interested, Jimmy. Nobody in Maryland cared who I was.” She gave a surprisingly vicious kick at the cooling body at their feet. “This one wanted to use me—wanted to own me. I ran away because I wouldn’t be owned. You don’t deserve to be tried for this, James, but they’ll do you. If we bury him and disappear, nobody will come looking for us. If we tell them we killed Thomas Conklin Senior because he was abusing his property, they’ll hang you before you’re done speaking.”
She looked at Bridget for confirmation, and Bridget had trouble nodding. She was brilliant, Sophie was. Bridget would have followed her into hell—she was just as glad to be following her into a better future than that.
The rest of the night was sort of a cloudy nightmare. They didn’t want to use the lovely quilt on the bed, so Bridget snuck downstairs to the linen closet for a clean sheet while Sophie cleaned up and packed. They used Sophie’s ruined blouse and skirt to scrub the blood from the floor, and from the walls and the damaged paperweight. They rolled the tattered clothing into a ball and shoved it with Conklin’s body into the tight linen wrapping of the sheet.
They were interrupted once by a knock at the door asking if they wanted to attend dinner with their one guest. Bridget answered in discreet tones and said her mistress was overwhelmed with her father-in-law’s visit and was resting.
That was their only visitor.
Sophie’s face was swollen and bruised—there was no hiding it—but since James had ridden his wagon in and left it down at the stables, nobody would see Sophie up close once they got on the road. All they had to do was bury the body before sunup and make sure their bill was paid.
They left Sophie in the room to finish the cleaning, although Bridget knew she had no talent for it. Bridget was left to help James heft the body, long after all the occupants of Daisy Place were safely tucked into their beds.
Bridget never forgot that strange journey in the horse and wagon, under a moon stained the color of Conklin’s blood. James muttered to himself about witches and bad luck the whole way there, and Bridget couldn’t find the words to reassure him. As they got to know each other in later years, Bridget would realize the enormity of the murder, and how it sat on his shoulders like the dead weight of a corpse. But on this night, she only hoped Sophie’s brother could move a bit faster and not break under the strain of their bitter work.
He stayed steadfast, though. Bridget was no stranger to hard work, and they took turns using James’s camp spade to dig the grave. The graveyard had seemed alive that night, watching—even breathing—in the chilly autumn dark. James would not shut up about how lucky they were to escape the snows that year, and all Bridget could remember thinking was how lucky they’d be to escape the law.
But eventually, about an hour before the skies tinged gray, they finished their grim task and rode back to the house.
“You stay here,” Bridget told him. “I’ll get Sophie and our bags.” They hadn’t brought much.
“I can come—”
“No! Because if someone catches us, that will be us alone. Nobody will believe two women killed an old man by themselves. But you—you’re sturdy as a tree. They’ll know. Just stay here. I’ll be back before the sky’s more than a minute lighter.”
She clutched her skirts up to her ankles and pattered through the great entryway and up the stairs.
Sophie was asleep on the bed, fully clothed, her hat lying next to her. Asleep she looked delicate, ethereal, even with a swollen nose and mouth. She’d packed as well as could be expected, but Bridget had a feeling she’d left more than one thing behind. She saw the lump in the wallpaper, where Sophie had hid James’s correspondence, and she tsked.
“Sophie girl—what did you do that for?” With more tenderness than Bridget thought she’d ever possessed, she smoothed the loose tendrils of butter-yellow hair from Sophie’s forehead.
Sophie stirred on the bed and smiled sleepily. “Do what?”
“The letter, love. Behind the wallpaper.”
Sophie’s grin was so proud. “I wanted to hide proof that James was here.” She yawned. “I would have burned it, but there’s no fire or grate in this room.”
No indeed. Daisy Place had a radiator, slow to turn on even in the frost-laden autumn mornings.
“Well, let me hide