Free A Flight of Arrows by Lori Benton Page B

would come no better opening than this.
    Lydia tapped the doorframe. “Reginald? Captain?”
    Both men started, turning toward her.
    “Lydia,” Reginald said. “What do you here?”
    Ignoring the less than cordial greeting, she stepped within and rounded the bateau, the hem of her petticoat sweeping a path through wood shavings. “I’m sorry to interrupt, and overhear, but as it happens, I may have another solution to the problem you appear to be facing…should you care to hear it.”
    “I’d like to hear it,” Ephraim Lang said.
    Lydia beamed, grateful. Reginald waved a hand for her to continue, then folded his arms as if already set to refuse her suggestion.
    “I hadn’t known you were suffering the depredations of vandalism, Reginald. It’s only that lately”—
how
lately, she refrained from elucidating—“with the increased demand for bateaux from the northern department, it occurred to me you could use another set of hands at work here. It sounds as though you could use another set of eyes as well. An apprentice, perhaps?”
    Captain Lang slapped his thigh in approval. “There now. The very thing I’ve been attempting to persuade him of since he returned from Skenesborough.”
    Reginald had the look of a man cornered. “ ’Tis the pair of you ganging up on me, is it?”
    Captain Lang grinned, showing strong, yellowed teeth through his white beard. “I like the way this woman thinks. Get yourself an apprentice. Give him this shop for a billet. Save our old bones the discomfort.”
    “Mind who it is you’re calling old.” Reginald held his defensive posture a moment longer, then the corner of his mouth twitched. “All right. I’ll look about town for a likely lad I can train—once I get a bit caught up. In a day or two—”
    “Today, Major,” said Lang. “Else there’ll never be any catching up.”
    “Actually, about that likely lad…”
    Reginald peered at her, suspicion gathering in his gaze. “This conversation hasn’t been wholly theoretical, has it? You’d someone in mind before you came through the door.”
    “That a fact?” Captain Lang asked, interest in his gaze.
    Lydia’s face warmed. “Was I that transparent?”
    Reginald all but rolled his eyes in resignation. “Who is he? Where shall I find him? I see I’ll have no peace until I do.”
    Lydia smiled with a brightness she hoped wasn’t overdone. “You needn’t go looking. I’ve brought him with me.”
    Reginald’s face stilled. “Have you?”
    Knowing she’d seconds before he guessed for himself, Lydia turned toward the doorway and called, “Anna? Will the two of you come in now?”
    “Anna?” Reginald repeated. “What has she to do with this?”
    Lydia’s heart gave a skip as Two Hawks stepped from the shadowed passage into the window-lit shop. Anna had thought ahead, in hope, and brought to town weeks ago not only a pair of breeches William had abandoned in his flight but two shirts, as well as a hat—no longer stiffened into corners but still presentable. To this Lydia had added a neckcloth once belonging to Jacob and a pair of dark stockings she’d yet to turn into rags. Jacob’s coats would need altering to fit Two Hawks’s leaner frame, but a pair of buckled shoes had been of a suitable size. With his hair clubbed, the hat covering its shiny blackness…
    Reginald stared at William’s twin, his face registering shock, then an instant’s joy, replaced almost at once by recognition and disappointment as Anna moved to stand beside Two Hawks, the pair of them tense, visibly nervous, but radiating hope.
    “Papa, will you have Jonathan for your apprentice?”

9

    Half-Day Moon
    Kanowalohale
    O n her way back from the lodge of the Tuscarora women, Good Voice spied the girl, Strikes-The-Water, skulking at the forest’s snowy edge. Catching her gaze, the girl stepped back into the pines, knocking a bough-full of snow onto her head.
    Good Voice pressed back a laugh as Strikes-The-Water’s mutterings