The look of confusion and utter embarrassment on the boy's face was replaced instantaneously with one of unmitigated joy, which gave Elizabeth momentary pause. "I do trust we will not have any repetitions of this unfortunate event, Ephraim Hauptmann. No matter how beautiful the weather."

His face went very still. "No, miss. "Course not." He paused, and shrugged philosophically. "Didn't feel very good, anyway."

They managed to control themselves until he was safely out the door, and then they laughed until Elizabeth's ribs ached with it.

Hannah appeared at the door. She sniffed, and raised a brow in unspoken criticism.

"Are you coming back to school?" she asked Liam when he had managed to stifle himself.

He ducked his head in sudden seriousness. "I suppose so," he said. "Until my brother finds out and takes a switch to me."

"Good," said Hannah. "We need another boy for games at recess. And you need to learn to read." And she disappeared into the sunshine.

"Miz Bonner?" Liam paused at the door on his way out.

"Yes?"

"I ain't got any money to pay tuition," he said. "But I can chop wood."

She was careful not to smile. "That would be a very acceptable arrangement, Liam."

Staring at his own bare feet, the boy spoke up again.

"It weren't my idea, you know. About Albany, and the court. I wanted to tell you I was sorry about that."

Nathaniel squinted at her, his skepticism written in the downward curve of his mouth. But Elizabeth remembered Liam as a willing and eager student, good—natured and hardworking, if not especially talented. She was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

"Thank you," she said. "I am much relieved to hear you say so."

The boy nodded, kneading his cap as if he hoped to wring the right words from it. "If you've got a taste for duck, well, then come down to Half Moon late this afternoon. Most everybody will be there." He cast a sidelong look toward them. "Could always use another canoe."

Nathaniel hesitated so long that Elizabeth grew uncomfortable.

"Thank you kindly for the invitation," she said.  "We'll try to come."

* * *

"I don't see why we should not go, Nathaniel. If they are making an effort to include us—”

“You're sure that's what's on their minds?" he said, gruffly.

Elizabeth stopped to pick a handful of pink milfoil. She crushed one of the gray—green leaves and inhaled the spicy smell while she weighed her response.

"Do you think it's some kind of trap?"

He looked around for Hannah, who had hung back on the trail to examine a dead firebird. She was folding and unfolding the wing, studying the way the joints worked. With one part of her mind, Elizabeth wondered if Nathaniel noticed his daughter's preoccupation with the workings of living creatures: if it was unusual, or the normal way of Kahnyen’keháka children. But his thoughts were elsewhere.

"They ain't quite that dumb, or desperate. Not yet. But then we ain't turned anybody off the Wolf, yet."

"Then why should we not?" She heard the impatience in her voice, and then tried to modulate her tone. "Please tell me why we should not go to the village for the duck hunt, Nathaniel."

"You tell me first why we should." His own tone bordered on the edgy.

"Because my students will be there, with their families. Because it would be good to see the Hauptmanns, and I need to talk to the McGarritys—”

“You need more society." He came to a halt in the path, for they had lost sight of Hannah.

Elizabeth laughed. "Society? Now you are being silly, Nathaniel. But it does seem to me that we need to show our faces in the village, once in a while. We must live among these people, after all."

"Your father will likely be there, and Julian."

"Father, at least," Elizabeth agreed. "I will not hide from my father, and I'm surprised that you would want me to."

Nathaniel let out a great rush of air, a sound of surrender that Elizabeth had learned to recognize. He was not convinced, but he would no longer oppose.

"I don't want you to hide from anybody, Boots." He brushed his knuckles along her cheekbone. "But I'm afraid you're in for more than you bargained for."

She caught his hand and kissed it. "I won't be there alone, will I?"

He smiled, finally. "Never for a moment."

Chapter 49

They came down to the village at dusk, stopping just above the lake to survey the shore. Nathaniel remembered fishing the lake as a boy. At dawn or dusk, wading in the shallows or out in the canoe he had felt like an intruder in a world crowded with fish and birds and wild of all kinds. That was before the village took hold and started to grow like a new kind of animal, jealous of its space and food.

Where now a crowd of children fed deadwood into a growing bonfire, he had once watched a hawk and an eagle wage a screaming battle over a mallard. Asleep on the shore, he had come suddenly full awake to see a bobcat drinking not twenty yards from him, all gold and sliding muscle.But now the shore was crowded with canoes and dugouts and anything that could be paddled, even a makeshift raft. Men paced back and forth, their movements jittery with excitement. Their voices rose like a buzzing on the wind.

"Like warrior ants, on the move," said Chingachgook beside him, and Nathaniel grunted in agreement.