He said they had chosen to leave, and nothing a stranger wrote could erase their choices.
The older boy asked whether people would believe him.
Daniel answered that some would and some would not, but they would keep telling the truth anyway.
Miriam returned from the market with a letter addressed to a woman who no longer lived in the district.
She had obtained it from a trusted clerk who noticed the name Mary Baines in an undelivered packet.
The letter had been written by Hannah Vale.
It contained enough detail to confirm that the woman who left Blackwood Manor with Eleanor was indeed Mary.
It also contained a warning.
Hannah wrote that Richard’s men were questioning midwives along the river.
She believed they wanted to find Eleanor not to bring her home but to remove any living evidence of the birth.
Mary had planned to place the child temporarily with a widow named Rebecca Finch, who lived near the northern edge of the county.
The widow was unrelated to Albert Finch at Red Creek despite the shared surname.
Hannah asked anyone who received the letter to help Mary reach a safer destination.
Daniel studied the handwriting and felt the strange sensation of standing close to somebody he had never met.
Eleanor existed beyond Catherine’s claims and Richard’s threats.
She had been carried through rain, fed, soothed, and hidden by people who considered her worth protecting.
The knowledge did not tell Daniel what responsibility he could safely assume.
It did tell him that a child’s life could not be reduced to a bargaining paper on a steward’s desk.
Rose wanted to search for Rebecca immediately.
Thomas reminded her that Richard’s agents might already be watching the widow’s house.
Miriam suggested writing to Hannah through a separate route and asking for confirmation before anybody traveled.
Daniel disliked another delay, but he had learned from the mill wheel that haste could break the thing a person was trying to save.
They sent a cautious note and waited.
During that week Daniel helped repair chairs for Miriam’s schoolroom.
The children asked why he sometimes stopped work to stare through the window.
He told them he was learning the shape of a place where no one was entitled to summon him after midnight.
One little girl answered that he could begin by choosing when to take his lunch.
Daniel laughed, surprised by how precisely she had named the freedom he wanted.
