Susan pulled backward so hard that Cordelia staggered and might have fallen again, if the table had not been handy to grab. Behind her, muddy foot-tracks stood out on the clean kitchen floor like accusations. “Call me that again and I’ll... I’ll slap thee!” Susan cried. “So I will!”

Cordelia’s lips drew back from her teeth in a dry, ferocious smile. “Ye’d slap your father’s only living blood kin? Would ye be so bad?”

“Why not? Do ye not slap me, Aunt?”

Some of the heat went out of her aunt’s eyes, and the smile left her mouth. “Susan! Hardly ever! Not half a dozen times since ye were a toddler who would grab anything her hands could reach, even a pot of boiling water on the—”

“It’s with thy mouth thee mostly hits nowadays,” Susan said. “I’ve put up with it—more fool me—but am done with it now. I’ll have no more. If I’m old enough to be sent to a man’s bed for money, I’m old enough for ye to keep a civil tongue when ye speak to me.”

Cordelia opened her mouth to defend herself—the girl’s anger had startled her, and so had her accusations—and then she realized how cleverly she was being led away from the subject of the boys. Of the boy.

“Ye only know him from the party, Susan? It’s Dearborn I mean.” As I think ye well know.

“I’ve seen him about town,” Susan said. She met her aunt’s eyes steadily, although it cost her an effort; lies would follow half-truths as dark followed dusk. “I’ve seen all three of them about town. Are ye satisfied?”

No, Susan saw with mounting dismay, she was not.

“Do ye swear to me, Susan—on your father’s name—that ye’ve not been meeting this boy Dearborn?”

All the rides in the late afternoon, Susan thought. All the excuses. All the care that no one should see us. And it all comes down to a careless wave on a rainy morning. That easily all’s put at risk. Did we think it could be otherwise? Were we that foolish?

Yes... and no. The truth was they had been mad. And still were.

Susan kept remembering the look of her father’s eyes on the few occasions when he had caught her in a fib. That look of half-curious disappointment. The sense that her fibs, innocuous as they might be, had hurt him like the scratch of a thorn.

“I will swear to nothing,” she said. “Ye’ve no right to ask it of me.”

“Swear!” Cordelia cried shrilly. She groped out for the table again and grasped it, as if for balance. “Swear it! Swear it! This is no game of jacks or tag or Johnny-jump-my-pony! Thee’s not a child any longer! Swear to me! Swear that thee’re still pure!”