"What be goin' on in here?" The man who filled the doorway was enormous, black, clad in the same loose white trousers that Joss wore. Lilah stifled a scream at his sudden appearance, watched as Joss turned to glare at the intruder. More disaster! Then, miraculously, her mind started to function again.
The situation was not quite beyond saving.
"Henry-it is Henry, isn't it? I need your help. Mr. Kevin's had a… a fit of some kind, and J-Joss here had to subdue him. I need you to stand guard over him, not let him up until I can get back here with help."
Henry, whose identity she remembered because he was the biggest of the field hands, taller even than Joss and huge with muscle, frowned. But the habit of obedience was ingrained in him, and he obviously knew her for the master's daughter.
"Yes, Miss Lilah," he said, and stepped into the room, looking uncertainly down at Kevin's unconscious form. Joss, after shooting a quick, surprised glance at Lilah, lowered the pistol and stood up, stepping away from the body. Joss was barefoot, dressed only in the trousers that now sported a long rip down one leg. His chest and arms were covered with red marks from the punches. His hair was wildly disordered, and blood trickled from one corner of his mouth. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, and looked at her again. Despite all that had happened, his green eyes were bright. Like most men, Lilah suspected with an inward spurt of disgust, he probably secretly liked nothing better than a good fight.
"You come with me," she said, nodding to Joss, every inch the mistress. "Henry, I'm counting on you to keep Mr. Kevin here until I get back with help. Do you understand?"
"Yes'in, Miss Lilah. I understand." The big man squatted down by Kevin's prostrate body, scowling direly at the seriousness of his charge. Lilah, motioning to Joss to follow her, stepped quickly outside. Her eyes widened as she saw the crowd that had gathered in the narrow track between the rows of huts. Apparently a goodly number of the field hands had been awakened by the shot and had come to investigate.
Lilah looked at the mass of faces, recognized several through the graying light, chose one. "Mose, you go in there and help Henry. You're both to keep Mr. Kevin in that hut and quiet until I get back. You hear?"
"Yes'm, Miss Lilah." Mose detached himself from the group that Lilah saw numbered perhaps twenty, and went into the hut, sidling past Joss, who was just coming out.
"The rest of you, go on back home. You've no business hanging about," she said sharply to those who remained. As they began to disperse, she motioned to Joss, who fell in with deceptive meekness behind her. Once the two of them were safely out of sight, she looked wildly over her shoulder at him. To her amazement, he was grinning.
"As I believe I've said before, you're a female in a million! That was a stroke of pure genius." Admiration shone from his eyes as they moved over her. "How long do you think we have before the Boss Man gets away from them?"
"I don't know-Papa will miss him at half past five, when he doesa't ring the bell."
"Then we've got a little more than an hour. I have to get away. You don't have to come with me. It'll be dangerous, there'll be pursuit. I can send for you when I'm safe in England."
Lilah stopped walking abruptly. Joss stopped too, his expression suddenly serious. Beyond him, perhaps half a field away, she could see the white stucco walls and red roof of Heart's Ease, dark and still in the hour before dawn. The house and all those in it were everything she had once held dear. The moment had come when she had to decide, finally, irrevocably, whether or not to give up her home and family and every bit of the security she'd always known for this man. If he left without her, she greatly feared that she would never see him again. Even if he got away, got back to England, she would be trapped. Her father would never let her go to him.
Chances were, he would not get away. As he'd pointed out, there'd be pursuit. But perhaps if she were with him, she could keep him from being killed out of hand.
In any case, her choice had already been made. Whatever came of it, good or ill, she was throwing in her lot with Joss.
"I'm coming with you, and we don't have time to argue," she said with finality, and caught his hand. "Come on, we have to get away before Kevin starts raising a ruckus. The stables are this way."