“What then?” Jennet said, fumbling to contain his hands; too late.

“We'll take them all,” Luke said. “So there's no one for her to stay behind for.”

“Wait.” Jennet twisted with all her strength to stop him, pushed with both hands against his shoulders. “You intend to empty the whole stockade? A hundred prisoners or more, they'll just walk away with the blessing of the commander?”

“More or less,” Luke said, taking her hands and pinning them to the pallet to either side of her head. “Any more questions?”

“Not just now,” Jennet said, and pulled him to her.

Chapter 38

Up to her elbows in soapy water, sweat-soaked in the heat, Lily looked up from the floor she was scrubbing to Curiosity, who stood on a stool, her arms full of curtains.

“Hope you got some sweet talk ready,” Curiosity mumbled around the pins in her mouth. “Here come Simon, and he don't look pleased.”

Lily sat back on her heels and wiped the hair out of her face. There was a slight breeze coming up from the lake, and the idea came to her, odd but very appealing, of simply dashing down the path and jumping into the water. Along the way she could shed her clothes and loosen her hair, she thought. After all, if the villagers got such pleasure out of gossiping about her, she might as well give them something at least halfway true to talk about.

Then Simon was at the open door, blocking the light and the breeze.

“Is it so?” he asked shortly. “Have you put off the wedding again?”

“Just a week,” Lily said, gathering her skirts and hoisting herself up. He stepped forward to take her by the elbow and lifted her effortlessly.

“So that the cabin will be ready,” she finished, and found herself almost nose to nose with the man she was supposed to have married ten days ago.

“The cabin,” he said.

She pulled her arm away and blew a hair out of her eyes. “Yes, Simon, the cabin. This cabin. Our home. You don't want to move into a pigsty, do you?”

His mouth twitched, whether in preparation for laughter or shouting, Lily wasn't quite sure. He was frustrated, that much she could see.

At the window Curiosity said, “You two got a lifetime ahead of you for arguing and making up too. Right now I need help. Come on over here, Simon, and give me a hand with these ornery curtains.”

The cabin was two small rooms in a clearing, no space even for a decent kitchen garden, which was why nobody had showed any interest in it in the years since Jack MacGregor had died. But Lily liked the way it sat on a little hill looking over the lake. She liked the fact that the sun filled the larger room for most of the morning. And most of all she liked that it was only ten minutes' walk to the village and the meetinghouse; that was worth a great deal.

Simon had agreed that the cabin was well situated and would suit, and he helped cheerfully enough, cleaning out the well and carrying water and digging a trench for the necessary. With a little wheedling Lily had even got him to make her new shelves and a number of other small things that tried his patience but pleased her mightily.

Curiosity ordered him about too, but he didn't seem to mind. He did his best for her, but he talked while he worked and asked the questions Lily had answered before and must answer again: did it really take so long to get the bed linens in order, and why it was that pewter had to come from Johnstown, and was it sensible for Lily to be asking for a new stove when she didn't much like cooking, after all, and more than that, why were they going to so much trouble to furnish a cabin where they would live for less than a year?

Another woman might have been frustrated, but Simon's questions pleased Lily, just as it pleased her to look at him. There was sawdust in his hair and eyebrows and his beard shadow was dark though it was hardly midday, and when he looked at her there was a burning in his eyes, an impatience barely held in check. Once she had thought him rather plain, something that confused her and amused her, too, that she had been so willfully blind.

“What you really asking,” Curiosity said when Simon had run out of questions. “Is whether our Lily got cold feet. You worried about her running out on you.” Curiosity shook her head at both of them as though they were unruly children. Before Lily could say anything, Curiosity waved a hand to stop her.

“I'ma go home and see if those girls got dinner on the table yet. You stay here and tell the man what he want to hear, child. I don't know about young people these days, I truly do not.”

There was a short silence between them after Curiosity had disappeared down the steps with her basket over her arm, and then Simon cleared his throat.

“Well?”

Lily crossed the room to him in five quick steps. “Of course I'm not going to change my mind. Would I be spending all my time making this cabin into a home for us if I planned to run off?”

She put a hand on his arm and felt the pulse jumping there. It was a shameful thing, but she took considerable pleasure in the discomfort he didn't quite manage to hide.

“You're stuck with me now, Simon Ballentyne,” she said. “Like it or not.”

That earned her the smile she wanted, the one that flashed his dimples and made his face come alive. She pushed the dark hair away from his face and he caught her hand, turned its palm to his mouth and kissed it. They might have done more—a shiver ran up Lily's back at the things he suggested, his mouth against her ear—but it was dinnertime, and her stomach rumbled loud enough for him to hear it.