Max smiled as he freed his left arm and whisked off his own coarse gray wig. With a gentlemanly flourish he whipped a linen handkerchief from a deep pocket in his tattered jacket and began to wipe the rice powder and lampblack from his face, knowing full well it would take a good scrubbing to rid himself completely of the simple disguise.

Beneath the rags of a beggar his heart was still pumping madly with the excitement of the encounter. He didn't even feel the cold anymore. "Because you're the only one of us who can still get away with shaving once a week. Dalton and Garrick have those unfashionable little beards they refuse to part with, Lewis and John would make dreadfully ugly females--"

"And I don't?"

"--and Fletcher simply flat-out refused," Max finished. "You did a splendid job. Why, I do believe that captain was growing sweet on you before you pulled those flintlocks on him."

Beck snorted as he unbuttoned his dress and reached inside for his "breasts," hand-sized sacks of grain joined by a ribbon and dangling from his neck.

Max was almost ashamed of the elation he experienced. However, it was a thrill he couldn't deny, and it washed over him not because they'd saved a man from the gallows, and certainly not because the job had been well planned and executed--he'd expected nothing less--but for a different reason.

For all his talk of leaving the perils of his former life behind, there was still a strong appeal to the immediate presence of danger. That--together with the knowledge that he was meting out a justice that was rare and precious in this world--gave him a tangible thrill. He felt more alive at this moment than he had in months.

"Hey, gorgeous." John's familiar gruff voice reached them before the sound of footsteps. "How about a little kiss?"

Beck spun around. "That's not funny."

"No, it's not," Garrick said crisply as he followed. "But you must remember that John has dallied with many a woman uglier than you."

"Just that one ... well, and maybe that other one," John mumbled.

They continued the lighthearted teasing as Beck quickly shed the dress and stored it in a sack along with the "breasts" and wig. Garrick and John removed their wild gray wigs and tattered clothing, and revealed their own more-dignified garb and well-groomed dark heads of hair. Garrick brushed the powder from his goatee and mustache, and briskly swept his hands over his fine jacket as if to shed entirely the persona he'd taken on for this mission.

By the time they'd completely cast off every shred of the disguise that they'd donned for the British soldiers, the rest of their crew was approaching. Fletcher was in the lead, gloomy as always, while Dalton and Lewis argued quietly in the rear.

"How did it go?" Max directed his somber question to Fletcher.

Fletcher snatched off his wig and combed back his own unruly black curls with one hand. "They'd damn near beat him to death." When he was angry, as he was now, his Irish accent became more prominent. "And he was just a lad, I tell you. A mere child, and they would have hanged him without a second thought."

They were all silent now, as they listened. His euphoria past, Max studied the men who surrounded him. They'd seen injustice in the past, been touched by it and survived. Outwardly they were all composed. But he knew them well enough to know that beneath the relaxed exteriors their hearts beat as his did--fast and furiously with anger at that inequity.

"You saw him off?" he continued.

It was Lewis who answered. "We saw him safely on board the schooner. He'll be well-tended, and he'll be safe from the likes of Victor Chadwick, once he arrives in Williamsburg and is delivered into the hands of a sympathetic ally."

Max nodded in approval. How had this begun? He was barely settled in his new home--a home he'd fought long and hard for--when he'd heard the rumor. A rumor that had quickly been proven as fact. A number of silk- and satin-clad Charles Town loyalists had sat at a finely laid table and discussed the news with as much fire and enthusiasm as they'd given comments on the moistness of the bird they ate. A man was on his way to the gallows for speaking his mind and inciting a crowd to do the same. To Max's way of thinking, it wasn't right. In fact, it was damned unfair.

"We can't go back, you know," Garrick said softly. His steady voice was clear as a bell here in the solitude of the woods. "We can't just stop."

"For once Garrick's right," John mumbled.

"This is just the beginning," Fletcher said as he stepped away from the crowd. "Tonight we made ourselves a part of it."

"Do you propose that we continue?" Max directed his question to them all, six friends and shipmates and fellow soldiers. They'd been to hell and back together in the past seven years, survived tribulations that had proven the destruction of lesser men. This was supposed to have been their reward. A new country, a new home ... peace at last.

But there was no peace here. Max wondered if he would ever truly have peace, if he would recognize the much-sought-after tranquility if it ever visited him. Most likely not, since he'd known no true peace in his lifetime.