She looks to the fire, and at the anvil, and then up to the sprinkling of stars spread across the sky like white seeds in a smooth black soil. She swallows once, then twice, and then pulls in a long breath of night air. “Suppose I best leave you in peace,” she says.

“Wait,” I say, finding my tongue. “Don’t you need to take the plate back with you?” I pull the stool over for her. “Will you sit with me while I eat this?”

When she lowers herself on to the seat, I lean against my anvil. I haven’t got a second stool. Nor a fork anywhere handy, so I pinch at the food with my fingers. When I place it on my tongue, I am amazed. I could no sooner describe what I’m tasting than name the color of a winter sunrise, or whistle the tune of the forest. I don’t mean to, but I groan with my fingers stuck in my mouth.

She laughs at me making a fool of myself, but I don’t mind, because I’ve made her laugh. It’s the first time I’ve heard her do that. If bluebells made a sound, it would be her laugh.

“It’s heavenly,” I say. “I’ve never had the like.” I eat every scrap, holding back from licking the plate.

She scrunches up her nose and looks at me sideways. “You never had cobbler before?”

I shake my head and drag my finger over the empty plate and suck the last taste from it. “For special days, Ma might have made a meat pie, if we had meat to make it with,” I tell her. “I never ate sugar until I got to America. And then only twice. And not like this.”

We hear the splash of someone fetching water at the well, and then the clink of glasses being carried across the lawn, probably back for washing at the kitchen house.

“I best be getting on.” She rises, brushing at her skirt.

“You’ll be needing this.” I approach her carrying the plate.

She takes hold, but doesn’t pull it from me, and I don’t let it go.

“I’m grateful to you,” I say, “for coming out here and bringing this for me.”

We stand with the plate between us.

“Thank you,” I say.

She looks at me with a warmth like the sun. And something else. An invitation. The feeling is like peach cobbler. Sweet and fresh and new and too good to be real.

“Evening, Sarah,” says a deep rumble voice that crashes into the moment like thunder. We jump and turn to see Red standing back a pace, watching us. Beside him is the man who drives Jeremiah Keeler’s coach and who played so well on the fiddle last night.

Sarah steps apart from me, looking at the floor, at them, at the plate in her hand. Anywhere but at me.

“Evening, Red. Zeek,” she says. “I was just bringing Mister Taylor some cobbler for helping with Master Thomas.”