Cecily shakes her head, her eyes wide. “That’s not what I’m worried about. He’s gonna hurt her.”
Gilbert sighs. “All the more reason for you not to be there.”
His niece starts to cry. “This is all my fault. I got to undo it before I make everything worse.”
Gilbert wants to laugh, but he reminds himself she’s too young to realize how ridiculous she sounds. “You don’t think you showing up in the yard, like Lazarus, is going to make things worse?”
She wipes her eyes with the palms of her hands, but the tears won’t stop. “I’ll tell him I acted alone. That she and Moses had nothing to do with it.”
“No,” Gilbert says firmly. “You show up in that yard, and you going to get your mother and brother sold south.”
Cecily doesn’t say anything, and for a minute he worries she’s still considering it.
“You hearing me?”
Finally, she gives him a ferocious nod. “Then what do I do?”
He thinks for a second, but he’s not coming up with much.
She starts to panic. “You got to tell me what to do.”
“Go back to the boathouse.”
“And then what?”
He doesn’t have the heart to say anything about the flyers, nor to explain that the whole reason he was over here in the first place was to tellDella that Cecily doesn’t have a prayer of boarding a stagecoach without being recognized.
“I’m not sure. But we’ll figure it out.”
“Uncle Gilbert, I’m scared.”
He’s not in a good position to reassure her, not right now. “Just be careful making your way back. Steer clear of Kemp and that fellow he’s with, Doug Gibson. I’ll meet you there, soon as I’m ready to get you out of here.”
“Tonight, you think?”
He leans down, kisses her once, lightly, on the forehead. “No idea,” he says. “Now go.”
When Cecily is gone, Gilbert makes his way around to the front of the cabin. A number of the men and women who live in the quarters have already begun to trudge up the hill to the yard, but Moses is still standing in the middle of the street, as if he has been waiting for Gilbert to emerge from behind the cabin.
“You all right?” Gilbert asks when he’s close enough to wrap an arm around his nephew’s narrow shoulders.
Moses nods.
Gilbert leans down so he’s looking Moses directly in the eye. “You hear all that?”
“About Cecily?”
“And Master Price.”
Moses nods again.
“It don’t matter. None of it matters. Cecily’s your sister, same as them babies are.”
Moses looks relieved to have someone spell it out for him.
“Now your mama needs your help.”
Moses is all ears.
