"Oh," said Elizabeth, flustered. She had heard of this local habit of starting a family before marriage, but it was a difficult one to come to grips with.

"Very well for Hitty," said Julian impatiently, trying to urge Elizabeth toward the door. "But it's time for my tea now and I'm afraid I'm not willing to wait any longer. Are you two coming along or not?"

"Go on ahead," Richard said, before Elizabeth could answer. "I will see your sister home."

Julian raised an eyebrow in question at Elizabeth, and she gave him reluctant nod. He shrugged his shoulders and took his leave from the men at the hearth. "I'll be back to hear more about that gold," he called to Axel with a flourish, and the door fell shut behind him.

* * *

"Is there anything I may bring you from Johnstown?" Richard asked when he had settled Elizabeth into his sleigh and tucked the lap robes around her.

"Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?" she asked, surprised.

"No, but it will do for a start. And do I need a reason to talk to you?" he asked, clucking to the chestnut geldings to set them on their way.

Elizabeth had quickly realized that the hardest part of her role in the current affair was not missing Nathaniel, but coping with Richard. His possessiveness was a trial she had not really anticipated. She felt his gaze on her now, a sidelong glance of paternalistic condescension which marked her his asset, his almost—wife. Sometimes it was more than she could bear.

"I suppose not," she said tightly.

"Miz Elizabeth!" called a young voice, and Elizabeth smiled and waved at Peter Dubonnet, the youngest of her schoolboys. She was surprised to see him salute her with an axe; he was a slight child, and she wouldn't have thought him strong enough to be effective at splitting kindling. But a half—filled wicker basket stood to one side and he turned back to it as the sleigh moved on. In the classroom Peter had the serious demeanor of a child with too much responsibility, and Elizabeth wondered where Claude Dubonnet kept himself while his son chopped wood.

"There might be mail waiting in Johnstown," Richard was saying, and Elizabeth turned back to the conversation at hand.

"I suppose there might be," she agreed.

"Perhaps word from your aunt Merriweather."

"Yes," said Elizabeth, now more distinctly uncomfortable. "Perhaps. Will you be disappointed if there is none?"

Immediately Elizabeth regretted this question. She dared not look at Richard, and so she looked instead at the way the softened snow puckered and fell in on itself over Henry Smythe's fallow cornfields.

"I am a patient man," Richard said finally.

"I see that you are," Elizabeth said. "If I may make an observation, you are also a stubborn one."

He shrugged a bit, as if to concede this point. Irritated, Elizabeth decided to have her way just this once with Richard, and risk the possibility of putting him off

"When are you going to tell me about your childhood?" she said to him. "You seem to always evade the subject."

"The way you are evading the subject of my proposal?"

"We have discussed your proposal at length, on a number of occasions," retorted Elizabeth. "You have yet to tell me anything about your childhood."

"You're mighty interested in stories today," Richard said, clearly put out.

"Do you mean Jack Lingo?" Elizabeth said.

He grunted.

"It was an interesting story, but it has nothing to do with the matter at hand."

"There's nothing to tell," Richard said stiffly.

"Between strangers, perhaps not," Elizabeth said, just as stiffly. She wondered herself why she was being so insistent about this, why it seemed so important to get Richard to talk about his time with the Mohawk.

"Are we to be strangers no longer, then?" Richard asked in a voice which struck Elizabeth as toneless and, at the same time, vaguely threatening.

The sleigh track entered a narrow place where the river negotiated between a steep hillside and a wall of rock, so that the path bordered directly on the water, rushing high now with icy runoff from the mountain. Just beyond the turning, Elizabeth knew, her father's house would come into view. But right here they were not visible from the house or from the village. With considerable discomfort Elizabeth watched as Richard brought the sleigh to a halt.

This is what my curiosity reaps, she thought to herself grimly. For weeks now she had managed to avoid this kind of encounter with Richard, but there was nowhere to go, no excuse to be made.

"Elizabeth."

She met his gaze with a raised eyebrow.

"Do you believe that your aunt will give her blessing to the match between us?"

Elizabeth called up an image of aunt Merriweather. She was a kind but sometimes rash woman of strong opinions, and one of those opinions was that a woman without considerable resources of her own was better off married. Love was not a staple of aunt Merriweather's philosophy, and she would not know what to make of Nathaniel. Richard, on the other hand, would be a more familiar kind of creature to her in spite of his unconventional childhood.

"I really don't know," said Elizabeth finally.

"Will you go against her wishes if she does not support your plans to marry?"

What a fortuitous formulation, Elizabeth thought. At least in answering this I can look him straight in the eye. "If I feel that it is in my best interest to marry, I will do so, even if my aunt does not agree."