#DailyLines #MOBY #WRITTENInMYOwnHEARTSBlood #Book8 #OutJUNE10th #maritalhonesty


They stood in silence for a bit, and Ian felt his heart, clenched with a sudden grief at the thought of his mother, ease in Rachel’s sympathetic company. He hadn’t said it, but what he’d most regretted was not his inability to show his mother the beauties of America, but the fact that he couldn’t show her Rachel.


“She’d have liked ye,” he blurted. “My mam.”


“I hope that she would,” Rachel said, though with a tinge of dubiousness. “Did thee tell her about me, in Scotland? That I am a Friend, I mean. Some Catholics find us scandalous.”


Ian tried to remember whether he _had_ mentioned that to his mother, but couldn’t. It made no difference, in any case, and he shrugged, dismissing it.


“I told her I loved ye. That seemed to be enough. Come to think, though—my da asked all kinds of questions about ye; he wanted to know everything he could. He kent ye were a Quaker, so that means she kent it, too.” He took her elbow to help her down from the rock.


She nodded, thoughtful, but as she followed him out of the clearing, he heard her ask behind him, “Does thee think a married couple should be completely in each other’s entire confidence—share not only their histories, I mean, but every thought?”


That sent a qualm skittering down his backbone like a mouse with cold feet, and he took a deep breath. He loved Rachel with every fiber of his being, but he found her apparent ability to read him like a book—if not actually to hear his thoughts, and sometimes he thought for sure she did that, too—unsettling.


He had in fact suggested that they walk together to Marston’s Ford, and meet Denzell with the wagon there, rather than ride with him from Valley Forge, so that he might have sufficient time and solitude in which to share a few necessary things with her. He’d rather be tortured by Abenakis than tell her some of those things, but it was right she should know them, no matter what the result might be.

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