“I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that.”
“Believe it!” Again the harsh voice was edged in steel. “By the god, girl, haven’t you been listening? Don’t you know yet what kind of man he is?”
“But to kill two women without pretext? Even a Governor---”
“Oh, he would find a pretext. Harboring a fugitive, spying..... Witchcraft.”
Mary was silent. And though she reproached herself for it, her one desire in that moment was to get as far away from the hate-filled old woman as possible. She longed to escape from the smouldering darkness of that place, to find some quiet hillside where she could think it all through, and decide what must be done. What must be done..... But at the same time she felt the need, far stronger than she cared to admit, for some strong and reassuring male presence.
At that moment she heard hoofbeats outside the door. Not waiting to ask, or consider whether it was right or wrong, she rose from her place and went to the door. The old woman did not try to stop her. She went outside.
Stephen Purceville stopped short in the saddle, and for the space of several seconds, did not move or breathe. Then with an effort to remain calm he dismounted, for that brief instant losing sight of her, and telling himself it had not happened.
But when he moved forward around the horse, holding tight the reins as if trying to keep a dream from fading, he felt again the strange and forbidding shock of her presence.
The girl was beautiful, yes, but it was far more than that. There was a depth to her, a genuine suffering..... But that was not the whole of it, either. What did it mean? What did it mean?
He could not know that part of what he was feeling was an instinctive sense of kin, the primal recognition of blood and family, a feeling which jarred against, and at the same time increased, his awed physical desire, for her.