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“YOU CAN’T CATCH ME.”
Though he couldn’t see Jane, he could hear her giggling. Balthazar looked for her, but in the thickly wooded glade, with the still-thick leaves only just starting to turn to gold, she was just one of the many shadows.
Grinning, he said, “I can try.”
He dashed in the direction of her voice and was rewarded with a cry of laughter and a glimpse of her. Jane’s favorite green dress would have made her invisible in the summertime, but now she was vivid against the gold, the one thing still living in a forest on the verge of its long sleep.
Although he could have caught her almost right away, Balthazar prolonged the chase as long as he could. It was wonderful to hear her laughter, to not worry about anyone overhearing or judging them, to just be in the moment—
—but even better to catch her.
His hands slid around her waist, and she pretended to push against his chest to escape, but she didn’t push very hard. After one moment’s hesitation, one moment where he wasn’t sure he dared, Balthazar bent down and softly kissed her … hardly for a second. He’d never kissed anyone before.
Nor had she. He knew that when she pulled back and put her hand to her lips. Yet he could tell she was as delighted as he was.
“You shouldn’t,” Jane whispered, trying to sound scandalized. “What would the elders say?”
“The elders aren’t here.” If they were, Balthazar thought, they might order him put in the stocks for immorality, so people could throw rotten cabbages at his head. He imagined getting out of it by offering to marry Jane to preserve her honor. If the church elders agreed to that, his father couldn’t stand in the way any longer, and he could have his own home with her.
A cool breeze rustled through the trees around them, and a fall of golden leaves showered down. Jane flung her arms wide and spun beneath them, her face turned up to the sky. “Oh, right now I feel like I could fly. Just like a bird.”
“Come here, and we can both feel that way again.” Balthazar caught one of her arms and pulled her close.
This time, the kiss lasted much longer, and by the end wasn’t nearly as soft.
When they pulled apart, Balthazar combed his fingers through Jane’s dark hair and smiled down at her—only to see her own expression crumpling, as if she was about to cry. “What’s wrong?”
“We’re wrong,” she said. “Or so everyone around us believes.”
“They’re the ones who are wrong.”
“We are Catholics.” Jane spoke the words as though she had been over them in her mind many times before. “Your family are heretics.”
“You know I care little for the church—”
“The churches care for us whether we like it or not. Where would we live?”
Balthazar fell silent. Throughout the colonies, a patchwork of religious beliefs and rules governed each settlement; the only true faith in one colony was forbidden and outlawed in another. Though the rules governing marriage were secular—at least, here in Massachusetts—nobody would allow either of them to remain here married to the other.
I could convert, he wanted to say, but the words died in his throat. To become a Papist would be to cast his parents, and Charity, out of his life forever; they would never even acknowledge him after that, and he could never reside permanently in Massachusetts again. He, like Jane and her father, would require special permission even to visit. Could he bear it? Yes, he could leave his parents—but not Charity. His dreamy little sister had no one else to understand her.
More than that, he’d heard sermons his whole life about the evils of the Roman Catholic Church. Although he could think for himself enough to judge Jane and her father as he found them, he knew he could never, in honesty, claim the Catholic faith as the truth of his heart. Without that, any conversion would be empty, and Jane would know it.
Jane stepped away from him, her earlier joy faded and blown away like the first fall leaves. “We shouldn’t have come here today.”
“Jane, don’t. Let’s enjoy what time we can.”
“It will only make parting more difficult.” He held out his hand to stop her, but Jane dodged him. “Let me go. Please. I can’t think on this any longer now.”
The gentle, mournful quality of her expression then stirred a memory in him of another girl—someone who reminded him of her. The name Bianca flickered in his mind, and it seemed to him it was important, but he couldn’t hold on to it for long.
Jane hurried away, and Balthazar simply stood and watched her. The dreamlike quality of it all made him wonder if this could be really happening, but he found he didn’t care. If it were a dream, let him get lost in it and go on dreaming, as long as he was able to keep looking after Jane, to keep her in his sights. That was worth anything.
“A pity, to see two young lovers parted,” Redgrave said.
Balthazar startled; he hadn’t heard Redgrave’s approach. His cheeks burned as he thought of the private moment this peculiar man might have seen. “Sir, you should have made your presence known.”
“As indeed I just have.” Redgrave leaned against a nearby tree. He seemed a part of the golden grove around them—primeval, in some unfathomable sense—and yet unnatural, too. “Will you let her go so easily?”
