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“What are they in?”

“Lime water. Keeps them when the hens stop laying.”

There was no refrigeration, supermarket, or neat plastic carton waiting every week whether a chicken felt cooperative or not. Food here had seasons and limits, and people planned around both because failure meant more than inconvenience.

“You’ve a sharp eye,” Sorcha said behind her. “And a nose for spirits too, so I hear.”

Olivia nodded. “I helped my late husband. I know whisky.”

Sorcha nodded as though she’d expected nothing less. “My mother always said a good Glenbrae had the taste of warm stone after rain.”

Olivia forgot about the eggs and thinking about food preservation for the coming winter. “Warm stone?”

“Aye. Her words, no’ mine. Honey too, though she said it should be honey from the comb.”

“What about the smoke?”

Sorcha covered the butter crock and considered. “She never spoke much about peat. Only said the smoke shouldna take over.”

Warm stone after rain. Honeycomb. Light smoke.

The quaich had carried honey, grain, apple, restrained smoke, and that strange mineral structure beneath everything. Jamie’s whisky had given her part of the same profile. Now warm stone after rain slid neatly beside the mineral note she’d been trying to name.

Olivia reached automatically toward her pocket before remembering there was no notebook inside it.

“What are ye thinking?”

Jamie had moved to stand beside her.

“My grandmother taught me the same way before I ever had proper training. She’d hand me a glass and ask what it reminded me of. Toast. Apples. Damp wood. Orange peel. She never cared if I knew the right words. She cared whether I was paying attention.”

Jamie’s expression softened. “She taught ye to trust yer own nose.”

“Yes.” Olivia smiled faintly. “And to argue with anyone who told me I didn’t smell what I thought I had.”

He grinned. “That explains a great deal.”

Morag bundled several bannocks into a cloth and pushed them against his chest. “Take those to Mairi. Her gate is hanging again.”

Jamie stared at her. “I fixed that gate last month.”

“Then ye didna fix it properly.”

Olivia suddenly found the contents of the nearest crock fascinating.

Morag opened the door and sent him through it with the bannocks before he could defend himself.

Once he’d gone, Iseabail set the stocking in her lap. “Now tell us all about Boston.”

Olivia spent the next little while trying to be careful in answering their questions while helping Morag finish the bannocks. Boston was large. Yes, women ran businesses there. Her grandmother ran a pub. No, Olivia had not been married long, an answer she escaped as quickly as possible. Women sometimes wore trousers. Winters could be miserable. Ships came from all over the world.

She was trying to describe the harbor without accidentally mentioning airplanes overhead when the cottage door opened and a young woman came in carrying a basket of eggs.

“Set them there, Annie,” Morag said.

Annie looked sixteen or seventeen, with rain darkening the hair beneath her kerchief and color high in her cheeks from the walk. She gave Olivia a curious smile while setting the basket on the table, then looked back toward the doorway.

The smile disappeared as a man stepped inside behind her.