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over her like the sea. The sensation was so strong that she felt as though she had experienced these thoughts before.

      She wondered if she had.

      Wondered, too, if this day, this moment would come back to her years later: this quiet contemplation, the sweet inconsequentiality of the whole scene. The smell of smoke, of summer grass and lady ferns, and the sound of Rafe Trehearne clearing the forest.

      Like a child awakening, her eyes flew open. She was becoming fanciful. She turned her mind to more practical matters, like how to keep Mystic Ridge without taking a husband.

      A dream no more.

      Silence pervaded. Charity sat up, a small frisson of agitation ran down her spine as she tried to imagine the reason for such silence.

      The cessation of sound was only momentary; the next moment there was a piercing scream. It was made by one of her sons.

      Charity jumped to her feet. No sooner had her boots touched the ground than she was off down the hill, running as fast as her legs would move.

      

      “We saw a snake, Master Trehearne!”

      “A great big’un!” added Benjamin, all out of breath.

      Rafe had removed his shirt, and his bare arms were slick with sweat. He had just driven the broad blade of the ax deep into a buck oak, and his hands rested lightly on the smooth hickory handle. “Sure it wasn’t a figment of your imagination?”

      Isaac stabbed a finger in the air, and his blue green eyes sparkled. “I did see it! A green-striped adder, sir!”

      Rafe was momentarily amused. This pair never gave up, he thought. “And where is this fierce serpent?”

      “He crawled into the barn!” Isaac shuddered, just once, a pathetic gesture.

      Of all the damned crazy notions. Rafe shrugged. He knew for an absolute certainty now that the boys were up to more mischief. He still felt nauseated from the salted tea he’d drunk out of sheer bravado. He wished they would go back to the house and leave him alone, but he was engaged in a contest of wills, so he calmly wrenched the ax free.

      “Well, snakes will crawl out with the spring heat,” he said casually. “Better be careful, kids!” He returned to his labor.

      Occasionally as he worked Rafe glanced over at the saltbox homestead and outbuildings. There was no saying what those rapscallions were up to. He had overheard Charity giving the boys instructions about learning some catechism for the morrow. While he was sure they were not attending to their lessons, they were quiet enough, anyhow.

      Probably hatching up more pranks.

      He could see them in his mind’s eye, bright heads bent together, blue green eyes shining as they concocted their mischief. Somehow, the image became overlaid with that of another.

      It was Charity’s bright hair that he saw, mysteriously free of that starched helmet she wore and flowing over her shoulders like ribbons of red silk. Those luminous, sea-colored eyes, which seemed to trap and hold the light, were all misty admiration, as if he were a visitation from heaven.

      Rafe felt the tension pounding behind his eyes. He shook his head. This was no time for romantic visions.

      He bent back to his task. His body glistened with sweat as he hacked branches off the big oak. There was a sense of savage relief in the hard physical exertion. He had no time to brood, no time to think.

      But the thought of Charity Frey would not be denied. She had gone off to visit a neighbor whose child was ailing. It seemed the little Puritan was something of a healer.

      Of mind as well as body? The previous evening she had stood there, anxious and afraid, and yet had been able to reach out and touch his mind.

      It occurred to Rafe that he himself had manipulated Charity Frey earlier than that. He had provoked her into making a decision that went against all her Puritan principles.

      Confused and dim-witted as he had been at the time, he had recognized the panic within her. She had been seeking protection, offering sanctuary. Across the distance between them at the auction block, the bargain had been sealed.

      Last night she had called on him to honor that unspoken vow. Stay. Protect her. Keep her and her sons safe from harm. He had asked for sanctuary and been given it. Now he had to pay the price.

      Rafe thought about that. It seemed ironic and proper that he now felt at a disadvantage. The ignominy of his position, a position due entirely to his own stupidity, bit deeply into him. He was caught in his own trap.

      He vaguely recalled some ancient theory of sanctuary, whereby a man running from justice might run so adeptly that ultimately he entered into the place of refuge from which he could not be extracted.

      Or was it that he did not want to be liberated?

      The broad blade of the ax crashed down on an unoffending branch and buried itself in the wood. Rafe wrenched the handle free.

      Struck again.

      And again.

      A peculiar certainty stole over him as he gripped the hickory handle, counterbalancing the quivering strength of the tree. As he worked Rafe absorbed the rhythm of the axe, his bonding with it the key to survival in this wilderness.

      There was a bond, a link, between Charity Frey and himself as well, and such a connection could never be broken…

      He heard a shout and twisted his head a fraction, but could see nothing amiss. Those pernicious children never gave up.

      “A snake! Master Trehearne, a snake!”

      Benjamin came tearing out of the barn just as Rafe swung the ax. It bit deep. He tried to wrench it free, but the handle came loose in his hand. Damnation! Now it would take him a quarter of an hour to repair the ax. It was all the fault of Charity Frey’s pesky sons.

      Rafe’s head jerked up. “What proof can you give?”

      “I tell you true!”

      “How may I know that you tell the truth?” He did not even bother to sound contemptuous.

      “You gotta believe me, sir. It’s gonna get Isaac!”

      There was a peculiar, tense silence. Then, from the barn, came a high-pitched scream.

      It was Isaac. The boy shrieked as if someone had stuck a knife into him.

      Rafe knew the sound of terror when he heard it. His pulse leapt. Abruptly all his blood was alive, singing danger through his veins. He sprang forward.

      Between the barn door and the first stall was a bundle of hay. In the hay a snake was coiled—light gray with brown diamonds along its thick, muscular back.

      A rattler!

      Rafe’s whole body tingled. His legs trembled, but not with fear. He flexed his thigh muscles and pushed off from the balls of his feet. The spring gave him the momentum he needed. His outstretched hands clawed, gripped onto one of the timber roof struts. He swung himself from beam to beam until he was directly above the petrified boy.

      Dropping back to the ground, he grabbed Isaac by the shoulders, pivoted and thrust him to safety, looking all the while for something to kill the rattler with. He cursed himself for a fool for not believing the boys earlier.

      “Don’t move!” he commanded. The order was an explosive inflection. Isaac opened his mouth, closed it. Rafe was already in motion.

      Under the loft at the end of the barn was a pile of fence posts. Rafe grabbed one, took the scythe that hung from a hook on the wall and stole slowly toward the reptile near the barn door.

      He was only a few steps from the snake when it raised its head, its sinuous body already in motion. A rattling sound was the only warning Rafe received before the serpent sprang forward, an elongated, blurred shape. With the scythe Rafe met it halfway, pinning its neck against the barn sill while he struck

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