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glanced toward the door. She was not surprised when Aunt Coira followed her shout into the room.
    Everyone told her that her father and Aunt Coira, who had been twins as well, had looked as alike as possible when they were babes. Would her father have had silver hair now and worn glasses on the very tip of his nose as Aunt Coira did? She liked to think so, for she had no memories of him. She had been no more than a baby herself when he had died during a hiking accident in the mountains.
    â€œWhat are you doing here?” Aunt Coira demanded, glowering at her children as if they were still in short coats. “Neilli, your cousin Sima was looking for you to help her with her new baby this morning. And, Parlan, you should not be disturbing Anice. She was mightily hurt yesterday. She needs to be resting.”
    Anice heeded her aunt’s terse orders to get herself to bed to rest. At this moment, she would agree to just about anything to give her head the opportunity to stop ringing with the sound of everyone’s voices.
    Yet, even when her cousins had been shooed out and her aunt had closed the door, Anice did not seek her bed. She sat in a chair and stared at the two guns leaning against the armoire. Certainly, by now, Lucais had realized that he had left his gun behind. Mayhap he believed it would be wiser to forget about it than to come back to Ardkinloch, where he was unlikely to find much welcome.
    She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. What was keeping her cousins from seeing that the road and the bridge might be for the betterment of the valley? Could it be only that their old traditions had blinded them to this? If she could be sure of that, she would be more sure of her own opinions.
    Curling her feet beneath her on the comfortable chair, she cradled her hand in her lap. She must find out the truth. Was it simply Kinloch stubbornness that had formed their beliefs about the road project? As soon as she was steadier on her weak legs, she would begin to pay calls on her neighbors to obtain their insight.
    And the first would be Lucais MacFarlane.…
    She knew she should silence that thought, but she took it with her into sleep, not bothering to determine why that was the most comforting thought she had had all day.
    The wind teased Anice’s hair from beneath her bonnet. She wanted to shove it back, but she could not when she carried freshly picked flowers in one hand and Lucais’s gun in the other. Somehow, since she had come to Ardkinloch, she had grown accustomed to coming to her grandmother’s grave to talk out her problems.
    Nothing she had heard about Marcail Kinloch had suggested that her grandmother was a woman who would sit and listen. Quite to the opposite, for Lady Kinloch had gained a reputation of issuing edicts to her family and everyone else within the valley split by the river. Still, Anice liked to escape here, where her superstitious cousins would not follow and voice their concerns. Sometimes she found solutions in talking out her troubles here. Often she did not.
    The cemetery was separated from the fields by a stone wall that would keep out the sheep. An iron gate always protested being opened and closed, but Anice ignored its squeak. She leaned the gun against the wall.
    Walking among the stones, she went to a grave set beneath a tree that protected it from the changing seasons. Anice knelt. Even after all her visits here, she still shivered with delight and amusement as she read the curse carved into the stone. She wondered if it had been devised by her grandmother.
    Rejoice and sing, ye good and wise,
    Your rest remains above the skies.
    But “ah!” rebellious sinners know,
    Your portion lies in Hell below
    Unless with speed you sin forsake
    And to the Grace yourselves betake.
    Sitting back on her heels, she laughed. If her grandmother had chosen the words, Anice wished she had had the chance to know her. The austere matriarch described by Anice’s