Free A Flight of Arrows by Lori Benton Page A

the boards, brown fingers and white entwined. Their hands sprang apart as she shut the door, pushing out the cold.
    “Lydia.” Anna stood, rocking the bench on the flagstones. “I haven’t started supper. Two Hawks arrived…We’ve been talking.”
    “I see.” Lydia set her medical case on the table and greeted the young man with a smile. He’d stood with Anna, tall and sleekly muscled in his Indian garb, disconcerting her still with his face so like—and
un
like—William’s, as if the same bold features had been twice sculpted, one hewn in marble, the other cast in bronze.
    As Anna wrangled supper from their pantry, Lydia asked, “Have you just arrived?”
    “In the morning,” he said. “I wanted to come into the town when the streets were quiet.”
    Had he and Anna been together the day long? Lydia turned to look at Anna. “How is Charlotte Stuhler?”
    Anna halted, clutching a round of bread. “Oh no. I forgot about Charlotte.”
    “Who is this one forgotten?” Two Hawks asked.
    Anna put the bread on the table, a knife beside it. “She’s expecting a babe soon. I meant to check on her today. I’ll go first thing in the morning.” She chewed her lip in indecision before blurting, “We had so much to talk about, Lydia. Two Hawks has come to ask Papa to apprentice him at the Binne Kill. He wants to learn the boat-building craft.”
    Joy and uncertainty vied on Anna’s face. Two Hawks gave a small nod of affirmation, though his features were unreadable. “If Aubrey will have me, that is what I want to do.”
    His expression might have been inscrutable, but his eyes were eloquent, gazing at Anna with such unshielded longing that it pricked Lydia’s eyes with tears. Without their saying a word, she knew they were about to place their hearts in her hands. “Let me guess. You wish
me
to put the question to him?”
    “We were going to ask you at supper,” Anna admitted. “Will you help us? With you on our side, there’s a chance Papa will agree.”
    Lydia took leave to doubt the efficacy of her influence, but since when had she been able to deny Anna anything so badly wanted?
    “Of course I’ll help you. Both of you,” she added, as her gaze slid down the length of Two Hawks’s frame, stopping short of those lean thighs scandalously bared by leggings and breechclout—the long woolen shirt he’d worn outside was draped across a kitchen bench. “But, Anna…might you have brought anything of William’s from the farm over the past months? A pair of breeches, perhaps?”

    With all the good intention in the world, their timing might have been better. Lydia halted at the doorway of Reginald’s workshop, mindful ofAnna and Two Hawks—Jonathan, they’d agreed he would be called—waiting down the passage in the sitting room. Praying their hearts out, no doubt. Lydia stood in need of prayer.
    Reginald wasn’t alone in the spacious, wood-scented shop. His partner in business, white-haired, trim-muscled Ephraim Lang, had interrupted work on the long bateau set on the stocks to air a grievance concerning the finished vessels lining the bank of the iced-over Binne Kill.
    “The side’s hulled sure as if a six-pounder hit it square. A mallet was used, I’d say—and a deal of mean spirit. We’ll have to haul it back onto the stocks for repair.”
    Visible in profile, Reginald’s jaw was stiff, his brow tight. “Were you not here last night then?”
    “For a time,” Lang replied. “But I’ve my own bed and a wife in danger of forgetting the look of me, I’ve spent so many nights here of late.”
    Lydia’s stomach tensed beneath her stays. She’d never heard the two so near an argument. She waited, breathing in motes of wood dust hanging in the air. She caught the wearied stoop of Reginald’s shoulders as he said, “All right, Ephraim. I’ll be the one to sleep here from today. That’s what you’re after, is it?”
    Hope surged. Perhaps her timing wasn’t so unfortunate. Surely there