When Miriam and Rose arrived, Rebecca met them in the doorway with a kitchen knife in her hand.

She did not threaten them, but she refused to invite strangers inside simply because they knew Mary’s name.

Miriam gave her the phrase Hannah had included in the letter.

Rebecca lowered the knife but kept her body across the opening.

She asked whether Richard Blackwood had sent them.

Rose answered that they were trying to prevent him from finding the child.

Inside, the house smelled of boiled potatoes and clean linen.

A small cradle stood near the hearth.

Eleanor slept beneath a faded quilt with one hand resting beside her cheek.

Rose felt a fierce tenderness that surprised her.

She had spent much of her life helping children whom other people treated as property, but this baby’s helplessness made the danger suddenly immediate.

Rebecca said Mary had left two days earlier to draw pursuers away from the house.

She had promised to send word when she reached Hannah.

No message had come.

Rebecca did not know Daniel, but she knew that Catherine had been frightened of her husband’s reaction to the birth.

Mary had described the mistress’s threats toward the carpenter and the shame she tried to force onto him.

Rebecca said she would not return the child to a household that had made fear the price of survival.

Miriam explained that Daniel wanted Eleanor protected but was not asking to take her from the only safe arms she knew.

Rebecca nodded, relieved that the conversation had begun with the child’s needs rather than the desires of adults.

Rose helped feed Eleanor while Miriam examined the windows.

A broken latch near the back door suggested somebody had tried to enter earlier that week.

Rebecca had blamed the wind, but the fresh scratch marks told a different story.

They moved the cradle into an interior room and arranged for neighbors to watch the road without knowing whom they were protecting.

Miriam sent Daniel a note saying only that Eleanor was alive, safe for the moment, and in need of a better hiding place.

Daniel read it beneath a lantern and cried quietly where no one could see him.

Daniel had been carving a wooden wheel for a school cart when Miriam’s note arrived.

The wheel was small, designed for a child’s toy rather than a working wagon.

He held it between his palms and imagined Eleanor gripping something he had made.