just occasionally, it's a real pleasure.

William Tavington did not need another problem.

This was, unfortunately, a refrain that had haunted him throughout the entirety of the southern campaign. If he experienced a loss, he had a problem. When he experienced a victory, its efficacy was such to be his problem. And in every little frustrating gap that lingered between his time in the field, he was handed nothing but constant and unsolvable problems.

And though solving unsolvable problems was, of course, how he achieved his current rank, as of late, they spawned like roaches—crushing one birthed dozens more, all of which scattered into the shadowed swamps of South Carolina. He had spent a little over two months scouring the whole of the colony, hunting these roaches and obliterating them. And their families. And anywhere they might want to call home.

Now that he had arrived in Camden, he would finally be able to cross off the final two problems on his list. Perhaps, then, he would finally be able to sleep without shooting awake and staring into the empty air.

Bordon would have come with him, could have helped him at least dispatch the second issue. But Bordon was dead now. Just as André was. People invited into his confidence had a tendency to tear themselves from his life’s fabric as of late. Not that the fabric itself had cohesive enough threading to bear any warmth to start.

All just as well. It would be far more satisfying to resolve it all himself.

The first problem to see to was the irritatingly sore gunshot wound in his side. This, too, had been the result of the roach-like survivability of these colonials. Eliminating traitors resulted in more traitors taking up arms. Extinguishing those efforts resulted in underhanded attempts to humiliate himself and his superiors. And retribution for that cowardice resulted in boys—stupid, reckless, unpracticed boys—finding the opportunity to shoot him in the bloody stomach.

Tavington marched into the hospital early in the morning, expecting to find Dr. Thomas Charlton, but was instead greeted with Dr. Moore—he didn’t recall Moore’s first name and also didn’t care—inside the ward and wrapping the limb of a recent amputee. He did not allow this observation to linger.

“Moore,” Tavington began, standing at the entrance of the ward. “Where’s Charlton?”

“Suspected of spying,” Moore replied without looking up. “Chased out of his home.”

As it should be. “Very well. I’ll have a moment of your time, then.”

Moore turned, glancing over his spectacles and meeting Tavington with an incredibly unimpressed expression. “You might notice that I’m busy, Colonel.”

Moore was so fortunate to be one of the only medical doctors in this godforsaken colony.

“I am, in fact, capable of observation,” Tavington replied. “I assure you it will only take a moment.”

The doctor raised a brow, but did not protest, instead choosing to finish the wrap on his current patient and gesturing for him to return to his bed on the ward. As soon as the man had gone, Moore looked to Tavington, inviting him with an open palm to take the stool in front of him. Tavington acquiesced, beginning to shrug off his jacket as he was seated.

“I sustained an injury in the field earlier this week,” he said, folding the jacket, “and I find it is not resolving as quickly as I’d prefer.” He then moved to unbutton his waistcoat. “There is an upcoming engagement for which I’d like no surprises.”

“Have you any redness?” Moore asked boredly as he scribbled something in one of his notebooks. “Warmth to the touch?”

Tavington resisted the urge to snap his fingers in the doctor’s face. “Perhaps you’d like to observe instead?” He tugged up his shirt to reveal his side. Moore did not glance from his paper. “Doctor.”

Moore sighed, but again said nothing, placing his pen down and then shifting to examine Tavington’s wound.

In the days since he’d been shot, he’d only succeeded in enraging the injured flesh. He hadn’t wanted the ball removed, hadn’t wanted anyone to observe it, hadn’t wanted anyone’s hands but his to touch it at all. He’d simply wrapped himself with a bandage to staunch the blood flow and continued his ride toward Camden—and for some reason, this had done little to aid in healing. Moore pressed his fingers around the bullet’s entrance, and Tavington grit his teeth. It felt full to burst.

“You’ve the beginnings of a blood malady,” Moore replied, returning to his notebook. “We’ll need to bleed you.” Exhaling, he nodded toward an open bed on the ward. “Lie down on one of the beds, if you please, Colonel.”

Tavington did not move. The words of a familiar contrarian—reminders of whom he’d been trying to bury for the past two months—leapt to his tongue. In any other situation, he would have swallowed them along with the still-clinging memories. But faced with Moore’s irritatingly blase approach, Tavington found himself unable to stop the words, drawn to speak aloud the disagreement he knew she would have had.

“No whiskey available, then?”

Moore stared at him. “You grew accustomed to the authoritarian left in my stead, I see.”

“The men under her care healed far more quickly than the men under yours.”

“Then I can’t imagine why you’ve deigned to hallow my ward with your presence,” Moore replied, walking toward his cabinet and retrieving a bottle of whiskey. “Your favored nurse would be certain to provide you with the preferred care.”

Tavington’s jaw and throat tightened. Preferred care was perhaps the only way he could stomach to phrase his partiality for her company. Company he had now not had in over two months, company for which he felt an unannealing ache, company that remained absent for reasons he dismissed as quickly as they were considered. He could not, would never allow himself to rationalize the behavior of a traitor. A rebel.

There had been perhaps, over the course of the past weeks, a flicker within his gut— you imbecile—but only once or twice, and only in the winter chill of night. Never more than that, and never for longer than a handful of seconds. He had been, after all, occupied with breaking the spirit of the rebellion.

An occupation he was considering quite successful, if he did say so himself. Half the militia forces had split to squirrel their families to safety, the other half were now too emotionally compromised to effectively fight. Surely, now that Tavington had killed his eldest son, Benjamin Martin would be, if not devastated by the toll of his treason, convinced that fighting would be absurd. There remained only one person to eradicate.

But he would attend to that after his wound.

“The dragoons have been through the entirety of the backcountry in a manner of weeks,” Tavington replied. “There have been no nurses in the field.”

Moore raised his brow as if he had not only listened but had considered this one of the most interesting statements Tavington had ever made. “Of course.” Holding a bandage now soaked in whiskey, he leaned forward and pressed it to Tavington’s wound.

White fire seared his skin, pain flashing with an image of his little contrarian, grinning as she recalled men howling beneath her whiskey-wet hands. Tavington permitted himself to steel his jaw, but only that, despite being nearly blinded by the intensity. Moore wiped edges of the wound, packing the bandage into it before beginning to wrap another around Tavington’s waist.

“You bore that with surprising dignity.” Moore tied off the wrapping. “Have you any other burdens to heap upon me, Colonel?”

Tavington ripped himself away—truly, the doctor was so, so, fortunate—and tucked his shirt into his breeches. “None.”

“Very well, then. Good day to you.” With little expression, he turned to attend to other patients.

As he donned his waistcoat and jacket, the wound pulsed at his side, hot with the burn of alcohol. That would be irritating for at least the next week, but he had little time to waste for it to heal, and littler time to worry about any of it altogether. After straightening his lapels, he daggered one last look at Moore before exiting into the streets of Camden.

The jail wasn’t far, but it was slightly beyond the fortified boundaries of the city, which meant it was far enough for him to ride. His horse was hitched outside to one of the posts near the hospital; Tavington freed her before hopping astride. With a prod of his heels, she blithely trotted on.

Could an animal be blithe, really? It was no longer enough for Tavington to consider this animal his horse—instead, he thought of her with an identity, a personality, and of all the most ridiculous attributes, a name. As if the thing wasn’t a fragile collection of bones waiting to crumble at the suggestion of a too-harsh wind.

However, Phaedra—that was the beast’s name—had been the hardiest mount he’d had since his arrival in the colonies. She’d weathered every demand he made of her, met his obstinance with her own indomitability. Even when he was certain she would die, would heave her final breath and collapse, she denied him the satisfaction, as if to prove to him her right to live. Her right to an identity.

Tavington resisted the desire to draw parallels to any other female in his life. Not that there were any such females. He’d seen to that, hadn’t he? It was a return to normalcy. Until a handful of months ago, William Tavington had not even considered the word wife, had never dared to imagine his potential offspring. Partially due to his focus on the war, but mostly due to every other woman he’d ever met failing to inspire anything other than a brief twitch from his cock. Women had long been the means to an end.

And it hadn’t been until her that he’d faced how unsatisfying both those means and those ends had been. How even after spending himself over a strange woman’s thighs there had been a pit in his stomach that stuck open, like a gaping maw seeking its first meal. That his head had ached with the emptiness of it. That this thing within him had not been sated and sleepy until she begged for his hand around her throat. It had become so sated, in fact, that he had not been able to resist the bestial, foolish need to come inside of her.

Because there could be no other explanation for that other than cock-blinded insanity. Though he had not regretted it then. And even with the horrifying idea that he could have fathered some sniveling bastard with her, he did not regret it now.

That was to say nothing of her companionship. And he wouldn’t. To experience that relief even once was enough. It would have to be. Now his prospects would remain unconsidered until the war was finally over and he had a massive tract of land in the Ohio under his purview. Then, and only then would he permit himself a future with company. No matter how unappealing that company would likely be.

On his right, the jail and adjoining jailer’s house were in reach; the jail’s red brick facade burnished in the morning light, the sounds of thwarted rebellion rabbling from behind its barred—and, frankly, generous—windows. That would not do. Outside, the stocks stood currently and wastefully unoccupied, and that would not do, either. Perhaps it was fortuitous he’d arrived. The state of affairs here had languished without proper guidance.

After hitching Phaedra—Christ, he really was calling her that, wasn’t he—at the nearest post and stowing his helmet, Tavington approached the jailer’s house and slammed the knocker against the door. One of the house slaves answered, and after quickly ascertaining that a colonel of the King’s Army was at the door step, she scurried off to fetch the officer being sequestered there.

He waited about thirty seconds before deciding that this wait time was worthy of reprimand, and when the officer stationed at the jailer’s house finally appeared, the righteousness of this decision was fortified. Captain James Pettis trundled out onto the steps, his coat askew.

“C-colonel Tavington!” He shut the door behind him, his pouchy face already spiked with the flush of a morning whiskey. Clearing his throat, he stepped forward with a half-bow. “Excuse me, sir. I didn’t realize the dragoons had come to Camden.”

Pettis was, unbelievably, not the worst officer the British Army had to offer, but was certainly one of the worst men on offer from Britain herself. The concepts were different: one could be a relatively inoffensive, halfway-competent manager of duty while still collecting every objectionable quality on earth. Pettis had curated a menagerie of them, between his love for dice and drink and hatred of anything involving a modicum of courage. Tavington had heard one of his men pass on some story of Pettis nearly fainting at the sight of blood, and had himself had the displeasure of interrupting his attempted exploits with women.

As if Pettis could have managed a woman like her. The thought alone nearly brought Tavington to laugh. But he didn’t.

“I recommend you respond promptly next time you're called upon, Captain.” Before useless apologies could be heaped upon him, Tavington continued, “The dragoons have not come to Camden. My business is solitary.” Pettis looked as if he’d been stuck with a bayonet. “Nothing regarding yourself.”

“Ah.” He swallowed, gave a small smile. “Of course. What can I assist you with, Colonel?”

“I’ve come for a specific prisoner. A captain in the Continental Army. He was captured about three months ago.”

Pettis brightened, pulling the keys for the jail from his pocket and barreling forward. “We’ve only one of those, sir. Let me take you.” Tavington followed, his throat strangely thick. “Lovely to see you again, Colonel. It’s been—what, over four months now since the ball at Middleton?”

“Indeed.”

“That was an eventful night,” he continued, sticking the key in the front door. “Not the Mischianza, I’m sure.” The lock popped. “Though I still managed to steal company for the evening.”

Tavington flattened his expression. “Did you.”

“One of the field nurses,” Pettis replied, as if Tavington was foolish to ask. “It only took a few minutes, but she found her way back after you escorted her away.” He grinned broadly enough for Tavington to estimate he could punch him square in the mouth and manage to smash every one of his front teeth. “Perhaps a bun with a bit too much butter for my taste, but still sufficient for the night.”

In a rush perhaps stronger than any lust he’d ever felt, Tavington craved to bring her in front of this man and humiliate him before her eyes. Shall I tell the captain what I did to you? he’d ask, and she would release that infuriatingly charming giggle, urging him to recount it in detail, and he would—he’d recount every bruise, every drop of blood and spend spilled between them, every scrape of skin and nail and tooth, every plea she breathed and every curse he choked.

More importantly than anything, he would gore Pettis to the soul with the severity of his inferiority, make him chew and swallow it like a chunk of suet. He would make Pettis regret that he even maintained a memory of what did not belong to him.

The door opened, and Pettis pushed inside. “Colonel?”

Tavington cleared his throat and stepped forward. He and Pettis were now the same in that regard. She did not belong to him either.

“He’s on the second floor. By himself.” Pettis said, gesturing down the hall toward the staircase. “Was stirring up discontent with the other men. Are you familiar with him?”

“I am. He’s overdue for my visit.”

Pettis laughed. “I’d hate to be in his position. The stocks?”

“Not quite.” Tavington held out his hand for the key. “If you please, Captain.”

Frowning, Pettis dropped the key in Tavington’s open palm. “Will you need assistance, sir?”

“I cannot imagine I shall.”

With that, he left Pettis behind and strode up the staircase. The stench of the men was nearly overwhelming as the sound, but at least one of these silenced upon entry; the other stuck like sap to his nostrils. It would be a relief to be on a floor with just one man. His throat thickened again at the thought, but he stuffed this awareness into the back of his mind and arrived on the second floor, scanning the cells for his charge, finding the man in the one farthest from the steps on the right, sitting on his decrepit bed, his back against the wall.

“Captain—”

“Just call me Michael,” the man replied, seemingly undeterred by the deteriorating condition of his environment. In the three months since his imprisonment, he’d hollowed beneath the eyes, a sweaty beard had gnarled out of his skin. Even from this distance, it was clear his hands, his cheeks, his very existence was coated in a film of filth. “I’d say we’re past formalities, wouldn’t you?”

It would be such a relief to watch life leave this man’s eyes. How he could stand to be so glib while faced with certain death did nothing but spur Tavington to introduce it to him with haste.

“Perhaps you are,” Tavington said, crossing to the man’s—Michael’s, if he was really going to insist—cell. “I still consider myself worthy of them.”

Michael held out his hands in surrender. “Whatever you need, Colonel,” he replied. “I assume there’s a reason you’ve come to pay me a visit?”

The reason was simple and the options were many. In fact, Tavington could pull out his pistol right now, place it to Michael’s head, and blow whatever remained of him onto the cell walls. But the idea of watching fear finally flood his face as he stood with a rope around his neck gave Tavington pause. It was impossible to choose. If only there was a way to combine the finality of a bullet with the suffering of a noose.

But did he deserve a soldier’s death? Certainly a gibbet was far more appropriate given the circumstances.

“Perhaps you’ve come for a bit of conversation?” Michael grinned. “I’ll admit I’m not as finely educated as someone of your background—”

“Does incessant babbling constitute conversation?”

Michael shrugged. “Your manner of speech betrays you, Colonel,” he said. “I’d hazard a guess that you’re familiar with wealth.”

It would take only a second: Tavington could snatch his pistol, its pan primed and ball ready, thrust it between the cell bars and pull the trigger. Blood would pool between the crevices of stone long after the man to whom it belonged had stopped breathing. But his hand stalled. Michael could not spend his last seconds alive under the impression he had been right.

“A hazardous guess indeed,” Tavington replied, “and one that betrays your ignorance.”

“Is that so?” Michael studied him. “I don’t think I’ll concede that.”

Tavington rolled his eyes, the response automatic. “I don’t imagine you’re keen to concede on anything.”

“Finely educated and observant!” Michael said, a smile breaking his face.

Why was he still talking? Why in the blue hells was Tavington wasting time? He grabbed the key, unlocked the cell door and flung it open while brandishing his pistol in a single breath. Jaw firm, he leveled it at the man before him—half the man he’d been just months ago and yet maddeningly undiminished in spirit—and cocked the hammer. He did not fire. Michael did not flinch.

Tavington held his target in the gun’s sights. His throat had swollen enough to restrict his breath. His finger would not pull the trigger.

It would not pull the trigger.

Most annoyingly, Michael simply sat there, as if there weren’t a gun in his face and his life wasn’t about to meet an instant end. Had he accepted death? Did he not care? Did he not realize how his very existence had ruined Tavington’s own life? It was unconscionable that he could take a bullet to the brain and not offer Tavington even a single trickle of satisfaction.

If it weren’t for him, Tavington could have been long on his way to Cowpens instead of spending a January morning in bloody Camden. If it weren’t for him, Tavington would not have been forced to speak to Pettis for longer than a second. If it weren’t for him, Tavington could be one step closer to victory, to Ohio, to finally expunging the stain of his father from his family name. If it weren’t for him, Tavington would never have ruined whatever association he’d maintained with the sourest, rudest, most captivatingly intelligent and beautiful woman he was certain he’d ever meet.

And If it weren’t for Michael, Tavington would have never met her to begin with.

The fact that he had was another problem. A problem not even he could solve.

Tavington dropped his arm, swallowing whatever had grown in his throat. Michael exhaled, slumping further into the bed.

“Can the King not afford a soldier a formal trial?” he asked.

“A soldier? Certainly,” Tavington replied, turning his unfired pistol in his hand. “You are a traitor.”

“Ah. Of course.” Michael laughed. Or something close to it. His eyes flicked to the open cell door and back to Tavington. “Is that what you call every man who disagrees with you on how one’s life should be lived?”

“Whether one disagrees with me or not is irrelevant. These are questions of loyalty. Of law.” Tavington peeled back the frizzen on his pistol to check the pan. Still primed. He let it go with a click. “Not philosophy.”

“I disagree, Colonel.” Beneath Michael’s thin and sun-ravaged skin twinkled something familiar. “I would say one’s perception of loyalty and of law are highly dependent on one’s philosophy. After all,” he said, “even Socrates the law-abider did not believe rules enacted by tyrants to be laws.”

Tavington was not going to debate the philosophical underpinnings of law with the swamp witch’s father. He would have refused to continue the conversation if he could overcome his sudden hand injury and bring himself to point the damn gun and pull the trigger.

“You said you weren’t well-educated.”

“I said I wasn’t finely educated.”

Michael laughed—a laugh that caught edges, then roughened until it became a cough: a deep, bellowing cough that rattled his ribs and doubled him over until he gasped for breath that then hiccuped in his stomach. Tavington only stood, only watched as Michael cleared his throat, strained for air like a drowning man until he found his body’s rhythm again and leaned back, watching the ceiling until his lungs evened.

“Well?” he said, exposing the first hint of exhaustion Tavington had heard all morning. “Shall we do this?” He gestured to the gun.

Not only could this man accept his death, he would even invite it. He would welcome it with a laissez-faire hand in the air like an inevitable friend. He would do this aware his daughter would have no knowledge of his fate, all after she’d placed herself upon the figurative rack to keep the tethers of her family together, after she’d risked her own life and honor and dignity merely to appease his ill-reasoned whims. He would condemn her to a lifetime of uncertainty, of potential suffering without a single protest.

“Have you no desire to save yourself? No instinct even to plead?” Tavington snapped. “You must be irrevocably selfish even in death?”

A short cough-laugh. “I beg your pardon, Colonel?”

“Is it not enough for you to dangle your family above the mouth of war? You will force yourself onto its tongue without imagining for a moment the efforts made to keep you free of it?”

Michael appeared unable to answer. Tavington, however, found he could not stop. Every motion of his tongue wished to invoke the name and shape and memory of the woman that the man in front of him had found so easy to abandon.

“You are far too obtuse to have realized this,” Tavington said, “but your daughter has followed you for months all in the effort to surveil and ensure your wellbeing. Your wellbeing. Not her own.” He stepped forward, stomach twisting in an ache unrelated to his wound. “Your liberal approach to your life—to the world—has placed the weight of that world on her shoulders, and it is only through sheer, utterly stupid luck you managed to create a creature so dedicated to you that she would never even think to regard you with the fury you deserve.”

The closer he drew to Michael, the tighter the twist became—Tavington spied an echo of her eyes, a spectre of her face in the haggard lines of her father’s.

“You have spent your days wrapped in whatever quixotic notion appeals to you while your daughter spent those same days managing the responsibilities you neglected. And now you face death with the same witless negligence. Like an adventure to be embarked upon.” Tavington wanted to spit in disgust. But that was uncouth. “Shall we do this,” he mocked. “Without a single thought toward the woman whom you raised to enable you.”

He raised the gun, the muzzle inches from Michael’s forehead. That twisting felt now like a knot, but worsened, like a writhing mass, throbbing in his temples, in his chest. It was not in competition with the wound in his side, it was worse; entirely incorporeal but completely tangible in its effects, an invisible bleed that pulsed with his heart.

And staring into Michael’s eyes—her eyes—only served to magnify it, summoning memories: her eyes defiant in the candlelight of the prisoner tent, her eyes glittering with triumph as she sat across from him in his office, her eyes wide as she laid beneath him for the first time, her eyes wrought with fear as he ripped her purity from between her thighs, her eyes pinched with bliss and ecstasy, her eyes fluttering awake to meet his own in the dim and tender light of morning.

His finger still would not pull the trigger. Michael’s attention fell to Tavington’s boots, studying them. He nodded to himself.

“You know my daughter,” Michael said.

Tavington stiffened. “Clearly.”

“She told you all of that?”

“Clearly not.”

As if she would ever speak disparagingly about her father. Especially to Tavington. Did Michael know his own child?

“I imagined she didn’t.” Michael’s gaze flicked beyond the gun and locked to Tavington’s, a gaze so incisive, so resonant of her that Tavington’s breath almost tripped. “You are correct.” He shrugged. “I cannot disagree with a single point you’ve made.”

Winning an argument was an experience with which Tavington was well-acquainted. Winning an argument with any member of this family, however, was not.

“At least you have gathered enough sense throughout your imprisonment to admit your faults.” Tavington still refused to lower his pistol, despite having achieved the capitulation he’d wanted. “A short-lived consolation for any person with the unfortunate reality of having made your acquaintance.”

“Is it odd to you I’d admit my faults?”

Tavington snorted. “Of course it is.”

At that, Michael’s eyes narrowed. He cocked his head. A quiet laugh bubbled up freely from his chest, something like a realization cresting over his face.

“Ah ha. I see. I see now,” he said, rubbing his thighs. “I did not imagine it possible. But…” His gaze drifted over Tavington. “No, this makes sense. It does.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“You know my daughter better than any man has had the opportunity to,” Michael said. “In fact, I’d say you more than know her.”

Tavington, for the first time in his life, felt—even for the shortest of seconds—like a boy standing before a man whose opinion strangely, stupidly mattered to him.

“You love my daughter,” Michael said, adding her name, a name Tavington had not heard aloud now in months, a name that felt almost too precious for him to even think, let alone hear from the mouth of a veritable stranger. “You’re in love with her.”

If there had been a single word William Tavington had made efforts to avoid over these past handful of months—a word that seemed to carry with it a weight he simply did not wish to bear—it was love.

Love could not be simplified or stripped of context, it could not be made a utilitarian tool. Love could not be wielded with cruelty, nor with a desire to dominate, nor could it aid conquest and ensure victory. It was, wholly and completely, an entity of altruism and sacrifice, a network of selfless, open veins. It was something for which Tavington would not, could not make space; not while on the precipice of achieving everything he had chased for years. It was something for which he had long ago decided he’d had no need and had long ago determined to never want.

But if there was a single word that could describe, now, the thrashing agony within him, as if there was a great deluge of something dammed from escaping, pressing against every boundary of his body with a desperate need to be cradled and soothed and, more importantly than all of it, known—

Against all of his wishes, Tavington had borne the weight of love. He had borne it so freely that until just three months ago, he hadn’t even recognized it to be a weight at all.

Her father now forced him to suffer beneath it. To recognize what it had made of him.

Only after the object of its inspiration disappeared had love crushed him, and crushed him deep into the soil. In no reality would Tavington have shirked his duty and not captured her father, and she must have known that—but he had also known that if he had told her what he’d done, what he planned to do with her father, he risked losing her altogether. By lying to her, he’d ensured it anyway.

It was no wonder she had betrayed him. Fear had denied them both the relief of transparency. Of honesty. Of peace.

“A fire flower of a woman, isn’t she?” Michael asked.

Those were not the words Tavington would use. But what words were there for a woman who managed to quiet his mind and invigorate his blood at once? What words could describe a woman who upended his assumption that he’d be content once land was in his name, who birthed the question of what contentment even was, if she did not share it with him? What words could possibly capture a woman who had taken him in her jaws and impaled him, with a single bite, between her teeth?

You rode alone all the way to the coast. The journey took nine days—perhaps ten—though by the third you could hardly recall leaving the swamp. At some point the mud beneath Puck’s hooves had become grass. Someone handed you a lump of salt pork. Voices murmured around a fire. The grass became sand.

Your traveling company received a genial welcome from the island’s residents. Figures emerged from thatched clay structures built upon the sand, some rushing forth, some hanging curiously back. The air swam with laughter. You blinked at the open expanse of sky, at the ocean glittering below. The sun was bright. The air was balmy. Your thighs were chapped. Each of these sensations passed your awareness as if beyond a screen, barely needling through. Someone helped you off of Puck.

You managed to mumble out your thanks, or you hoped you did, before collapsing upon a bench you were led to. After resting your face in your palms then rubbing the grit from your eyes, you looked around. Slaves, chimed some distant recognition in your head. All of these people must have escaped enslavement. Taken refuge here, built this town. Another thought drifted wretchedly through the distance.

Papa would have loved to see this place.

Your head dropped into your palms once more.

You should have helped unload the supplies, but you didn’t, and you should have helped prepare supper, but you didn’t do that either. The sun wheeled above you until dusk drew on and shadows surrounded the fire. One of them approached you.

“You really must eat.”

A bowl of cornmeal cakes pushed its way into your hands.

“Must I.”

“Yes,” Lottie said, closing your fingers around the bowl. “Just as I must, remember?”

“Rules for thee,” you grumbled in what was meant to be bitter humor, but only sounded bitter. By way of apology, you nibbled a cake. It was plain but hearty, and woke a rumble in your belly that had you swiftly biting off more.

“There she is,” said Lottie tenderly. When you looked up she was smiling, though it was a morose sight beneath the puffy red rims of her eyes.

You tried to return one of your own, but it faltered on your lips. Lottie sank down beside you, threading an arm with yours. Her head rested on your shoulder.

“What happens now?” she asked.

You shrugged your unladen shoulder, swallowing a mouthful.

“I don’t know.”

Lottie sighed, and her breath shook on the exhale.

“We… go on, I suppose,” she offered, sounding unconvinced. “That’s what my brother would have said, at least.”

You nodded. “Right into the ocean.”

Her shoulders jumped, jostling the bowl in your hands. Her free hand reached up to whack you gently on the forehead. Then you did smile, and took another bite.

“It’s not all hopeless,” she said after a quiet moment, her voice unsteady. “I must believe that.”

To that you had nothing to say. You chewed on cornmeal and watched the distant flames, letting them burnish your mind as smooth as brass. Until no thought or feeling could catch a foothold. One after another they slipped off. Cascaded somewhere dark and blissfully obscure. The bottom of the ocean, perhaps.

Beside you, Lottie’s shoulders shook. Her arm tightened within yours. With a wet sniffle, she turned to press her eyes into your collar.

“I miss him,” she choked. Then she sobbed. “I miss him desperately.”

Her tears soaked the fabric of your kerchief, and you drew a breath that almost felt relieving. This you did not mind. This you could manage. You set your bowl down beside you on the bench. Gently you unwound your arm from her grasp and wrapped her into an embrace. Lottie folded into you, and the dam of her grief broke against your chest. As she sobbed and convulsed, a memory tested the surface of your thoughts. A memory of Grace, some time long ago, just like this in your arms. Your gaze found the fire, your ears the murmur of the waves, your cheek the top of Lottie’s head. The memory slipped away into the dark.

The following day there was a wedding. A wagon arrived early in the morning, drawing your attention beyond the billowing linens you had busied yourself with hanging. From it leapt a bright-eyed girl, followed by her ailing father, and the girl rushed across the beach to embrace Gabriel Martin with a vigor that inspired a feeling not unlike a fishing spear through your gut. Afterward there was much commotion that you did not care to involve yourself with. You retreated to the sanctuary of a cookfire, making yourself useful to anyone who had a command to throw your way.

Many commands were thrown your way. By the time the sun crested the sky, all was in place. Ribbons hung from every canopy. The scents of spiced fish and rich soups and sweet, tangy nut rolls clung to the breeze. An aisle had been constructed, complete with pews and a quaint altar, and everyone in the village crowded around to see Gabriel Martin wed the bright-eyed girl. From your place in the back, you could just glimpse Lottie seated in the crowd, a small boy perched on her knee. She was smiling. They were all smiling. Your eyes slipped to the sea beyond, willing the waves to crash against your mind and wash it blank.

One of Martin’s men—the reverend from the fort prison—read out the ceremonial vows. The couple embraced. The throng descended into celebration, shouts and laughter and music ringing out across the breeze.

You ate, and drank, and smiled at those who sought your gaze. This was easy, you thought. Puppeteering yourself through this charade. Everything here was so new, so lovely and unfamiliar, that it was easy to leave your thoughts at the bottom of the ocean where they lay. Should one begin to surface, you needn't do more than bite into a leg of spiced crab, or ask to learn the rules of the game some children were playing with stones and shells in the sand.

Just after you were beaten in your third round, music struck up in earnest and the children all leapt to join the fray. With thirsts and appetites sated, bodies began to orbit each other in dance. Even the music was as strange as it was delightful. All jolting, energetic rhythms and frolicking melodies that brooked no stillness in its listeners. Your own foot found itself tapping the sand as you sat back and watched an elderly couple swing each other around, laughing and sweating and spinning as if the music siphoned the age from their very bones.

The setting sun cast the village in gold as evening encroached. In the light, a flash of copper hair caught your eye. Lottie was dancing with a young village girl, stiffly mimicking her movements to the girl’s utter delight. She grasped Lottie’s hands and guided her arms just so, then lifted one to spin beneath it. With an exaggerated flair, she bade Lottie perform a spin of her own, which sent her careening directly into the shape of Captain Pearce.

He grasped her shoulders, steadying her before placing a respectful distance between them again, though he was grinning madly and color rose in his cheeks. You could tell Lottie was stammering every manner of apology, and that Pearce was having none of it. He bent to whisper something to the young girl who bit her lip and beamed at Lottie before nodding and galloping away. Pearce straightened, bowed slightly, then offered his hand. Lottie took it with a curtsey. Pearce held her gaze and raised her knuckles to his lips, then stepped closer to take her waist. And for the first time in many long days, the smile that lit Lottie’s face was unmarred by pain.

They danced, barefoot in the sand, sweat-kissed with their top laces half undone. The sight might have bordered on indecent had the whole party not been in a similar state. It occurred to you that you were, in fact, the only one still bound in every layer of your skirts. Your kerchief still clinging to your shoulders despite the sweat building beneath. Suddenly sweltering, you staggered to your feet and away from the party, shoes catching awkwardly in the sand.

A breezy awning caught your eye, but as you drew nearer you realized it was already occupied. Colonel Martin sat beside a woman in only her underclothes. They spoke quietly for a few moments, and then he cupped the back of her neck and pulled her mouth to his. Your stomach twisted. You veered well away from the pair and toward the shore instead, clawing your kerchief loose.

Damned Martins. Damned party. Damned heat.

It felt as if autumn had forgotten this place. As if the world had left you entirely behind, as if everything were spinning on and on without you. As if… As if…

Hard, wet sand slammed your knees. The impact tore through you and caught on some intangibly raw edge that had you doubling over and gasping for breath, your palms slapping down into shallow waves. You groaned against the sensation—like a fissure opening within you. Like you were rending into two pieces, but one of them was already missing.

No. Not missing. It lay somewhere outside your body in a bed that was not yours, curled into the only embrace that had ever made you feel whole.

“No,” you heard yourself say out loud, and you cupped an incoming wave to splash it against your face.

But when the water met your cheeks you only saw a flash of clear blue eyes, a broad chest, the flex of a hand encased in leather.

You screeched into the wind, ripped your kerchief from your neck and pounded it into the shallows, hoping to split your knuckles. Anything to wrest yourself back from the brink of madness. You brought the soaked cloth up and wrung it against your chest, gulping air. As the water trickled beneath your bodice and heated to your skin you felt William’s touch, the ghosts of his fingertips making you shiver as they traced the shape of you. The setting sun warmed your back like the press of his body. The breeze became his breath against your ear.

“Leave me be,” you moaned into your fabric-wrapped fist, though your heart could not reach the words. You shuddered as a gust caressed the hairs at the nape of your neck.

Your eyes fell closed. Waves lapped your thighs, turned your skirts to lead. The memories dragged you under, down and down, until you could almost believe it had all been a bad dream. The execution. Your escape. The island. None of it was real. You would awake in the arms of the man you loved, and his lips would find your lips, and the sun would weave his hair with threads of gold, and nothing would hurt.

You opened your eyes to an expanse of ocean. Something hot carved a path down your cheek as water cooled to a chill upon your skin. The sky dimmed. The sun poured its gold into the waves.