"They buried Southern today," Nathaniel offered in explanation. "It's an Irish wake they've got going on."

"Oh, lovely, then they are in a rare mood. Think, please. Even if you manage it somehow, they will come looking for him—and for you—immediately."

Nathaniel stared down at her sternly, his eyes narrowed.

Elizabeth knew that she was saying things he didn't want to hear, but that he couldn't deny. She recognized the expression on his face, although she had never seen him wearing it before. It was a look she knew too well: all her life, she had seen it on the faces of men when she asked yet another question, or made that final observation, the one that dug too deep and hit a nerve. Slowly, reluctantly, Elizabeth had begun to trust the fact that he liked her the way she was, that he could cope with a woman with a mind of her own without losing his sense of himself as a man. And now, here it was. That look.

She watched him struggle with it. He would either talk to her, and they would resolve this, or he would try to send her home.

The muscles in his throat began to work convulsively. His face, his beloved face, all angles and planes. The scar at the corner of his eye; the straight line of his brow. It all dissolved as she watched, anger and stubbornness giving way to something she had never imagined: desperation. The kind of bone—deep desperation that made other men—not Nathaniel, never Nathanielinto little boys.

"Elizabeth." His voice came harsh with the effort of it, of showing her this. "It'll kill my father. It will kill him, not being there when Chingachgook walks the path. I know my father, Elizabeth. And I cannot leave him sitting in that gaol, and live with myself. Not tonight, not for another day. Don't ask me to walk away from this, because I can't."

Elizabeth pressed a hand to her mouth. Then she said: "I will go talk to the judge. He cannot be so cruel as to keep Hawkeye from his father's deathbed."

He groaned in frustration. "Don't you see? Kirby would raise an army to stop him."

She searched his face for the truth. "Are things so far gone here, then? Do they hate us so much?"

He had no words for her; for once, Nathaniel had no comfort to offer.Elizabeth stood up straighter, and glanced toward the tavern.

"I will go in there and speak to Kirby. Perhaps I can appeal to his better instincts.

"I can't let you waltz into a room of drunken men with bloodshed on their minds. And it wouldn't do any good anyway, Boots. You know that yourself."

Elizabeth let her head drop back against the wall of the church. Above her, the dark shapes of the fir trees flexed against the night sky. For no reason she could understand, Elizabeth thought of Kitty's mother hiding up in the branches of one of those trees for two days after the Kahnyen’keháka war party had come to call, afraid to climb down and face the rest of her life after what she had learned about the cruelty of men, and how deep it could run. Some folks sit tight and let life happen to them, Curiosity had said to her once. No matter what the cost.

"But I do not," Elizabeth murmured. "And never will I."

The worry that etched Nathaniel's face in deep lines gave way to sudden curiosity.

"Have you got a plan?"

Amazed to realize that she did indeed have a plan, Elizabeth nodded. "Can you raise enough of a fuss to empty the tavern? Get all of them out here for a quarter hour or so?"

One brow shot up, incredulous. "And what good will that do us?"

Elizabeth smoothed her hand over his shoulder. "Quite simple. While you are out here amusing all of them, I will be inside."

The other brow went up, and with it, a flicker of a grin. "Elizabeth Middleton Bonner," said her husband slowly. "Are you proposing to break a man out of gaol?"

"If you'll explain to me how to force the lock, well, then. Yes. I suppose that is exactly what I am proposing."

Nathaniel reached into his bullet pouch and pressed a knobby iron key into her hand.

"Where did you get this?"

He shrugged. "We've got some friends left in Paradise."

"Axel." She nodded. "And I know we can count on Anna to look the other way, if it comes to that."

"It's going to take more than a little luck to pull this off, Boots."

"Pah." She made a small flickering motion with her fingers. "Luck is for the unprepared and the mediocre. What we need is a plan. And careful timing. And quite possibly, a large gourd from Anna's garden."

Elizabeth thought that if she let herself contemplate the enormity of the task she had just taken on, she would begin to shake with fear, and so she spoke to him of the details. Nathaniel was already more himself; she could feel it in the way he ran his hands over her arms, see it in the distracted look on his face as they discussed timing, and decoys, and meeting places.

"We should wait another hour or so," he said, when they had sketched it out between them. "Until they're good and drunk."

"You won't burn anything down, will you?" She plucked at his sleeve anxiously.

"Nothing so dramatic as that, Boots. No, I thought I'd give Billy Kirby what he really wants, which is just a chance to beat me bloody in front of his friends. If we wait, he'll be drunk enough to think that maybe he can do it. So we've got some time on our hands here. Any ideas?"

She had an idea, oh, yes. Pinned against this wall with Nathaniel leaning over her, his warm breath stirring her hair and his fingers plucking gently, she had notions in her head that a year ago were beyond her imagining. The warm summer night and the smells of him, and the anxiety and excitement of what lay before them, all came together to hum in her veins. She lifted her face to him, knowing that he could read what was written there better than any words on a page.