Jack considered that.
“Does your father know?”
“He knows why I began. He does not always understand why I continue.” She touched the edge of the cloth.
“People think a veil hides a woman. Sometimes it is the only thing that lets her decide what the world gets to see.”
A breeze shifted the fabric. Jack caught a glimpse of a small silver pendant at her throat, shaped like a star with one point missing. He recognized it, though he could not remember where. The sight unsettled him, as if a door in his mind had opened onto a dark room. He forced himself not to stare.
“Why did your father say I might freeze when I saw you?” he asked.
Isabel went still.
“He said that?”
“He didn’t use those words. But everyone seemed to be waiting for something.”
“My father believes a face can settle an argument.” She looked away.
“I don’t. And I will not lift this veil to satisfy a crowd.”
“I wasn’t asking you to.”
“Not yet.” She sounded less angry than wary.
“Before I decide, I need to know what you would do if you found your brother and he told you to leave us behind. Would you go?”
Jack thought of Daniel as a boy, racing him along a creek, stealing apples from a neighbor’s tree, and lying so badly that their mother had always known which one had broken the jar.
“I’d listen to him. But I wouldn’t let him make my conscience smaller.”
“And if staying meant you might die?”
“I have survived by leaving before. It didn’t make the people I left safer.”
For the first time, Isabel’s expression changed. Her eyes softened, then sharpened again as though she regretted allowing him to see it. She stepped toward the water and knelt to fill a small clay cup. When she rose, the veil caught on a thorn. She freed it with careful fingers, and Jack saw a thin white scar near her temple. It looked familiar, like a mark he had once seen under lamplight. Before he could place the memory, she had turned away.
“I will consider your proposal,” she said.
“But I want three conditions. First, there will be no wedding until I have spoken with you privately at least three more times. Second, you will not claim authority over me in public or private. Third, if I tell you to leave because your presence endangers the community, you will hear my reasons before deciding.”
“I can agree to the first two. The third needs one addition: you hear my reasons too, if I believe leaving would make things worse.”
She tilted her head.
“You negotiate even when you are being offered a chance to escape.”
“I’m told it’s a character flaw.”
“It may be useful.”
They returned to the clearing together. The deputy had grown impatient and was arguing with Naya, who seemed to be enjoying the argument more than she should. Chief Samuel listened to Jack and Isabel’s conditions, then declared that no wedding would occur that day. Instead, the community would hold a council at sunset and decide how to answer the warrant.
That decision angered the deputy.
“You’re sheltering a fugitive and obstructing the law.”
“I am sheltering no one,” the chief said.
“Your warrant demands a man who is not here. If you wish to search the valley, return with an order that respects the homes of its residents.”
The deputy mounted, promising that the judge would hear of this defiance. As the riders departed, Jack noticed one of them looking at Isabel with an expression of recognition. The man’s gaze lingered on the pendant at her throat before he wheeled his horse away.
That evening, Jack sat with Chief Samuel, Naya, and two elders beside a fire. They discussed routes through the canyon, the company’s likely next move, and the missing survey record. Isabel did not attend. Jack wondered if she had decided he was another stranger who spoke well but would vanish when the cost became real.
After the council, Naya approached him with a lantern.
“My cousin wants you to understand something,” she said.
“She has been called ugly by men who wanted to make her small. She has been called beautiful by men who wanted to make her useful. Neither word has ever told her who she is.”
“I wouldn’t call her either unless she asked me to.”
“Then you may be less foolish than you look.” Naya handed him the lantern.