A Flight of Arrows (6 page)

Lydia's heart ached for the man, staring after his daughter with all the guilt in the world pouring from his eyes. But she knew when next he met her gaze he'd have shut it away, as he had the evening before when he'd given Good Voice and Stone Thrower all of William he'd had to give. Not enough. He didn't seem to understand that it could never be enough. She'd hoped the act of condolence Stone Thrower had performed for Reginald—that astonishing ceremony that had taken place in the clearing, back in summer when they'd expected vengeance—would be the first step in Reginald's coming to terms with half a lifetime of guilt. In embracing a God he'd kept at arm's length because of that burden.

Instead he'd run away to build boats for General Arnold.

Lydia touched his arm. “Let her be for now. She needs—”

“Time,” Reginald finished for her. “To forget about him. I understand.”

But he didn't. Not if he thought Anna could simply put Two Hawks out of mind. Did he truly think they'd seen the end of that young man's involvement in their lives?

“I'd best speak to Rowan, see whether he needs me here today,” he said, putting distance between them with the mundane. “Shall Anna ride in with you?”

The smile he gave her never touched his eyes, nor dispelled the shadow there. There was still William in his gaze. William wanted. William wounded.
William
.

Lydia ignored the question. “William is of great importance, Reginald, but he isn't the sun around which we all revolve. Do you expect all our hearts and hopes to hang in abeyance until he returns—or is dragged back—to reckon with what he's run from? There is life to be lived meantime. Will you live it?”

She'd been too blunt. Inwardly she cringed as Reginald's face began to close. Then something in his eyes broke open again, meeting hers with a bleeding need.

“Lydia.” He took a step toward her. “When I was in the water, when I thought myself dying, you were—”

“Lydia? I'm ready.”

Neither had heard Anna come out of the house. As they lurched apart, there she stood, a small bag and her new medical case gripped in either hand, looking at Lydia with a brittle determination. She wouldn't meet her father's gaze.

“I mean to stay with Lydia for a while, Papa. We've babies to deliver.”

Reginald gazed at his daughter's bowed head. When he spoke, it was not of babies. “Anna, their leaving is for the best. They've their world, see, and we—”

“I should like to stay with Lydia for the winter, I think,” Anna interrupted. “Keep busy in town, then maybe it won't be so…” Her chin
quivered; she swallowed whatever she'd intended to say. “I'll be back another time for my things.” She swung toward Lydia. “If that suits you.”

“Of course,” Lydia said. “Though perhaps you should ask your father if this arrangement is agreeable to him.”

Pain lanced across Reginald's eyes as Anna met his gaze. He didn't wait for her to ask. “Aye. 'Tis fine. I'll drive the cart in with whatever else you need, when next I come in to town.”

“Good,” Anna said. “Thank you.”

Heartache ravaged both their faces. Lydia couldn't bear it a moment longer. “I'll get my things then.”

Reginald gave a stiff nod. “I'll help Rowan saddle the horses.”

Lydia watched him stride away, his limp a disturbing echo of Stone Thrower's. What had he started to tell her, before Anna interrupted? Something about being in the lake, near to drowning—she shrank from imagining—and then he'd said, “
You were
…”

What had she been?

“It's going to be all right,” she said, as much to reassure herself as the man limping away, or Anna, who stood staring toward the creek at the emptiness there. Waiting.

January 1777

Lachine, Montreal

P
rivate William Llewellyn Aubrey—his name as he'd entered it in the rolls of the King's Royal Regiment of New York—was beginning to worry about his toes. He no longer felt them inside his cracked leather shoes. Nine years in England had dimmed his memories of New York's winters, but he judged the cold of Montreal more brutal still. Exposed skin ached after a moment's acquaintance. Every breath not muffled by layers of wool seared the lungs.

He'd meant to be warm in his billet by now, communing with a cannikin of mulled cider. Such succor wasn't to be. Between the termination of their guard duty at His Majesty's storehouse in the village of Lachine and making their report to Sergeant Campbell, William had lost track of Private Sam Reagan—
again
, blast his elusive hide. Distracted by the door of the officer's headquarters, which tended to stick fast in the cold, William had wrenched it open and glanced aside to find his fellow guard slipping off through the ranks of a passing company of Royal Highland Emigrants headed off to drill on snowshoes.

It was becoming habit with Sam, this cutting out early. One that left William to take the brunt of Sergeant Campbell's displeasure. News of recent rebel victories at Trenton and Princeton had every officer of the regiment going about grim faced and snappish, but Campbell, always a surly brute, had taken animosity to another level. He'd fixed upon William as
his particular target, which struck William as prodigiously unfair, given it was Sam who played the truant.

Campbell was Scottish born, but unlike most of the Scots who made up Sir John's regiment, come over the mountains from the Mohawk Valley the previous summer, Campbell had been a Montreal merchant before joining. Somehow it had become known that William had spent the past few years reading law at Oxford's Queens College, an ambition Campbell had cherished in his younger years but never possessed the means—mayhap the brains as well—to fulfill. In his better moods, the man referred to William sneeringly as
Oxford
, a sobriquet that reminded William—with the subtlety of a prodding knife tip—that Queens was the last place he'd been certain of who he was, where he belonged, what sort of man he was destined to become.

A certainty built upon lies, even then. Every time he so much as looked at Campbell with his blunt nose, near-lipless mouth, and loathing gaze, William had to shield himself against the memories that still shredded his soul.

Casting about for an excuse not worn threadbare, William had covered for Sam's truancy once again, absorbed another verbal lash, and vowed as he stalked the frozen streets of Lachine risking important bits of himself to frostbite that it was the absolute last time. Reagan was up to his neck in
something
. Perhaps he'd found himself a willing maid among some merchant's staff and couldn't keep from her. William only hoped it was such a piece of foolishness. Regardless, he meant to have the truth. He'd no more tolerance for deceit in those who made claim to him, be it blood or friendship.

He spotted Sam on the wind-swept riverfront, down on the pebbled beach—knew him by the pale blond tail of his hair, for he'd already changed out of his regimentals.
Johnson's Greens
they'd been dubbed on account of their coats. Buff-faced, blue-trimmed, with a buckle depicting the Royal Crown, they weren't exactly objectionable, just not the scarlet
coat William had envisioned donning after their grueling mountain crossing last summer. Despite appealing to General Burgoyne for the bounty other commanding officers received, Sir John had been told to foot the bill himself for his regiment's raising. The King's Royal Regiment of New York, regarded by army regulars as a motley provincial assemblage devoid of discipline, must take what they could get.

Sam wasn't alone. He stood in conversation with what looked to be…an Indian. The figure was wrapped in a wind-whipped trade blanket, quilled leggings and moccasins peeking out below. A small figure, slightly bent—to the freezing wind if not with age. Likely one of the Indians from across the St. Lawrence. A Mohawk from Caughnawaga, a mission village on the river's southern shore. Longtime Catholic converts most of them, they often passed through Lachine, where the Crown's Indian gifts were stored and river trade for the western lakes began. William avoided them. He hadn't known Sam to have truck with them either. Until now. What business had he with this solitary Indian?

One possibility occurred, nearly halting William in his tracks. The storehouses…the Indian goods…the truancies. Was Sam engaged in illicit trading with the Caughnawagas, and appropriating the King's property for the purpose? Such temptation had overmastered more than one soldier in weeks past. Those caught could expect the cat-o'-nine-tails. William had no trouble imagining Campbell volunteering to administer the lash and gleefully dragging him into it as well. Guilt by association.

William was too far removed to catch their conversation over the wind's buffeting whine, but his shout carried well enough.

“Reagan!”

Sam jerked round to face him. So did the Indian. A woman, boney faced and wrinkled. The sight sent William's mind spiraling back to last summer, to Anna's voice pleading. “
Then don't stay for Papa. Stay for Good Voice, for Two Hawks
…”

“Shut up,” he muttered. “Just shut up.”

As he neared the pair, he forced himself to meet the wary gaze of the woman. Whoever she was, she took the seconds before William crossed the final stretch of beach to scurry off along the frozen riverside, retreating past a cluster of fishing shacks abandoned for the winter.

“William. Still loitering in this cold?” Sam's mouth crooked, hazel eyes behind drifting breath bright with the half-sheepish look of a man caught out. “You were talking of cider last I saw you.”

Though a few years older than William, Sam could still display the reckless mischief of youth. It had been appealing back when William's most pressing concern had been convincing his father to let him return to his studies at Queens. “Figured you'd found yourself a sweetheart,” he snapped through numbed lips. “But is that one not a bit old for you?”

Red-faced with cold, Sam smiled blandly as he took William's arm in a mittened hand, steering him away from the river. “Far too old and a savage to boot. Let's get indoors. This wind's vicious.”

A savage…

“Her name is Good Voice,”
Anna had told him, there in the barn as his world shattered to pieces.

And he'd said,
“What sort of name is that?”

“Onyota'a:ka—
Oneida
,” she'd said, on her face such hope resting, while he'd felt the shock of it like a lance thrust through his vitals.

“So that is what I am? An Indian. A half-breed.”

“You are my son!”
So said the man who'd committed the egregious act of his abduction and compounded it with a lifetime of lies. William's lifetime.

He'd swung onto his horse, unable to look Reginald Aubrey in the eye, emptiness raging where his heart had been.
“I am not though, am I? You've said as much. Wales, Oxford, this place—my
name.
None of it is mine.”

He yanked free of Sam's grip. “Next time wait till after you've seen
your duties through before you run off chasing skirts—buckskin or otherwise.”

He strode ahead of Sam toward the house they'd quartered in since November. The crunch of boots on gravel trailed him.

“William. What ails ye?” Keeping pace beside him, Sam shouldered past the few bundled figures braving the cold for the shops along Lachine's streets.

“Forget who the officer of the day is today?”

“Ah…sorry. Campbell doesn't like you overmuch, does he?”

“The sentiment is mutual. But I'm done covering for you, see. Next time I'll tell what you've been about, shall I?”

Sam halted. A pace more and William pivoted to face him, blowing breath like a winded horse. “What do you mean to say of me?” Sam demanded, no longer grinning.

“That depends. What business had you with that woman?”

Sam blinked, then visibly relaxed. “The Indian? She was soliciting me for business, if you must know. Not
that
sort,” he added. “She wanted to tend our laundry. I told her we have that covered—and naught to pay her anyway.”

William searched his friend's face, but Sam's features gave back nothing.

“You don't believe me?”

“Fine. Whatever. I'm getting indoors.” He turned to go, but Sam grabbed his arm, detaining him before they turned a corner.

“It won't happen again.” William's face was too frozen for expression, but there must have been a coldness in his eyes as well. Sam stepped back a pace. “You're truly cross with me?”

“Yes. No. I'm just…” Just so all-consuming angry. Still dislocated to the core of his being. He'd hoped to find his footing in the army, in his loyalty to the Crown, but even here he'd found scant common ground
with the rank and file of Johnson's regiment, largely composed of the transplanted Highlanders Sir John's father, William Johnson, had settled on his landholdings north of the Mohawk River.

Like them, William was a Tory, but he wasn't hellbent on marching back into the valley he'd fled, wielding a fiery sword of vengeance against the rebel neighbors who'd driven him from his home. All he'd sought that summer night he galloped from Reginald Aubrey's barn was escape. A place to hole up, lick his wounds, regain his equilibrium. He'd been a branch uprooted, caught in a rushing stream, hurtled along its flow. Rashly he'd reached for the first mooring to hand—Sam Reagan, set to flee to Quebec to join the British in Montreal.

“Look,” Sam said now. “It would have been hell getting here without you and I'm grateful you came with me, but you've never said why you were so keen for it. Whatever it is, it's been eating you inside out the winter long.” When William merely glared at him, tight lipped, Sam pressed, “It's to do with your father, isn't it? You haven't so much as mentioned Reginald Aubrey since the night we left.”

“That's because he's not my father!”

William instantly wished the words unsaid. He'd rebuffed Sam's attempts to uncover his reasons for journeying north until finally Sam had let the subject alone. They'd passed the weeks in Lachine working on local fortifications, doing rudimentary drill training, patrolling the river with orders to “seize all Rascals who may attempt to steal in or out of the Province, spreading lies.” In other words, watching for rebel spies—the farthest thing from Sam's mind at present, to judge by the utter astonishment fallen like a sheet across his wind-chapped face.

“Aubrey isn't your father? But you bear his name. Did he…what? Adopt you, as he did with Anna?”

William ignored the question. “You want to know why I'm angry, do you?”

“If you're finally ready to tell me.” People were passing on the street.
Sensing he'd no wish for an audience, Sam drew him closer to the stone wall of the corner building, another warehouse. “Come now. Getting it out will help.”

Wishing it could, William bit the words through cracked lips. “Very little of what you know of me is true, Sam. I
was
born the day Fort William Henry surrendered, but not to the Aubreys. Not to my…” He swallowed past the painful knowledge that the woman who'd raised him, loved him—to her own distraction—had born no relation to him whatsoever. Heledd Aubrey had been deceived as well. “Another woman in the fort birthed me. When Reginald Aubrey's son died, he stole me from my mother's side. There were two of us. Twins. I suppose I looked white enough to pass for his son. He took me and left his dead babe in my place. I never knew any of it until the night I said I'd cross the mountains with you.”