So Pure a Heart (Daughters of His Kingdom 4)

She blinked, failing to snip the line of his stare. He could not be so genuine, could he? When for ten years he had not so much as—

“Hannah?” Joseph’s stare reached out with firm, familiar tenderness, belying the rage that warred behind their blue depths. “Are you untouched?”

“Aye.” She swallowed away the storm of emotions, praising the Lord once again for His goodness. “I am unharmed.”

His shoulders dropped as a heavy sigh left his lips.

Licking her own, she continued. “Somehow Ensign followed me, despite his wound, and shot one of them, but the other turned and stabbed Ensign where he stood.” Her voice severed, and a searing tear streaked down her cheek. “He gave his life for me.”

Closing his eyes slowly, Joseph bowed his head, then brought it back up in the next breath. He squeezed her wrist gently before releasing his grip and pushing up to his full height. “You were not followed?”

“Nay.”

He nodded and pivoted toward the tent door, his fists working, rippling the muscles in his forearms. He lunged for the door when Nathaniel strode in, another man entering behind him.

The doctor looked from Joseph to Hannah and nodded, a somber tilt across his mouth. “I am pleased to see you are looking so much better.” He turned to Joseph, his tone dropping an octave. “Do you have the full of it?”

“Nay, but enough.”

Nathaniel’s eyebrows shot up. “And?”

“The king’s men have taken control of the foundry.” Joseph paused, his throat working. “They killed Ensign. Hannah managed to escape unharmed.”

Eyes sharp as a blade’s edge, Nathaniel looked swiftly to the man Hannah still didn’t know, before facing her. “Why did they take it? Did they say?”

Hannah’s shivering increased, and she gripped the little mug harder, wishing its warmth could seep into her soul as well as it seeped into her fingers. “To use it—’tis what I understand from what I heard him say.”

“Who?” The stranger neared, his striking face strict with purpose. “A soldier? Did you get a name?”

“Aye.” She scowled, scrambling through the ransacked memories, searching for the name she knew must be hidden in the disarray, when she stumbled upon it, like an overturned table. “Stockton. Major Stockton.”

The men in the room eyed each other, their jaws ticking.

“Not surprising there, is it?” The man whose name she still did not know clenched his fists.

“Do you know him?” Hannah’s bravery saddled her wild curiosity, flinging the question from her lips.

“I do,” he said, his tone answering far more than she’d asked. The stranger bowed politely in her direction. “Forgive me. I fear we have not been introduced.”

Nathaniel stepped forward. “Miss Young, allow me to introduce Captain Henry Donaldson.”

She nodded politely in return as the man pinned his unmoving gaze upon her.

“What exactly did he say? Was there anyone with him?”

Flinging a look to Joseph, Hannah shifted on the cot, ignoring the way her stomach flipped at the sight of him so near. She met her questioner’s stare. “There were others. I do not recall their names…Greene, perhaps? There were more, but I don’t remember the others.”

She glanced between Nathaniel and Joseph, whose brows shot skyward as they fixed their eyes on their friend.

The captain shook his head, then turned back to her. “Pray, continue.”

Tension, that ever-thickening weight on her chest, pressed so hard her lungs struggled to rise. She steadied her voice as one might a frightened horse, but still it fought against the tether. “That is all I know.”

The three men stared, each with tight lips and hard eyes.

The new fellow spoke low, his head dipping. “We should tell Thomas of this.”

“Aye,” the others answered in unison.