“I was afraid of how it would be,” Evangeline admitted, at some length. Scully’s blood was proving to be stubborn stuff, hard to scour out of linen. “Still, Mr. Keating had always spoken well of his cousin, even though they didn’t actually grow up together.” She paused and sighed. “I guess when you don’t have a real choice, when it comes down to leaving or staying someplace, it doesn’t matter much if you’re afraid.”

“You’ve said that,” Scully allowed. “That you didn’t have a choice.” He didn’t sound entirely convinced. “Are you running from something, Mrs. Keating? Or somebody, maybe?”

Evangeline slammed the sopping wet sheet down into the tub, heartily discouraged. From then on, the cloth would be good for nothing except rags. “Perhaps you’d like to amuse yourself with one of your books,” she said stiffly. “Since you seem so full of curiosity. Shall I fetch you one?”

He stretched and retrieved the volume of mythology Abigail had been reading from earlier. “This one will do,” he said mildly. “There was somebody, though, wasn’t there?”

Evangeline glowered at him, then dragged the washtub over the threshold and dumped it out beside the step. Abigail and the kitten were playing a game and neither spared a look for the frazzled woman who watched them from the doorway for several moments.

“Button your coat, Abigail,” Evangeline said.

“Who was he?” Scully asked, the moment she’d turned around, now carrying the much lighter wash-tub.

After putting the tub away in the pantry, she fetched the basin, ladled water into it from the stove reservoir, and retreated to the area of her bed to splash her face and hands. The question followed her, over and back. Reaching Scully’s bedside again, she put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Nobody. At least, he was nobody to me. His name is Mott Keating,” she said. “My husband was his father. Are you satisfied?”

There it was again, that unseemly twinkle in those blue-green eyes of Scully’s. It caused a warm tickle inside Evangeline. “No,” he said amiably. “Did he want to marry you? Your stepson?”

“Don’t refer to him as my stepson, if you don’t mind. He’s thirty-five years old and mean as a badger with a thorn in its paw. And yes, he wanted to marry me. He wanted to do a lot of things.”

Scully ground his jaw at this, and a shadow fell across his eyes, driving out the mirth. “Did he hurt you? Or Abigail?”

“Not physically.” She glanced toward the door again, to make sure her daughter was out of earshot. “He discounted Abigail, because she wasn’t a boy. He wanted sons, not daughters. He would have sent her away, even though she was his half sister.”

“And you’d let him?”

“I’m a woman, Mr. Wainwright. Legally, a woman is the property of her husband, and so are her children. He could have sent her to an orphanage or even put her out on the street if he chose, just like you might give away a dog or trade off a horse. And if something had happened to me, she would have been entirely defenseless.”