In her simple woolen garb she was more beautiful than ever. She had matured in the more than two years that had passed. Her face had sharpened, but beautifully so. Her figure was fuller, yet she still moved as though sailing from place to place. She seemed quieter, perhaps wiser—but still her eyes could snap with blue fire, and she would fight heaven and hell to have her way.
He fed on his anger. It was good, if only because it helped to assuage the pain of knowing he could not touch her. She owed him—she owed him the courtesy of seeing his child. If he had only known…
He never would have left her, Alwyn or no; Robert Powell or no. Neither the devil nor God himself could have convinced him to leave her—not even when she had begged him herself.
He laughed aloud suddenly, and spoke to the wet and frigid March air. “She is a witch, friends! The kind to beguile a man beyond reason, to taunt and torment him to the end of his days, no matter where he goes, or what he does!”
His horse pricked up its ears and Sloan laughed again, dryly, as he patted its neck. “Sorry, old boy. Ah, perhaps it is best that she does not come near me. I would want to beat her senseless for keeping him away from me. For leaving me.…”
He sighed deeply. He was a fool. He was going to stay around here—torturing himself—while his crew spent all their profit in Boston. Letting his anger and desire simmer and brew until it was a powderkeg just waiting for a spark. He was going to stay and hope that she’d come to him—before he went mad and burst into her sanctified little Puritan household.
Brianna was baking bread again when Robert returned to the house. From the way she pounded into the dough, Robert knew that she longed to pound into the magistrates—probably Hathorne.
“Well,” she demanded tartly, “what did you learn in the ordinary?”
Robert ignored her and went to Michael, who was sitting on the floor playing with pewter tins. “Want to come for a walk with Papa, Michael? A thaw seems to be truly setting in, and we’ll start plowing up the fields soon. Perhaps your Mama has a carrot or two we might spare for the mules.”
Michael happily lifted his arms to Robert. Brianna glanced up and bit her lip, then quickly looked back to her work. Michael was getting too heavy for Robert to hold. And Robert did not look well. She believed that the things going on were disturbing him perhaps even more than her.
Robert walked by Brianna. “You will see; things will return to normal. Seems we have found our scapegoats,” he said bitterly. “After Tituba’s story the other two would do best to admit their guilt—so that our good people can start saving their souls—and let them live out their mortal lives!”
“A confession will save them?” Brianna demanded.
“Aye—from the rumor that I hear.”
She smacked the bread soundly. Maybe there would be justice here—if it was true. She knew these people, and the truly pious would rather die than “belie” themselves, for they believed that God would eternally damn them for a lie. Yet she did not want to trust Robert’s words, because it was quite customary anywhere to execute a confessed witch.
He touched her hair then, and bent to kiss her forehead. “I do not think that we have anything to fear.” He smiled wanly. “Ingersoll’s was most interesting. John Proctor was there, quite disgusted. ‘Come to fetch his jade,’ he said. Mary Warren is his servant, you know. Her fits did cease, he said, when he thrashed her. He is a man of good standing in the community and he is sick of the nonsense. ‘Spectral evidence!’ he snorted to me. And old George Jacobs calls the girls ‘bitch witches.’ It will end, Brianna.” He turned away from her, cradling Michael’s little face close to his shoulder. “Brianna, do not run from me again. I cannot help but be afraid. None know of you but Eleanor, and she would never harm you. But if someone did hear something, they could so easily accuse you!”
Brianna swallowed miserably. “I’m sorry, Robert.”
“I know how you feel,” he murmured. “Well, young Michael, we shall go for our walk. Where has Mama put your coat?”
“I’ll get it!” Michael cried happily, shinnying from Robert’s arms. He took his coat from the deacon’s pew, and Robert helped him into it. Then Robert rose and his dark-brown gaze caught hers again, opaque and troubled.
“There was other talk at the ordinary,” he told her, pausing a second. “Lord Treveryan was there right before I came.”
“Oh?” The single word caught in her throat. She tried to keep her eyes level with Robert’s; they refused to stay so.
“He sailed in a week ago.”
“I—I had heard.”
“Had you?” Robert seemed surprised. “Why do you suppose that he has come?”
She shrugged, feeling half blinded as she started to pound into the dough again, trying to reply blithely. “He is a sailor. He captains his own ship. Such men must sail the seas, or so I suppose.”
She waited for Robert’s answer. It was slow in coming.
“We will talk later, when Michael sleeps.”
Brianna nodded and Robert and Michael went out.
The rabbit she cooked that night was tough and stringy, and improperly seasoned. Her bread burned. When she attempted to set the table, she dropped the forks and knives.
Each time she felt her husband’s eyes upon her, she wanted so badly to be able to pretend with assurance and bravado that Sloan’s being near meant nothing to her at all.
And yet when Michael was at last in bed asleep, Robert’s stand regarding the situation was not what she had expected at all.
