They grew up in a time of war.
Sarah knows this now, she can look back on the books she kept during that time and see plainly that they did not grow up in a time of fun, or high adventure. It was war. It was war when Henri was stabbed. It was war when an American Militia man threatened to rape her, threatened horrible things when he had stared at her. Hearing the british lilt in her voice, something she had never been ashamed of before he had turned on her.
James had stopped him then. Cradling Sarah to him and from then on their dynamic had changed. The time of war had changed their innocent relationship.
Sarah wasn't sure how to return home after all that. It wasn't that she didn't know how to act. Because she was sure she could manage the manners, and the games. But it all seemed so petty now. She instead waited to be told to come home. Her letters were more infrequent, completely skipping her growing closeness to James.
Her parents were progressive, she knew that. But not so progressive as to marry their daughter to a man with nothing. The colonies are still so in her family's mind. The country she helped fight for is nothing now to them.
She knows even more then that, her parents couldn't see James as a human. He was simply a colonist, a treasonous colonist. And she didn't know how much her parents would take to her switching sides. Switching loyalties. She tried to not, she honestly had wanted to remember all that was good about England, about the pomp and the manners. But she felt herself slipping.
She'd felt it from the moment she'd walked onto American soil. It wasn't a shock, like James had expected. It was a quiet want, the same quiet want she felt when she looked into James' eyes. It was the want she felt when she heard children running about, in peace as they looked content. But it had gotten stronger. She'd been on the forefront of reporting almost all of the war. Mr. Franklin had been adamant that her position not be hindering her reporting. So she'd seen the death, she'd let soldiers die in her arms. She'd watched her friend's die. She'd held them in her arms.
It was impossible to watch them dying for their cause and not change. She'd spent time in plenty of British camps, and she cried over those young men's deaths as well. But she'd cried more because of why they'd died. They hadn't died believing in anything. Sarah had recorded their dying thoughts, they wanted to let their wives know they loved them. They wanted to be loved. They wanted to go home to their farms.
She had brought these messages to Franklin, hoping the similarities could tie the two nations together again. Franklin said it was too late. The red coats were no longer people to Americans. That they were a symbol.
James had read the messages. Them along with the pleading in Sarah's eyes had convinced him to put down a gun and only pick up a pen.
The messages had convinced Sarah that she could never return to England. She couldn't be a loyal subject of a crown which sent its troops to die for no reason other then taxes. She wished instead that she could hide from the war. Stay in the Printing shop close the window shutters and never leave.
James had coaxed her out. They had both grown so much from the beginning of the war. He had been wounded, his face no longer as pretty. He had grown stronger too, wiser. He no longer was so brash, he no longer ran about. He instead sent Henri and other apprentices out to do his reporting. His arm had been shot once, and it hindered his writing at times.
All those things, made it impossible for her to return.
But especially James.