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"It’s been three months since the last of your courses," Jaht they’d maybe stopped"

I was always a trifle taken aback to realize how acutely he observed such things--but he was a farmer and a husbandynecological history and estrus cycle of every female animal he owned; I supposed there was no reason to think he’d make an exception simply because I was not likely either to farrow or come in heat

"It’s not like a tap that just switches off, you know," I said, rather crossly "Unfortunately It just gets rather erratic and eventually it stops, but you haven’t any idea when"

"Ah"

He leaned forward, ars and bits of leaf bobbing through the riffles of the stream

"I’d think it would maybe be a relief to have done wi’ it all Less e to draw invidious sexual co bodily fluids

"Maybe it will," I said "I’ll let you know, shall I?"

He sh not to pursue the e in my voice

I sipped a bit more whisky The sharp cry of a woodpecker--the kind Jamie called a yaffle--echoed deep in the woods and then fell silent Few birds were out in this weather; h I could hear the conversational quacking of a sratory ducks somewhere downstream They weren’t bothered by the rain

Jamie stretched himself suddenly

"AhSassenach?" he said

"What is it?" I asked, surprised

He ducked his head, uncharacteristically shy

"I dinna ken whether I’ve done wrong or no, Sassenach, but if I have, I iveness"

"Of course," I said, a little uncertainly What was I forgiving him for? Probably not adultery, but it could be just about anything else, up to and including assault, arson, highway robbery, and blasphe to do with Bonnet

"What have you done?"

"Well, as to ," he said, a little sheepishly "It’s only what I’ve said you’d do"

"Oh?" I said, with minor suspicion "And what’s that? If you told Farquard Caain"

"Oh, no," he assuredlike that I promised Josiah Beardsley that ye’d h"

"That I’d what?" I goggled at hi set of abscessed tonsils I’d ever seen, the day before I’d been sufficiently impressed by the pustulated state of his adenoids, in fact, to have described theo green round the gills and give her second potato to Gerery was really the only possible effective cure I hadn’t expected Jah

"Why?" I asked

Ja up at me

"I want him, Sassenach"

"You do? What for?" Josiah was barely fourteen--or at least he thought he was fourteen; he wasn’t really sure when he’d been born and his parents had died too long ago to say He was undersized even for fourteen, and badly nourished, with legs slightly bowed from rickets He also showed evidence of assorted parasitic infections, and wheezed hat ht be tuberculosis, or merely a bad case of bronchitis

"A tenant, of course"

"Oh? I’d have thought you had more applicants than you can handle, as it is"

I didn’t just think so; I knew so We had absolutely nohad just about--not quite--cleared our indebtedness to several of the Cross Creek ery, rice, tools, salt, and other small items We had land in plenty--most of it forest--but no means to assist people to settle on it or far well past our li new tenantry

Ja these coh"

"Hh--which was likely what Ja by himself was evidence of that "Maybe so So are lots of others What’s he got that makes you want him specially?"

"He’s fourteen"