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When prodded, Levi had said, “Not guilty,” but the statement had lacked conviction.

“The baby?” These were the first words Levi had spoken of his own accord since he had been fetched from his brother’s house, and Alexander had no idea what he was talking about.

“Elizabeth.” Levi looked at him with red-rimmed eyes. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week. “Elizabeth lost the baby.”

It took Alexander a moment to remember Ezra Weeks’s heavily pregnant wife, now pregnant no longer.

It was, he thought, a very good thing they had taken her deposition when they had.

Now that Levi had spoken, the words flooded out in a deluge of grief. “The doctors despair of her life. Mary Ann keeps asking for her mother. I don’t know what to tell her. None of us know what to tell her. Ezra sits by Elizabeth’s side hour after hour, never sure if the next breath will be the last.”

That hit Alexander in the gut. Six years ago, Eliza had nearly died of a miscarriage. Alexander had been away from home, in the wilds of Pennsylvania, leading troops against the insurgents who had taken up arms against the whiskey tax; it had been left to others to visit Eliza and send him word. He’d rushed back as soon as he’d heard; he’d immediately resigned his post at the Treasury. But it still haunted him, the thought that his Eliza might have perished while he was elsewhere.

“Childbirth is a dangerous thing for women,” Alexander said soberly.

Levi shook his head wildly. “I brought this on them. If it weren’t for me, Elizabeth would never have lost the baby. It was the strain—that was what they said—the strain of the charges against me—”

He gulped for air, his face contorting into gargoyle shapes.

“I never meant to hurt anyone. Oh God, Elma—and now Elizabeth—”

Alexander patted his hand. “With good care and God’s grace, she’ll see this through and there will be other children.”

“Unless she dies.” Levi refused to be comforted.

“It will worry them more if they hang you,” Alexander pointed out. “The best thing you can do for your family now is prove your innocence in a court of law.”

Levi gave a short, bitter laugh. “What hope is there for me? They’re all in league against me. That Croucher has been spreading stories that there’s evidence against me come from the Jerseys—”

“Why from the Jerseys? Have you connections there?”

“No! My family is from Massachusetts!”

The insinuation that he might be from the Jerseys seemed to distress Levi as much as his own impending execution.

“He and Elias Ring—they’ve been stirring everyone up against me. Ring has been telling everyone he’ll shoot me on sight.” Levi shoved his hands into his hair, making it stick out wildly around his face. “I was a prisoner long before they brought me back here. Ezra forbade me to leave the yard for fear someone would take justice into his own hands. They say I touched Elma’s corpse when they found her and her drowned face wept tears of blood.”

The sign of a murderer.

“What did I do to bring this on myself—on my family? What did I do more than any other man has done?” Levi demanded hysterically. “All I did was talk to a pretty girl. . . .”

“What about Ring?” Alexander demanded, breaking into Levi’s lament. “From all accounts, he did far more than talk to her. You were there in the house with them this autumn. Did you know?”

Levi stared at him like a startled rabbit, frozen in a field.

Alexander looked at him with exasperation. “Why didn’t you tell me of Ring and Elma? The basis of the prosecution’s case—the center of all the rumors against you—is that you seduced an innocent girl with promise of marriage. If the world knew that Elma was sharing her favors with Ring . . .”

“I didn’t want to shame Elma,” Levi muttered.

“Elma is beyond shaming,” said Alexander gently. “You, however . . . You’re not beyond saving. If not for your own sake, for your family.”

Levi dropped his face into his hands. “She asked me to keep her secret for her.”

“Would she wish you to keep it at the expense of your own neck?”

“I know. I know. I’ve been a fool. If I said it now, who would believe me? He’s a Quaker. And he’s made the world believe that Elma had eyes for no one but me. When she never wanted me at all,” he added resentfully. “Not like that.”

“What was it like?”