TURN OFF THE MOON, DO IT SOON
Anna had never endured a dinner so tense as the one that evening at Whitehall. Major Hewlett had explained the circumstances to Judge Woodhull, who could hardly refuse her refuge without awkward elucidations. Catching the judge's stony eyes on her, Anna gripped her knife and fork a little tighter; she wished she could tell him it was hardly an ideal situation for her either. But the thought of Simcoe creeping around the tavern brought bile to her throat, so she bit her tongue. Major Hewlett proved to be skilled at filling the uncomfortable silences of the evening—a skill developed in the English drawing rooms of his youth, perhaps. Anna was grateful for his steady, distracting conversation and the tiny, encouraging smiles he sprouted whenever he caught her eye with a sidelong glance. She could not deny the loneliness of her situation, and it was a comfort to have a friend again—if only he weren't the enemy, she reminded herself for the hundredth time.
After supper, she eagerly took up the Major's invitation for another turn at the telescope, relieved to escape the stifling tension of the house. Pulling her shawl tight about her shoulders against the November chill, Anna followed Hewlett across the dark lawn, her skirts catching softly on the dry grass.
"I was going to show you—I've been working on a star chart," Hewlett was saying as they reached the outlook where his telescope had been stationed.
Anna tilted her head up at the sky as Hewlett carefully hooked his lantern to a fencepost. She wondered if that great, glittering expanse could swallow her up, and if she would even mind the stillness—but there was Hewlett at her elbow, leafing through a notebook.
"Ah—no, that's not it," he muttered at the pages. Anna glanced down at the book and caught a glimpse of a sketch.
"What's that?" she interrupted his search, catching the corner of the page between her thumb and forefinger. A closer look brought a rendering of the harbor into focus. "I didn't know you were an artist as well as an astronomer."
She looked up at him with a smile. The poor man stood frozen, blushing faintly and keeping a tight grasp on the book.
"May I?" she nodded slightly at the page.
"Oh—I—if you promise not to laugh," he eased the book from her fingers and carefully tore the page from the binding and presenting it to her gingerly, "you may keep it. Only you mustn't ask to see any further examples of my artistic endeavors, if I can call them such, for I'm a very poor artist, it's just a simple diversion, really—"
"Thank you," Anna put a stop to his rambling, angling the page so she could examine it by the flickering lantern. The image was a familiar scene to her, boats bobbing beside the pier as a gull wandered across the sky. It was a simple sketch, but an earnest one, and Anna found that it tugged at her curiously—it reminded her of more innocent times, when Setauket still felt like home.
"You don't give yourself enough credit," she told him. "You're a man of many talents."
Hewlett scoffed and shook his head dismissively. Anna wondered at his flustered embarrassment—she had first known him as a stern, cold, even ruthless man, but now he seemed to be another creature entirely—sensitive, affectionate, and lonely as she was. But any solace she might have found in this discovery was tempered by the weight of her own secrets, and the knowledge that just one of them could break his heart. She put a hand on his arm, sleeve warm against her cold palm.
"I shall treasure this, Edmund, truly."
He smiled shyly, glancing briefly at her hand before turning his attention back to his notebook.
"Ah, here we are," he finally showed her the star chart, unfinished but clearly painstakingly drafted. "I've only done Perseus so far—are you familiar with the story of Perseus?"