All in all, Edilean thought, True Love was better to read about than to experience. In real life, love hurt more than it made a person feel good.

The problem was what to do about it all. How did one change one’s self? In England, no one had questioned her validity. She was a wealthy young woman, nice to look at, and that was everything she needed to be. No one expected her to do anything except to marry well. But her father’s will had changed that. He’d given her rights over her own money and her own life.

The problem was that in this new country people seemed to expect everyone to pull his or her own weight. Through the church in Boston, she’d met American women from wealthy families who worked harder than the maids. They made their own jam, dug their own potatoes, and an hour later delivered a nine-pound child. It was what she’d feared ending up with in Scotland.

Just the thought of all that made Edilean want to get on a ship and go back to England. She could buy herself a nice house and… She didn’t know what was to happen after that. Sit there and wait for suitors to come to her?

When she heard Harriet in the hallway, Edilean got up and went to her. Harriet was angrily tying the ribbons on her bonnet.

“Would you mind if I went with you?” Edilean asked meekly.

“You do what you want to, you always do,” Harriet said as she picked up a big market basket, and opened the front door.

Edilean grabbed her bonnet, but she didn’t need to hurry because Harriet paused on the doorstep and looked around, as though she expected someone to leap out of the bushes. Edilean didn’t ask who or what she was looking for because she knew Harriet wouldn’t tell her.

Harriet hurried down the streets so fast that Edilean had to run to keep up with her. She held her bonnet on with her hand, the ribbons trailing out behind her. Four gentlemen doffed their hats at her, but she didn’t have time for them.

Edilean had never been to a street market, but she’d been to many of Boston’s better shops when she was buying what they needed for the house. To her mind, the decoration of a house was something that a “lady” did, but except for overseeing the kitchen garden, food wasn’t her concern. She might go over the menu with the cook, but “ladies” didn’t go to the fish market and haggle. All her life, she’d left that task to other people.

Harriet turned a corner, and Edilean stopped, her eyes open in wonder at the loud chaos before her. There seemed to be a hundred wagons, all of them laden with produce, meat, and homemade goods that had been brought to town to sell on market day.

“It’s wonderful,” she said under her breath.

Harriet turned to look at her, anger still on her face, but when she saw Edilean’s expression, she softened. “Stay close to me and don’t buy anything. These merchants will bargain you into the poorhouse.”

Edilean nodded as she looked at the people and carts lining the street. She started to take a step forward, but Harriet pulled her back. She’d almost stepped into a pile of horse manure.

“What can I sell a pretty lady like you?” asked a man with most of his teeth black.

“Nothing!” Harriet said as she pulled Edilean forward. “He’s a dreadful man who’d sell his own mother if he thought he could get a good price.”

“Do you know all of these vendors?”

“Most of them,” Harriet said. “You have to learn who you can trust.”

“And you trusted Mr. Sylvester?”

“Completely. Oh! Look! His wife has the cart here. Come and see what she’s brought.”

They went to a large cart where the produce was displayed in a haphazard way that Edilean didn’t think was very appealing, but Harriet didn’t seem to notice as she began to paw through the vegetables. Edilean stood back and looked at the place. It was extremely busy, with what looked to be hundreds of people rushing about. Most of the women carried big baskets like Harriet’s, and they were fighting crowds and arguing with sellers at the top of their lungs.

For all that it was exciting, there was also an air of frustration about the place, as though the men were enjoying themselves, but the women just wanted to get it all done and over with.

Behind the wagon was a young woman with a belly swollen with child and a toddler on her hip. She was gently crying into a handkerchief while three women hovered around her, looks of sympathy on their faces.

“Is that the widow?” Edilean asked Harriet.

“Yes. She’s much younger than her husband was. She certainly looks young to have seven children, doesn’t she?”

“Very young,” Edilean agreed.

“Poor thing. I wonder what she’ll do now.”

“Sell the farm, make thousands, and marry someone else,” Edilean said quickly.

“You seem sure of yourself,” Harriet said as she picked up a plum and inspected it.

“Is it good enough for our table?” There was amusement in Edilean’s voice.

“Why don’t you go look around and see what the others have to offer?” Harriet said impatiently. “But just look; don’t buy.”

As Edilean took her up on the suggestion and began to walk around, she saw what Harriet meant. Several of the carts held produce that didn’t look fit to buy. It had been thrown into the wagon, so it was bruised, which meant it would rot in a day or two.

When she got to the end of the long row, there was a woman with her back to her who looked familiar. When she turned, Edilean saw that it was Tabitha, and in spite of herself, she almost felt that she was seeing an old friend. Edilean knew so few people in America, and here was one of them.

She wasn’t sure if Tabitha saw her, but when she moved away, Edilean followed. She turned a corner, then stopped, for Tabitha had disappeared.

In the next second, Tabitha slipped out from beside a building and confronted Edilean. “What do you want?” Tabitha asked in anger. “You didn’t get enough of hurting me the last time? You came back to do more?” As she spoke, she was looking Edilean in her silk dress up and down with contempt.

“What happened to you after our confrontation?” Edilean asked, noting that Tabitha was filthy. On the ship she’d had enough pride in herself that she’d kept her hair neat and her clothes clean, but now she looked like she’d given up.

“What do you care?”

“I don’t,” Edilean said as she started to turn away.

“I could kill you for what you done to me,” Tabitha called out after her.

“Whatever do you mean?” Edilean asked, looking back at her. “You’re the thief, not me.”

“How was I to know your lover had diamonds? I thought they were just glass. They were in his pocket like so much rubbish, and when I brushed up against him, I just slipped them out. Who carries diamonds about in his pocket?”

Edilean wondered the same thing but didn’t say so. “And I took them from you and gave them back to him. Is that why you’re so angry and so…” She looked her up and down.

“Dirty?”

Edilean gave a little shrug.

“They… the people in the camp took the bracelets, then threw me out on my own because of what you did to me. They said I was worthless to not know what I’d taken-and to let a lady like you beat me in a fight. But you was fightin’ for your life. I wasn’t.”

“True,” Edilean said coolly. “But I did beat you.” She knew that, logically, she owed this woman nothing, but still, she couldn’t seem to make herself leave. “Where are you living now?”

Tabitha’s face hardened. “Anywhere I can. With whatever man will have me for the night.”

A month ago, Edilean wouldn’t have fully understood what Tabitha meant, but she did now. To think of doing that with a man you didn’t love! It almost made her sick at her stomach. And Edilean well remembered that Tabitha had loudly declared she was no whore. She’d been branded by a man rather than bed him. But because of what Edilean had done to Tabitha, the woman was now walking the streets. “I have to go,” Edilean said. “Someone is waiting for me.”