PART II

By mid-October autumn hangs heavily in the air. Every now and again a small yellowing leaf falls from a tree; the vast harvested fields, have a bright emptiness. Along the forest's edge, where an expanse of tall grass spared by the haymakers shows its sheen to the wind, fat black bumblebees sleep on the yellow ruffles of flowers. The faint blue of the sky, still not warmed up after the night, a single small cloud starts to turn pink with an unearthly grace about its long, thin outline. The air is crisp on the lung, the sun is still struggling to make it past the horizon and the smell of woodsmoke hangs heavily on the morning's mist.

From the black branches of some trees, a flock of sparrows flutters away with an airy rustle and settle on the swaying tops of a row of drooping sunflowers as he moves his horse on. When he reaches a crest overlooking an amber glade, he can make out a small hamlet below that sits nestled innocently amongst the picturesque agrarian backdrop, already filled with men and women hunched over in the green fields full of white flowering tobacco, twisted teepees of sun crisped corn stalks dotting across their empty field, lines of wagons loaded high with red gourds and yellow squashes that criss-cut through the greenery and grainery. The Colonel sits slouched in his saddle, sipping at his cold weak coffee he made out of three-week-old grounds and revolting water he strained out of a muddy surely disease festering ditch, observing, waiting; listening to a cow moo somewhere almost dreamily in a far off field. As the sun rises higher and higher and the hamlet grows ever lighter, in step with it, the entire area coming to life, losing its strange shadowy charm.

He shakes out the dregs of his cup and puts it away. He pulls out a small journal and piece of graphite and makes a rough sketch of the buildings and their surroundings, making notes of the distances and any obstacles and he moves on down a narrow private round that leads around the settlement that he hopes will give him a better vantage point.

Not far down the road he hears the unmistakable shrieking and laughter of children. Veering off the into the brush he sets his horse beneath some dense trees and dismounts and walks on foot up until the source of the racket was in view: a half burnt two story farm house turned into a makeshift play area for a handful of young children.

The children had looted several horse blankets, feather beds, furniture cushions, bags of laundry and whatever else they could find that was soft scattered amongst the destruction and piled them up outside the second story window. One climbs onto the other's shoulders, hoisting themselves up onto the scorched landing of brick that still holds up the partially exposed second story. After disappearing inside for a moment, they reappear at the window, then wildly jump with shrieking screams of excitement onto the gathered cushioning twenty feet below to the great encouragement and warnings of danger from the audience of children. A little girl with white-blonde hair and a bulky canvas dress plummets from the window and lands and bounces off the pile and almost immediately starts to cry. A boy goes to her and looks at her hand and inspects it and shrugs his shoulders. He helps her up and goes back to joining his cohorts to the thrill ride of the window.

The sobbing girl cradles her hand to her chest she walks away from the mob of youngsters and sits down on a ripped and filthy wingback chair towards the back of the shambled property into the uncut wood that backs it. She cries to herself for a bit before looking around and inexplicably she notices the Colonel. She looks down at her lap nervously and away and then back to see if he's still looking at her. He thinks to move but before he can turn she's already started walking across the clearing that flanks the house towards him.

Slowly at first, cautious and halting, she looks back to the house before gaining confidence and she soon skips to him in that way little fae children do, so magically and fluttering and weightless on their impossibly frail legs.

"Are you hurt?" he asks her when she stops about ten feet in front of him just past the cover of the brush.

"I fell."

"I saw."

She looks him over. Looks back to the house then again to him.

"Did you break anything?"

"I don't know."

"Let's take a look, shall we?"

She just stares at him. Closer up he can see she's a child of complete destitution. Wearing no shoes and her feet and knees blackened. Her too big for her canvas dress greyed and blotched black. Her sunken bright eyes peer from her skull from behind streaks of ash on ivory. Thin and gaunt. A strange beauty.
He crouches down with his elbows upon his knees and rests his weight back on his heels. "It's alright. I won't hurt you."

She approaches him slowly with her left arm extended straight out and points to her wrist and forearm. "There."

"Right there?" She nods and he gingerly takes her ash streaked arm in his hand and he looks at her tiny twin knobbed wrist. A small puncture wound followed by a trail of spotted coagulating rubies runs just above the delicate bones, a slight swelling in the fingers. He pushes his fingertips into the joints of her arm and then tells her to bend her wrist back and forth and she does. "Does it hurt to move?" Her face in deep contemplation, then: "I don't know." He tells her to move it in circles and shows her with his own how to turn it around and around and she copies him in great seriousness. He suddenly wiggles his fingers which creates a most delightful laughter from her. He smiles and tells her he thinks she'll live.

He thinks for a moment he might have something on him for her and he stands up and goes to his horse and unbuckles a saddle pouch and pulls out a leftover piece of hard dumpling from the night before and hands it out to her. "Are you hungry?"

She shakes her head and trots up to him and goes to snatch it out of his hand but then looks up to him, unsure.

"Go ahead," he urges.

With cautious fingers she grabs the starchy ball and takes a huge bite out of it with her tiny white teeth. She looks him over and stares at his pistol and then to his horse and back to him. Swallows. Blue eyes touch his own. Her mouth still full of half chewed boiled dough she asks, "You be here to get the bad men out, sir?"

He nods and crouches back down to her level and leans on one knee and looks at her. "That's right, dear lady. I'm on a very important, very secret mission."

"For honest?"

"Do you think you can you help me?"

The girl nods slowly with wide tear stained blushed eyes. She eagerly wipes her face and nods with more vigor, her face brightening. "I want to help. I can help."

"What's your name, love."

"Sarah. Sarah Marie Kettleman."

"It's a pleasure, Miss Sarah," he says, handing her his last dumpling. "My name is John."

She looks back towards the house and around as if to make sure their conspiring remain secret from spying ears. Softly she says to him, "There were bad men here."

"I know," he whispers back. He looks around and to the children still playing at the burnt out house in the distance. "Are these your brothers and sisters?"

She shakes her head they aren't. They are a group of children she only knows from the neighboring farm and two are 'quite rude' and one a 'right out scoundrel'. "He pushed me when I tried to jump, you saw it?"

"Your parents?"

"Dead, sir."

"Listen Sarah, I'm searching for a house owned by a man named Ole, do you know of him?"

She nods.

"Can you show me where it is?"

She smiles and nods again. Helpful Sarah points off past the burnt house towards the river, telling him of the shingled house that has a big red trough for the horses that was in fact recently moved by the men who made quick ash to the house turned child's playground, to the opposite side of the bridge it had been placed on. She continues on how two barns were ripped down to make new fencing. When he inquires why they had done this he finds out a most extraordinary bit of information, one that completely contradicts his own. He was under the information they had all left, but apparently for whatever reason, according to Sarah Kettleman, an inexact number were still present and doing something at the river. As it turns out, this little angel was sent to protect him after all.

"That's a good girl." He smiles and gently squeezes her upper arm and pushes back the hair from her face. "You best get back to the others."

He stands up and rifles through his food rations and gives her his last little sack of parched corn, mounts his horse and looks down at the little girl. Skinny and bruised and dirty and without shoes she stands staring at him. Stark blond like his brother was. He'd be sixteen now. No, seventeen. He wonders if he would have stayed that blond. He leans forward in the saddle with his fingers crossed on the horn and sighs. The children at the house have begun to move on, their voices faint and distant. He looks at the burnt house across the small floodplain this filthy fairy skipped across to him and the pinewoods and the brightening sweep of the morning sky beyond, then back down to her, her deep blue eyes still upon him, staring intently.

This discarded stray.

"I've changed my mind," he declares, and dismounts. "Would you like to come with me?"

"If I'm late to my chores, I be whipped bloody, sir."

"Do you like it there?"

She shakes her head. "I miss living with my mama."

"What if I told you, you don't have to go back there ever again?"

"What'd you mean?"

He crouches back down to her level and using all his persuasive skill and charm, and with conspiratory undertones, he puts a hand on her arm and holds it as he says, "Look here dear, it may not look like much, but this is a most treasured item of mine." He leans back and reaches into his waistband and takes out a brass handled dagger in a worn leather sheath that is roughly the size of her spindly forearm and hands it to her. "Within it, lies blessed protective powers. Whoever wields it, becomes invincible."

She turns it over in her delicate hands and looks at it and then him and then back in disbelief. "Wow. For true?"

"What you hold is the dagger of a monstrous man onboard a Turkish slave ship. The brute must have been seven feet tall and with a great black beard, his ugly face all scarred up and with one eye missing, a dreadful fright of a creature, who came at me with a huge sword," (imitating a looming swinging motion at the fascinated child), "and I prayed to Christ Almighty because I knew for sure I was soon to be extinguished most brutally by this devilish man. But impossibly, against all odds, I managed to overtake and kill the villain, by taking this dagger off his waistband and shoving it deeply into his flank," (the gruesomeness and his exaggerated gesturing and narrating tones delighting her). "So you see, it's very special to me. He was the first man I killed with my own hands. And it has protected me ever since."

"It's lovely," she says, her bemused eyes looking over the nicked blade, the small spiral of scrollwork at the tip of the hilt, the thick round finger guard that curls under itself at the base of the blade.

"And since you're officially a member of the royal provincial forces now, providing me with such invaluable intelligence," he says, taking it from her hands and pulling the blade from its sheath, holding it out to show it to her, waving and turning it in between them. "That puts you under my command and care. And as such, no one will whip you ever again."

"Really?"

He nods. "But you see, I worry about losing my treasure. Back in the times of old, there was a very special person who would be entrusted to care for and carry their master's most special and sacred swords and weaponry. So, would you like to be my sword bearer? It's a very important job, though, I'm unsure such a small girl can handle it."

"No, I can" she says quickly and solemnly shaking her head she says, "I can do it. I'll do it."

"You're sure? It's a big responsibility."

"Aye, sir. I promise."

"Now, if anyone at all ever tries to harm you, you have my permission to use it without delay. But only then."

"Can you show me how?"

He smiles. "I will teach you anything you would like to know, my dearest child."

He angles the blade and mimics a quick stabbing motion. "Just like that. In the face. The gut. The cock. Wherever you can. And then you run for your life. Understand?" The girl nods her head and he places the blade back in its leather sheathing and places it back in her hand. "We'll have a better lesson later, hmm?"

"Okay."

Standing up and brushing the leaves and dust off his knees he says, "Let's get a move on."

"Where are we going?"

"Wherever the king needs us."

"Like knights?"

He picks her up under the arms and swings her up onto the saddle. "Like soldiers."

He mounts and sits behind her and moves the horse on. She happily chatters in between shoveling corn into her mouth, as they make their way back up round through the wood, down the road and out towards the meet up point with his other patrols. As she goes on, she tells him all sorts of activities and interpersonal gossip out of the mouth of babes taking place at her rebel assisting hamlet tucked upon the river and while she does, a plan is quickly forming in his mind on how to best approach this new situation.

But his unease and anxiety is being caused not by some chance there could be any worrisome opposition waiting for them, but his mind dwelling on his biggest worry: dark and sad, a little over five feet in height, soft and sun kissed, surprisingly strong legged, the fire of his life and he, the perpetual disappointment in hers.

They had parted on circumstances that left him in great anxiety and everyday he spends out in the field away, it only increases exponentially. The events of the summer now seeming like some fantastical dream.

It all came about innocuously, and how all temptation of our downfalls present, in our most happiest of joys and pleasures. Sometime around mid-summer when the weather became an unbearable and constant misery, it had turned out an irrigation trench and thorny bower he and a fellow officer sat in for eight hours while watching a road, keeping themselves concealed from the enemy was not only a source of keeping his feet soaking wet, but even worse, a log he was leaning against was the home of a raving nest of unhappy fire ants that left his legs, hands and back covered in painfully itchy red welts the size of saucers. After departing from this unhappy mission of which he spent a blistering week in the sun, he had returned late in the evening upon his utmost pain with a headache that refused to cease, and his utmost joy to find his dearest just as her bewitching German literary sister, still the same bright, beautiful creature whose presence softens pain, and sheds happiness around whichever way she turns.

Watching her through the open half of the Dutch door of the kitchen, she sat at the table writing something, a letter perhaps (to him?), lost in rapturous concentration that caused the tip of her tongue to curl at the corner of her mouth, and as he looked on, the sweet girl sighed dreamily and flipped her page over. Her loose pale yellow frock happened to be so deeply cut out behind that whenever she moved her back while tilting her head, he could make out the sharp hourglass slopes of her prominent shoulder blades, hints of her silky ensellure, that salty long snake of vertebrae he loved kissing so much peeking out beneath the bunched fabric.

Head throbbing, but heart longing, he opened the door and took her into his arms and tried to kiss her, only for her to jerk her head away and look over him in shock and horror and welcomed him with, "Dear God in Heaven, what happened to you?"

"Just a few too many days in the sun, and in—some very angry large red ants," he cajoled looking at his red puffy hands, and tried to playfully joke it off but apparently he looked quite the fright and she led him by the arm to his room as if he were a confused invalid wandering the hallways at a late hour.

And his heart might have ruptured into a million pieces at her worry and concern over his condition as she, with the assistance of one of the nicer house-girls named Phoebe, (a chubby cute little fille de joie which he gave a crate of goslings to that he had seized and has ever since left his bed well aired and fluffed, double sheeted and always greets him with a flirtatious jab and an update on how "his geese" are), attended to him immediately. Rushed a long in a daze, she had him sit down and he wondered if he were in a dream, and perhaps it was the feverish haze he was in from his sun touched skull, for she knelt down before him and in what would look to any unknowing outsider to be a typical domestic scene of a dutiful wife removing her husband's boots and socks, to inspect and mourn with delicate fingertips over his blistered raw feet and the swollen red bumps where nasty insects had feasted. And wouldn't you know, she had an array of waters and ointments his thoughtful girls had made while he was gone for him knowing he'd been suffering terrible sunburn and all the ravages of the wilds of the country made from the recipes in the very book he had gotten her. How could one tolerate it all?

While Phoebe filled up the copper tub with buckets of water, Anna loaded his arms with clean towels and clothes and ordered him to take a cold bath, much to his disappointment alone, handing him a jar with a finely milled powder ("What is it?" he asked to which she replied smiling, "Grainies and thingies, as my mother called it.") to add to the water that would help soothe his skin and cool his blood down. It smelled not unpleasant and so he dumped the entire amount of it into the water, making it milky and smooth to the touch. The cereal smell brought him right back to when he and his brother were regularly doused together in the very same kind of water during a childhood battle with an itchy pox that left them both with a series of deep holes in their little faces and bodies, and over the years as rambunctious and careless boyhood encounters with the unforgiving tropical sun, local vermin and irritating plant life happened. He sank with an achy groan and a sigh of pleasured relief when the cold water hit his hot skin. Leaning his head back on the fat metal lip of the tub he closed his eyes, hoping the pounding throb in his skull would subside, and letting the gleeish delight of her attention bring a stupid grin to his stupid sunburned face.

When he was thoroughly shriveled and soaked and feeling a bit chilled, he exited the tub, carefully dried himself and put on the pair of baggy trousers she so thoughtfully had given him. He walked barefoot and sans-shirt back to his room on the table next to his bed was a glass filled with a steaming liquid. He picked it up and smelled it and nearly wretched. Bitter roots, willow bark, vinegar, brandy and something he could not identify. Fermenting goat's milk?

From the doorway she came in and he heard her say, "Drink all of that, now. Every drop."

"But—"

"No arguing now," his nursemaid reprimanded. "Drink it all and sit yourself down. Consider your luck that it's not going in the other route."

He did not argue. He drank the swill down and chased it with a glass of warm water that did not help much and sat down on the edge of the bed. She placed a towel soaked in a pleasant smelling water upon his neck and ears and the top of his head and gave him another to hold to his hot burning face.

On her knees behind him, with careful fingers she parted his hair exposing the painful burned areas of his scalp and ears and gasped. "Heaven's be John, a person could go mad from the sun like this, I've heard terrible stories."

"Yes, yes," he murmured, wincing while she gingerly applied a thick rich smelling ointment to the blisters and raw skin he had scratched bloody. He listened as she went on about the horror story of some poor child who was left baking in a field only to grow up simple in every way except he could without fail accurately predict the weather, like some yokel oracle and he became quite an important person in the village, but he died suddenly and horribly, and it was somewhere around there his attention to what she was saying was drowned out by how his heart slammed in his chest at her simple touch, the proximity of her! Even still! He could not help but be moved by all this, and how in her presence he so easily allowed himself feel the sweet joy and sense of wholeness that can only come from being weak before another, and being safe to do so, letting his mind and soul fill with the peace that somehow this simple girl possesses all control over. He wondered if she even realized what agonies her little familiarities inflicted upon him, as her knees and the warmth of her thighs bumped and leant against him, her hand brushing through his hair, her warm breath on his nape, fingertips dabbing at his weepy disgusting wounds, smiling, laughing, stabbing his soul, stirring his desire.

Suddenly her story and lecturing and his reverie was interrupted and in synchronous motion they both turn their heads towards the door as a spying Lucy who had witnessed the scandalous scene of Anna kneeling behind a hardly dressed Colonel on his bed, shamelessly attending to his exposed skin, had stepped on a creaking board and given her position away completely. She did not say anything and quickly slunk away, surely to go weep into her Frankish embroidered pillow.

"You left the door open?"

"Aye, I suppose I did."

"You are quite devious, madam. You continue to both impress and enchant me."

"I think from now on, she won't be liking either one of us very much. I'd say you are in my debt, eh?"

"So there was an ulterior motive afoot?"

"I'm simply sick of her skulking and tiresome pining to be honest," she laughed softly and paused for a moment. "But," she started and smiled and bit her lip and then looked back down to inspect his hands. "Now that you mention it, there is one thing I wanted to ask of you, Colonel. But we can speak of it later."

She hopped off the bed and placed a piece of oilcloth on his pillow and then covered it with a wet towel for him to lay and soak his sun stroked scalp upon. There in the bed, he laid upon his back with his eyes closed and she placed a soothing cool towel across his face and told him to leave it there. She drew the curtains shut to darken the room and he felt the mattress sink when she sat down alongside him. He soon felt the skin tingling cold wetness of a foul smelling vinegar she began applying to his bite wounds, lifting and rolling up his pant legs, her cool fingers played delectably across his skin while she applied her loving treatment to his body and busying herself with changing the towels on his pillow and face with fresh water as his sweltering skin burned through them almost instantaneously.

After fifteen minutes or so of her loving dark room treatment, he noticed the throbbing pain in his skull had been reduced to a light ache and he only felt like ripping his skin off every ten breaths instead of two. Raising the towel off his face she softly asked, "Better?"

"A little."

She smiled at him. "What would you do without someone to take care of you? How did you ever manage to get this far?"

He smiled at her. "You should join me in the field, assisting Mr. McKernon."

"And who is Mr. McKernon," she inquired taking the folded towel laying across his closed eyes and forehead and rinsing it in the basin.

"Our surgeon, of course. You would make an excellent nurse."

She laughed and shook her head and curled up her nose. "Me? On a battlefield?"

"I think you possess more strength than half the men there. You're certainly smarter than most, God in Heaven, you should hear these mindless misfits I'm surrounded by constantly," he cried, taking her cold tonic scented (milk, oranges, lemons, sugar candy) fingers into his hands and inhaling, lovingly kissing their soft pads before lying his head back on his stiff but soothingly cool wet pillow. "How I have missed you—your angelic voice, your bright face; my perfect, luminescent darling. The terrors of war and the banalities of vulgar peasantry, you are the only relief I have from such sufferings. You are my only friend."

"You flatter me, as usual, Colonel," she smiled, and brought a cool towel across his eyes, "but I also think you're still a bit touched from the sun, hmm?"

"Perhaps," he said, lifting up the cloth off his eyes and reaching a hand out to her face, teasing her pink lips with his thumb, running the backs of his fingers along her jaw and down her chest and gently caressed her through her dress. "I've missed you, unbearably so, that is no lie or sun induced madness."

"You've been missed here as well."

"Have I?"

Standing up slowly, she turned herself away from him and went to the door and closed it, turning the lock behind her.

She came and stood back alongside the bed and turned her back to him and he realized she was working the complicated series of pins of her dress undone, placing each one with a plink down into a tin tray on the bedside table. Soon each layer fell away until she was down to her stay. With his eager help, it came quickly unlaced and was thrown to the floor as he pulled her to his side into the bed, lifting her shift up over her head and taking her soft full breasts into his hands, devouring her, kissing the long pink crenulations the cruel garment left imprinted upon his love's tender flesh.

But before he could get too carried away she stopped him and reminded him to keep his wet head on his pillow of which he was not convinced and replied with a growling, "Make me," into her chest and made her laugh to which she slapped his bright red neck cruelly. "Stay put. You are not allowed to move," she said, ripping herself from his grip and sitting up alongside him.

"And if I don't? Will you give me a good spanking like a naughty schoolboy?"

"I have a feeling you would enjoy that."

"One never knows unless they try."

"Now quit being vulgar and lie back," she groaned pushing him down.

"Yes, mam," he sighed heavily, flopping back on the bed, half annoyed half dying of need.

The fingers of a hand trailed playfully down the hair of his chest and belly and stopped just above the Major's Revenge before very lightly petting the copper hairs over it.

"That's because of you, you know," he said, taking her hand and bringing it to a lower latitude that was in much more urgent need of her touch. "I nearly died."

"Did you," she said flatly, with that inscrutable way of hers that leaves one to guess whether it is sarcasm or sincere concern or some mock imitation of the two, while caressing him with mysterious, impure eyes. A shiver flooded through his veins he sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth when she leant down to press her lips to the jagged translucent skin of the scar.

"Did it hurt terribly?"

"You have no idea."

"Poor darling," she sighed, rising upon one knee and swinging the other over his waist, settling her warmth down across his hips, hot inviting Venus nestled just above a longing Mars, her little curling toes digging into his bite ravaged thighs. She sat upright upon her bended knees letting him gaze upon her, bent forward and kissed his chapped lips and then cryptically, very quietly, said, "I wonder, would you do it again?"

He traced with his fingertips her breasts with one hand, then let his hand fall away. She repositioned herself, using his shoulders as foundations for her spread palms holding her straight arms up, her eyes watching his face. "I said something wrong?"

He sighed and sunk his fingers into her hair and brought her mouth to his. He tenderly kissed her and against her lips he said, "No, nothing wrong."

She smiled darkly at him in a way that both sent a thrill and deep unease through him as she put the flat palm of her hand on his chest while connecting them with the other, and then, there was just the feel and taste of her and everything was washed away, flooded in the force of desire.

And it was after the final throbs of this reunion and during its glowing aftermaths of soft kisses and whispers the conversation ended up in a place where before he knew it, she managed to get him to agree, while he was home at least, to allow her out under his omnipresent thumb. She made a very compelling case to his sex sated self that he could see no logical reason to object to: They had been there for nearly a year, she had not tried to leave or break their heavily one sided agreement in some time (to his knowledge). Everything flowed from her lips in soft and sweet tones, her balmy breath on his lips and cheek, fingers lazily in his hair; she could have asked him to resign his commission and become a crab fisherman and he would have agreed it sounded just brilliant. It would not be often, she pointed out eagerly before he could make his counter argument which never came, it was only to a neighbor's for "normal" activities and socialization, there was a lovely group of ladies who she got on with and it would all be just fine and merry and roses. Listening to her go on begging for such small humane freedoms made an ashen sense of awfulness creep over him, as what kind of monster would he be to deny her? And as she pointed out, wouldn't it seem stranger and more suspicious that she never is allowed to visit others? He agreed that it was. And wouldn't it be nice for her to be able have prayer and tea with others? Dear God, yes! Yes! Why not just stab him in the eye?

It was when he was under these spells of confused bliss in which she took advantage of his weakened state. Whether it was intentional or not he still does not know. Although he'd be fool to say that she did not leave slivers of doubt in his mind whether real or imagined, and perhaps, because he was a fool, even still, he did not feel himself deceived. When he looked at her dark smiling eyes he could see, could feel her sincere warmth, and dare he even say, dare he even believe his own heart that screams to him ceaselessly, she loves me, she loves me…

So he agreed to her desires, every last one of them, and she beamed and squealed with such radiant joy, kissing him with no restraint or hint of platonic notion, crushing her soft chest to his chest, slowly reawakening the spent spire, telling him how happy he had made her and then showing her gratitude in acts and airs that sent a rutting heat through his veins, that he felt a complete self-satisfied ease with his obvious and pathetic capitulation.

How strange it is when we know for a fact that a decision made is destined and we know will only bring us sorrow and destruction later, and despite this knowledge, this ability of logic and high intelligence granted to us from God making us supposedly greater than the beasts of the earth, that we willingly ignore it! We ignore it for those irresistible immediate gratifications, promises of hopes we know that will never come true, just to experience those overflowing emotions, to ease the pain for those brief moments, regardless of the cost, it seeming so far off and like a vague possibility rather than a foreboding inevitability. He could not help himself. Like the barren woman who knows she simply cannot bear to hold another's precious bundle, knowing it will increase her suffering and lead to the darkest of despair, only to be the first to volunteer when the opportunity arises. And it all seemingly occurring without our control.

He hadn't yet realized it just yet, but something deep inside him had morphed into some insidiously jealous, dark and paranoid devil that ceaselessly whispered conspiracies and threats of both the probable and improbable to him, with his ability to distinguish the difference fading by the day. And it was when he allowed his grip to slacken on her, to let that control slip, he found himself unprepared at the incredible fierceness his selfish obsession with possessing her, realizing the limits of such, had developed into an obsessive fear of losing her.

Thinking that the mere possession of her would be enough to quell his heart; he found it nonetheless confused, desperate. There was still an aching emptiness that could not be filled, a distance between them impossible to close. She was his, but he was no fool. She was not. Even while inside her, feeling her hot grip on him, the lengths of their bodies pressed close he still felt a painful longing, a need to give her more, to possess her completely. It was only in dreams, mere madman's demented fantasies that he could fully shed himself of this torment, to turn her delicate insides out and give as much attention and know so intimately her sacred insides as he did to the every pore of her external self—along the tight strings of her heart, to adore and explore with his lips the silent pulsing blood vines of her precious iliac crests, the sunny fat globules over her flittering kidney, the glorious reds and blacks and pinks and whites of her fiery matrix itself; to be one with her, to slake his desire in an unending pool of her rich blood.

But even so, despite these pitfalls and disillusionments of reality, it was not that he was unhappy. On the contrary, he had never known such joy or been a more cheerfully annoying person in his three decades on this planet. Colors became brighter and richer. The wonderful feeling of the warmth of the sun saturating his soul and the songs of birds a simple delight. Things that would have seemed so important a year ago, became trivial. Things that disrupted his soaring heart and tempted to bring the draining pain of rage, seemed less able to rouse it. She to him was a sacred being in which all passion, all life resided.

One is lead to believe that familiarity breeds contempt, and perhaps this is true, but for him it only seemed to fill his heart with a deep peace that carried with him throughout his absences and sustained his heart, making him smile and find the most pleasurable indulgences in the most childish or simple of things. His days home were spent waking up alongside her, seeing that small shape beneath the covers, with her dark silks spread unceremoniously across his pillows filled him with such a deep gratitude and sense of peace that he would lay silent and watch her sleep, to watch the slow rise and fall with her every breath, her unguarded innocence making her even more charming, more precious.

For every morning to wake her with soft kisses to her bed-warm nape, the feeling of the naked aura of her warmth against his bare skin, the times she sat alongside him and shared the waning sunset and he slipped his hand into hers and she did not recoil, she did not sigh, she did not stiffen in response but instead with every bit of tender gentle intent, entwined her fingers through his. Neither spoke a word but he feared his chest might rupture from the reverberations of his heart's song as her simple tender gestures spoke to him what she never would not or perhaps could not say with words. When all seemed hopeless he would hear her voice echo from a distant room or at times sing her enchanting melodies and all was dispersed, like a heavenly air sweeping through him, lifting the madness and despair, letting him breathe freely once more.

Happiness or what we think of when we hear the word, that abused over saturated meaningless word, in comparison seemed so superficial. Happiness is what you felt when you overindulged in candies or you received a letter from an old friend. What he felt, was not as childish and fleeting as happiness. It was sanctity. He kept a small folded bundle of her letters on his person tied in a ribbon steeped in her perfume and like a superstitious peasant or papist, he held the firm belief they provided him with some kind of protection, a piece of his peace in physical form, a relic of her grace with him into the hazards of war. For after all, she had saved him from death once before and he knew with all the faith he was capable of, that she was his gift from God. He had never felt more invincible, nothing seemed impossible, the world was a beautiful, a serenely beautiful and brutal place.

He was more in love with her than ever. He was drunk upon her, selfishly loving her as much as possible, gorging himself upon her, becoming an expert in all things Anna until her essence hung ceaselessly on his senses, while he can, before she disappears, before he leaves to never return; to whatever end. And so in his desperation to make his object of desire happy he made a bad decision. Followed by several more. But alas, she was evil, he was in thrall, and in manipulating him with both her hold over his happiness and certain carnal, unworldly pleasures that he could not live more than a few days without, all rational reasoning went out the window.

At first, he was proud of his decision. He had shown her a huge leap of faith, showing her he trusted her and wanted her happiness, he wanted her to be free, which he truly deep in his heart did. For what essentially was normalcy, or as close as it would be possible for them, was all he ever truly wanted. And she was never happier with him. They must have found themselves entwined at least twice a day those following weeks and he was convinced that it was a simple beeline to happily ever after. How did this love thing ever seem so difficult before?

However, as all things go, especially when it comes to love, something always comes along to piss on our happiness and joy. And in this case it was about a hundred and fifty pounds, with curly raven glossy black hair and teeth whiter than nature would ever permit. While out speaking to one of his officers about acquiring new horses, upon her return one afternoon he made out in the distance Anna exiting a carriage followed by a man in a dreadful tan and mauve coat with powder blue breeches. His name, as he would find out later, Samuel Barret, a begrudgingly to admit dashing man. They crossed a ways from the carriage which they walked through the small garden of late blooming coneflowers towards the house. He overtook her finally and they stopped and spoke. She twisted her body side to side and would look down and back up again like she did when she was nervous. She was wearing a dress she had made out of the fabric he had bought, soft pink and green, her intolerably pale and graceful nape was turned towards him as he watched this handsome man whose name he doesn't know yet is Samuel Barret take her hand and kiss it. He kissed the top of her hand. That was okay, that was French. She smiled and put her other hand playfully to her face, covering her mouth as she laughed at something he said. He smiled and shrugged and then said something again and held onto her hand while he went on about whatever surely idiotic banter he was spewing, and then audacity over the limit leaned down and kissed her wrist. That was simply not done, that was intolerable, that was considered improper to the respectable peoples of both East and West.

An outwardly calm but inwardly enraged Colonel, like a predator closing his distance between himself and his prey, approached them and cheerfully introduced himself, inserting himself in between the two towering over the much shorter gentleman. A little taken by surprise, the man returned the introduction and he learned his victim's name finally. He then took his hand and shook it firmly and continued, "I wanted to make sure to thank you personally," (not releasing the man's hand before finishing his words), "for seeing my beloved fiancé home safely, despite the fact I specifically have a carriage arranged to retrieve her. I do hope she wasn't much trouble?"

"Oh yes," he replied quickly, "I mean, no, not at all of course. My mother, you see, wasn't feeling well and their little get together cancelled early I'm afraid and I thought it best to escort your—fiancé is it! home. She is a lovely woman, my sister and mother enjoy her company very much. You are quite fortunate."

"Yes, I know. How about you sir, when can I meet your lovely wife?"

He laughed joylessly. He was not married. Of course he was not. No intended? Not one of those either. What a shock! Turns out he was a very single young stallion, currently on the prowl for some poor filly to stud (not his words exactly, but an astute Colonel can read in between the smarmy lines) while he made his living as a secretary for his father's shipping company. Barret's hands worked nervously at his cuff and he looked back to his carriage as if hoping it would receive him magically on nothing but his sheer discomfort alone.

"Not a very safe profession these days, is it? With privateers murdering entire crews even. I've even heard of some rebels attacking the offices and people that work for the lines in retaliation for what they consider traitors to their ill-conceived cause."

Taken back a little, the humor dropped out of Barret's face, "Oh? No, I had not heard that."

"Dreadful business, I'm afraid. Pray, what kind of shipping does your company do, Mr. Barret?"

"These days, well sir, we mostly are transporting grain, salt and tar."

"For the army?"

"—Yes."

"Yes," he repeated smiling and nodding. "Well I do thank you on behalf of the war effort for what you and your father are doing, supplying our men despite the substantial risk to your own lives and safety. It's quite brave for a civilian, don't you think so, dear?"

He looked back over his shoulder where Anna stood with her arms crossed, staring off in the distance looking painfully bored. "Aye," she nodded and gave a fake half-smile. "It certainly is."

"But surely, Mr. Barret knows from his father that the heart of the shipping business is about taking calculated risks with other people's property, isn't it?"

The man paused and studied his face for a moment for his mouth half opened and then closed. He nodded. "Yes, sir," he said slowly, and it would seem the young hopeful was not as dumb as his good looks would suggest. He started to take corrective steps back, as he had realized his fatal error of having stepped into enemy territory and the drumbeat of the native warriors began to sound closer to the intruder, the enemy circling, they're a circling...

"Although, I'm merely a secretary," he remarked and squared his hat nervously. "I should be going. It was a pleasure meeting you, Colonel Simcoe."

"And you as well, Mr. Barret," he loudly replied to his shrinking presence. "Travel safe."

The man bowed in the hurried fashion of men of nervous withdrawal and quickly turned towards back towards his carriage. Without looking at her while keeping his eyes on the diminishing figure in the distance he flatly said, "I don't want him near you ever again."

She slapped the back of his arm. "Why would you tell him that?"

Keeping his eyes on the retreating figure, he replied, "Because he fancies you, isn't that obvious?"

"So what! Now he's going to tell his sister and mother! This will change everything, what were you thinking?"

Oh, would it? That possibility hadn't crossed his mind. The consequence that now every horny goat and hopeful lad in their circle will know not to make unwanted advances towards her without having to deal with him brought a hint of a warm glow to his bittering soured insides. Turning his head towards her but keeping his eye fixed, he asked, "I'm curious why this upsets you so. Do you fancy him?"

"Of course not."

"Then what is the issue?"

She looked at him, dumbfounded her mouth open but the words not coming out fast enough. "What do you mean what is the issue? We are not engaged!"

Her opposition to his brilliant maneuver and discharging of her escort grating along his nerves and pride, he said, "Am I not enough for you? Do you want everyone to think you are unattached and free to slut around with, is that it?"

"John," she said, shocked. Her brow furrowed and face wracked as his words tore through her. "Why are you being so hateful to me?"

Taking her arm in his hand he snapped, "Why are you letting yourself be touched in public by a secretary in sequined breeches?"

She tried to tear herself away but he kept his firm hold on her upper arm. "Ah ah ah," he admonished, pulling her under his arm in a possessive embrace and placed a kiss upon her head making sure the monsieur saw it as he stepped into his carriage and sat looking back at the couple. "It would be rude not to see your friend off."

As soon as the whip hit the horse's haunches and the carriage leapt into motion, she jerked herself free of his grip and stormed off into the house. He did not follow. He watched the carriage leave until all he could see was its dust dissipating in the breeze. He had made her cry and he knew it and even though that was his intent by striking at such a raw nerve truth be told, he instantly hated himself for doing it and did not understand why he had. As most little tiffs and rows went, they were allowed to cool and then pass away, unspoken of and thankfully put behind them. But this one left a dangerous little seed of discontent that grew, sending sharp barbed tendrils into his mind and heart and he only made it worse by partaking in a few too many glasses of wine that evening, and came into her room past an appropriate hour.

"No, no," he said when she started to protest, pulling the thin covers open and sliding against her. "Quiet now."

He shushed her gently putting his fingers to her lips. "I want you to listen to me."

Pushing his knee between her thighs he settled over her, pressing his body onto hers, leaning up on one arm while stroking her dark hair with the other. Sighing, he watched her for a moment, the whisper of her image in the darkness, the gentle gradation of brown hair at the temple into her light skin.

"Are you drunk?"

"I know," he said softly. "You must forgive my words earlier. I should have never said such a terrible thing to you."

She sighed and tried to turn away from him but he held her still. "You think that's the only reason I'm upset? Why are you behaving this way? Go back to your own bed, and sleep it off," she told him firmly and tried to push his hulking mass off but he was like an inebriated stone and shook his head and told her that didn't matter, that he would prove it to her (what exactly, he didn't say) and that he would die for her and for the very reason he tries in general not to overindulge when overtly emotional, continued to make a complete and utter fool of himself.

It was at this point that he broke down before her and confessed her absence became beyond unbearable to him. Said that the thought of finding her gone or with another was sheer torture. Every time he leaves on orders it's all he thinks about, to come home to find her gone. She had no such feeling and was surprised by his words.

"Why should I leave?"

He settled upon her like a hundred eighty pound child, resting his cheek upon her chest, curling himself around her. He apologized profusely. But there's nothing he can do about the feeling it inflicts upon him, it's still there. Even now there is a hollow ache for her.

"What do you want me to do, John," she sighed.

"Tell me you don't fancy him," he murmured into her chest.

"I do not fancy him."

"You swear it?"

"Yes."

"To God?"

"Yes, I swear it to God."

"Will you stop going there?"

She paused. "His sister is my friend. I don't wish to quit seeing her or their family. You've met them, they're fine people." She paused again before asking, "Will you stop me?"

He sighed heavily, painfully and answered, "I want to protect you, but you make my task so difficult."

"Do you not trust me to go on social calls without ending up in a man's bed simply because he shows any favor to me? You think I will betray you so easily? To put everyone here in danger? That I have no honor to even pretend to hold onto, is that what you think? You say you love me, but you think so little of me, John. You're no better than Richard Woodhull."

She stabbed him right in the soul. Oh, what had he done? "No, no," he shook his head, raising his head and looking at her. He swallowed before continuing, his words slurring and rambling as his heart broke in his heavy nauseous drunk chest, "No, I've never thought that of you, not once I swear it, I—only have the utmost and complete respect of you, Anna, your virtuous soul—I do love you—"

"Then just stop," she cried, exasperated. She half laughed and put her hand up in the helplessness she felt. "All of this. Can you understand? Stop."

She sighed and placed her hand over his head and brought it back to her chest and began slowly stroking her fingers through his hair. "Let us not speak of this anymore. It's late."

"Can you ever forgive me?"

He felt a small laugh in her chest. "Of all the things I have forgiven you for, I suppose I can for this."

"May I stay?"

"If you wish," she said after a while, sounding neither happy nor sad.

He placed a kiss upon her collarbone and rolled his weight off her, keeping her in his embrace. His eyes and closed and he listened to the rhythmic beats of her heart. "I love only you."

"I know," she breathed and leaned her cheek down upon his crown, holding him to her. "I know. Just—go to sleep now."

Now, it all would have been fine if she had stopped going like he so pathetically begged her to. But did she?

His Anna? The one who does nothing she's told? The devious one who, purposefully will walk in front of her guardsmen in her nightclothes because she knows it makes them uncomfortable until eventually they moved so far away from where they should be, they were merely there in title? The same one who tells him to his face he's a despicable cretin? Of course not.

It is not as if he could ever be one hundred percent sure she never betrayed him, no matter what he did, there was no possible way despite his rather intricate and invasive methodology of keeping her every move under supervision, there always being gaps in unaccounted for time. Even if he kept her chained to the bed, still, there could be no way to know if she allowed herself to be pawed up by some random footman or care taker coming to roll her over for the night.

Looking back now he can see his suspicions were simply misdirected, as she was hardly interested in him let alone any other man and she not even told him as such but reinforced it in action when his presence to her was unbearable or his touch rejected with no apology. He never witnessed her ever show any affection or pity for any man unlike her tendency to do so in the past, quite the opposite, she now seemingly possessing a rather apathetic or even sadistic air towards any victim of his he may mention, and even as such as the two of them were, she rarely and typically only in dark unguarded moments of either tearful consolation (long heaving sessions that left his shirt soaked and his heart torn) or the after hours of tearful unbearable pleasure, tended to show any even for him. And perhaps it was that, perhaps it was their strange situation, their vague ambiguous status she liked to throw in his face whenever she wanted to wound or deject him, or perhaps it was he had never been so close to a woman his entire life outside his mother and felt like a blind man left in a field with nothing to help him navigate this strange, confusing landscape. Whatever it was or is, it made him behave in a manner that he ardently regrets.

On his next visit home, an unpleasant tension between them strung like a tight wire. It was present the moment he returned and he could not pinpoint what it was that he had done or what had happened to make this uncomfortable feeling between them. She would not talk to him. Anna became distant and cold, she wanted little to do with him and avoided him at every turn possible. She wept inconsolably. She hid away, sad, and slept most of the time when she could. It reminded him of the old days and it sent a panic through him he could have never imagined possible upon realizing the familiar feeling of helplessness.

And so it took the smallest provocation of her being almost two hours late to return one evening from that house, his madness overtook him and he tore through her room, scrutinizing and investigating every scrap of paper, flipping and shaking out every book and magazine and newspaper, trying to find hidden letters, notes or money or something he wasn't even sure she had but he knew she was hiding something. He looked under the bed, looked and fondled about in the bureau for any strange clothes or foreign objects that did not belong, the crunch of paper amongst cloth or a jingle of coin, but found nothing.

His attention turned to a wardrobe and in the back upon a hook found an old coat far in the back that tellingly made a tinkling sound when he disturbed its rest. Devastation ravaged through his heart in those seconds as he hastily scooped and shook out its pockets onto a small desktop, hoping it was just some thimbles or other notions and not to have his paranoid fears confirmed but behold, before his eyes: two shillings, some coppers and four guineas. Four! What exactly was his darling doing in order to acquire such a sum? He had given her, at times, small amounts in case of shortage or some unforeseen need in his absence but the total was nowhere nearing even a single guinea in wealth. Of much less interest, but that his mind scanned and catalogued with great heightened detail in the throes of his increasingly enraged state: A pink dog-eared prayer card (And they shall fight against thee; but they shall not prevail against thee; for I am with thee, saith the Lord, to deliver thee). A coarse bristled hairbrush covered in fuzz and frazzled dark hair. Pins. A blue button. Disgusting ancient crumbs of some kind. A frayed yellow ribbon.

He roughly shoved the money into his pocket and hung the coat back up and turned to leave the room, but suddenly a surge possessed him so terribly that he turned around and in a berserk fury, flipped her mattress off of the bed and shoved the entire bedframe across the floor as far as it would go and when that did not fully relieve him, he ran it up onto its side against the wall until it fell back with the loud sound of wood cracking as it slammed down upon itself. The weight of it so great that he instantly knew he pulled something although he could not feel it yet, his blood too fired. The exertion utterly drained him physically, purging him, and then left sad and weak, he collapsed on a nearby chair and rested his head in his hand when he noticed a half hidden Mercy standing at the doorway frozen in curious terror.

A mouse, he told her.

He removed the money and put everything back the way it was (approximately) but when her Highness finally decided to grace the home with her presence, his clever girl immediately noticed her belongings had been violated. From the opposite side of the wall of his room, he could hear the telltale signs of female distress began, the thumping and stomping grew in volume and force, the tone of exasperated anger and incoming doom vibrated through to his room and he calmly tried to prepare himself for the very uncalm storm that had by then become a full force squall when she discovered a huge uncomfortable dip in her bed, due to the fact that in his fit he had broken a supporting slat under the mattress and did not think to check and fix it before her return, as it looked to be, upon his superficial glance, perfectly fine.

And oh, how he paid for that oversight. The princess noticed the pea (or rather the 6 inch gap) and forgoing any kind of formality or manner, came wildly into his room demanding to know what the devil he did. He claimed complete innocence and ignorance at first, even offering to take a look to perhaps fix it for her? Backfiring spectacularly, with insult now added to injury, her dark eyes slanted at him and her mouth curled in disgust and she stomped down the hall approximately twenty steps, rapping upon a door, the traitor known as Mercy nervously told her everything. She did not buy the mouse story.

Quickly he followed her into her room and before he could try to diffuse the situation, setting off a chain of events in the blink of an eye, she sharply slapped him very hard across the face. The unexpected sting of it took him by surprise and he reflexively grabbed her by the arms, a little too roughly, a little too angrily. He shoved his weight against her in response and through clenched teeth, he darkly warned her, "Don't you ever strike me, again." His hold on her was so tight and on the last word that she let out a little yelp of pain that sobered him a few degrees out of his rage.

"I will do whatever I like as you have done to me," she bitterly spat at him and she did not stop there. She went on, viciously so. That he disgusted her. Her features began to tremble and her voice started to shake as she said she was so tired, so tired of hearing his condescending voice, his lies and how dare he violate what little privacy she had, how dare he think he owned her.

"My lies?" He fished out the guineas in his pocket and presented them on his palm right up to her face, expecting to catch her in an ah ha! moment, but to his disarmed irritation she had a flawless reaction of being completely clueless.

"Where would I possibly get four guineas? Are you mad?"

He wasn't buying it. "You got it from that secretary didn't you? What have you told him?"

She laughed humorlessly and informed him that since his not so subtle threat to poor Mr. Barret, a nice man who had been nothing but kind she said, the man has been terrified to even make eye contact with her, let alone lure her into confessing to him why she really was with this crazed lunatic on top of her. The thought of the disturbingly handsome man in the ugly coat casting his gaze away in terror from her brought him a much needed schadenfreuden relief in that tense moment and the corner of his mind creating and fantasizing over every gruesome detail of killing this fop slowed significantly. She didn't know where the money came from, had never seen it before, she swore. The desperate plea in her wavering voice made him want to believe her but because of the stubbornness of pride and jealousy he kept on her, demanding, demanding, and suddenly she snapped. She screamed for him to get away so loudly he brought one of his hands to her mouth and covered it, pushing her against the wall, making her struggle against him so hard he thought she might hurt herself. His intent to try to calm and contain her had the opposite effect and it made his chest twinge as he saw the stubborn willful pride blaze in her wide unforgettable eyes, where anger and tears clashed as she thrashed wildly about in his grip, trying to turn her head out of his grip on her jaw, twisting her arms trying to find a promising angle to wrench herself free before kicking him painfully in the shin.

His hands loosened their death grip and she yelled her frustrations and hatred and slapped angrily at him with her open hands before slipping out under his arm escaping him. Weeping, she stormed out the door.

He followed just a minute behind, after realizing she had not gone off to cry in another part of the house, but had just slammed the front door. When he reached the place where she had entered the woods he stopped. Over the sound of his own hard breathing he could hear the leaves bursting apart under her feet, the twigs snapping in her path. Following the sound, he quickly caught sight of her. Within seconds he snagged her by the arm, spun her around and held her up against a tree. She gasped but said nothing, trembling, her defiant eyes holding his stare.

Mustering his last semblances of calm, he slowly said, "Get back to the house. Now."

"I will not—"

"Just shut up!" he shouted over her, making her eyes close and face recoil in fear, her body shrinking beneath him, those little handles on control slipping away at the sound of her argumentative tone. "I have had it with your lies. Why can't you ever just do what you are told?"

"Because you are insane!" she shouted back, sobbing, enraged. "I'm not lying, I have no money and I wouldn't leave you if I did! Now piss off!"

Her breath hitched in her enraged chest as she tried to hold back her tears. The delicate skin around her eyes were morbidly alluring, swollen and red with her wet shiny black matted eyelashes. Her breath became noticeably hot on his lips. With his heart pounding in his chest he took her face into his hands and crushed his mouth to hers, mad with desire for her tears, her anger. Her arms pushing against him at the force of his attack, but suddenly, she sobbed a stirring groan into his mouth, and then her arms were around him pulling him to her.

Her pulse throbbed under his palm as he pressed a hand to her delicate neck while he greedily devoured her mouth, jaw, the flat salty skin along her décolletage, the little dips of her collarbones. He pulled her to the ground, plunging them into a dense undergrowth where they grappled at one another until he used his unfair advantage of size and strength and rolled her onto her stomach, straddling her legs, pinning her beneath him.

He took her arms by the wrists and pinned them above her head, bringing his chest down upon her back, crushing her beneath him. She gave a last valiant, but ultimately futile attempt to twist her body, but groaned with exhaustion and defeat and finally went limp beneath him. Both of them panting on the forest floor, he brought his lips to kiss her cheek, her temple, her hot burning face. "You can't leave."

He whispered, "You are mine."

With a bolt of urgency he sat up upon his knees, and in a frenzied hurry he struggled with their respective clothing for tortured seconds and finally, finally, freed his desire and relished her little sounds and pleas as he slid deliciously and threateningly against her defenseless open body beneath him.

"Anna," he panted against her ear, his stubble chafing her delicate cheek as he pushed himself inside her, "you know I love you."

It was a brutal yet beautiful tryst where everything was forgotten and forgiven, at least in that divine space of existence between first and last throb. With the ebb of angry lust and the terrible glory of release dissolving, he found himself lying limp and utterly spent, his panting face buried in her neck trying catching his breath. He let go of her wrists, and still inside of her he brought his mouth to hers, and with his kiss asked for her reassurance of what he had just done so brutally. Her lips were cold as he brushed against them with his, giving her time to say no, to push him back, but her mouth was hot when her lips parted and he brushed his tongue over hers and slowly settled into a deep, languorous kiss. He stayed like that for a long time and neither said a word, only their labored and recovering breaths breaking the silence. With a lingering kiss behind her ear, he carefully climbed off of her, pulling her soiled rumpled dress back down with him.

When he looked down he could see she was mourning the front of her dress, which had been damaged by the pokey and rough forest floor, as much had her poor face. He murmured an apology and promise to replace it. He helped her to stand and inspected the series of welted red dents and scratched skin, carefully brushing his fingers over her love abraded skin and placed a kiss upon her cheek and enfolded her in his arms close against him.

"Are you alright?"

She nodded.

"Come back inside with me," he insisted against her hair. "Please."

"In a minute. There is something," she started but then paused a long time before continuing, "There's something I have to tell you, that I have been hiding from you."

He leaned back to look at her but she quickly told him to stop, to stay as they are, not to look at her because she won't be able to tell him if she has to look at him. Expecting the truth of the guineas to come out, he patiently waited to be told he was right all along, but then she was crying. And while that was not unexpected, her sobs became a bit more filled with despair than he felt was appropriate from someone simply hiding money and his heart sunk in his chest as a thousand disaster scenarios of what she was about to say flooded through his mind. "Please, whatever it may be, you can confide to me," he urged, the situation beginning to frighten him.

She sniffled her nose and took a deep breath of courage and resolve and sighed, and took his hand into hers, and placed it firmly against a small but noticeable swelling across her belly and held it there. She then looked up to him, her face imploring him to silently understand what she was trying to impart upon him and suddenly his entire world shattered into a million shards.

"It's been almost four months," she whispered. "—I'm sorry. Please don't be angry."

"I—," is all managed to choke, and his voice cracked as the full force of a sweeping happiness came over him, completely eclipsing the piercing and agonizing ache behind the sobs he could no longer control conjuring from his chest. "Angry?"

Pulling her into his arms closer, he swung her around making her yelp and laugh and he held her tightly and kissed her face and whispered, "Christ, you'll be the death of me."

Notes: - Giving servants or slaves their own geese or to allowing them to keep the feathers of the birds they plucked for eating was a nice thing someone could do for a young girl, as the feathers could be used to make down-beds for their dowry. Long time no update!