A Hope Divided by Alyssa Cole (17)

CHAPTER 16

The situation was decidedly not good. The Home Guard was closing in, and if Ewan could see them, they would soon see him—and Marlie, who dangled halfway down the entirely too large Lynch home. He looked up at her, expecting to see her scrambling or showing some other sign of fear. Instead she released her grip on the rope and began plummeting down. For a moment he thought she would simply crash to the ground, but then she slowed. He realized she hadn’t released the fabric completely, but was letting it pass through her hands and holding tight when she began to lose control.

She wore no gloves, and Ewan could only imagine how painful it was—the friction of the rough fabric would be tearing at her skin. But then she was on the ground before him, her objective attained.

She stood still for a second, as if adjusting to solid ground beneath her feet, then looked up at him with a wild-eyed grin of success that dashed away his fear like summer rain on dusty stones. But they had no time to dawdle.

He eyed the telltale rope hanging from the house. If he left it, the soldiers would be able to tell something was amiss as soon as they arrived. He grabbed a fair-sized rock along the side of the house and wrapped the end of the fabric around it, then lobbed it up into a nearby tree. The fabric could be noticed if anyone looked up, but he’d have to hope that the men wouldn’t. He didn’t put much truck in hope, but it would suffice just then.

“Are you all right?” he whispered.

She winced as she attempted to curl her palms, and her shoulders hunched as if she fought the urge to cry out. That was an expression Ewan knew all too well. “Yes.”

“Then let us make haste,” he said, accepting her lie.

He started to move forward but Marlie surprised him. “Follow me.” She adjusted the bag over her shoulder and took off at surprising speed for someone who had skirts to contend with. She stopped at the corner of the house, peering around to make sure no one was about. After looking back to check that he was following, she moved, keeping close to the house, where shadows lurked and no one looking through a window would catch sight of them. They passed under the kitchen window, where a woman was singing a doleful song. Marlie paused and looked up, but then kept moving forward. She crouched now and again as she walked, and he realized she was snatching up leaves from the garden plants growing behind the house, tucking them away into her apron pockets.

When they got to the edge of the next corner, she looked back. “We have to run that way.” She held bunches of leaves between her fingers, but they didn’t obscure the direction in which she pointed. It was the same direction he’d arrived from—or there was a shed similar to the one he had stayed in. But other than that, there wasn’t much cover. Anyone looking from the house or who walked around it would see them.

The shouts of the men grew louder, the clap of their hooves announcing their arrival on the property.

Marlie’s and Ewan’s gazes met and held for a long moment.

“Now.”

They took off, Marlie ungainly as she held up her skirts with her fingertips, Ewan’s long legs outpacing her by double, even with his tender ankle. He slowed and tried to take her hand but she snatched it away before he could, stretching her legs farther and trying to keep pace. Behind them there were whoops and shouts, but Ewan couldn’t stop to see what the racket was about. They ran, the woods getting closer, their path to freedom almost secured.

Joy surged through Ewan as they entered the copse of trees, but diminished when a shadow stepped toward them, metal glinting off the weapon in its hand.

Marlie gasped and Ewan stepped in front of her.

“Marl?”

“Tobias!” She breathed his name in relief.

“What you doin’?” His gaze latched on to Ewan, and instead of Get in line, son, there was something much more menacing.

“You don’t know?” Marlie gasped, still trying to catch her breath.

“Been out at the farm,” Tobias said. “Got held up helping birth a calf.”

“Melody discovered that Marlie is Stephen’s daughter and intends to sell her into prostitution with the help of Cahill. To avoid that unfortunate outcome we must flee. Now.” Ewan looked back over his shoulder. “Forgive me for not being more polite, but the militia just arrived and her absence could be discovered at any moment.”

Tobias’s expression was sober. “You leaving us?” he asked.

“I have to,” Marlie said. “I’d die before letting Cahill sell me off.”

Marlie spoke the words with a vehemence that rocked Ewan. After seeing her defy Cahill, a man whom he knew to be intimidating in the extreme, he didn’t think her soft, but to hear her speak so fiercely reminded him that Marlie contained depths that were still unknown to him.

Tobias looked at Ewan again, and then extended the butt of his rifle in Marlie’s direction. “Take this.”

“I can’t,” she said.

“You need protection,” Tobias insisted.

“I do, but my hands aren’t quite up to the task. Please give it to him.”

She held up her hands and Ewan could see the bloody pink of her palms now.

“We have to go. Tobias, tell Sarah . . .” Her voice broke then, and the tears spilled down her cheeks.

“I will,” he said, wiping away the tears. He handed the gun to Ewan. “Keep her safe. And if you have any designs, redraw them.”

“Tobias! Enough.”

The man pulled her into a gruff hug. “I’ll hold ’em off from getting to your room for as long as I can. Go on, now.”

And then they were running into the night again. Beneath the cricket song that filled the night air, Marlie’s breathing occasionally hitched with a sob. She didn’t stop running, though.

They slowed as they moved deeper into the forest, the undergrowth making a faster pace impossible.

“Do you know where we’re going?” he asked. He looked about at the kudzu-covered trees looming like ancient giants around them. Everything was dark shadows and leaves rustling in the wind—there was no sign of what direction they should turn.

“I have a general idea,” she said. “The road is running alongside us over through those trees, and that’s the road I take to get to the small farms every few months. I’m usually in a carriage, but the road runs northwest.”

The smell of something fragrant and savory hit Ewan’s nose, and he looked in her direction to find her running her teeth over a bundle of leaves before clasping them in her fists. “Sage. Good for cleaning wounds.”

“And parsley?” He nodded at the curly leaves that peeked out from the pocket of her apron.

She nodded. “Helps with swelling.”

They walked in silence, the kind that Ewan hated. He grasped about for some subject to engage her in, but could find none, and the silence stretched taut between them. The easy conversation of days past had left them, in part because of his careless words. He hadn’t thought past getting her out of Lynchwood. Now she was by his side, but may as well have been back in her rooms, as she seemed entirely unreachable. Ewan felt an uncomfortable tightness at his neck.

“I can’t believe no one told me,” she finally said. “Now I look back at all those interactions and realize that everyone in the household knew who my father was but me. He sat in the same room with me, and said nothing. He watched Melody—his wife!—make me feel unwanted in my own home, and allowed it.”

Ewan realized that while he was fixated on her silence, she had been mourning her life. He chastised himself. His perspective had narrowed to a tiny window when he needed to be surveying the wide vista of what Marlie might need from him.

“Surely everyone wasn’t aware,” Ewan said, and Marlie cut her gaze in his direction.

“Tobias didn’t even blink when you told him,” she said.

“Ah. Correct.” They walked on. “Do you think you would have preferred knowing?”

Marlie chewed on her parsley a bit and then mashed that in her fists as well. “I’m not sure. But anything would have been better than finding out like this.”

Ewan heard her breath hitch, and couldn’t tell if it was anger or sadness or both.

“I have to say that if Stephen is your father, which appears to be the case, and he allowed you to be treated in this way, he was not worth your mother or you.”

“That’s easy for you to say.” She stopped and faced him. “You may not have liked your father, but he was there! He claimed you!”

Ewan couldn’t help the laugh that escaped his lips. “You think I merely didn’t like my father? I hated him. I wished him gone, and the best thing that ever happened to my family was the day he took his own life.”

Marlie gasped. “You can’t mean that,” she said.

“I’ve had the good part of a lifetime to reflect upon it and my opinion hasn’t changed,” he said. He understood most people valued blood relations, as if that link magically allowed for all types of transgressions. That was not a part of his philosophy. “I do not say this to diminish your pain and anger, but to remind you that Stephen is weak, as was my father. You have already been made to suffer for his weakness—you are here with me right now, driven from your home, because of it.”

“How could he pretend I wasn’t his daughter? All these years of him barely speaking to me. I thought it was because I reminded him of his father’s misdeeds . . . I feel like such a fool.” Marlie bit her lip, but that didn’t stop the tears from spilling from her eyes. This time Ewan didn’t restrain himself. He brought his hands to her face and brushed his thumbs over her cheeks, wiping the tears away.

“Don’t you wish your father had been kind to you?” she asked.

“Wishing is for fools,” he responded reflexively, and for some reason that made her laugh.

“So my point stands,” she said. “I am a fool.”

He’d never met a person the term applied to less, and in that moment he added Stephen to the list of men he wanted five minutes alone with.

“Mourn your father. Or hate him. But be sure that you know he is the one who should be ashamed and feel foolish, and not on account of your mother or you. You are perfect, despite his part in creating you, which means your mother must have been magnificent. His shame lies only with himself.”

She stared back at him for a long time, silent as the hot tears ran over his fingers.

“We have to go,” she finally said. She patted his hand, then turned and began walking.

They walked, resting every now and then, and Ewan began to worry about where they would pass the day. Spending the daylight hours unprotected with the Home Guard around would be asking for trouble. There was also the risk of Rebel pickets and Secesh neighbors who would turn them in as easily as breathing.

“We’re almost there,” Marlie said as if reading his thoughts.

The trees began to thin, and a small, fallow field opened up before them. On the other side of it was a less than modest home. Even in the predawn darkness, Ewan could see that it was in need of serious repair.

“Will we be welcome here?”

“There’s only one way to find out.” Marlie marched up to the porch and Ewan followed.