Written in My Own Heart's Blood

That made Murray’s mouth twitch, reluctantly.

“Fortunes of war,” he said hoarsely, and sat down at the open tailboard of the wagon. He was breathing like a winded ox, but had possession of himself. He gave William a brief glance.

“What are ye doing here, a fang Sassunaich?”

“None of your business, but a good job I was,” William replied, just as briefly. He turned to Rachel, having made up his mind on the moment.

“Take the wagon and see the girls somewhere safe.”

“That—” Rachel began, but then looked round, startled, as Jane and Fanny ran past her, crossed the road, and dived into the wood. “Where are they going?”

“Oh, bloody hell,” William said, already striding across the road. “Wait here.”

THEY COULDN’T outrun him, and they had nothing in the way of woodcraft that would enable them to lie hidden. He caught Fanny—again the slower of the two—by the back of her pinafore as she was scrambling over a log. To his astonishment, she squirmed round in his grasp and launched herself at him, scratching at his face and screaming, “Wun, Janie, wun!”

“Will you bloody stop that?” he said crossly, holding her at arm’s length. “Ow!” For she had sunk her teeth into his wrist, and he dropped her.

She eeled over the log and bounded away like a rabbit, still screaming her head off. He started to follow her, and then thought better. On the one hand, he had a strong impulse to abandon them, but on the other . . . He remembered Mac telling him about plovers one day as they sat near Watendlath Tarn, eating bread and cheese, watching the birds.

“Bugger off, Mac,” he said under his breath, and shoved thought of both Helwater and the groom ruthlessly away. But remembered, whether he wanted to or not.

“They run about and call out as though wounded, see?” Mac’s arm had been round him, keeping him from going too close to the fluttering bird. “But it’s to draw ye away from their nest, lest ye crush the eggs or damage the young. Look canny, though, and ye’ll see them.”

William stood quite still, calming his own breath and looking round, slow and careful, barely moving his head. And there indeed was the plover’s nest: alas for Jane, she had worn her pink calico today, and her rosy bu**ocks rounded smoothly up out of the grass ten feet away, quite like a pair of eggs in a nest, at that.

He walked quietly, without haste. Nobly resisting the strong urge to smack her beguilingly curved behind, he instead laid a hand flat on her back.

“Tag,” he said. “You’re it.”

She wriggled out from under his hand and shot up onto her feet.

“What?” she said. “What the bloody hell do you mean?” She was wild-eyed and nervy, but cross, as well.

“You’ve never played tag?” he asked, feeling foolish even as he said it.

“Oh,” she said, and let out her breath a little. “It’s a game. I see. Yes, but not for a long time.”

He supposed one didn’t play tag in a brothel.

“Look,” she said tersely, “we want to go. I—I appreciate what you’ve done for me—for us. But—”

“Sit down,” he said, and compelled her to do so, leading her to the log over which her sister had escaped and pressing on her shoulder until she reluctantly sat. He then sat down beside her and took her hand in his. It was very small, cold and damp from the grass where she’d hidden.

“Look,” he said, firmly but not—he hoped—unkindly, “I’m not letting you run off. That’s flat. If you want to go to New York with the army, I’ll take you; I’ve already said so. If you want to return to Philadelphia—”

“No!” Her terror at the thought was clear now. She pulled desperately at her hand, but he wouldn’t let go.

“Is it because of Captain Harkness? Because—”

She gave a cry that might have come from the throat of a wild bird caught in a trap, and he tightened his grip on her wrist. It was fine-boned and slender, but she was surprisingly strong.

“I know you stole the gorget back” he said. “It’s all right. No one’s going to find out. And Harkness won’t touch you again; I promise you that.”

She made a small bubbling noise that might have been a laugh or a sob.

“Colonel Tarleton—you know, the green dragoon that made advances to you?—he told me that Harkness was absent without leave, hasn’t come back to his regiment. Do you know anything about that?”

“No,” she said. “Let me go. Please!”

Before he could answer this, a small, clear voice piped up from the trees a few yards away.

“You’d best tew him, Janie.”

“Fanny!” Jane swung round toward her sister, momentarily forgetting that she was pinioned. “Don’t!”

Fanny stepped out of the shadows, wary but curiously composed.

“If you don’t, I wiw,” she said, her big brown eyes fixed on William’s face. “He won’t thtop.” She came a little closer, cautious but not afraid. “If I tew you,” she said, “do you pwomise not to take us back?”

“Back where?”

“To Phiwadelphia,” she said. “Or the army.”

He sighed, exasperated, but short of torturing the answer out of one of the girls, clearly no progress would be made unless he agreed. And he was beginning to have a cold feeling under the ribs about just what the answer might be.

“I promise,” he said, but Fanny hung back, distrustful.