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Joseph swallowed, attempting to lubricate his suddenly hoarse voice. “Discovered? What are you speaking of?”
Anvil could sense the rising tension. He sidestepped, shaking his head and grunting, but Joseph could do naught to calm him, for his own anxieties were cinching around his throat.
The next Higley spoke seemed unreal, as if said from afar. “I know what you do and who you are—both of you. But how I know, I cannot reveal.” Higley brought his mount as near to Anvil as he could. “If you do not use everything within your power to remain covert, you will be discovered and you will be killed.”
Body numb, Joseph stared, struggling to read the man’s hard expression. “You cannot be serious.”
Higley’s expression clutched Joseph at the chest like a vice.
“If you truly love her, you will get her as far from here as possible, as soon as you can.”
A wintery breeze iced through him. There were too many revelations in Higley’s words to settle on one. They flew around him like snowflakes on a circling wind. Who was this man, and how in heaven’s name did he know so much?
More, how did he know Joseph loved Hannah when he wasn’t prepared to admit such a thing himself?
Joseph sidestepped the swirling questions to face the one most glaring, no longer attempting to ignore the obvious. “What of Stockton? Will not he go after her—us—once we have fled?”
“If you leave now, you may have a chance.” Higley looked up the road, then back the way they’d come and kicked his horse to move again.
Joseph followed.
“Once they discover your involvement, his shame will be revealed to all—that he trusted the enemy with secrets he should not have. He will not rest until you are found.”
“You speak of the enemy, but do so as if I am not one.”
Higley’s jaw ticked. “What you are to them is what should most concern you.”
Still, the man would be so secretive? So much information offered, but so little declared.
Joseph gnawed the inside of his lip, heart racing at a speed he hadn’t known, filling his muscles with blood and resolve. “We shall make the decision we believe best.” If Higley would be cryptic, so would Joseph. “I thank you for your warning. It is duly noted.”
Nodding, Higley glanced away, visibly displeased with the reply. He motioned to the split in the road. “This is where I leave you.”
Joseph tipped his hat, allowing them to part before he stalled, calling after Higley, freeing the question that burned a path through his chest. “Captain. How know you I love her?”
“It lives in your eyes.” Higley inclined his head, a smile ever so slight. “Take care. I doubt you will be able to conceal it much longer.”
With that, Higley pulled his horse around and charged
into the darkened road, leaving Joseph’s shredded disguise to fall to pieces around him.
Dear Lord. He was surely not that transparent, was he?
Anvil grunted and nudged his head toward home. Joseph tapped him to a run. He had much to tell, much also to conceal. Hannah should not learn of Higley’s knowledge of them. ’Twould cause too much alarm, and she dealt enough with burgeoning anxieties.
His pulse charged. Hannah had best be home. If she was not…he would make sure she never left the house without him again.
* * *
Despite the biting cold and the way her breath froze on the air with every exhale, Hannah’s body pumped with heat. She rode into the yard, slowing her mount to a trot, startled at the darkness of the house. No lamps or candles flickered in the windows. Though the sky had yet to wrap fully in black, she knew naught could be seen in the house without the aid of a flame. Was no one home?
Limbs buzzing, unease afresh in her veins, she pulled to a halt and slid to the ground. Racing to the door, she flung it open, shoving aside the childish fear that some unseen ill awaited her in the shadows.
“Joseph?” Her voice echoed through the vacant room.
Blackness spilled through the parlor like ink across a table, pooling in the corners. She fumbled to light the candle at the table beside the door, only fully breathing when its yellow glow offered a pale flickering through the room.
“Joseph?” She closed and latched the door, unable to smooth away the ripples in her voice. “Joseph, are you here?”
