Crow Hollow Read Online Free PDF Page B

backed her way into the hallway. She pulled the door shut until it snicked into place, then turned toward her own room.
    A dark shape stood waiting. Prudence gasped.
    A hand closed on her wrist. It wasn’t the reverend, thank the heavens, but his wife—Prudence’s older sister, Anne, in her nightgown and cap.
    “What madness is this?” Anne hissed.
    “Shh.”
    “What were you doing in there? Those men—have you no shame?”
    “I swear, it was nothing like that.”
    Anne looked back up the hall to her bedroom, where the reverend would be sleeping. Then, still gripping Prudence’s wrist, she dragged the younger woman toward the stairs. The younger sister let herself be pulled along.
    Moments later, the two women sat opposite each other in front of the dying embers of the fire. It reflected off the pewter mugs hanging from their hooks, but did little to cut the chill in the room. Prudence shivered and looked at her feet rather than meet Anne’s glare. Prudence was twenty-five years old, but her sister’s disapproval could still pierce her breast with shame.
    “Well?” Anne said.
    “I wasn’t doing anything shameful. There are two men in there. What could I have done?”
    “Then what, rummaging through their possessions? Stealing?”
    “No!”
    “Then what?”
    Prudence didn’t answer.
    “One would think you were five years old, Prudie. Am I to paddle you until you spit out the truth?”
    “Why not? You used it often enough when we were young.”
    “That’s unfair.”
    “Is it?”
    “I didn’t ask to be the oldest,” Anne said. “And I didn’t ask for seven younger sisters.”
    “And I didn’t ask to have seven older sisters, either. And I certainly didn’t ask you to lord it over me.” Prudence didn’t like the way she sounded when interacting with Anne, but she felt helpless not to slip back to their childhood roles. “Anyway, I’m an adult now, I’ve been married and had a child of my own. And I don’t answer to you.”
    “But I have to answer for whatever happens under my roof. Am I to tell Henry I caught you sneaking out of that room? What would he think?”
    That question didn’t need an answer. Prudence had heard plenty of the reverend’s ranting sermons about fornication. And he seemed even more worried about his sister-in-law than about the unmarried girls in the house. After all, she knew, and presumably had enjoyed, sexual congress with her husband before he was killed. Maybe she still lusted after it.
    “I told you, it wasn’t that,” Prudence insisted.
    Anne’s expression hardened. “I’m losing my patience. It wasn’t that, and you weren’t stealing, either, because I can see now you’ve got nothing on you. So what?”
    It would be easy to say that she’d spotted something in James’s cloak, had heard rumors he was a spy for the Crown, and had been torn with curiosity. There was at least a partial truth hidden in that claim. But her tongue felt oily at the very thought of lying to her sister.
    “I slipped the missing chapter into a pocket in his cloak,” she said.
    Anne’s expression softened. She put a hand on Prudence’s knee. “Oh, Prudie. You didn’t. What good would that serve?”
    “He’s going to Winton. Then maybe north. If he does, he’ll be speaking to the Abenaki and Nipmuk.”
    “He wouldn’t do that. There’s no reason. The war is over, the matter settled.”
    “Settled?” The bitter laugh that came up tasted like gall. “It has been scarce nine months since my captivity.”
    “Time enough to put it behind you,” Anne said firmly. “Yes, to see matters settled. God willing, to never think of them again.”
    How could matters be settled, when every time Prudence closed her eyes she could see the murdered English at Winton, hear the harsh cawing as flapping black wings settled blanket-like over the slaughtered Nipmuk warriors at Crow Hollow?
    One particular image never ceased its torment. A crow had buried its beak into the eyeball of a