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stomach as if he’d been stabbed. “I’ve not been feeling well these last number of days.”
    “There’s not many can keep up with John Senior on the bottle. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
    He looked up at her quickly and she smiled at him with her lips pressed firmly together. A crooked smile, he thought. He shivered violently. He was wearing only his undershirt and a pair of long underwear, and he’d pulled his half-boots on over his bare feet. Cassie removed her shawl and wrapped it around his shoulders.
    “Please,” Buchan said. He held a hand out to fend her off.
    “Oh now,” Cassie scolded. “I’ve heard you retching outside in your small clothes in the middle of winter weather. You’ve no pride to protect around me.”
    He nodded uncertainly. She showed an easy forwardness with him that belied her position in the household. Her lazy eye winked at him. “I’m somewhat partial to invalids, Lieutenant,” she admitted. “I should have been a nurse.”
    When the kettle boiled she made tea and sweetened it with dark molasses. Buchan sat cradling the mug in his lapand she pulled a chair close to the fire to sit across from him. His face was chalky white, his eyes swollen to slits. He raised the mug towards her in thanks and then sipped at the hot liquid.
    “The secret to drinking with John Senior,” she advised him, “is to be the one refilling the glasses. Less attention gets paid to how far behind you are.”
    “I’d like to ask you something,” Buchan said suddenly.
    Cassie waited for his question. He seemed to be struggling with the proper words, or to have forgotten himself completely. “Lieutenant?” she said.
    He smiled but wouldn’t look at her. He said, “I’m afraid it may be somewhat indelicate.”
    She shrugged. “There hardly seems a point to standing on ceremony from here.”
    “That being the case, then,” he said. He looked unsteadily across at her. “I’d like to know why you are not yet married.”
    “You make it sound inevitable, Lieutenant. Like death.”
    “There are some that see it that way.” He closed his eyes. “And that’s not an answer to my question besides.”
    She said nothing.
    “Forgive my forwardness,” he said. And after a moment more of silence he said, “You’ve had proposals.”
    “A number, yes.”
    “And no one has suited you?”
    “Every one of them has talked of taking me away from here,” she said. She looked about the kitchen.
    Buchan followed her eyes. “From Mr. Peyton, you mean.”
    She shrugged again, but she didn’t dispute the statement.
    “Are you in love with him?”
    “The thing I most appreciate about John Senior,” she told him, “is that he’s never talked to me about love.”
    “I’m sure I don’t understand why that would endear him to yourself.”
    “No,” she said. “I’m sure you don’t.”
    Buchan sat a while, drunkenly considering the woman across from him and what he knew of her station. It seemed a lonely life for a woman too young to be a spinster to be leading and he said as much to her.
    She tipped her head side to side, as if she wanted to dispute the assertion but in all honesty could not. “There are worse things in life,” she said, “than loneliness.” And before Buchan could respond to this, she stood and placed the chair back in its place beside the table. “Can you make the stairs on your own?”
    He raised the mug again, as if to demonstrate the extent of his sobriety.
    “Just leave the shawl there when you go.”
    She turned to leave the room, but he stopped her. “Miss Jure,” he said. “I would be in your debt if you didn’t make a story of this.” He motioned helplessly about himself.
    Cassie folded her arms beneath her breasts and smiled. “Why is it that men are more afraid of being seen as a fool than they are of behaving like one?”
    Buchan nodded. “I can see,” he said, “why so many men have talked of taking you away from here.”
    The heavy weather continued