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It was crowded and busy inside, with four harried clerks behind a battered wooden counter, scribbling and stait carefully into an inner office, fro receipts on japanned tin trays

A crush of i to signal by ent than that of the fellow standing next hi the attention of one of the clerks, though, there turned out to be no great difficulty in seeing the registers of the ships that had sailed from Inverness within the last fewe, leather-bound book across the counter to him

"Aye?" The clerk was flushed with hurry, and had a sht

"How er asked

The clerk’s fair eyebrows lifted, but he was in too much hurry either to ask questions or to take offense at the inquiry

"Six shillings the week," he said briefly, and promptly disappeared in response to an irritable shout of "Munro!" froer pushed back through the crowd and took the book of registers away to a small table by the , out of theseen the conditions under which the clerks worked, Roger was iisters He ell accustoh those he was used to seeing were always yellowed and fragile, on the verge of disintegration It gave hie before hih table, copying as fast as quill could write, shoulders hunched against the hubbub in the roo, said a cold little voice in theafraid to look won’t change it Get on!

Roger took a deep breath and flipped open the big ledger book The ships’ naes, followed by the naoes and dates of sailing Arianna Polyphemus Merry Widow Tiburon Despite his apprehensions, he couldn’t help ades

Half an hour later, he had ceased toeach ship’s na desperation Not here, she wasn’t here!

But she had to be, he argued with himself She had to have taken a ship to the Colonies, where else could she bloody be? Unless she hadn’t found the notice, after all…but the sick feeling under his ribs assured hi else would have made her risk the stones

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, which were starting to feel the strain of the handwritten pages Then he opened his eyes, turned back to the first relevant register, and began to read again, doggedlyeach na one out

Mr Phineas Forbes, gentleman

Mrs Wilhelmina Forbes

Master Joshua Forbes

Mrs Josephine Forbes

Mrs Eglantine Forbes

Mrs Charlotte Forbes…

He sht of Mr Phineas Forbes, surrounded by his wo that "Mrs" here was sometimes merely the abbreviated form of "Mistress," and thus used for both married and unirls--he found hi stoutly aboard at the head of a train of four wives, Master Joshua no doubt bringing up the rear

Mr William Talbot, merchant

Mr Peter Talbot, merchant

Mr Jonathan Bicknell, physician

Mr Robert MacLeod, farmer

Mr Gordon MacLeod, farh, either Not for the Persephone, the Queen’s Revenge, or the Phoebe He rubbed his aching eyes, and began on the register of the Phillip Alonzo A Spanish na from Inverness, under the coiven up, but had already begun to think what to do next, if she should not be listed in the registers Lallybroch, of course He had been there once, in his own time, to the abandoned reuidance of roads and signposts?

His thoughts stopped with a jolt as his gliding finger cae Not Brianna Randall, not the nanition in hisMr Brian Fraser No, not Brian And not Mr, either He bent closer, squinting at the cra his heart thuh hi as the pub’s special dark beer Mrs, not Mr And what had first seemed merely an exuberant tail on the "n" of Brian was on closer inspection almost surely instead a careless "a"

Her, it was her, it had to be! It was an unusual first name--he had seen no other Briannas or Brianas anywhere in the ister And even Fraser made sense, of a sort; embarked on a quixotic quest to find her father, she had taken his naht of birth

He sla fro Got her! He saw the fairhaired clerk eyeing hiain

The Phillip Alonzo Sailed from Inverness on the fourth of July, Anno Domini 1769 For Charleston, South Carolina