“Goddamn you chits! You come out here! I’m gonna give you all what-for and I mean it!”
“Mr. Fredericks! Please, please—come back! The girls didn’t mean to—”
Without a second’s hesitation, Mr. Fredericks turned and slapped the woman behind him across the face with his belt.
Behind Ian, Patience let out a scream of pure rage and lunged for the porch. Ian caught her with an arm around her waist and put her behind him.
“Go to your sisters,” he said, and shoved her toward the shed. “Now!”
“Who the devil are you?” Fredericks had come off the porch and was advancing on Ian, sandy hair ruffled like a lion’s mane and a look on his broad red face that made his intentions clear.
Ian drew his pistol and pointed it at the man.
“Leave,” he said. “Now.”
Fredericks snapped the belt so fast that Ian scarcely saw it; only felt the blow that knocked the gun from his hand. He didn’t bother trying to pick it up, but grabbed the end of the belt as it rose for another blow and jerked Fredericks toward him, butting him in the face as he stumbled. Ian missed the nose, though, and Fredericks’s jawbone slammed into his forehead, making his eyes water.
He tripped Fredericks, but the man had his arms round Ian’s body and they both went down, landing with a thud among the dead leaves. Ian grabbed a handful and smashed them into the man’s face, grinding them into his eyes, and got his own leg up in time to avoid being kneed in the balls.
There was a lot of screaming going on. Ian got hold of Fredericks’s ear and did his best to twist it off while kicking and squirming. He heaved and rolled and got on top then, and got his hands round Fredericks’s throat, but it was a fat throat, slippery with sweat, and he couldn’t get a good grasp, not with the man hammering his ribs with a fist like a rock. Enough of this foolishness, said the Mohawk part of him, and he took his hand off Fredericks’s throat, grabbed a sturdy stick from the litter on the ground, and drove it straight into the man’s eye.
Fredericks threw his arms wide, went stiff, gasped once or twice, and died.
Ian moved off the man’s body, slowly, his own body pulsing with his heartbeat. His finger hurt—he’d jammed it—and his hand was slimy. He wiped it on his breeches, recalling too late that they were his good pair.
The screaming had stopped abruptly. He sat still, breathing. The snowflakes were coming down faster now, and melted as they touched his skin, tiny cold kisses on his face.
His eyes were closed, but he dimly perceived footsteps, and opened them to see the woman crouching beside him.
There was a wide red welt across her face; her upper lip was split and a trickle of blood had stained her chin. Her eyes were bloodshot and horrified, but she wasn’t screaming, thank Christ.
“Who—” she said, and stopped, putting her wrist to her wounded mouth. She looked down at the dead man on the ground, shook her head as though unable to believe it, and looked at Ian.
“Thee should not have done this,” she said, low-voiced and urgent.
“Did ye have a better suggestion?” Ian asked, getting some of his breath back.
“He would have left,” she said, and glanced over her shoulder as though expecting his nemesis to appear. “When he—when he had finished.”
“He’s finished,” Ian assured her, and moving slowly, got up onto his knees. “Ye’ll be Mrs. Hardman, then.”
“I am Silvia Hardman.” She couldn’t keep her eyes off the dead man.
“He’s Friend Jamie’s nephew, Mummy,” said a small, clear voice behind him. All three girls had clustered behind their mother, all of them looking shocked. Even the little one was round-eyed and silent, her thumb in her mouth.
“Jamie,” Silvia Hardman said, and shook her head. The dazed expression was fading from her face, and she dabbed at her swelling lip with a fold of the tattered wrapper she wore. “Jamie … Fraser?”
“Aye,” Ian said, and got to his feet. He was battered and stiff, but it wasn’t hurting much yet. “He sent me to see to your welfare.”
She looked incredulously at him, then at Fredericks, back at him—and began to laugh. It wasn’t regular laughing; it was a high, thin, hysterical sound, and she put a hand over her mouth to stop it.
“I suppose I’d best get rid of this—” He toed Fredericks’s body in the thigh. “Will anyone come looking for him?”
“They might.” Silvia was getting her own breath back. “This is Charles Fredericks. He’s a judge. Justice Fredericks, of the City Court of Philadelphia.”
IAN REGARDED THE dead Justice for a moment, then glanced at Mrs. Hardman. Bar that moment of unhinged laughter, she hadn’t been hysterical, and while she was paler than the grubby shift she wore, she was composed. Not merely composed, he noted with interest; she was grimly intent, her gaze focused on the body.
“Will thee help me to hide him?” she asked, looking up.
He nodded.
“Will someone come looking for him? Come here, I mean?” The house was isolated, a mile at least from any other dwelling, and a good five miles outside the city.
“I don’t know,” she said frankly, meeting his eyes. “He’s been coming once or twice a week for the last two months, and he’s—he was,” she corrected, with a slight tone of relief in her voice, “a blabbermouth. Once he’d got his—what he came for—he’d drink and he’d talk. Mostly about himself, but now and then he’d mention men he knew, and what he thought of them. Not much, as a rule.”
“So ye think he might have … boasted about coming here?”
She uttered a short, startled laugh.
“Here? No. He might have talked about the Quaker widow he was swiving, though. Some … people … know about me.” Dull red splotches came up on her face and neck—and looking at them, Ian saw the darker marks of bruises on her neck.
“Mummy?” The girls were all shivering. “Can we go inside now, Mummy? It’s awful cold.”
Mrs. Hardman shook herself and, straightening, stepped in front of the dead man, at least partially blocking the girls’ view of his body.
“Yes. Go in the house, girls. Build up the fire. There’s—some food in a valise. Go ahead and eat; feed Chastity. I’ll be in … presently.” She swallowed visibly; Ian couldn’t tell whether it was from sudden nausea or simple hunger at mention of food; the shadow of her bones showed in her chest.
The little girls sidled past the body, Patience with her hands over Chastity’s eyes, and disappeared into the house, though Prudence lingered at the door until her mother made a shooing gesture, at which she also vanished.
“I think we canna just bury him,” Ian said. “If anyone should come here looking for him, a fresh grave wouldna be that hard to find. Can ye get him dressed, d’ye think?”
Her eyes went round, and she glanced at the body, then back at Ian. Her mouth opened, then closed.
“I can,” she said, sounding breathless.
“Do that, then,” he said. He looked up at the sky; it was the color of tarnished pewter and still spitting a few random snowflakes. He could feel more coming, though; there was a sense of the North Wind on the back of his neck.