"Go now, Daniel," Wylliam said. "And don't come back, or I'll have the law upon you."

I stared down at my feet, clutching the small bag that held all the belongings I had in the world: a change of clothes, a razor and comb, and a letter of recommendation which I had not asked for and certainly did not deserve. "Master Wylliam—"

"Stop. I know Agnes is no innocent. Were she a different girl, I'd have you whipped, but she isn't, and that wouldn't be right to you. I'm a man myself, and a fair one. But no matter the circumstances—" Wyll paused to draw a breath, and I could tell he was reining in his anger. "Go."

The memory of our shame was upon me, as heavy as an iron collar around my neck, but I shook with desperation. I couldn't go. My body would not take me away from that place; there was no way I could leave her.

"Please, Master Wyll—" But what could I ask of him? That he let me stay, let me love his sister when I shouldn't, trust me to keep away from her when I couldn't? I closed my eyes and drew a breath, steeling myself for the parting I could not bear. "I'll go, sir, but please—please tell her ..."

Wylliam raised his eyebrows, daring me with his eyes. I could tell he didn't intend to pass any message along to Agnes for me.

"Tell her I wish her well."

"Farewell, Daniel. Be safe on the road."

The door closed in my face.

I backed away across the porch, then turned to walk down the steps onto the path. It was a warm summer day, and the indigo fields were in bloom. The pleasant scent of the verdant landscape came to me, threaded through with the salty tang of the breeze from the ocean. When I turned to look back at the manor house that had been my home for so long, I saw Agnes at the window with her hand starred out across the glass. I couldn't see her face properly from so far away, but I knew it would be expressionless.

I could see her in my mind. I could see those endless, unreadable sea-colored eyes.

I thought back over the week that had passed since Captain Dremmer returned her to the manor in the dark of night. My broken acquaintance with Agnes had been been restored, and we had been swept along in a whirlwind of passion I do not think either of us expected—painful, tender, sweet. Forbidden.

Had I led her to it? Had I coerced her? No, I did not think I had. Ness was the one who had come to me that night in the kitchen by the glowing light of the fire; she'd kissed me, and I had given into her, unable to stem the tide of the thing that was between us.

No one had known what had happened that night. Everything had unraveled the day after.

I had taken Agnes water for her bath, but before I could go away, she had pulled me into another embrace. I could not stand against her.

We had lain there in her bed afterward, our naked limbs entangled. The white sheets surrounded us in curls and foaming crests, an ocean of pure light, and I held her against my chest. "I love you," I had said, my voice unsteady.

She said, "Oh, Dannie," and nothing else.

I had looked at her in question, my heart thudding in my chest. I turned her pale moon face up to mine, wondering how I could ever have thought her plain. Those lips which had kissed mine were now the gateway to a whole world; those deep eyes now gleamed like stars. "I love you," I repeated. "I love you, Ness. I want to marry you."

She had looked at me seriously and said, "You are my dearest, Dannie. When we go away, we'll be together."

Ness never said she loved me. Not then, as we lay flesh to flesh; not before, not after. Never once.

I didn't have time to draw her feelings out of her. Everything happened so quickly. Just as I opened my mouth to speak, there was a knock at the door. It opened before Agnes or I could think, could move.

It was Master Wyll. "Agnes, we'll be—"

I was frozen in shock. In the instant my eyes met Master Wyll's I felt my world shatter and fall to pieces around me.

Wyll's face went red with rage in the space of a breath. I've never felt fear like I felt in that moment. I was certain he'd kill me, and he'd have been on the right side as far as the law was concerned. Even in those first seconds, I knew it—who could prove that Ness had come to me willing? Even if they knew she had, she was a lady, I a servant.

I sat upright, groping blindly for my shirt. "Master Wyll, I—"

"Agnes!" He strode to the bed and snatched her up by the shoulders. I reached out, more by instinct than anything, to shield her, but he smacked my hand away and shook Agnes so hard I heard her teeth click together. He called her things I'd never heard him say before.

"Master Wyll, let her go!" I cried.

Wyll snatched Agnes's nightdress from the floor and flung it at her. Then he turned his rage on me. "Get out! Get out!"

I scrambled, humiliated and terrified, to get myself into my clothes. He sent me stumbling into the hallway, and I fled to the kitchen for want of anywhere else to go, shaking, my mind racing with a dozen plans to rescue Agnes from her brother's rage.

But there was little I could do, and the shouting lasted only a few minutes after I left her. Wyll found me in the kitchens and told me, calm again, that I'd be leaving the Allore house on the morrow.

Now, I was walking away from the place I had called my home, cast out. I was walking away from the only thing I had ever loved, apart from the father who'd done his best for me, and away from the woman I wanted to make my wife. In my foolishness and weakness, I had succumbed to my passion and had ruined any hope of what could have been ours.

It was like walking into death, facing the future without her, but it was all I should ever have hoped for. She had been born into privilege, I into poverty. We were doomed from the beginning, she and I. It had simply happened faster than we'd thought it would.

The cruelty of it was just, though, that much I knew, for if Agnes had not loved me, I did not deserve her. I would seek my fortune elsewhere, and she would wed another, more suitable man. Someone she could love.

I turned toward Annisport, intending to enlist as a sailor—to go away from the colonies. There was nothing for me on that merciless shore.