It was not a scene that bore intrusion. I came back to the still-warm bed, holding in my mind the picture of the laird of Lallybroch, half-naked in the moonlight, pouring out his heart to an unknown future, holding in his lap the promise of his blood.

When I woke in the morning, there was a warm, unfamiliar scent next to me, and something tangled in my hair. I opened my eyes to find Katherine Mary’s rosebud lips smacking dreamily an inch from my nose, her fat fingers clutched in the hair above my left ear. I cautiously disengaged myself, and she stirred, but flopped over onto her stomach, drew her knees up and went back to sleep.

Jamie was lying on the other side of the child, face half-buried in his pillow. He opened one eye, clear blue as the morning sky.

“Good morning, Sassenach,” he said, speaking quietly so as not to disturb the small sleeper. He smiled at me as I sat up in bed. “Ye looked verra sweet, the two of you, asleep face-to-face like that.”

I ran a hand through my tangled hair, and smiled myself at Kitty’s upturned bottom, jutting absurdly into the air.

“That doesn’t look at all comfortable,” I observed. “But she’s still asleep, so it can’t be that bad. How late were you up with her last night? I didn’t hear you come to bed.”

He yawned and ran a hand through his hair, smoothing it away from his face. There were shadows under his eyes, but he seemed peacefully content.

“Oh, some time. Before moonset, at least. I didna want to wake Jenny by taking the wean back to her, so I laid her in the bed between us, and she didna twitch once, the rest of the night.”

The baby was kneading the mattress with elbows and knees, rootling in the bedclothes with a low grunting noise. It must be close to time for her morning feed. This supposition was borne out in the next moment, when she raised her head, eyes still tight shut, and let out a healthy howl. I reached hastily for her and picked her up.

“There-there-there,” I soothed, patting the straining little back. I swung my legs out of bed, then reached back and patted Jamie on the head. The rough bright hair was warm under my hand.

“I’ll take her to Jenny,” I said. “It’s early yet; you sleep some more.”

“I may do that, Sassenach,” Jamie said, flinching at the noise. “I’ll see ye at breakfast, shall I?” He rolled onto his back, crossed his hands on his chest in his favorite sleeping posture, and was breathing deeply again by the time Katherine Mary and I had reached the door.

The baby squirmed vigorously, rooting for a nipple and squawking in frustration when none was immediately forthcoming. Hurrying along the hall, I met Jenny, hurrying out of her bedroom in response to her offspring’s cries, pulling on a green dressing gown as she came. I held out the baby, waving little fists in urgent demand.

“There, mo mùirninn, hush now, hush,” Jenny soothed. With a cock of the eyebrow in invitation, she took the child from me and turned back into her room.

I followed her in and sat on the rumpled bed as she sat down on a nursing stool by the hearth and hastily bared one breast. The yowling little mouth clamped at once on to a nipple and we all relaxed in relief as sudden silence descended.

“Ah,” Jenny sighed. Her shoulders slumped a fraction as the flow of milk started. “That’s better, my wee piggie, no?” She opened her eyes and smiled at me, eyes clear and blue as her brother’s.

“ ’Twas kind of ye to keep the lassie all night; I slept like the dead.”

I shrugged, smiling at the picture of mother and child, relaxed together in total content. The curve of the baby’s head exactly echoed the high, round curve of Jenny’s breast and small, slurping noises came from the little bundle as her body sagged against her mother’s, fitting easily into the curve of Jenny’s lap.

“It was Jamie, not me,” I said. “He and his niece seem to have got on well together.” The picture of them came back to me, Jamie talking in earnest, low tones to the child, tears slipping down his face.

Jenny nodded, watching my face.

“Aye. I thought perhaps they’d comfort each other a bit. He doesna sleep well these days?” Her voice held a question.

“No,” I answered softly. “He has a lot on his mind.”

“Well he might,” she said, glancing at the bed behind me. Ian was gone already, risen at dawn to see to the stock in the barn. The horses that could be spared from the farming – and some that couldn’t – needed shoeing, needed harness, in preparation for their journey to rebellion.

“You can talk to a babe, ye ken,” she said suddenly, breaking into my thought. “Really talk, I mean. Ye can tell them anything, no matter how foolish it would sound did ye say it to a soul could understand ye.”

“Oh. You heard him, then?” I asked. She nodded, eyes on the curve of Katherine’s cheek, where the tiny dark lashes lay against the fair skin, eyes closed in ecstasy.

“Aye. Ye shouldna worrit yourself,” she added, smiling gently at me. “It isna that he feels he canna talk to you; he knows he can. But it’s different to talk to a babe that way. It’s a person; ye ken that you’re not alone. But they dinna ken your words, and ye don’t worry a bit what they’ll think of ye, or what they may feel they must do. You can pour out your heart to them wi’out choosing your words, or keeping anything back at all – and that’s a comfort to the soul.”

She spoke matter-of-factly, as though this were something that everyone knew. I wondered whether she spoke that way often to her child. The generous wide mouth, so like her brother’s, lifted slightly at one side.

“It’s the way ye talk to them before they’re born,” she said softly. “You’ll know?”

I placed my hands gently over my belly, one atop the other, remembering.

“Yes, I know.”

She pressed a thumb against the baby’s cheek, breaking the suction, and with a deft movement, shifted the small body to bring the full breast within reach.

“I’ve thought that perhaps that’s why women are so often sad, once the child’s born,” she said meditatively, as though thinking aloud. “Ye think of them while ye talk, and you have a knowledge of them as they are inside ye, the way you think they are. And then they’re born, and they’re different – not the way ye thought of them inside, at all. And ye love them, o’ course, and get to know them the way they are… but still, there’s the thought of the child ye once talked to in your heart, and that child is gone. So I think it’s the grievin’ for the child unborn that ye feel, even as ye hold the born one in your arms.” She dipped her head and kissed her daughter’s downy skull.

“Yes,” I said. “Before… it’s all possibility. It might be a son, or a daughter. A plain child, a bonny one. And then it’s born, and all the things it might have been are gone, because now it is.”

She rocked gently back and forth, and the small clutching hand that seized the folds of green silk over her breast began to loose its grip.

“And a daughter is born, and the son that she might have been is dead,” she said quietly. “And the bonny lad at your breast has killed the wee lassie ye thought ye carried. And ye weep for what you didn’t know, that’s gone for good, until you know the child you have, and then at last it’s as though they could never have been other than they are, and ye feel naught but joy in them. But ’til then, ye weep easy.”

“And men…” I said, thinking of Jamie, whispering secrets to the unhearing ears of the child.

“Aye. They hold their bairns, and they feel all the things that might be, and the things that will never be. But it isna so easy for a man to weep for the things he doesna ken.”