“I’ve been assigned to Major Hughes, so I’ll be here as long as he has command, or until they figure out which direction the British are going to invade from,” he said. He glanced down at her, the color of his eyes particularly strong and strange in the first light. Then he turned his head toward the north, and at that moment Hannah heard it, too: the sound of men on horseback. A lot of them, moving at a fast clip.

Ben took both horses by the bridle and pulled them into the trees that led down to the water. Hannah followed, more curious than alarmed. They stood while the horses thundered by, shoulder to shoulder. Ben leaned over and spoke into her ear so that gooseflesh moved in a wave down her back.

“Hughes and the men. I’ll have to catch up.”

Hannah said, her voice oddly high and far away: “Try not to get yourself killed, will you?”

The smile he turned on her was so wicked that Hannah should have been alarmed. Before she could step away he bent his head and kissed her as if it were the most natural thing in this strange world, as if she belonged with him and nowhere else. She kissed him back anyway.

He was still holding the reins, and he turned to loop them around a low branch.

Hannah said, “You have to catch up.”

“I won’t have far to go,” Ben said. “They’re stopping at the Kilty-Smith place. You could see them if you went down to the water’s edge.”

There were many good reasons to refuse, but none came out when Hannah opened her mouth to protest. Instead she let him pull her deeper into the trees. She went with him because she was intrigued and flushed and couldn’t think of an excuse not to go, at least not an excuse that wouldn’t make him laugh at her outright. So she let herself be pressed up against the trunk of a tree—a cypress, she noted with some part of her mind—and be kissed. And she kissed him back, glad of the chance, glad of the feel of him. Things were changing, that was true, but Hannah realized that she didn’t want Ben Savard to be one of those things.

One large hand was lifting her skirt and moving up her thigh with a touch as light as feathers.

“Really, Ben—” She shuddered as Ben’s tongue traced from the hollow of her throat to the jut of a collarbone.

Against her ear he said, “Send me off to war with a smile on my face.”

“You’ve been smiling for hours,” she said, her voice wobbling.

There was no more talking for a while, though Hannah could not make her mind stop working, couldn’t stop the words tumbling and then disappearing into the long kisses that shifted and deepened and broke only long enough for Ben to lift her, her skirts caught up around her waist, her legs wound around him.

“You see?” he said. “We fit.”

She saw, yes. She saw him, the truth of him and of herself. She wanted this. Ben Savard so deep inside her and still it wasn’t enough, couldn’t ever be enough. With one part of her mind she heard more horses on the shell road, and men on foot marching in formation, and then that sound was gone, too, lost in the shudder and shift, the heat and commotion and push and pull and the final plunge, like falling from a great height, heart pounding, to be caught up again in the tangled web of the world.

“What is going on?” Hannah asked, when she had her breath back and was trying to put her clothes back in order. “A hundred men must have gone by here in the last fifteen minutes.”

“Major General Jackson,” Ben said. He retrieved the slouch hat he had dropped from the ground and settled it on his head. “Come to rescue us from the presumptuous enemy.” He leaned down to kiss Hannah, a hard stamp of his mouth. “Get back to the rue Dauphine,” he said. “You may not see me for a week or more. Sleep in my bed while I’m gone.”

Chapter 35

The ride out to the Bayou St. John was unexpectedly pleasant, though Luke had got little sleep and less rest. Jennet, relieved beyond words at this change in their fortunes, had climbed up onto the great bed in the large, almost opulent chamber they had been given for their use, and fallen asleep while the baby was still nursing. Luke had untangled him and was considering whether or not he should wake Jennet when a maidservant scratched at the door. It turned out to be the Livingstons’ wet nurse, who had the care of their young daughter and who had been instructed to take on Nathaniel’s needs as well.

And so Jennet had slept on, undisturbed, and Luke had lain next to her, not quite asleep, while the evening’s conversation drifted in and out of his mind. He was deeply uneasy for a dozen reasons, and also oddly resigned. They had taken a great risk in approaching Livingston, but it seemed as though the Savards’ intuition had been correct.

In the morning, things moved so quickly that there was no time to reconsider. A manservant—a slave, no doubt—appeared with clothes suitable for Livingston’s secretary, the jacket a little small, the linen a little large, the boots, thankfully, the right size and well broken in. Then he had been given a bowl of coffee and milk and a roll of soft white bread, and before first light they had ridden out of the city.

The first day of December. In Montreal there would be snow and cold, but here the skies were clear, and the temperature was no more than chilly. Another thing to be thankful for: Luke found he wasn’t expected to make any kind of conversation. They were in a larger party of men, among them the mayor and the governor.

Luke was surprised at Claiborne’s youth—the man looked to be no more than thirty-five, though he had been appointed to his post by Jefferson some years ago. Worse than his relative youth was the fact—Luke couldn’t overlook it after even ten minutes in the man’s company—that he was severely limited in terms of intelligence, excessively prideful, and completely unaware of the way he presented himself to the world.