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“That one was out of politeness.”

He rolled his eyes as they made their way to the baker, picking their way between puddles and people while she tried to see the market through Jamie’s eyes instead of her own.

He nodded toward two older women near the baker’s table.

“Your widowhood gives ye more freedom than an unmarried lass would have.” He rubbed his chin. “Mayhap ’tis different in America than here in Scotland. Here, folk won’t expect ye to trail behind some auntie, and ye can speak more directly to men without causing as much talk, but if ye are too interested there will be talk.”

Something in his tone made Olivia look at him, and she found the humor gone from his face.

“Folk will ask about Boston and they’ll ask about your husband.”

The market noise seemed to fade beneath the sudden rush of her own thoughts. Of course they would. It was a small village, they’d be curious about her.

Her invented husband had been easy to manage while no one asked about him. Now people would want to know where he’d been born, what sort of merchant he’d been, how old he was, how long they’d been married, whether they’d wanted children, how he’d died, and where she’d buried him. Every answer would require another lie, and every lie would turn Mr. Bennett from a useful prop into a man Jamie believed Olivia had loved and lost.

“I know,” she said, smoothing one hand over her cloak.

Jamie watched her for a moment, and unfortunately he misunderstood her discomfort exactly as a decent man would. His expression softened before he stepped slightly closer, not touching her, merely placing himself between Olivia and the busiest flow of people moving past them, which made her guilt considerably worse.

They’d barely reached the baker’s table when the man said, “Greetings Jamie. The Widow Bennett. I’m sorry to hear of your loss. Yer tall for a woman. Was your husband a tall man?”

Olivia stopped with one hand still reaching toward a loaf, but Jamie stepped in before she could answer.

“Aye, her husband was tall.”

Jamie’s voice remained pleasant. He didn’t raise it or embarrass her, yet something shifted enough that the baker looked away first and became extremely interested in rearranging the pastries.

Jamie picked up the bread, checked it, and handed it to the man for wrapping as though nothing important had happened.

“Thank you.”

He glanced toward her while the baker tied the loaf into a square of cloth. “I know ye dinna like speaking of the dead.”

Guilt filled her and for a moment, she seriously considered telling him the truth, then common sense took over and she brushed the thought away as they continued through the market.

They stopped for salt, thyme, a twist of dried mint, and a length of blue ribbon whose purpose Olivia never learned because Morag had simply written ribbon on the list as though the universe understood the rest.

The woman selling herbs listened to Olivia’s accent, asked where she was from, and when Jamie answered Boston before she could, slipped an extra bundle of thyme into the basket.

“Yer the widow,” she said softly. “’Tis good for grief.”

Olivia nearly handed it back, but instead she thanked her, and by the time they reached the edge of the market, Mr. Bennett had acquired enough sympathy from strangers that she wanted to strangle him herself.

The road narrowed near the kirk wall, where two unfamiliar men stood beside tethered horses talking to a grain merchant. Their coats were better than most in the market and their boots were less muddy than they should have been after the morning’s weather, but neither detail bothered Olivia as much as the way one man kept looking toward the road whenever a laden cart entered the square while the other pretended to inspect a sack of barley.

Olivia slowed without meaning to because she’d seen that kind of attention before. Not those clothes, not those horses, and certainly not eighteenth-century grain sacks, but men had sat at Grandma Bennett’s bar nursing the same drink for an hour while watching who came through the door. Cops did it. Bookies did it. Husbands looking for wives did it. Men waiting for somebody who owed them money did it. They always found something ordinary to stare at while watching everything else.

Olivia glanced at Jamie and realized he’d seen them too.

“Friends?” she asked quietly, adjusting the cloak around her shoulders.

“Nay.”

“Excisemen?”

“Mayhap. Or men paid to listen for them.”

The taller stranger laughed at something the grain merchant said, yet his eyes moved toward a cart entering from the south road.