Eleanor rose sharply, then gripped the chair as though dizzy.
“You are forgetting yourself.”
Ruth lowered her eyes but did not apologize.
Eleanor watched her for a long moment.
“You could go with him,” she said finally.
“I could arrange it if he came back.”
“Go where?”
“Somewhere better than this place.”
Ruth thought of Caleb standing beside the wagon at dawn, the way he had tried to look brave when he was afraid.
“A place you own?” she asked.
Eleanor’s face hardened.
“You are dismissed.”
Ruth went downstairs with her hands trembling.
Hester found her near the bread oven and led her into the pantry.
“You must leave tonight,” Hester said.
“She knows I know something.”
“She suspects everyone.”
“That’s not the same as knowing.”
Hester took a bundle from beneath a shelf.
Inside were Ruth’s spare clothes, a small loaf of bread, and a folded letter addressed to Lottie Reed.
“I can leave by the orchard gate after the last cart,” Hester said.
Ruth stared at her.
“You’re coming?”
“If I stay, Eleanor will force me to testify about a child I was never permitted to examine.”
“Will the colonel stop us?”
“He will try.”
Hester grasped Ruth’s hands.
“Listen carefully.”
“The orchard gate opens toward the mill road, but you must turn into the ditch before the second bend.”
“Why?”
“The coachman has been ordered to watch the road.”
Ruth nodded.
The plan frightened her, but it belonged to them rather than to a mistress who claimed kindness while keeping a threat ready in her hand.
When the moon rose behind Hawthorne, Ruth slipped through the kitchen garden carrying the bread wrapped in her apron.
Hester followed several minutes later with the letter sewn into her hem.
Neither looked back at the upper window.
Chapter Seventeen: The Search at the Bridge
The colonel’s men arrived at Willow Ford before Ruth and Hester reached Lottie.
Their leader was Captain Edward Pryce, a former militia officer who took private contracts that required weapons and few questions.
He wore a dark traveling coat and spoke with the confidence of someone accustomed to doors opening when he demanded it.
“We’re looking for a runaway carpenter,” he told the meetinghouse caretaker.
“He stole property from Hawthorne Estate.”
Sarah Mott stood beside the doorway holding a basket of laundry.
“What property?” she asked.
“That is between the colonel and the law.”
“Then perhaps the law should be present.”
Pryce stared at her.
