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BLOODY MEN
ONCE THEY REACHED the trace, there were horses, mules, and wagons, as well as militia companies. Rachel was able to ride in a teamster’s wagon filled with sacks of barley, Ian and Rollo trotting along beside, as far as Matson’s Ford, where they were meant to meet Denzell and Dottie. They waited at the ford until midmorning, but there was no sign of Denzell’s wagon, and none of the militia groups crossing there had seen him.
“He’ll have had an emergency,” Rachel said, lifting one shoulder in resignation. “We’d best go on by ourselves; perhaps we can find a wagon on the main road that will carry us into the city.” She wasn’t troubled; any doctor’s family was used to fending for themselves unexpectedly. And she loved being alone with Ian, talking, looking at his face.
Ian agreed that this was good sense, and they splashed across, shoes in hand, the cold water a relief. Even in the forest, the air was close and hot, restless with prowling thunder that never came close enough to do much good.
“Here,” he said to Rachel, and handed her his moccasins, his rifle, and his belt, with powder horn, shot bag, and dirk. “Stand back a bit, aye?” He could see a scour in the streambed, where a persistent eddy had carved a deep hole, a dark, inviting shadow in the ripples of the creek. He leapt from stone to stone and jumped from the last one, going into the hole with a PLUNK! like a dropped boulder. Rollo, belly-deep in the ford and soaked to the shoulders, barked and showered Rachel with water from a huge wagging tail.
Ian’s head lunged back into view, streaming water, and he reached a long, ski
“Want to go in?” he asked, gri
“I would,” she said, smearing the cold droplets over her sweating face with one hand, “if my clothes were as impervious to the elements as thine are.” He had on his worn buckskin leggings and breechclout, with a calico shirt so faded that the red flowers on it were nearly the same color as the brown background. Neither water nor sun would make any difference, and he would look just the same wet or dry—while she would look like a drowned rat all day, and an immodest drowned rat at that, shift and dress half transparent with water and sticking to her.
The casual thought coincided with Ian’s buckling of his belt, and the movement drew her eye to the flap of his linen breechclout—or, rather, to where it had been before he raised it to pull it over his belt.
She drew in her breath audibly and he looked up at her, surprised.
“Eh?”
“Never mind,” she said, her face going hot despite the cool water. But he looked down, following the direction of her gaze, and then looked back, right into her eyes, and she had a strong impulse to jump straight into the water, damage to her wardrobe notwithstanding.
“Are ye bothered?” he said, eyebrows raised, as he plucked at the wet cloth of his breechclout, then dropped the flap.
“No,” she said with dignity. “I’ve seen one before, thee knows. Many of them. Just not …” Not one with which I am soon to be intimately acquainted. “Just not … yours.”
“I di
“Startled,” she repeated, giving him a look. “If thee thinks I am under any illusions about either the object or the process, after living for months in a military camp … I doubt I shall be shocked, when the occasion a—” She broke off, a moment too late.
“Rises,” he finished for her, gri

IN SPITE OF the hot blush, which seemed to run from her scalp straight down into her nether regions, she didn’t begrudge him fun at her expense. Anything that made him smile like that was balm to her own spirit.
He’d been deeply oppressed, ever since the dreadful news of the ship’s sinking had come, and while he’d borne up with a stoicism she thought natural to both Highlanders and Indians, saying little about it, he hadn’t tried to hide his desolation from her, either. She was glad of that, despite her own sadness for Mr. Fraser, for whom she had a deep respect and affection.
She did wonder about Ian’s mother and how she might have got on with that lady. At the best, she might have had a mother again herself—and that would have been a great blessing. She hadn’t been expecting the best, though; she doubted that Je
“How shall we be wed, d’ye think?” Ian, who had been walking in front of her to push branches out of her way, paused and turned to let her come alongside, the path here being wide enough to walk abreast for a little.
“I don’t know,” she told him frankly. “I think I ca
“Do Friends marry only other Friends, then?” One side of his mouth curled. “I’d think the choice might be a bit sparse. Or d’ye all end up marrying your cousins?”
“They marry other Friends or they get put out of meeting,” she told him, ignoring the gibe about cousins. “With rare exceptions. A marriage between a Friend and a non-Friend might be allowed in case of dire circumstance—after a committee on clearness had conferred with both bride and groom—but it’s rare. I fear that even Dorothea may have difficulty, in spite of her very evident sincerity of conversion.”
Ian laughed at thought of De
“Have ye asked De
“I haven’t,” she admitted. “To tell the truth, I am somewhat afraid to ask.”
Ian’s feathery brows shot up.
“Afraid? Why?”
“Both on his account and ours. You know we were put out of our meeting in Virginia—or, rather, he was, and I went with him. It affected him very much, and I know he wishes above all things to marry Dottie properly, before the witness of a meeting to which they both belong.”
Ian shot her a quick glance, and she knew he was about to ask if she felt likewise. She hurried on, to forestall him.
“There are other Friends in his same case, though: men who ca
“Some such held meeting now and then at Valley Forge, but they aren’t accepted by Philadelphia yearly meeting. De
“Aye?” The trail had narrowed again and Ian moved ahead, turning his head to speak over his shoulder so she would know he attended. She was somewhat distracted herself; the buckskin was drying slowly, molding itself damply to Ian’s long, sinewy shanks, and reminding her of his breechclout.
“Yes,” she said, recovering her train of thought. “The thing is—is thee familiar with religious disputation, Ian?”