He put on his blood-encrusted coat, with the telltale hole in the right shoulder, and groped his way out of the house. When he got back—it was absolutely all Evangeline could do not to go looking for him, he was gone so long—he was pale as death and very nearly too weak to stand. He collapsed onto the cot, boots and all, and dropped off into an immediate and seemingly fathomless sleep.

Very gently, Evangeline removed his boots and set them on the hearth.

After resting by the fire for a little while, and enjoying a restorative cup of hot coffee, Evangeline sighed and got to her feet. She hadn’t gathered the eggs yet, though she’d fed the chickens and filled their water pan, and there was still the wood to chop.

“Will you look after Scully for me?” she asked Abigail, making her expression as serious as she possibly could. “I need someone I can really depend upon.” As though she had any other option.

Abigail seemed to grow a couple of inches before Evangeline’s very eyes. “I’ll be right here the whole time,” she promised, in a confidential whisper. “I think Hortense needs to go outside, though.” The kitten was mewing at the door. “The wolves won’t eat you and Hortense, will they, Mama?”

Evangeline kissed her child’s forehead. “No, darling. When I come back, we’ll have a piece of Mrs. McCaffrey’s lovely fudge. How would that be?”

Abigail was very much in favor of the idea, and when Evangeline left the house to finish the morning chores—there would, of course, be another round of them at nightfall—her daughter was seated importantly on the floor in front of the stove, her chin propped in her hands, her wide, solemn gaze fixed on Scully.

CHAPTER

7

THE FIRST THING she meant to do when Big John Keating showed up in the springtime, Evangeline decided, during her fifth or sixth trip to the spring for water in the space of a morning, was put a shovel in his hand and demand that he start digging a proper well, close by the house.

When she struggled through the front door, the hem of her skirt soiled with mud, she saw that Abigail had dragged one of the chairs over by the stove, near Scully’s cot. She sat reading aloud from a book of Greek legends, her small feet swaying back and forth to dispel excess energy. Hortense, never far from her young mistress unless she was outside tending to kitten business, kept trying to capture a foot, rather like a child attempting to leap onto a passing swing.

Scully looked at Evangeline apologetically as she began filling kettles and setting them on the stove. Abigail kept reading, the words flowing over her tongue unerringly, caught up in the splendid images of Apollo and his chariot of fire, racing across the sky.