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frightened of me, and that you are not.”
    Alex shoved at him, creating some space between them.
    “I suppose I must take that as a compliment,” she said, mentally patting herself on her back for how casual she succeeded in keeping her tone.
    Philip Burley laughed, an admiring look in his eyes. “Take it as you will, Mrs Graham. But never commit the mistake of thinking we have forgotten the blood debt your husband owes us. However long it takes, we will have revenge for what he did to our Will.”
    Alex tried to say something, but her tongue had glued itself to the roof of her mouth, and to her shame she could hear her breathing become ragged, a slight whistling accompanying each inhalation.
    “I was right: I do scare you.” With an ironic little bow, Philip Burley walked off, and Alex wasn’t quite sure how she made it from the tree to her kitchen door.
    *
    By the time Matthew came in for supper, the militia company was long gone. In silence, he listened to Alex’s brief recap of her meeting with Philip Burley, and once she was done, he shoved the plate away – most of the food uneaten.
    “Damn!” Matthew drove his fist hard into the wall, cursed again, and sucked at his broken knuckles. “Where were they headed?”
    “To Virginia,” Mrs Parson said. “At least, that’s what they said. Up for disbandment, they reckoned.”
    “And his brothers?” Alex was as always amazed by how much information Mrs Parson was able to gather in a matter of minutes.
    “Ah, his brothers… Well, that Walter fell foul of his commanding officer some months back, and is kicking his heels down in Jamestown, while Stephen, he was wounded, struck down by an arrow.”
    “Serve him right,” Alex said. “I hope it leaves him permanently incapacitated.”
    “It near killed him,” Mrs Parson said with a shrug. “They won’t be back this way.”
    “For now,” Matthew corrected. “We all know that, sooner or later, they will be.”
    “Three Burleys are no match for us, Da,” Ian said.
    “You think?” Matthew shook his head. “They’re lethal, Ian.”
    “We’re all good shots,” Mark protested. “They won’t make it down the lane.”
    “They won’t come down the lane,” Matthew said. “They’ll come at night, from the direction we least expect them to.”
    Blood rushed so quickly out of her head, Alex felt faint, no matter she was sitting down.
    Matthew leaned forward to clasp her hand. “I’ll think of something, lass.”
    “Of course you will,” she replied with a false smile.
    *
    It took Alex several days to regain some kind of equilibrium, but when one day after the other passed without any incidents, she managed to shove the Burley bogeymen into a dark and rarely visited corner of her brain, submerging herself in the demanding day to day instead. Foremost on her mind was Daniel’s imminent departure for Boston, and when she saw her son making for the river, she called for him to wait and hurried over to join him.
    “Are you nervous?” Alex fell into step with Daniel, extending her stride to match his. At thirteen, Daniel already overtopped her, and now he smiled at her and shortened his steps.
    “Aye, but not in a bad way.” He stared off across the harvested fields, shifting his shoulders.
    Alex patted him on his cheek. Thirteen and already on his way out into the world… For the last year, he’d been living down in Providence, with Minister Walker, and Alex was secretly very impressed by how much he had learnt in such a short period of time. She liked Walker, and had tried to imprint in Daniel that there was a minister to emulate, a man that combined a deep knowledge and love of the Bible with huge quantities of compassion and humility.
    Matthew had howled with laughter when she’d shared this view of Minister Walker with him, saying that, aye, the minister was a right godly man in many ways, but he was no paragon of human virtues – what with his frequent and regular visits to Mrs Malone’s