the hole. “I really need to card and spin enough more wool to weave the fabric for winter shirts for you and Jem, but I’ll have to pick and preserve for the next week or so, and—”

“I’ll dig it for you.”

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him, just under the ear, and he laughed, suddenly feeling better.

“Not for this winter,” she said, taking him contentedly by the arm, “but eventually—I’m wondering if I can vent some of the heat from the kiln, and run it under the floor of the cabin. You know what a Roman hypocaust is?”

“I do.” He turned to eye the foundation of his domicile, a simple hollow base of fieldstone on which the log walls were built. The notion of central heating in a crude mountain cabin made him want to laugh, but there was really nothing impossible about it, he supposed. “You’d what? Run pipes of warm air through the foundation stones?”

“Yes. Always assuming I can actually make good pipes, which remains to be seen. What do you think?”

He glanced from the proposed project up the hill to the Big House. Even at this distance, a mound of dirt by the foundation was visible, evidence of the white sow’s burrowing capabilities.

“I think ye run a great danger of having that big white buggeress transfer her affections to us, if ye make a cozy warm den under our house.”