“Culloden?” I said softly. “Has it come back again?” I actually hoped it was Culloden—and not Wentworth. He woke from the Wentworth dreams sweating and rigid and couldn’t bear to be touched. Last night, he hadn’t waked, but had jerked and moaned until I’d got my arms around him and he quieted, trembling in his sleep, head butted hard into my chest.
He shrugged a little and touched my face.
“It’s never left, Sassenach,” he said, just as softly. “It never will. But I sleep easier by your side.”
JUST FOR THE FUN OF IT
IT WAS A PERFECTLY ordinary red-brick building. Modest—no pediments, no carved stone lintels—but solid. Ian looked at it warily. The home of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, the weightiest meeting of the Society of Friends in the Americas. Aye, very solid.
“Will this be like the Vatican?” he asked Rachel. “Or more like an archbishop’s palace?”
She snorted.
“Does it look like any sort of palace to thee?” She spoke normally, but he could see the pulse beat quick in the soft spot just beneath her ear.
“It looks like a bank,” he said, and that made her laugh. She cut it short, though, glancing over her shoulder as though afraid someone might come out and scold her for it.
“What do they do in there?” he asked, curious. “Is it a great meetinghouse?”
“It is,” she said. “But there is also business to be done, thee knows. The yearly meetings deal with matters of . . . I suppose thee would call it principle. We call it Faith and Practice; there are books, rewritten every so often, to reflect the present sense of the meeting. And queries.” She smiled suddenly, and his heart gave a small extra thump. “I think thee would recognize the queries—they’re much like thee has described the examination of conscience before thy confession.”
“Och, aye,” he said agreeably, but declined to pursue the subject. He hadn’t been to confession in some years and didn’t feel sufficiently wicked at present to trouble about it. “This Faith and Practice—is that where they say ye mustn’t join the Continental army, even if ye dinna take up arms?”
He was immediately sorry he’d asked; the question dimmed the light in her eyes, but only momentarily. She drew a deep breath through her nose and looked up at him.
“No, that would be an opinion—a formal opinion. Friends talk over every possible point of consideration before they give an opinion—whether it’s a positive one or not.” There was the barest hesitation before “not,” but he heard it and, reaching out, pulled out her hatpin, gently straightened her straw hat, which had slid a little askew, and pushed the pin back in.
“And if in the end it’s not, and we canna find a meeting that will have us, lass—what will we do?”
Her lips pressed together, but she met his eyes straight on.
“Friends are not married by their meeting. Or by priest or preacher. They marry each other. And we will marry each other.” She swallowed. “Somehow.”
The small bubbles of misgiving that had been rising through his wame all morning began to pop, and he put a hand over his mouth to stifle a belch. Being nervous took him in the innards; he’d not been able to eat breakfast. He turned a little away, from politeness, and spied two figures coming round the far corner. “Och! There’s your brother now, and lookin’ gey fine for a Quaker, too.”
Denzell was dressed in the uniform of a Continental soldier and looked self-conscious as a hunting dog with a bow tied round its neck. Ian suppressed his amusement, though, merely nodding as his future brother-in-law drew to a stop before them. Denny’s betrothed had no such compunctions.
“Is he not beautiful?” Dottie crowed, standing back a little to admire him. Denzell coughed and pushed his spectacles up his nose. He was a tidy man, not over-tall, but broad in the shoulder and strong in the forearm. He did look fine in the uniform, Ian thought, and said so.
“I will try not to let my appearance engorge my vanity,” Denzell said dryly. “Is thee not also to be a soldier, Ian?”
Ian shook his head, smiling.
“Nay, Denny. I shouldna be any kind of soldier—but I’m a decent scout.” He saw Denzell’s eyes fix on his face, tracing the double line of tattooed dots that looped across both cheekbones.
“I expect thee would be.” A certain tenseness in Denny’s shoulders relaxed. “Scouts are not required to kill the enemy, are they?”
“No, we’ve our choice about it,” Ian assured him, straight-faced. “We can kill them if we like—but just for the fun of it, ken. It doesna really count.”
Denzell blinked for an instant at that, but Rachel and Dottie both laughed, and he reluctantly smiled.
“Thee is late, Denny,” Rachel said, as the public clock struck ten. “Was Henry in difficulty?” For Denzell and Dottie had gone to take farewell of Dottie’s brother, Henry, still convalescent from the surgery Denny and Ian’s auntie Claire had done.
“Thee might say so,” Dottie said, “but not from any physical ill.” The look of amusement faded from her face, though a faint gleam still lingered in her eyes. “He is in love with Mercy Woodcock.”
“His landlady? Love’s no usually a fatal condition, is it?” Ian asked, raising one brow.
“Not if thy name is neither Montague nor Capulet,” Denny said. “The difficulty is that while Mercy loves him in return, she may or may not still have a husband living.”