fireplace with its single scarred and empty pipkin hanging over a pile of ash in the grate. No trinkets, no knick-knacks. No gleaming pans or hearty broth steaming gently. It looks like it was abandoned years ago; it looks worse than some of the huts he’s slept in.
I cannot stand it when he turns to me; my face feels alight with shame. I wonder what he sees when he looks at me. Brown hair turned darker with grease, wound around my head in braids to keep it from my mother’s grasping hands, crescents of black dirt under my fingernails, lips chapped. It’s no wonder that he… I cut that thought dead.
I don’t need to see his face to feel the pity that radiates from him, and it ignites my temper, humiliation and rage building a fire in me. “You should go now,” I say rudely, pulling the door open.
Chanse Unwin stands there, his fist raised to knock.
He looks from Silas to me, his eyes widening. I turn to look at Silas, horror digging sharp fingers into me as the lower part of Silas’s face turns chalk white.
Unwin’s expression might be amusing if I weren’t so terrified. His eyes bulge as he gapes at Silas. I see him cataloguing the worn boots, the loose threads dangling from his cloak, his battered gloves. He looks him up and down, two, three times, before his gaze settles on Silas’s hidden face.
“You left the meeting early,” Unwin says finally, turning to me, his voice glassy and dangerous. “I saw you go. I thought we had an agreement to meet afterwards.”
“Forgive me,” I say. “I was afraid there’d be trouble; I didn’t want to get caught in it.”
“It was nothing I couldn’t control. I am the nearest thing to a Justice here, after all,” he says, looking back at Silas. “Which leads me to ask, who are you, exactly, my good sir?” He says “sir” as though it’s a dirty word. “Where are you from? I don’t recall seeing you here before.”
Silas lowers his head so only his chin is visible. “I was just leaving,” he mutters. His fingers are blurred, tapping a rapid tattoo on his arm as tension rolls off him.
“You’d better get going.” I shove Silas past Unwin, stepping out of the house and between them.
Unwin’s face starts to darken and he sucks in a deep breath. It prompts Silas to move, disappearing around the corner of the cottage. Unwin watches him go with an ugly expression.
“Evacuation plans,” Unwin snaps suddenly, turning back to me. “That’s what you missed. There’s a caravan leaving the village at first light, for the camp near Tyrwhitt. You’re to leave with it.”
Dread fills me. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
“My mother is ill. Very ill. I daren’t move her.” The lie falls from my lips before I’ve had time to think it through.
“That’s funny, because this morning your mother was out and about, looking to pay her dues, you said. And now she’s at death’s door?”
“She was. She had to return before she could find you; she should never have gone out, it was foolish.” I know I’m babbling but I can’t stop. “Now she’s resting, but she can’t be moved. I’m not sure what it is but … I wouldn’t want her near anyone.” I lower my voice. “It might be contagious. And in a caravan, and then a camp … it could spread like wildfire. And I couldn’t nurse her there.”
I understand too late that I’ve talked myself into a trap, only noticing when I see something akin to victory in his answering smile.
“Well, doesn’t this bring us neatly to a proposition I have for you.”
“A proposition?” I repeat.
He looks over his shoulder, glancing around before lowering his voice. His tone is cajoling, sickeningly intimate. “If you wished to stay here, I could make room in the manse for you. For you both.” His smile is all teeth.
“What?”
“I saw your face when I mentioned evacuation. I know you have nowhere to go, nowhere to turn. Your father and brother dead.”
“Lief isn’t dead. He’ll come back.”
The look Unwin gives me is pitiless. “You have nothing, my girl. And I’ll be staying on here, working with the army. I can’t go into the details, but I’m inviting you both to stay too. For a price, of course.”
“What price?” Sweat breaks out along my shoulders and cools, chilling me.
“I was thinking we could come to an arrangement. Between us. One that’s mutually satisfying.”
His pupils are dilated, his voice low and breathy,