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in. Mac fished it out and nearly drowned himself. He would have if Mr. Nick hadn’t dived in when he saw Mac was in trouble. Tch! And all over a dog!” He jerked his head back toward the camp. “That Beowulf. Mr. Nicholas, Mac, and Algy palled up a’cos of that ugly pup, and the three lads became mates, even though Mr. Nick was an officer and the other two naught but common soldiers. Best thing that happened to Mr. Nick and my Algy, Mac was. See, they were the same age, only Mac had started soldiering at twelve.”
    “Twelve!” Faith was shocked.
    “Yes, as a drummer boy.” Stevens shrugged. “There’s lots of Scots lads in the army—it’s that or starvation in the Highlands. So by the time my two green lads arrived on the peninsular, Mac was a seasoned soldier. He showed them both the ropes, taught ’em enough soldiering tricks to stay alive by the time they faced their first battle. Three lads, and all just sixteen.”
    He was silent for a long while, thinking of his son, Faith thought, then he added bitterly. “Old Sir Henry Blacklock was right. Army did learn Mr. Nick different. Changed him. Killed something inside him. Killed every one of his blessed friends, too, didn’t it? Includin’ my Algy. That’s when I went over to Spain to join Master Nick.” He snorted with self-mockery. “Thought I’d look after him, but got this instead.” He rubbed the scar on his face as if it itched. “And it was Master Nick and Mac what looked after me.” Then his tone changed. “Now, d’you see how your cane is bent over and you can feel something tugging—”
    “Oh! You mean I have a fish! Help! What do I do?” All other thoughts flew from Faith’s head as she struggled to land the wildly fighting fish. Stevens waded into the water, brandishing a small net, and Faith found herself following until she was knee-deep in the sea. Laughing, shrieking, and hanging on to the line like grim death, she attempted to follow Stevens’s instructions, and by the time the fish was safely landed, both she and Stevens were extremely wet—and had become fast friends. She looked at her fish with satisfaction. It flipped in its bucket, big, fat, and furious.
    “It’s a beauty, isn’t it, Stevens?”
    “It surely is, miss. Now, here you are.” He handed her a knife.
    “Don’t we cook it first?’
    Stevens laughed. “Yes, but first you’ve got to kill it. And then to gut it and scale it.”
    “Me?” Faith squeaked in horror.
    “Yes, miss, you. You caught it, you kill it.”
    “But I’ve never killed a thing in my life! Not even a spider. And I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
    To her dismay, Stevens didn’t budge from his position. He was a groom, not a gentleman. He didn’t think a lady should be sheltered from the realities of life. Especially not one who was sleeping in sand hills, his look seemed to say. “Never know when you might need to fish for your supper again, miss. Best to know the whole process.”
    Faith was thoroughly appalled by the idea, but it was barely a day since she’d resolved not to rely on others so much, to be more independent, to have control of her life. She stared at the fish, madly flipping in the pail. This was her first chance to prove she could do for herself.
    She watched him as he took a dead fish from the pail and showed her how to hold it. Gingerly she picked up her fish as he instructed, slipping her fingers into its gills and gripping hard. It wriggled and flipped and felt cold and slimy and completely disgusting.
    “Good girl,” he said.
    Faith’s resolve firmed.
    “Now hold the fish down here, on the sand, and slip the point of the knife in here, nice and gentle.” He demonstrated on his fish. “It won’t feel a thing, miss. It’s all any of us can ask, a quick and painless death.”
    She wrinkled her nose and nodded, unconvinced. It seemed a perfectly disgusting thing to do, but she was determined to leave helpless Faith in the past. Independent Faith could do