With the soldier now gone the angst he’d suppressed burst from its bounds and flooded William’s legs. He ran into the water and hurried to the place where Anna waited.
She was gone.
Whirling around, William looked across the creek then back again. The water was too shallow for her to have been taken in a current…
He raced down stream a few more steps, his stomach twisting as the sound of voices reached him from the bank. He leapt through the trees and jerked to a stop.
Blinking, he tried to calm the wild pace of his pulse so he could comprehend the placid scene before him.
Anna stood on the bank, her skirts wet all the way to her waist, speaking with another man as easy as one might a friendly stranger in town. Only this man was neither a friend, nor a stranger. He was a soldier.
The redcoat saw him first and immediately replaced his hat and with a nod of his head, turned and walked out of sight.
Anna spun, the corners of her mouth lifting the moment her gaze landed on him. She rushed forward and reached out. “Are you all right?”
The concern in her lyrical voice soothed the dying panic another measure. “Are you?”
“I was so worried when you didn’t come back right away…”
He gripped her shoulders, asking again, slower this time, and with a slight downturn of his head. “Are you all right?”
Her gaze darted back and forth between his eyes. “I am well. Why? Did something happen?”
“Something could have.” William neither shifted his look nor altered his grip. “What did he say to you?” Their encounter had looked blessedly benign, but the motives could have been more than a simple search for smugglers. They could have been looking for him.
“He found me in the water where you’d left me and asked if I was in need of help.” She stopped and looked to where the soldier had gone, then back. “I told him my husband and I were laundering and that I’d gone looking for a neckerchief that had floated away and that I’d slipped on a mossy rock.”
Clever. William lowered his hands. “Is that all?”
“He helped me from the water and…and he was so polite I asked what he was doing here.”
Brave. And foolish. “What did he say?”
“Nothing. He asked if I lived near—”
“You didn’t tell him did you?”
The insistent question must have appalled her for she pulled her head back with a quick shake. “I said that I was from town, that is all.”
William looked behind. He should allow her more credit. The sky, having been relieved of most of its light, reflected its deep blue in the gurgling stream. He stared at the water, sorting through the report. Her accent must have prompted the soldier’s question. Distrust, the serpent of past experiences, slithered at William’s feet. Was she telling the truth? Or was she hiding something?
He gave himself a much needed mental slap. He could read one’s eyes well enough and hers held no guile.
“His smile reminded me of my brother’s.”
Anna’s soft-spoken words made William turn back to her. “You have a brother?”
She looked to her hands. “I had a brother.” Her face lifted and her mouth tightened as if she wrestled with the thought of sharing more. “He was a soldier, too.”
Such a revelation tore down his spine and suddenly the thousands of unknown facets of his new wife’s past loomed like a coming storm. He brother had fought among the king’s men? When? Was her father in uniform as well?
Quickly executing the thoughts before they could plunge too deep, William motioned forward, acknowledging her comment with only an understanding nod. “We should gather the laundry and return before the sun leaves us completely.”
They did so in minutes and were once again within the safety of their home. William lit a candle, then another, granting a quaint glow to the darkness before securing a place for the wet clothes to dry. Anna retired to the bedchamber to change from her sopping clothes and returned to the parlor soon after. She draped her damp skirts over a chair in front of the fire. He swallowed. Against the firelight her figure looked far too pleasing. Round in all the right places, and slender in all the rest. The memories of the nights she’d slept beside him, that sweet, soft sound of her breath, the inviting scent of her hair. The warmth of her body just inches from his…
He licked his lips and forced himself to focus on the three remaining articles of wet clothes under his care. Theirs was not a traditional union and therefore certain things might never be. Remember that, Henry.
Once the clothes rested on the pegs by the door, William turned back, stopping silent as he did.