I could see assorted questions and responses flickering through her mind, all based on a growing fear that this mania of mine for rotten food was expanding, and would soon engulf the entire output of the kitchen. Her eyes darted toward the pie safe, then back at me, dark with suspicion.
I turned my head to hide a smile, and found Adso the kitten balanced on his hind legs on the bench, foreclaws anchored in the tabletop, his big green eyes watching the movements of the ladle with fascination.
“Oh, you want some, too?” I reached for a saucer from the shelf and filled it with a dark puddle of broth, savory with bits of goose meat and floating fat globules.
“This is from my half,” I assured Mrs. Bug, but she shook her head vigorously.
“Not a bit of it, Mrs. Fraser,” she said. “The bonnie wee laddie’s caught six mice in here in the past two days.” She beamed fondly at Adso, who had leaped down and was lapping broth as fast as his tiny pink tongue could move. “Yon cheetie’s welcome to anything he likes from my hearth.”
“Oh, has he? Splendid. He can come and have a go at the ones in my surgery, then.” We were presently entertaining a plague of mice; driven indoors by cold weather, they skittered along the baseboards like shadows after nightfall, and even in broad daylight, shot suddenly across floors and leaped out of opened cupboards, causing minor heart failure and broken dishes.
“Well, ye can scarcely blame the mice,” Mrs. Bug observed, darting a quick glance at me. “They go where the food is, after all.”
The pool of broth had nearly drained through the muslim, leaving a thick coating of flotsam behind. I scraped this off and dropped it on Adso’s saucer, then scooped up a fresh ladle of broth.
“Yes, they do,” I said, evenly. “And I’m sorry about it, but the mold is important. It’s medicine, and I—”
“Oh, aye! Of course it is,” she assured me hurriedly. “I ken that.” There was no tinge of sarcasm in her voice, which rather surprised me. She hesitated, then reached through the slit in her skirt, into the capacious pocket that she wore beneath.
“There was a man, as lived in Auchterlonie—where we had our hoose, Arch and me, in the village there. He was a carline, was Johnnie Howlat, and folk went wary near him—but they went. Some went by day, for grass cures and graiths, and some went by night, for to buy charms. Ye’ll ken the sort?” She darted another glance at me, and I nodded, a little uncertainly.
I knew the sort of person she meant; some Highland charmers dealt not only in remedies—the “graiths” she’d mentioned—but also in minor magic, selling lovephilters, fertility potions... ill wishes. Something cold slid down my back and vanished, leaving in its wake a faint feeling of unease, like the slime trail of a snail.
I swallowed, seeing in memory the small bunch of thorny plants, so carefully bound with red thread and with black. Placed beneath my pillow by a jealous girl named Laoghaire—purchased from a witch named Geillis Duncan. A witch like me.
Was that what Mrs. Bug was getting at? “Carline” was not a word I was certain of, though I thought it meant “witch,” or something like it. She was regarding me thoughtfully, her normal animation quite subdued.
“He was a filthy wee mannie, Johnnie Howlat was. He’d no woman to do for him, and his cot smelt of dreadful things. So did he.” She shivered suddenly, in spite of the fire at her back.
“Ye’d see him, sometimes, in the wood or on the moor, pokin’ at the ground. He’d find creatures that had died, maybe, and bring back their skins and their feet, bones and teeth for to make his charms. He wore a wretched auld smock, like a farmer, and sometimes ye’d see him comin’ doon the path wi’ something pooched up under his smock, and stains of blood—and other things—seepin’ through the cloth.”
“Sounds most unpleasant,” I said, eyes fixed on the bottle as I scraped the cloth again and ladled more broth. “But people went to him anyway?”
“There was no one else,” she said simply, and I looked up. Her dark eyes fixed unblinkingly on mine, and her hand moved slowly, fingering something inside her pocket.
“I didna ken at first,” she said. “For Johnnie kept mool from the graveyard and bone dust and hen’s blood and all manner of such things, but you”—she nodded thoughtfully at me, white kerch immaculate in the fire-glow—“ye’re a cleanly sort.”
“Thank you,” I said, both amused and touched. That was a high compliment from Mrs. Bug.
“Bar the moldy bread,” she added, the corners of her mouth primming slightly. “And that heathen wee pooch ye keep in your cabinet. But it’s true, no? Ye’re a charmer, like Johnnie was?”
I hesitated, not knowing what to say. The memory of Cranesmuir was vivid in my mind, as it had not been for many years. The last thing I wanted was for Mrs. Bug to be spreading the rumor that I was a carline—some already called me a conjure-woman. I was not worried about legal prosecution as a witch—not here, not now. But to have a reputation for healing was one thing; to have people come to me for help with the other things that charmers dealt in...
“Not exactly,” I said, guardedly. “It’s only that I know a bit about plants. And surgery. But I really don’t know anything at all about charms or... spells.”
She nodded in satisfaction, as though I had confirmed her suspicions instead of denying them.
Before I could respond, there was a sound from the floor like water hitting a hot pan, followed by a loud screech. Jemmy, tiring of his toy, had cast it aside and crawled over to investigate Adso’s saucer. The cat, disinclined to share, had hissed at the baby and frightened him. Jemmy’s shriek in turn had frightened Adso under the settle; only the tip of a small pink nose and a flicker of agitated whiskers showed from the shadows.
I picked Jem up and soothed his tears, while Mrs. Bug took over the broth-straining. She looked over the goose debris on the platter and picked out a leg bone, the white cartilage at the end smooth and gleaming.
“Here, laddie.” She waved it enticingly under Jemmy’s nose. He at once stopped crying, grabbed the bone, and put it in his mouth. Mrs. Bug selected a smaller wing bone, with shreds of meat still clinging to it, and put that down on the saucer.
“And that’s for you, lad,” she said to the darkness under the settle. “Dinna fill your wame too full, though—stay hungry for the wee moosies, aye?”
She turned back to the table, and began to scoop the bones into a shallow pan.
“I’ll roast these; they’ll do for soup,” she said, eyes on her work. Then without changing tone or looking up, she said, “I went to him once, Johnnie Howlat.”
“Did you?” I sat down, Jemmy on my knee. “Were you ill?”
“I wanted a child.”
I had no idea what to say; I sat still, listening to the drip of the broth through the muslin cloth, as she scraped the last bit of gristle neatly into the roasting pan, and carried it to the hearth.
“I’d slippit four, in the course of a year,” she said, back turned to me. “Ye’d not think it, to look at me now, but I was nay more than skin and bane, the color o’ whey, and my paps shrunk awa to nothing.”
She settled the pan firmly into the coals and covered it.
“So I took what money we had, and I went to Johnnie Howlat. He took the money, and put water in a pan. He sat me doon on the one side of it and him on the other, and there we sat for a verra long time, him starin’ into the water and me starin’ at him.
“At last, he shook himself a bit and got up, and went awa to the back of his cot. ’Twas dark, and I couldna see what he did, but he rummaged and poked, and said things beneath his breath, and finally he came back to me, and handed me a charm.”
Mrs. Bug straightened up and turned round. She came close, and laid her hand on Jemmy’s silky head, very gently.
“He said to me, Johnnie did, that here was a charm that would close up the mouth of my womb, and keep a babe safe inside, until it should be born. But there was a thing he’d seen, lookin’ in the water, and he must tell me. If I bore a live babe, then my husband would die, he said. So he would give me the charm, and the prayer that went with it—and then it was my choice, and who could say fairer than that?”
Her stubby, work-worn finger traced the curve of Jemmy’s cheek. Engaged with his new toy, he paid no attention.
“I carried that charm in my pocket for a month—and then I put it away.”
I reached up and put my hand over hers, squeezing. There was no sound but the baby’s slobbering and the hiss and pop of the bones in the coals. She stayed still for a moment, then drew her hand away, and put it back in her pocket. She drew out a small object, and put it on the table beside me.
“I couldna quite bring myself to throw it away,” she said, gazing down at it dispassionately. “It cost me three silver pennies, after all. And it’s a wee thing; easy enough to carry along when we left Scotland.”
It was a small chunk of stone, pale pink in color, and veined with gray, badly weathered. It had been crudely carved into the shape of a pregnant woman, little more than a huge belly, with swollen breasts and buttocks above a pair of stubby legs that tapered to nothing. I had seen such figures before—in museums. Had Johnnie Howlat made it himself? Or perhaps found it in his pokings through wood and moor, a remnant of much more ancient times?
I touched it gently, thinking that whatever Johnnie Howlat might have been, or might have seen in his pan of water, he had no doubt been astute enough to have seen the love between Arch and Murdina Bug. Was it easier for a woman, then, to forswear the hope of children, thinking it a noble sacrifice for the sake of a much-loved husband, than to suffer bitterness and self-blame for constant failure? Carline he may have been, Johnnie Howlat—but a charmer, indeed.
“So,” Mrs. Bug said, matter-of-factly, “it may be as ye’ll find some lass who’s a use for it. Shame to let it go to waste, aye?”
HOGMANAY
THE YEAR ENDED clear and cold, with a small, brilliant moon that rose high in the violet-black vault of the sky, and flooded the coves and trails of the mountainside with light. A good thing, as people came from all over the Ridge—and some, even farther—to keep Hogmanay at “the Big House.”
The men had cleared the new barn and raked the floor clean for the dancing. Jigs and reels and strathspeys—and a number of other dances for which I didn’t know the names, but they looked like fun—were executed under the light of bear-oil lanterns, accompanied by the music of Evan Lindsay’s scratchy fiddle and the squeal of his brother Murdo’s wooden flute, punctuated by the heartbeat thump of Kenny’s bodhran.
Thurlo Guthrie’s ancient father had brought his pipes, too—a set of small uilleann pipes that looked nearly as decrepit as did Mr. Guthrie, but produced a sweet drone. The melody of his chanter sometimes agreed with the Lindsays’ notion of a particular tune, and sometimes didn’t, but the overall effect was cheerful, and sufficient whisky and beer had been taken by this point in the festivities that no one minded in the least.
After an hour or two of the dancing, I privately decided that I understood why the word “reel” had come to indicate drunkenness; even performed without preliminary lubrication, the dance was enough to make one dizzy. Done under the influence of whisky, it made all the blood in my head whirl round like the water in a washing machine. I staggered off at the end of one such dance, leaned against one of the barn’s uprights, and closed one eye, in hopes of stopping the spinning sensation.
A nudge on my blind side caused me to open that eye, revealing Jamie, holding two brimming cups of something. Hot and thirsty as I was, I didn’t mind what it was, so long as it was wet. Fortunately it was cider, and I gulped it.
“Drink it like that, and ye’ll founder, Sassenach,” he said, disposing of his own cider in precisely similar fashion. He was flushed and sweating from the dancing, but his eyes sparkled as he grinned at me.
“Piffle,” I said. With a bit of cider as ballast, the room had quit spinning, and I felt cheerful, if hot. “How many people are in here, do you think?”
“Sixty-eight, last time I counted.” He leaned back beside me, viewing the milling throng with an expression of deep content. “They come in and out, though, so I canna be quite sure. And I didna count the weans,” he added, moving slightly to avoid collision as a trio of small boys caromed through the crowd and shot past us, giggling.
Heaps of fresh hay were stacked in the shadows at the sides of the barn; the small bodies of children too wee to stay awake were draped and curled among them like so many barn kittens. The flicker of lantern light caught a gleam of silky red-gold; Jemmy was sound asleep in his blanket, happily lulled by the racket. I saw Bree come out of the dancing and lay her hand briefly on him to check, then turn back. Roger put out a hand to her, dark and smiling, and she took it, laughing as they whirled back into the stamping mass.
People did come in and out—particularly small groups of young people, and courting couples. It was freezing and frost-crisp outside, but the cold made cuddling with a warm body that much more appealing. One of the older MacLeod boys passed near us, his arm round a much younger girl—one of old Mr. Guthrie’s granddaughters, I thought; he had three of them, all much alike to look at—and Jamie said something genial to him in Gaelic that made his ears go red. The girl was already pink with dancing, but went crimson in the face.
“What did you say to them?”
“It doesna bear translation,” he said, putting a hand in the small of my back. He was pulsing with heat and whisky, alight with a flame of joy; looking at him was enough to kindle my own heart. He saw that, and smiled down at me, the heat of his hand burning through the cloth of my gown.
“D’ye want to go outside for a moment, Sassenach?” he said, his voice pitched low and rich with suggestion.
“Well, since you mention it... yes,” I said. “Maybe not just yet, though.” I nodded past him, and he turned to see a cluster of elderly ladies sitting on a bench against the wall, all viewing us with the bright-eyed curiosity of a flock of crows. Jamie waved and smiled at them, making them all burst into pink-faced giggles, and turned back to me with a sigh.
“Aye, well. In a bit, then—after the first-footing, maybe.”
The latest spate of dancing came to an end, and there was a general surge in the direction of the tub of cider, presided over by Mr. Wemyss at the far end of the barn. The dancers clustered round it like a horde of thirsty wasps, so that all that was visible of Mr. Wemyss was the top of his head, fair hair almost white under the glow of the lanterns.
Seeing it, I looked round for Lizzie, to see whether she was enjoying the party. Evidently so; she was holding court on a hay bale, surrounded by four or five gawky boys, who were all behaving very much like the dancers round the cider tub.
“Who’s the big one?” I asked Jamie, calling his attention to the small gathering with a nod of my head. “I don’t recognize him.” He glanced over, squinting slightly.
“Oh,” he said, relaxing, “that will be Jacob Schnell. He’s ridden over from Salem with a friend; they came with the Muellers.”
“Really.” Salem was a good long ride; nearly thirty miles. I wondered whether the attraction had been the festivities alone. I looked for Tommy Mueller, whom I had privately marked out as a possible match for Lizzie, but didn’t see him in the crowd.
“Do you know anything about this Schnell lad?” I asked, giving the boy in question a critical look. He was a year or two older than the other boys dancing attendance on Lizzie, and quite tall. Plain-featured but good-natured-looking, I thought; heavy-boned, and with a thickness through the middle that foretold the development of a prosperous paunch in middle age.
“I dinna ken the lad himself, but I’ve met his uncle. It’s a decent family; I think his father’s a cobbler.” We both looked automatically at the young man’s shoes; not new, but very good quality, and with pewter buckles, large and square in the German fashion.
Young Schnell appeared to have gained an advantage; he was leaning close, saying something to Lizzie, whose eyes were fixed on his face, a slight frown of concentration wrinkling the skin between her fair brows as she tried to make out what he was saying. Then she worked it out, and her face relaxed in laughter.
“I dinna think so.” Jamie shook his head, a slight frown on his face as he watched them. “The family’s Lutheran; they wouldna let the lad marry a Catholic—and it would break Joseph’s heart to send the lass to live so far away.”
Lizzie’s father was deeply attached to her; and having lost her once, he was unlikely to give her so far away in marriage as to lose sight of her again. Still, I thought that Joseph Wemyss would do almost anything to insure his daughter’s happiness.
“He might go with her, you know.”
Jamie’s expression grew bleak at the thought, but he nodded in reluctant acknowledgment.
“I suppose so. I should hate to lose him; though I suppose Arch Bug might—”
Shouts of “Mac Dubh!” interrupted him.
“Come on, a Sheumais ruaidh, show him how!” Evan called from the far end of the barn, and jerked his bow authoritatively.
There had been a break in the dancing, to give the musicians time to breathe and have a drink, and in the interim, some of the men had been trying their hand at sword dancing, which could be done with only the accompaniment of pipes or to a single drum.
I had been paying little attention to this, only hearing the shouts of encouragement or derision from that end of the barn. Evidently, most of those present were no great hand at the sport—the latest gentleman to try it had tripped over one of the swords and fallen flat; he was being helped to his feet, red-faced and laughing, returning genial insults with his friends as they beat the hay and dirt from his clothes.
“Mac Dubh, Mac Dubh!” Kenny and Murdo shouted in invitation, beckoning, but Jamie waved them off, laughing.
“Nay, I havena done that in more time than I—”
“Mac Dubh! Mac Dubh! Mac Dubh!” Kenny was thumping his bodhran, chanting in rhythm, and the group of men around him were joining in. “Mac Dubh! Mac Dubh! Mac Dubh!”
Jamie cast me a brief look of helpless appeal, but Ronnie Sinclair and Bobby Sutherland were already heading purposefully toward us. I stepped away, laughing, and they seized him each by an arm, smothering his protests with raucous shouts as they hustled him into the center of the floor.
Applause and shouts of approval broke out as they deposited him in a clear space, where the straw had been trampled into the damp earth far enough to make a hard-packed surface. Seeing that he had no choice, Jamie drew himself up and straightened his kilt. He caught my eye, rolled an eye in mock resignation, and began to take off his coat, waistcoat, and boots, as Ronnie scrambled to lay out the two crossed broadswords at his feet.
Kenny Lindsay began to tap gently on his bodhran, hesitating between the beats, a sound of soft suspense. The crowd murmured and shifted in anticipation. Clad in shirt, kilt, and stockinged feet, Jamie bowed elaborately, turning sunwise to dip four times, to each of the “airts” in turn. Then he stood upright, and moved to take his place, standing just above the crossed swords. His hands lifted, fingers pointing stiff above his head.
There was an outburst of clapping nearby, and I saw Brianna put two fingers in her mouth and give an earsplitting whistle of approbation—to the marked shock of the people standing next to her.
I saw Jamie glance at Bree, with a faint smile, and then his eyes found mine again. The smile stayed on his lips, but there was something different in his expression; something rueful. The beat of the bodhran began to quicken.
A Highland sword dance was done for one of three reasons. For exhibition and entertainment, as he was about to do it now. For competition, as it was done among the young men at a Gathering. And as it first was done, as an omen. Danced on the eve of a battle, the skill of the dancer foretold success or failure. The young men had danced between crossed swords, the night before Prestonpans, before Falkirk. But not before Culloden. There had been no campfires the night before that final fight, no time for bards and battle songs. It didn’t matter; no one had needed an omen, then.
Jamie closed his eyes for a moment, bent his head, and the beat of the drum began to patter, quick and fast.
I knew, because he had told me, that he had first done the sword dance in competition, and then—more than once—on the eve of battles, first in the Highlands, then in France. The old soldiers had asked him to dance, had valued his skill as reassurance that they would live and triumph. For the Lindsays to know his skill, he must also have danced in Ardsmuir. But that was in the Old World, and in his old life.
He knew—and had not needed Roger to tell him—that the old ways had changed, were changing. This was a new world, and the sword dance would never again be danced in earnest, seeking omen and favor from the ancient gods of war and blood.
His eyes opened, and his head snapped up. The tipper struck the drum with a sudden thunk! and it began with a shout from the crowd. His feet struck down on the pounded earth, to the north and the south, to the east and the west, flashing swift between the swords.
His feet struck soundless, sure on the ground, and his shadow danced on the wall behind him, looming tall, long arms upraised. His face was still toward me, but he didn’t see me any longer, I was sure.
The muscles of his legs were strong as a leaping stag’s beneath the hem of his kilt, and he danced with all the skill of the warrior he had been and still was. But I thought he danced now only for the sake of memory, that those watching might not forget; danced, with the sweat flying from his brow as he worked, and a look of unutterable distance in his eyes.
PEOPLE WERE STILL TALKING of it when we adjourned to the house, just before midnight, for stovies, beer, and cider, before the first-footing.
Mrs. Bug brought out a basket of apples, and gathered all the young unmarried girls together in a corner of the kitchen, where—with much giggling and glancing over shoulders toward the young men—each peeled a fruit, keeping the peeling in one piece. Each girl tossed her peel behind her, and the group all whirled round to cluster and exclaim over the fallen strip and see what was the shape of the letter it made.
Apple peelings being by their nature fairly circular, there were a good many “C”s, “G”s, and “O”s discovered—good news for Charley Chisholm, and Young Geordie Sutherland—and much speculation as to whether “Angus Og” might be the meaning of an “O” or not, for Angus Og MacLeod was a canty lad, and much liked, while the only “Owen” was an elderly widower, about five feet tall, and with a large wen on his face.
I had taken Jemmy up to put him to bed, and after depositing him limp and snoring in his cradle, came down in time to see Lizzie cast her peeling.
“‘C’!” chorused two of the Guthrie girls, almost knocking heads as they bent to look.
“No, no, it’s a ‘J’!”
Appealed to as the resident expert, Mrs. Bug bent down, eyeing the strip of red peel with her head on one side, like a robin sizing up a likely worm.
“A ‘J’ it is, to be sure,” she ruled, straightening up, and the group burst out in giggles, turning as one to stare at John Lowry, a young farmer from Woolam’s Mill, who peered over his shoulder at them in total bewilderment.
I caught a flash of red from the corner of my eye, and turned to see Brianna in the doorway to the hall. She tilted her head, beckoning me, and I hurried to join her.
“Roger’s ready to go out, but we couldn’t find the ground salt; it wasn’t in the pantry. Do you have it in your surgery?”
“Oh! Yes, I have,” I said guiltily. “I’d been using it to dry snakeroot, and forgot to put it back.”
Guests packed the porches and lined the wide hallway, spilling out of the kitchen and Jamie’s study, all talking, drinking, and eating, and I threaded my way through the crush after her toward my surgery, exchanging greetings as I ducked brandished cups of cider, stovie crumbs crunching under my feet.
The surgery itself was nearly empty, though; people tended to avoid it, through superstition, painful associations, or simple wariness, and I had not encouraged them to go in, leaving the room dark, with no fire burning. Only one candle was burning in the room now, and the only person present was Roger, who was poking among the bits and pieces I’d left on the counter.
He looked up as we entered, smiling. Still faintly flushed from the dancing, he had put his coat back on and draped a woolen scarf round his neck; his cloak lay over the stool beside him. Custom held that the most fortunate “firstfoot” on a Hogmanay was a tall and handsome dark-haired man; to welcome one as the first visitor across the threshold after midnight brought good fortune to the house for the coming year.
Roger being beyond argument the tallest—and quite the best-looking—dark man available, he had been elected to be firstfoot, not only for the Big House, as folk called it, but for those homes nearby. Fergus and Marsali and the others who lived near had already rushed off to their houses, to be ready to greet their firstfoot when he should come.
A red-haired man, though, was frightful ill luck as a firstfoot, and Jamie had been consigned to his study, under the riotous guard of the Lindsay brothers, who were to keep him safely bottled up ’til after midnight. There were no clocks nearer than Cross Creek, but old Mr. Guthrie had a pocket watch, even older than himself; this instrument would declare the mystic moment when one year yielded to the next. Given the watch’s propensity for stopping, I doubted that this would be more than a symbolic pronouncement, but that was quite enough, after all.
“Eleven-fifty,” Brianna declared, popping into the surgery after me, her own cloak over her arm. “I just checked Mr. Guthrie’s watch.”
“Plenty of time. Are ye coming with me, then?” Roger grinned at Bree, seeing her cloak.
“Are you kidding? I haven’t been out after midnight in years.” She grinned back at him, swirling the cloak around her shoulders. “Got everything?”
“All but the salt.” Roger nodded toward a canvas bag on the counter. A firstfoot was to bring gifts to the house: an egg, a faggot of wood, a bit of salt—and a bit of whisky, thus insuring that the household would not lack for necessities during the coming year.
“Right. Where did I—oh, Christ!” Swinging open the cupboard door to search for the salt, I was confronted by a pair of glowing eyes, glaring out of the darkness at me.
“Good grief.” I put a hand over my chest, to keep my heart from leaping out, waving the other hand weakly at Roger, who had sprung up at my cry, ready to defend me. “Not to worry—it’s just the cat.”
Adso had taken refuge from the party, bringing along the remains of a freshly killed mouse for company. He growled at me, evidently thinking I meant to snatch this treat for myself, but I pushed him crossly aside, digging the small bag of ground salt out from behind his furry hindquarters.
I closed the cupboard door, leaving Adso to his feast, and handed Roger the salt. He took it, laying down the object he had had in his hand.
“Where did ye get that wee auld wifie?” he asked, nodding toward the object as he put the salt away in his bag. I glanced at the counter, and saw that he had been examining the little pink stone figure that Mrs. Bug had given me.
“Mrs. Bug,” I replied. “She says it’s a fertility charm—which is certainly what it looks like. It is very old, then?” I’d thought it must be, and seeing Roger’s interest confirmed the impression.
He nodded, still looking at the thing.
“Very old. The ones I’ve seen in museums are dated at thousands of years.” He traced the bulbous outlines of the stone with a reverent forefinger.
Brianna moved closer to see, and without thinking, I set a hand on her arm.
“What?” she said, turning her head to smile at me. “I shouldn’t touch it? Do they work that well?”
“No, of course not.”
I took my hand away, laughing, but feeling rather self-conscious. At the same time, I became aware that I would really rather she didn’t touch it, and was relieved when she merely bent down to examine it, leaving it on the counter. Roger was looking at it, too—or rather, he was looking at Brianna, his eyes fixed on the back of her head with an odd intensity. I could almost imagine that he was willing her to touch the thing, as strongly as I was willing her not to.
Beauchamp, I said silently to myself, you have had much too much to drink tonight. All the same, I reached out by impulse and scooped the figure up, dropping it into my pocket.
