Self—pity and whimpering, Elizabeth observed with a frown. This is a fine start you're off to, my girl.

She drew three deep breaths and with a suppressed sigh she rose from her warm spot before the hearth to walk to the dresser.

"You may be a spinster," she told her image in the mirror over the washbasin, "but you needn't be unkempt. You will start by making yourself presentable and finding your own way to the dinner table."

Quickly, Elizabeth washed her face and neck in cool water and then in rapid movements took out the pins which held her hair in place to shake her hair free. Uncoiled, it flew around her like an unruly veil, as deep as the night and rippling to her waist, falling from a widow's peak to frame a heart—shaped face, a strong, dimpled chin, an overgenerous mouth, and widely spaced light gray eyes ringed with darker gray, the same gray as the linen of her dress. Quaker eyes, her mother had always called them, affectionately. Now this thought of her mother helped Elizabeth, and she looked around herself. Perhaps her mother had brushed her hair before this very mirror in the cabin on the mountain the judge had built for her when they were first married.

With a start Elizabeth realized that her bags were not yet in her room, and that there were no brushes or combs on the dresser. She opened the door, hoping that Galileo's son might have been too shy to knock when they brought up the trunks, but the hall was empty. There was nothing to do but go and find her things.

Smoothing her rumpled traveling dress as best she could and praying that she would run into no one, Elizabeth made her way downstairs but found that the foyer was empty of people and luggage. She was confronted with a half circle of closed doors, the far one of which, she reasoned, led to the kitchens.

Finally, irritated at herself for her hesitance, she knocked and then opened a door, and found her father's empty study. The next door opened into the dining room, with a table set for an expansive midday meal, but also empty.

Growing impatient, Elizabeth opened the third door and found herself in the parlor.

Nathaniel Bonner was sitting directly before her on a low stool in the light of the window, stripped to the waist. Another man, tall and very broad, hovered behind Nathaniel's shoulder with a bloodstained rag in one hand and a scalpel in the other. At the far wall, on a stool next to the fire, the housekeeper worked over a mortar and pestle while Hawkeye watched with a critical eye. All four looked up at Elizabeth in surprise.

Even in her mortification, Elizabeth had to notice how different the two men were: one fair, with great masses of red—gold beard, and dressed expensively in linen and wool; the other dark and lean, dressed only in leather breech clout and leggings, his naked chest smooth and muscled. Then Elizabeth realized that she was looking at a stranger—a grown man—without a shirt, when she had never seen even her brother in such a natural state. She felt herself flooding with color.

Surprise crossed Nathaniel's face; he sat up and opened his mouth to speak but Elizabeth had already begun to spin away, sending her hair around her into a whirl. She slammed the door shut behind her, her face burning, and ran back toward the stair, where she bumped full force into her father and brother.

"Elizabeth!" the judge said, startled. "Are you quite well?"

"Really, Lizzie," her brother chimed in, straightening the lace stock at his neck. "Look at you. What a sight you are."

Elizabeth scowled."If I knew where my things were, Julian, I would not be here in the hall offending your sensibilities."

The judge put an arm around her shoulders. "Go back to your rooms, my dear. I'll send someone along with your bags right away so that you can change for dinner. Richard is here, and he's anxious to meet you, so put on something pretty."

The tone of this request, coaxing and unfamiliar, made Elizabeth pause in her flight up the stairs. "Richard?"

Her father smiled. "Richard Todd—I've written to you of him. You must have seen him just now, tending to Nathaniel. He is anxious to be introduced to you."

And Elizabeth remembered, suddenly, those words she had heard just minutes before: Is your father as content to have a spinster daughter as you are to be one?

"It seems the sights of the sickroom were such that she didn't notice the doctor," Julian was saying as Elizabeth disappeared up the stairs. At any other time, she would have responded to her brother's impertinence, but now, suddenly uneasy, she wanted nothing more than to get away.

Chapter 2

The housekeeper was called Curiosity Freeman, and Elizabeth soon understood how she had earned her first name. When Galileo brought up her trunks and valise, Curiosity came along—to help Elizabeth get settled, she said, but it was clear that there was more than baggage on her mind.

"How many times the judge will get himself into mischief with that smoothbore, I hate to think," she began without preamble. Over Elizabeth's protests, Curiosity lifted and moved the trunks without catching her breath or losing her train of thought.

"Never you mind, I suppose I can manage these few valises of yours. I've lifted heavier things in my life."

Elizabeth noted Curiosity's broad hands and muscled forearms and had to agree that she was capable.

"Don't you worry about me, miss. Not much short of a musket ball could put me off my feet." This put her in mind of the recent drama, and she took up the topic again. "Nathaniel would be crossing to the other side this very moment if he didn't have somebody watching over him, that for sure. But that little bullet certainly did push your homecoming out of the way, didn't it?"