“Here! Here!” Jane popped out of a bush right beside William, startling him, and shoved something into his hand. It was, thank God, a knife. Nothing to rival the bayonet, but a weapon.

Jane was still by him; he grasped her arm and began to walk backward, knife held low and threatening in his other hand. The Hessian—Christ, was it one of the sons of bitches who’d hit him in the head? He couldn’t tell; there were spots floating in front of his eyes, and the men had thrown away their telltale green coats. Did all sons of bitches wear green coats? he wondered muzzily.

Then they were on the road, and things became confused. He thought he’d stuck one of the men, and the girls were screaming again, and once he found himself in the roadway, choking on dust, but came up again before one of the bastards could kick him in the face … and then there was a shout and the pounding of hooves, and he let go of the man whose arm he was gripping and whirled round to see Rachel Hunter on a mule, coming fast down the road, swinging her bonnet from its strings and shouting, “Uncle Hiram! Cousin Seth! Hurry! Come on! Come on! Help me!”

His mule jerked its head up from the grass and, seeing Rachel’s mount, brayed in greeting. This seemed to be the last straw for the deserters, who stood gaping for one stunned moment, then turned and galloped down the road after their vanished fellow.

William stood swaying for a moment, gasping for breath, then dropped his knife and sat down abruptly.

“What,” he said, in a voice that sounded petulant even to his own ears, “are you doing here?”

Rachel ignored him. She swung down from her mule, landing with a small thump, and led it to William’s mule, tethering it to the cart. Only then did she walk over to where William sat, slowly brushing dirt from his knees and counting his limbs.

“You wouldn’t happen to have seen a couple of girls, would you?” he asked, tilting his head back to look up at Rachel.

“Yes. They ran into the trees,” she said, nodding toward the chestnut grove. “As for what I am doing here, I have been up and down this road three times, looking for thy cousin, Ian Murray.” She gave him a hard look as she said this, as though daring him to contradict her assertion regarding his kinship with Murray. Under other circumstances, he might have taken offense, but at the moment he hadn’t the energy. “I assume that if thee had seen him, dead or alive, thee would tell me?”

“Yes,” he said. There was a swollen knot between his eyes, where he had butted the deserter, and he rubbed this gingerly.

She drew a deep breath, sighed loudly, and wiped her sweating face on her apron, before replacing her bonnet. She looked him over, shaking her head.

“Thee is a rooster, William,” Rachel said mournfully. “I saw this in thee before, but now I know it for certain.”

“A rooster,” he repeated coldly, brushing dirt from his sleeve. “Indeed. A vain, crowing, gaudy sort of fellow—that’s what you think me?”

Her brows went up. They were not the level brows of classic beauty; they quirked up at the ends, even when her face was at rest, giving her a look of interested intelligence. When she was not at rest, they slanted with a sharp, wicked sort of look. They did this for an instant now, but then relaxed. A little.

“No,” she said. “Has thee ever kept chickens, William?”

“Not for some years,” he said, examining the hole torn in the elbow of his coat, the hole ripped in the shirt beneath, and the bloody scrape upon his bare elbow. Bloody hell, one of the buggers had come close to taking his arm off with that bayonet. “What with one thing and another, my recent acquaintance with chickens has been limited largely to breakfast. Why?”

“Why, a rooster is a creature of amazing courage,” Rachel said, rather reproachful. “He will throw himself into the face of an enemy, even knowing he will die in the attack, and thus buy his hens time to escape.”

William’s head jerked up.

“My hens?” he said, outrage bringing the blood to his face. “My hens?” He glanced in the direction Jane and Fanny had taken, then glared back at Rachel. “Do you not realize that they are whores?”

She rolled her eyes at him in exasperation. She bloody rolled her eyes at him!

“I expect I have been living with an army for somewhat longer than thee has thyself,” she said, making a decided effort to look down her nose at him. “I am familiar with women who lack both property and protection and are thus reduced to the dreadful expedient of selling their bodies, yes.”

“‘Dreadful expedient’?” he repeated. “You realize that I—”

She stamped a foot and glared at him.

“Will thee stop repeating everything I say?” she demanded. “I was attempting to pay thee a compliment—while, as thy friend, lamenting the end thy roosterishness will surely bring thee to. Whether thy companions are whores or not—and whether thee pays for their company—is irrelevant to the matter.”

“Irre—” William began in indignation, but choked the word off before he could be further accused of repetition. “I don’t bloody pay them!”

“Irrelevant,” she repeated, doing it herself, by God! “Thee has behaved in exactly the same way on my own behalf, after all.”

“You—” He stopped abruptly. “I have?”

She exhaled strongly, eyeing him in a manner suggesting that she would have kicked him in the shins or stamped on his toes if not reminded of her Quaker principles.

“Twice,” she said, elaborately polite. “The occasions were so negligible, I suppose—or I was—that thee has forgotten?”

“Remind me,” he said dryly, and, ripping a chunk from the torn lining of his coat, used it to wipe the mud—and blood, he saw—from his face.

She snorted briefly, but obliged. “Does thee not recall the odious creature who attacked us in that dreadful place on the road in New York?”

“Oh, that.” His belly clenched in recollection. “I didn’t exactly do it on your account. Nor did I have much choice in the matter. He bloody tried to cave my head in with an ax.”

“Hmph. I think thee has some fatal attraction for ax-wielding maniacs,” she said, frowning at him. “That Mr. Bug actually did hit thee in the head with an ax. But when thee killed him later, it was to protect Ian and me from a similar fate, was it not?”

“Oh, indeed,” he said, a little crossly. “How do you know it wasn’t just revenge for his attacking me?”

“Thee may be a rooster, but thee is not a vengeful rooster,” she said reprovingly. She pulled a kerchief from her pocket and blotted her face, which was growing shiny with perspiration again. “Should we not look for thy … companions?”

“We should,” he said, with a degree of resignation, and turned toward the grove. “I think they’ll run if I go in after them, though.”

Rachel made an impatient noise and, pushing past him, stomped into the woods, rustling through the brush like a hungry bear. The thought made him grin, but a sudden yelp wiped the smile off his face. He started after her, but she was already backing out, yanking Jane by one arm, meanwhile trying to avoid the wild swipes Jane was making with her free hand, fingers clawed and slashing toward Rachel’s face.

“Stop that!” William said sharply, and, stepping forward, grabbed Jane by the shoulder and jerked her out of Rachel’s grasp. She turned blindly on him, but he had longer arms than Rachel and could easily hold her at bay.

“Will you quit that?” he said crossly. “No one’s going to hurt you. Not now.”

She did stop, though she looked back and forth between him and Rachel like a cornered animal, panting and the whites of her eyes showing.

“He’s right,” Rachel said, edging cautiously toward her. “Thee is quite safe now. What is thy name, Friend?”

“She’s called Jane,” William said, gradually loosing his hold, ready to grab her again if she bolted. “I don’t know her surname.”

She didn’t bolt, but didn’t speak, either. Her dress was torn at the neck, and she put a hand to the torn edge automatically, trying to fit it back in place.