“Deal’s off,” Patrick had said around the length of a cigarette. “Take the long way home. Just watch the hills now, they tick.”
An hour or so later, there had been a distant blast to the South. A landmine tripped. And Kenton barely stuttered at the sound.
Theo nodded. “I remember.”
“Well, that man kicked their dog,” she said. “What do you think they imagine doing to me?”
Theo grimaced. “You were doing what you believed was right.”
Polly shook her head sadly. “The wordrightdidn’t factor much into it.”
“You were backed into a corner.”
“I was,” she said on a whisper. “And so was Nina. So wereyou. But I was the one to give Tanner the tunnel. I kicked the dog.” She turned to look at Theo then. “And I don’t deserve your compassion. I’m exactly the coward they believe I am.”
Theo considered her for a moment. “Do you remember when I arrived in Kenton Hill? The mining boys started in on me straight away. Trying to rile me up, I think. Test my mettle. I’d never met men like them before, throwing their weight around, beating their chests like apes. I thought them moronic. Only Scottie didn’t take too well to that observation.”
“Well, you called him a witless degenerate, and I don’t think he knew what either of those words meant.”
“And he and Otto took my chair out from underneath me, and I was lying there on the floor thinking they might beat my head in. Then you rose up like a guardian angel and scolded them both like they were toddlers. Told them to sit down before you knocked their heads together.”
She smiled, just slightly. “Scottie’s harmless. He only looks like a troll.”
“And Otto was butter in your palm from the very beginning.”
Her expression splintered at the sound of his name, and she turned away, eyes back on the Stewards’ book in her hands. “Are we just reminiscing? Or does this story have a point?”
“You’re not a coward, Polly. Not truly. You survived the Artisan school, and then countless towns after it, most of which were far from welcoming. You’ve seen far more than I would care to see, I’m sure of it. Whatever it is you are, you are not a coward. You simply want to survive. I can’t reproach you that.”
She turned in on herself, her spine curving. When she next spoke, her voice was reedy. “What kind of person forsakes an entire town just to save their own hide?”
Theo sighed heavily and looked out into the gloom. “Funny how things shook out in the end,” he said quietly. “I hated that damned parish, yet I stayed to help salvage it. You liked Kenton, and yet…”
“Yet I sent in the bloody infantry.” She sounded like she could hardly believe it herself. “Knowing full well that it might kill the man I—”
Theo watched the word stick in her throat, her eyes rimming with tears. “Loved?” he supplied. “Was it love? With Otto?”
The hollowing of her throat told Theo enough.
He did the gentlemanly thing of changing the subject. “What will you do after this? Without scribbling?”
She shrugged lamely. “If I’m being truthful, I don’t care, so long as I’m not shot dead somewhere along the way.”
“For what’s it worth,” Theo said. “I won’t let the Colsons kill you.”
“And if Nina were the one holding the gun?” she asked now, turning her head to watch his reaction. “Would you stop her?”
Theo frowned. “I wouldn’t have to. She’d never do that.”
“Wouldn’t she?”
Theo thought he saw something flash across Polly’s irises. Perhaps she was remembering the night they had found her in Rickers, Nina’s knuckles blanching around the butt of a pistol. “However angry she might feel, she isn’t capable of something like that, Polly. She isn’t one of them.”
Polly tilted her head as though she pitied him his naivete. “That’s exactly who she is, Theo. However much you might wish it otherwise.”
He bit his tongue to stave off a retort. She didn’t know Nina as he did.
“Do you think we’ll ever move on?” Polly asked now, shivering. The cold was closing in.
