Dishonoring Jack

Chapter Twenty One

 Jack rolled onto her back with a groan, her muscles sore, and reached for her head to rub the ache from her temples. A fire crackled in the hearth and Jack's bones ached from lying on Soka's wooden floor overnight. The kind Powhatan woman had offered Jack her bed, but Jack had refused, claiming she was still young and spry. The groaning in her joints and muscles belied her overeager words.

Donovan rested against a wall, a low-burning candle still next to him from where he'd spent the evening reading the local newspaper and scouring it for information about the Slate Brothers. Jack rose to a sitting position and studied his features, relaxed in sleep. Weariness and defiance mingled in the lines around his eyes and mouth and forehead. His resistance had brought him only sorrow and death. His brother, dead. His nephew, drafted. His sister-in-law, reduced to nothing. Donovan himself had become a fugitive, on the run from terrible men who plotted revenge with the law on their side.

If only Titus knew. Titus Fletcher, sheriff of Irvington, was a righteous man and he would protect Donovan if only he would trust him. Jack swore to herself that if Donovan didn't confess all to Sheriff Fletcher, she would. They needed help.

As Jack rose and folded the woven blanket on which she'd slept, Donovan stirred as well, his dark eyes fluttering open. He smiled up at Jack beneath heavy lids, groaning as he rose from the awkward position against the wall.

"Good morning, Jack," he said, taking the folded blanket from her with one hand while touching her face softly with the other.

Jack turned her face into his hand with a smile. "Good morning."

He set the blanket down and took her hands in his, stepping close enough that she could smell the faint scent of the wax candle on his shirt. "You do not know what this means to me, Jack. You coming with me. It's beyond what I could expect of anyone, it's--"

"It's my pleasure, I swear," Jack said, blushing under the praise.

Jack didn't say the rest of what she was thinking, that she would gladly sacrifice so much for anyone she loved. She couldn't utter those words here in the poor Powhatan house, not when Donovan had so much more weight on his shoulders. In fact, she scarcely knew what to do with the words herself, but she knew that any sacrifice she made on his behalf would be repaid tenfold by time spent with him.

"You're too good for me, Jack," he said, a smile pulling at one corner of his mouth as he intently studied her.

"Yes, and you best remember it," Jack said, turning away from him as they heard Soka stir in the room next to them.

Soka served them corn pone, cold from the day before, for their meager breakfast, but Jack didn't complain. Without her husband or her son or Donovan to help her with the harvest and the Slate brothers pressuring her at every turn, how could Soka offer them anything else? By the meager stock in her pantry, Jack knew the woman was near starving.

The three of them sat at Soka's crooked table, one leg shorter than the rest, with mugs of fresh-brewed tea that dispelled their exhaustion from the restless night's sleep. As Soka sat with them, she fingered something in the pocket of her dress and her eyes wandered out the window. Jack wondered whether she thought of her dead husband or her distant son.

"Have you heard from him?" Donovan asked.

Soka nodded reluctantly, pulling a wrinkled parchment from her pocket and setting it on the table. "Three weeks ago was the last letter."

"He is well?"

"How can I know?" Soka asked, cursing in her native tongue. "He would not tell me if he were half-dead. But I think he is well. He says there is not enough food, but he's used to scarcity so he will survive better than the over-fed boys in his company."