“I am Silvia Hardman.” She couldn’t keep her eyes off the dead man.
“He’s Friend Jamie’s nephew, Mummy,” said a small, clear voice behind him. All three girls had clustered behind their mother, all of them looking shocked. Even the little one was round-eyed and silent, her thumb in her mouth.
“Jamie,” Silvia Hardman said, and shook her head. The dazed expression was fading from her face, and she dabbed at her swelling lip with a fold of the tattered wrapper she wore. “Jamie … Fraser?”
“Aye,” Ian said, and got to his feet. He was battered and stiff, but it wasn’t hurting much yet. “He sent me to see to your welfare.”
She looked incredulously at him, then at Fredericks, back at him—and began to laugh. It wasn’t regular laughing; it was a high, thin, hysterical sound, and she put a hand over her mouth to stop it.
“I suppose I’d best get rid of this—” He toed Fredericks’s body in the thigh. “Will anyone come looking for him?”
“They might.” Silvia was getting her own breath back. “This is Charles Fredericks. He’s a judge. Justice Fredericks, of the City Court of Philadelphia.”
IAN REGARDED THE dead Justice for a moment, then glanced at Mrs. Hardman. Bar that moment of unhinged laughter, she hadn’t been hysterical, and while she was paler than the grubby shift she wore, she was composed. Not merely composed, he noted with interest; she was grimly intent, her gaze focused on the body.
“Will thee help me to hide him?” she asked, looking up.
He nodded.
“Will someone come looking for him? Come here, I mean?” The house was isolated, a mile at least from any other dwelling, and a good five miles outside the city.
“I don’t know,” she said frankly, meeting his eyes. “He’s been coming once or twice a week for the last two months, and he’s—he was,” she corrected, with a slight tone of relief in her voice, “a blabbermouth. Once he’d got his—what he came for—he’d drink and he’d talk. Mostly about himself, but now and then he’d mention men he knew, and what he thought of them. Not much, as a rule.”
“So ye think he might have … boasted about coming here?”
She uttered a short, startled laugh.
“Here? No. He might have talked about the Quaker widow he was swiving, though. Some … people … know about me.” Dull red splotches came up on her face and neck—and looking at them, Ian saw the darker marks of bruises on her neck.
“Mummy?” The girls were all shivering. “Can we go inside now, Mummy? It’s awful cold.”
Mrs. Hardman shook herself and, straightening, stepped in front of the dead man, at least partially blocking the girls’ view of his body.
“Yes. Go in the house, girls. Build up the fire. There’s—some food in a valise. Go ahead and eat; feed Chastity. I’ll be in … presently.” She swallowed visibly; Ian couldn’t tell whether it was from sudden nausea or simple hunger at mention of food; the shadow of her bones showed in her chest.
The little girls sidled past the body, Patience with her hands over Chastity’s eyes, and disappeared into the house, though Prudence lingered at the door until her mother made a shooing gesture, at which she also vanished.
“I think we canna just bury him,” Ian said. “If anyone should come here looking for him, a fresh grave wouldna be that hard to find. Can ye get him dressed, d’ye think?”
Her eyes went round, and she glanced at the body, then back at Ian. Her mouth opened, then closed.
“I can,” she said, sounding breathless.
“Do that, then,” he said. He looked up at the sky; it was the color of tarnished pewter and still spitting a few random snowflakes. He could feel more coming, though; there was a sense of the North Wind on the back of his neck.
“I’ll be back before the evening comes,” he said, turning toward his horse. “Pack what ye can. That horse is his, I expect?” There was a fine-looking bay gelding twitching his ears under the sparse shelter of a leafless tulip tree; clearly it didn’t belong to the Hardman household.
“Yes.”
“I’ll need to use that one to move the body. But I’ll bring another to help carry you and your bairns.”
Silvia blinked and pushed a lank strand of hair behind her ear.
“Where are we going?”
He grinned at her—reassuringly, he hoped.
“I’m takin’ ye to meet my mother.”