So Pure a Heart (Daughters of His Kingdom 4)

An abrupt about-face and she was at the stairs, taking them quickly for one so great with child. He stayed behind her, fear at the unknown weighing his steps.

The room was large, fully furnished but dark. The fire in the hearth at the far wall spewed an umber glow that failed to reach but half the room. Mrs. Smith turned at the head of the bed, voice pleading as much as her eyes as she handed him the candle.

“I will leave you now.”

He followed her with his gaze as she descended just as quickly as she’d come up. Shaking his head, he turned back around to face the one who’d summoned him.

The sight impaled like a harpoon. It couldn’t be.

His breathing went shallow. “Brother.”

Upon the bed, Ensign looked already passed, his face ashen, eyes sunk away. If not for the wheezing of his breath, Philo would not have believed he lived.

Ensign rolled his head against the pillow, his raspy sound unearthly. “I am glad you have come.”

“You are alive.”

There was a deathly pause as he swallowed. “Disappointed?” A weak smile tugged at one side of his mouth. Even at death’s door, his humor had not altogether been snuffed out.

Yet Philo didn’t find the laughter in it. “The British told me you died.”

He gave a weak cough. “They would have liked that.” Finally raising his gaze to Philo’s, Ensign’s voice gained strength.

“What happened? Who brought you here?”

Pain scrolled across Ensign’s face as his mouth contorted. “They were after Hannah.” Groaning, he sighed through his words. “Where is she? Is she safe?”

Remnants of Philo’s anger, his grief and shame flared to life, turning to ash any worry or lingering fear. “She is living with the man to whom you sold the foundry. If that is what you deem safe, than you and I have different understandings of the word.”

Pressing out another weak breath, Ensign allowed his head to lie flat on the pillow, as if he could now die in peace. “Praise God. She lives.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Philo bypassed his brother’s response. “Why did you sell to him?”

Blinking, Ensign tried to speak, but his voice became ever more hoarse. “’Tis God’s doing more than mine. She loves Joseph, Philo. God will mend what has been broken.”

So his brother would play both matchmaker and guardian, hmm? “I refuse it. I have always refused it, and you have always defied me, despite the fact that I am her father.”

Ensign coughed again, this time violent, but the fit quickly calmed. Now when he spoke, he could hardly be heard. “Read me God’s word before I pass.”

“You will not die, Ensign.” Philo spoke the words the dying wished to hear, though he didn’t feel them. More, because he wished not to open the book in his hand.

Philo rubbed his head, scrunching his eyes against the vision before him. How could this have happened? Ensign’s death had meant his vindication. But this blinding discovery made all that impeded him crash upon his future yet again.

“Who brought you here?” The holes widened, clamoring to be filled. “There is much I must know.”

“What does it matter if I am to die?”

“I would know the full depth of the dangers my child is amongst.”

The sigh Ensign released was not simply a breath. ’Twas patience and reticence. More, ’twas the signal that his brother would speak nothing of what Philo wished him to say.

“Read to me, brother.” The words hardly passed Ensign’s lips, his eyes fully closed. “I must hear something of comfort before I go.”

Comfort? What comfort was there to give? Between them both in the years since Hannah’s betrayal, there had only been heartache and strain. Yet…beside all of that, Ensign still had called for him, still asked him to read from God’s holy book. He, the woebegone preacher who shunned his own child for a life of loneliness and misery. Despite it all, Ensign would still make such an entreaty?

The thought, as if coughed free from his mind, allowed for a moment, a brighter, clearer vision—an illumination of something never before shaped in his mind. Had he been wrong and Ensign right? Could it be that all this time…with a blink he closed that light into the dark where it belonged. Nay. Ensign always wished to prove his worthiness above Philo’s, even here. Even at his death. The benevolent elder brother taking pity on the younger in his last moments.

“Please.” Ensign’s pitiful sound lifted Philo’s head. “Anything, please…I go quickly.”