"Are you in the habit of reading my mind these days, Boots? What is it that I think?"

"That I know something about the Leopard that I'm hiding from you."

"Do you?"

"That is what you're thinking!" She pulled away from him and rolled off the bed in a flurry, pausing just out of reach to smooth her skirt. When she looked up at him again, she had regained some of her composure.

"I once knew the captain of the Leopard, but that was seven years ago. He must have been posted elsewhere by now." And then, more slowly: "He was a friend of Will's."

Nathaniel sat up a little straighter. "Your cousin Will?"

She nodded. "But this must be simple coincidence, Nathaniel. It must be."

"Maybe so. But if it ain't--if you know the captain, and he knows you, is that good news for Hawkeye and Robbie, or bad?"

She let out a great sigh. "That's why I was hesitant to say anything, because I knew you would ask me that very question. The truth is, I don't know, Nathaniel. I truly don't know." And then: "If it is him, his name is Christian Fane."

She was anxious and skittish, and it worried him. But before he could even think how to ask the right questions to get to the bottom of it, Curiosity appeared at the inside door with one baby balanced on each hip. "Any news?"

Elizabeth smiled in relief and took Lily from her while Nathaniel told Curiosity the little they had learned.

"And the earl ain't got nothin' to add to that pitiful story?"

"We haven't seen him yet."

"Hmpf." Curiosity shook her head. "Is that scoundrel Stoker fixed on dying?"

Nathaniel said, "The Hakim got the bullet out of him. I expect he's tough enough to live through it."

"Good. Maybe he's the man to sail us home again."

"I don't know what's become of the Jackdaw," Elizabeth said. "The excisemen may have burned it."

Curiosity said, "Hawkeye will show up soon enough. There never was such a man for finding his way, and Robbie is cut from the same cloth. Don't you forget that, now."

Elizabeth sent her a thankful look. Curiosity might know of every tisane and poultice and healing tea, but she also understood that sometimes the right words were the most powerful medicine.

She stood over Nathaniel and touched a hand to his forehead. "Got to get some food into you," she said. "I hope they bring us something more than that little bit of jam and bread that Hannah left behind."

Elizabeth took some pillows from the bed to build a small fortress on the carpet. "I asked them to send up food," she said, propping Lily there and gesturing for Daniel so she could sit him opposite his sister. "Perhaps these two will amuse themselves while we eat."

"Where is Hannah?" Nathaniel asked.

"She went off with a little girl by the name of Jennet. Said they was goin' to do some exploring." Curiosity went to the windows and she stood there, leaning with one shoulder against the frame. "You see." She pointed. "There they go now, barefoot the both of them."

Elizabeth joined her at the window. Beyond the castle the mountains rose up, granite and heather against a smoke-blue sky. A beautiful day, but in the courtyard below, servants went about their business. Watermen at the well, a gardener with a muddy apron and a basket of greenery, a dairymaid arguing with a groom twice her size, jabbing her finger at him. And Hannah and the girl called Jennet were walking toward the stables just outside the gate, talking as they went.

"Who is she?"

"I don' know exactly, but she's a friendly little thing."

The two of them made a strange pair--one tall with long blue-black braids; the other quick and small and white-blond--and still they looked like little girls anywhere on a summer's day.

"Do you think it's safe to let her wander off?" Elizabeth asked.

"Yes I do," Curiosity said firmly. "Let her be a child for once."

There were men working young horses in the paddocks to the northwest corner of the castle, but what interested Hannah more was the woodland that began just beyond the stables and ran up to the top of the mountain called Aidan Rig. There were pines, juniper, birch and oak, and a stream winding through it all. Somewhere in the distance there was the sound of waterfalls. Hannah would have liked to see them, but Jennet had other ideas: she headed straight for a sprawling oak, threaded her skirt through the waistband of her apron to free her legs, and began to climb, talking to Hannah over her shoulder as she went.

"This is my favorite climbin' tree. I fell frae that branch"--she paused to point--"and broke my arm. But I was much younger then, and Simon was chasin' me at the time." She hopped from limb to limb until she arrived at the offending branch, where she settled herself with one arm slung companionably around the trunk.

"Are ye no' comin'?"

It had been many months since Hannah had climbed a tree and she wanted to follow Jennet very badly, but she cast a look back toward the gates.

"Ye needna fash yersel'," Jennet said. "We can see intae the courtyard frae here, should someone come lookin' for ye."

This was encouragement enough. She launched herself at the tree and in a minute she landed, a little winded, beside Jennet on a wide, flat branch. She wiggled her toes in the breeze and sniffed: pine sap and musk roses, woodbine and wild thyme, and no trace of salt water. The air hummed with bees at work, and she had never heard anything so musical.