A rapping on the door lurched William from his lounged position in front of the fire. He sprang to his feet and lunged for the pistol that rested on the mantel.
He swallowed, rubbing his thumb against the gun’s smooth handle, wishing his vision could penetrate past the planks of the door. Flicking a look to the clock, he frowned. Midnight.
The knock came again, followed after by a voice. “William. ’Tis I, Thomas.”
Heaving free his anxieties with an audible breath, William replaced the weapon and charged for the door. Thomas entered without an invitation, spiking the remaining edge of William’s worry.
“What’s happened?” William clicked the latch shut, his scowl growing heavy as Thomas faced him, his own expression hard, no doubt from the report he prepared to relay.
Only he did not. He stared, his jaw ticking before he removed his hat and tapped it against his leg. His gaze sharpened.
A suffocating mist of confusion and angst thick
ened the shadowed room. William stepped forward. “Speak, Thomas.”
“I have seen your hunter. He is in town.”
“This I know.”
Thomas’s eyes narrowed and he turned his head. “You know?”
Growling deep in his chest, William raked a hand over his head. “I saw him speak with Anna not seconds before she delivered your supper.”
Thomas hummed, his head still cocked. “I saw him at the tavern. He spoke with a man named Warren Fox—a man claiming to be searching for his daughter.”
A crack of rage shot down William’s spine. Then ’twas true, though he’d clung to a thread of hope his fears would prove false. Somehow, in the hours since Anna had retired, he’d almost convinced himself ’twas all some strange ghostly dream, that Paul had been a phantom and their lives were not truly on the brink of utter ruin. He shifted his weight over his feet. “Paul claims to seek the man who pretends to be her father that they may join their efforts—believing that indeed I am the one who took her. Find Anna, and they find me.”
Thomas huffed a quiet reply and slung his hat on the chair. Resting against the edge of the table, he pulled his bottom lip between his teeth and folded his arms across his chest. “He cannot be sure you two are together. No one knows but us.”
“It matters not how he came to such knowledge, only that he is here and that I must reckon with him.”
Tipping his head, Thomas’s tone reached to the floor. “You plan to fight?”
“I must.” William rubbed his eyes, then his forehead. “I know Paul too well. He will not surrender his hunt until I am found.”
“What of Anna?”
William looked to the bedchamber, regrets and wishes pulling against his spirit. His fraud, his lies and deceptions, cackled like demons in the sparks of the fire. She knew nothing of him, of his past and the darkness that followed. Here his enemy waited to ensnare and burn them, leaving ashes of grief where the walls of their joy once stood.
“You could flee.”
Thomas’s quiet words lured William from the singeing heat.
He shook his head, having already discarded that enticing alternative. “Running would only prolong that which is coming.”
A low sigh breathed from Thomas. “Then we shall fight him together.”
“We?” William pivoted, gripping his friend motionless with his gaze. “This is not your fight.”
“Is it not?” Thomas straightened, his stare darkening. “Your life is at risk because of what you have done—”
“What I have done—not you, not Nathaniel.” William snapped his jaw shut and looked behind to be sure his rising tone hadn’t awakened his wife. His chest pumped, holding back the edging fury. “’Tis I who acted and ’tis I who must answer for it.”
Thomas gripped the mantel, speaking through his teeth. “You acted on our behalf. Without us, you never would have—”
“If it had not been you, it would have been another.” William’s glare battled Thomas’s hard blue eyes. “I joined the army to defend the rights of others, not destroy them. ’Twas only a matter of time before I could no longer give my allegiance to the king.”
Thomas turned to the fire, his jaw shifting.