I remained with my family until Ryan left for boarding school with his eyes full of tears. He had been buzzing with excitement all week, but once the time came to say farewell to us all, he broke down - which, in turn, made Lydia cry. Meredith embraced him tightly, holding back her emotion until after he and Gabriel had left for Virginia. She kept her sadness to herself, and shut herself in her room soon after.

Nadia was especially tearful as she embraced him, for she doted upon him as though he were her own son, and he, in turn, adored her like a second mother. Their parting sorrows were the hardest to bear.

Long after the wagon had disappeared down the road, Nadia and I were still standing by the fence, watching the sun slowly turn the trees to gold. All was eerily silent - even the wind did not whisper - like all of nature was lamenting the absence of little Ryan, the shining one.

Nadia's dark eyes were distant. "We can visit him in two months. I'll make him up something special. Maybe that orange cake he loves so much. What do you think?"

"I think he'll be sick from eating too many sweets," I said with a grin.

Nadia tutted and shook her head. "I hope he would share with his new friends."

I felt myself smile as I imagined him settling in to his boarding school - making friends with other young boys from the colonies - staying up past curfew to dine on secret midnight feasts. "He's going to be trouble," I said. "The teachers don't know the storm that's coming to them."

"Oh, there will be tribulations." Nadia grinned. "Biblical. Shakespearean."

"Like that time when he let Merry borrow his favourite toy soldier and she used it to re-enact the battle between David and Goliath," I laughed.

"She nearly had that poor toy beheaded before Ryan came storming in," chuckled Nadia. "That was one of the biggest tantrums I have ever seen."

We lapsed into silence. Remembering. Little Ryan had such a huge smile - it took over his round face in his moments of great joy, of which there were many. It did not take much to make Ryan laugh, and the peals of his laughter were so infectious that one simply had to laugh along. His bottom four front teeth had fallen out, lending him a heavy lisp that would fade as his new teeth grew in.

His room would be empty now. Not empty in the physical sense - because his toys, his furniture, his cuckoo clock, had been left behind - but empty because he would not be there.

"The house will be so quiet without him," murmured Nadia. "Now two of you have flown the nest; only Merry remains." She gave me a sideways glance. "When will you return to the homestead?"

"Tomorrow," I said, but I must have looked apprehensive, because she lay a tender hand on my shoulder and said gently, "You don't sound all too eager."

I couldn't say the words out loud: that Connor was the object of all my soft and tender affections. The past week had given me the time to think. I didn't even know how long I had been afraid of this. There had been small moments throughout the years - fractions of moments - times where I would look at him and feel my breath catch in my throat, or I would ache to reach for his hand. These feelings would ruin everything we had built together.

Nadia's face was full of gentle concern. "Has something happened between you and Connor?"

I shook my head, thinking only of the way he smiled. "No."

"Ah." Nadia pulled back, and now amusement was mixed in with the sympathy in her eyes. "But you want there to be something."

Yes. "Nothing can happen," I said firmly. "It would ruin everything."

"What makes you so sure?" she asked, her words long and slow in her southern drawl.

Her calm outlook only made me overthink it more. "Okay. Say I did want something to happen. Say it did happen. What then? It would jeopardise everything we have built and worked for. If we were to split, our friendship would be ruined." I sighed. "It's the wrong time, wrong place, wrong person."

"There is never a wrong time or wrong place for love," said Nadia. "It just happens."

Her smile was soft and knowing. I asked her, "How long until you marry Finch?"

"Eight months," she said. Nadia had met Finch, a fellow freed slave, two years ago at the market. He was working as a farrier, and had been since he was freed two years previous. The pair had gotten talking, and had been courting ever since.

Both had bonded over their shared history of slavery: Nadia had been born into it on a plantation in South Carolina, and she and her parents had been freed when she was fourteen. Finch, by contrast, was freed at the age of twenty after the death of his former master in Georgia. Now the age of twenty-two, Nadia was eager to marry - and Finch, twenty-four, was head over heels for her.

Their marriage would mean that Nadia would move out of my parents' house, which she was also eager for; she had been in service to them since she was sixteen and had lived with them thence.

"Will you continue to work for my parents," I asked, "after you marry?"

"I don't think so," she said. "There are no small children who need looking after, with Ryan in school and Merry growing up. Lydia can look after the house by herself. If she needs help cooking I can do that, but she seems competent enough."

I laughed. "You overestimate her."

Nadia smiled. "I believe I do." She tilted her head, and her coiled braids caught the last of the evening sun. "Just because I'm not working here anymore doesn't mean that I'm not here for you. You know that. You can come to me, and we can go shopping, or we can talk, or you can come over for a cup of tea. I'd love to help you, Sassy."

Her raised eyebrows told me that she had left out a certain person's name. "I just don't know how I feel about him," I said.

"Is he aware of this?"

"No," I said firmly. "And it's going to stay that way."

"Why not?" Her eyes pitied me. I didn't want her pity. "He might be open to the idea."

Which was more dangerous? Speaking these feelings and facing his rejection, and the subsequent destruction of our friendship? Or having these feelings requited, and therefore placing the Assassins in jeopardy? I didn't want to think of either option, because both would spell our doom.

Thus, I ignored Nadia's suggestion. "Do you think it will be awkward," I asked quietly, "when I get back home?"

Her gaze was soft. "Only if you make it awkward."

I pondered this during my journey home the next day. What Connor didn't know wouldn't hurt him, I reckoned. These were just feelings, after all - they would go away if I stamped on them hard enough. No, I thought, perhaps stamping on them wasn't good. After all, one can stamp on a cockroach and it still won't die. Perhaps feelings and cockroaches are one and the same: unwanted creatures that find their way into everything.

As the manor came into view, and my horse's ears pricked forward in delight (she recognised home), I decided that my best course of action would be to ignore these feelings, and continue in my life with Connor and Achilles as normal. If I ignored these feelings for long enough, they would go away.

At any rate, Connor and I had spent our teenage years living together - we had been raised with a relationship more akin to that of siblings, or close friends in the very least. Achilles looked upon us as his children - did I dare to ruin everything we had built?

Connor was grooming his horse in the stables. Even from my distance, I could see him reach into his pocket and present a lump of sugar, and he smiled when the horse ate it from his palm. How I longed to be the subject of that smile!

Feelings are not like cockroaches. Feelings are like trees: they grow back even after one cuts them down. They grow taller and taller until they block out the sky and all one can see are trees, trees, trees.

My horse led me, without prompting, right to the stables, and Connor paused what he was doing to greet me. "Good afternoon. How are your family?"

I had not written to tell him of Ryan's schooling - by the time the letter would have arrived here, I would have already been home. "They are well," I said, and dismounted. "Gabriel and Ryan have gone down to Virginia, because Ryan has been enrolled in boarding school."

Connor took my saddle from the horse and hung it over the fenced stable wall. "That is great news. I am happy for him."

I grinned and slid the halter from my horse. "He's going to be America's next top lawyer, I'm telling you," I said as I led my horse into the empty stall beside Connor. "Any homestead news I need to catch up on?"

He helped me groom my horse, and at length, he spoke. "Norris has made various attempts to court Myriam, to no avail. He even had me climb all the way up the cliffs to pick flowers for her - which she rejected."

"What kind of flowers?" I asked.

"Peonies." He offered my horse a sugar lump, which was greedily accepted, much to his amusement. "By the way," he added, "Sam Adams has informed us that a second Continental Congress is due to meet on May the tenth, in Philadelphia. A new president of Congress is to be elected."

I nodded. "I'll tell the others to keep an ear out."

Once both horses were groomed, and my horse was watered and fed, we began a slow, meandering walk back to the manor, with the goal of reaching Achilles so I could greet him. Before we reached the door, however, Connor looked down at me and teased, "Have you any more news to catch me up on?"

My stomach exploded into fireworks at the sight of his cheeky smile. A small, desperate part of me suddenly turned and snarled at me to keep my mouth shut about Tobias, but I thought of my parents, and what had happened when I kept the Assasins a secret from them.

Secrets would only drive a rift between us, and I couldn't lose Connor that way. "I've discovered the identity of another Templar. One we didn't know about."

That made him pause, and his face became serious. "Oh?"

I told him everything - from the night at the Boston Tea Party, to Tobias finding Ryan, to the night we kissed, and how I discovered Tobias' ring. Connor's expression did not change throughout my explanation - he was as inscrutable as ever. I was uncomfortable when I told him that I had kissed Tobias, but I did not want secrets between us, so if the price to pay for that was a little discomfort, so be it.

He was very understanding. "Thank you for telling me," he said, slowly nodding. "I recognise that that may have been difficult, and I commend you for that."

"What will we do about him?" I asked.

"Add him to the list, I suppose," he replied, and his dark eyes were far away. "If he wears the ring, then he is already a trusted member of the Templar Order. There can be no mercy for him now." He reached out to open the door, and then paused. "Didn't you say that Rowan Carter has a friend named Tobias?"

The dread that his words brought hit me like a bolt of lightning. "I don't know if Rowan wears the ring. I'll find out."

If Rowan did wear the same ring as Tobias, as Thomas had pointed out to me some months ago, then he was a Templar. And if Rowan was a Templar, would I be able to trust Thomas? If I couldn't trust Thomas, what then? Was I living in a lie? Was my entire life - from the moment I met Thomas in London, all those years ago, a fond memory I kept locked in a gilded box - up to this point, knowing Thomas' greatest secret, and trusting him to keep mine - was it all a hoax, an illusion, a plan set in motion by the entrance of Thomas into my affections?

*

I pondered these things in my heart as April turned to May, and May to June. The second Continental Congress had met in May as planned, and John Hancock was elected president. Adams had kept a close eye on the proceedings, and informed Connor and me that the Congress would meet again in June to discuss matters of the army.

Now, on the sixteenth of June, Connor and I were seated in a stuffy, though brightly lit, room in the town hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, surrounded by members of the Congress, and delegates of each of the thirteen colonies. Six days ago, on the tenth, Hancock had proposed that the American forces in Boston be considered by the Congress as a Continental Army, and thus needed a commander in chief. The man before us, George Washington - a tall man with a powdered wig and a stern authority in his eyes - had been nominated to lead this army.

Adams had thought it best that Connor and I be present for Washington's official acceptance of his position, and he sat next to us on the bench, listening in rapture to the Virginian's speech.

"Mr. President," Washington addressed Hancock and the rest of the Congress. "Though I am truly sensible of the high honour done me, in this appointment, yet I feel great distress, from a consciousness that my abilities and military experience may not be equal to the extensive and important trust. However, as the Congress desire it, I will enter upon the momentous duty, and exert every power I possess in their service, and the support of the glorious cause."

We had been here for two hours already. I watched Connor from the corner of my eye, fascinated. At times like this, he really did embody the phrase as still as a statue - for, throughout this meeting, he had not moved, not even to fidget, as I had.

"I beg they will accept my most cordial thanks for this distinguished testimony of their approbation," continued Washington. "But, lest some unlucky event should happen, unfavourable to my reputation, I beg it may be remembered by every gentleman in the room that I, this day, declare with the utmost sincerity: I do not think myself equal to the command I am honoured with."

Four days ago, on the twelfth, another battle had broken out at Bunker Hill, and the Continental troops were led by one General Israel Putnam. Already, this battle was becoming one of the bloodiest in American history. The troops would need a miracle to save them - and, perhaps, Washington would help to bring that about.

Adams leaned over to us and murmured, "Truly, there is no man better suited to the task."

"Really?" someone sitting behind us muttered, listening in on our conversation - perhaps he was bored, too. "I can think of several."

Neither Connor nor I turned around; manners and propriety outweighed the desire for distraction, even if said distraction was a man with a nasal English accent behind us.

"As to pay, sir," Washington went on, "I beg leave to assure the Congress that as no pecuniary consideration could have tempted me to have accepted this arduous employment at the expense of my domestic ease and happiness, I do not wish to make any profit from it."

In order to pay the wages and funds for the newly appointed Continental Army, the Congress, under Hancock's directive, issued bills of credit. The thirteen colonies represented in the Congress - New Hampshire; Massachusetts; Connecticut; Rhode Island; New York; New Jersey; Pennsylvania; Delaware; Maryland; Virginia; North Carolina; South Carolina; and Georgia - had each promised to aid in repaying these bills.

"I will keep an exact account of my expenses," said Washington, and I gathered from his tone that he was at the end of his speech. "Those I doubt not, they will discharge. And that is all I desire."

The room rang out with applause as his speech concluded. Connor and I did not clap. We turned to face each other, but we did not speak - we were trying to get a subtle glimpse of the man who had spoken against Washington earlier. I only saw a dark moustache and pale skin before Connor abruptly stood, stiff with fury.

"Charles Lee," he growled.

And so it was: Lee sat, large as life, on the bench behind us, glaring up at Connor with thinly veiled hostility. "Do I know you?" he said lazily.

"I would not expect you to remember," Connor seethed.

I pulled him back by the arms, and I could feel him trembling. "Come along," I said, hauling him away. "I must speak with you." Lee's eyes, pale and thoughtful, bored into me, without blinking, as I brought Connor a respectable distance from the benches. "Sorry about that," I muttered to him, "but the last thing we need is the two of you coming to blows."

Connor's eyes had not left Lee, and he still bristled like a vicious wolf - but he was forced to tear his eyes away when Adams returned to us jovially. "Ah, you two. There's someone I want you to meet." He took me by the elbow and ushered us towards the head of the room, where Washington had been speaking. "Connor, Cassandra," said Adams, "allow me to introduce you to our newly-appointed commander in chief, George Washington."

The corners of Washington's blue eyes crinkled as he smiled. "Ah. So you're the pair who saved Sam and John at Lexington."

Connor spoke first. "It was the Patriots who did that. We merely lent support." His voice was strong and unwavering - I almost found it hard to believe that the object of his fury, Charles Lee, had been only seconds away from finding out for himself just how cold Connor's anger was.

Connor's words seemed to delight Washington, who laughed. "As humble as he is brave. We could use more men like you." His eyes wandered behind us, and his polite expression faded. "I'm sorry," he said distractedly, "I should attend to Charles over there. He looks none too happy about being passed over for command." He shook each of our hands. "It was good to meet you."

Connor nearly turned to glare at Lee as Washington brushed past us - the mere mention of Lee's name sparked the flames in his eyes - and to prevent that from happening, I said quietly to Adams, "Tell me you have news of Pitcairn."

Adams obliged, and Connor's attention was snagged. "I'm told he's taken shelter in Boston," whispered Adams, "where he's guarded by a thousand redcoats. The only way you're going to get at him is if we draw him out. Lucky for you, we're launching an offensive against the city in order to do just that. General Israel Putnam has been given command of our forces. Present this-" he handed Connor a folded piece of paper bearing his signature- "to him, and he'll provide whatever aid you require. You'll find him at the encampment on Bunker Hill."

I nodded. "Thank you."

Adams regarded us with kindness. "It's the least I could do. Pitcairn's a dangerous man - the sooner we are rid of him, the better."

Connor's dark eyes, once again, turned to the back of the room. "I would say the same of Charles Lee."

With a half-hearted laugh, Adams patted his arm. "That's an altogether different beast. Let us leave that for another day. Best you two head to Boston."

And that was that. Adams's attention was soon turned to Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, so Connor and I, seeing no reason to stay, walked out of the building and into the damp heat of Philadelphia. The grey clouds overhead foretold rain.

As we retrieved our horses, I asked Connor, "What's the quickest way to Bunker Hill?"

His face was solemn. "Follow me."