He frowned at her. “You and Wilde—”

“No,” she said shortly. “We did not. He was married.”

He is married, to Jemima Southern. Is it like this for them when they come together? The questions presented themselves and she pushed them away.

Simon let out a great sigh and lay down next to her, his hands crossed on his chest. “On a chair,” he said, shaking his head. “What a bloody great idiot am I.”

“Simon Ballentyne,” Lily said, turning on her side to face him. “If you're an idiot, what does that make me? Have you heard me complain?”

He sent her a sidelong glance. “Ye squealed like a grumfie.”

Tears sprang to her eyes and she brushed at them angrily. “What a disappointment I must have been, to make noise like a grumfie. Whatever that might be.”

He sat up so suddenly the bed rocked. “Listen to me now, Lily Bonner,” he said, every word pronounced very carefully. “It's myself I blame. You did nothing wrong.”

“And nothing right, either, it seems. You don't seem to have enjoyed it very much.” She was fishing not so much for praise but simple encouragement. Because, she admitted to herself, she wanted to ask him questions about this whole mystifying business.

“Och, I enjoyed it,” he said, smiling. “You just took me by surprise. I'm an aye fortunate man, Lily Bonner, to have been your first, but I regret the pain I caused you. I would have been more gentle, had I known.”

“Enough of that,” Lily said, irritated now and strangely heated, too, by the conversation. She said, “Do you always speak Scots when you're . . . you're . . .”

“‘Aroused' is the word I think you want.”

“Aroused.” She cursed herself for blushing.

He thought for a minute.

“I suppose Scots is what comes to me first when I'm in extremity of one kind or another. Surely when I'm angry, for English is far too weak a tongue when a man has a true temper on him. As far as this goes—” He ran a hand over her hip and rocked her a little. “That's a question you'll have to answer for yourself.”

“So no one has ever mentioned it to you before,” she said, a question of course and an impertinent one that he would not answer, she was sure. And yet she was curious.

He was looking at her, his brow creased. “Do you want to have that conversation, Lily? It's your right, though you might not like it, in the end.”

She pushed herself up on an elbow and the comforter fell away. Cold air made the flesh on her back rise into goose bumps.

“Sometime,” she said. “Not now.”

“But there is something you want to ask, is there no? I can see it on your face.” His hands had begun to explore beneath the bedclothes, light touches on the inside of her thigh that made her catch her breath and tense.

She struggled to make her tone casual. “It won't always hurt, will it?”

At that he loomed over her and showed her the dimples he had kept a secret for so long.

“No if we do it right.” And he lifted the blankets to crawl beneath them.

“Wait,” Lily said, breathless already. “First I want to know . . . what's a grumfie?”

He hid a smile against her breast; she could feel it, as surely as the warmth of his breath and the words he spoke against her skin.

“Shall we stop now and have a Scots lesson?”

And then he did her a real kindness: Simon Ballentyne pulled her down into the cave he had made for the two of them, and spared her from the embarrassment of an answer.

Chapter 18

Inquest regarding the Death of Cookie Fiddler,

Manumitted Slave and Servant

Officials present:

Circuit Judge Baldwin O'Brien

for the Northern District of Hamilton County

in the State of New-York

Constable Jedadiah McGarrity

Ethan Middleton, Esq., Recording Clerk

15th Day of January 1813

Paradise, New-York

Statement of Mrs. Anna McGarrity,

Constable's Wife

Claes Wilde may be a pure idiot for taking up with Jemima Kuick, but stupid ain't ever been a hanging offense and were it, why, none of you men would be sitting here in judgment on him for you'd all have gone to the gallows yourself long ago. It's the curse you bear, you men, being led around by—well, I don't suppose I need to say it plain. Claes has done himself a mischief, but he didn't raise a finger to hurt Cookie and I'd bet my good name on that.

It's Jemima you want to be asking about, for Jemima was here in Paradise and Nicholas was gone away to Johnstown, and that I know for a fact as he brought post back with him and the newspapers too, and a whole box of Elixir of Life, a favor to me, you see, for I do depend upon it as my husband there can tell you. Nicholas Wilde was gone and Jemima Kuick was here, and when he came back he found he was a widower without a housekeeper nor anybody to cook for him or look after his Callie. And just shortly after that it was, that Jemima started taking covered dishes over to the orchard house, she who never lifts a finger for a neighbor unless it's to scold. You listen to me, Baldy O'Brien, you had best let Nicholas Wilde go and look a little harder at his bride, for it was Jemima who profited from those deaths, and no one else. Motive and opportunity is what you're after, as I understand it. My husband there explained it to me. Motive and opportunity, and I ask you, who else but Jemima had them both in abundance?

Statement of Mr. Jan Kaes, Trapper & Veteran