Aunt Betty had tried her best, but she could never get Linet baptized. Rose had allowed the preacher to dip her back into the river current and wash away her sins, but Linet outright refused. It was a silly tradition. 

If God was so powerful and His Son's mercy so abounding, couldn't they purify the soul without the tea brown water of the Tug Fork? It was so silly, Linet wanted to laugh at the image.

Church was never a habit of her's. The congregation rarely gathered just for worship, but to wear their Sunday best and crow about how well their pigs were looking that year. Girls eyed each other, trying to decide the prettiest among them. Boys wrung their sweaty hands and tried to make awkward conversation. 

Certainly with her mother's reputation and the hatred that the town still held towards her heathen father, Linet would never be accepted. Anymore than Rose could hope for acceptance, being neither white nor black in race, but both. 

Perhaps in a city, anonymous and free to roam, they could have been happy. There had been many times in the cold darkness of Uncle Randall's barn that Linet had quietly planned their escape. They could cut their hair, steal trousers from an obliging wash line, and hop an open train cart. Masquerading as boys, they could find work at a shipyard. Linet had always wanted to see the ocean. 

But how could she leave her forests? Her hills? They were in her blood. Then there was her promise to her mother. She had yet to see it through. In the house of Cap Hatfield himself, they were closer than ever.

Clad in her linen drawers and chemise, the ones from her old life that she had snatched back from the maid returning from the wash line, Linet dove into the tumbling water. She was high in the hills, having hiked up there in the pale light of dawn. She wanted to wash away the grime from her own soul, left by Hatfield charity.

She told herself it was all a means to an end. Vengeance was as natural an impulse to Linet McCoy Phillips as breathing or drinking water. Her mother had poisoned her heart with it from an early age. Nancy knew her daughters. Rose had a gentle heart and strong sense of self preservation, with good reason. But Linet had her mother's mean streak. She had been fertile ground to sow bitterness into and watch it flourish.

By the time Nancy died in Aunt Betty's guest room, eaten up by consumption and moonshine, Linet had no problem swearing to continue her mother's war path for her. But Nancy was shrewd, even in her last minutes. Rose was the keeper of the secret to their revenge, until she perceived that the time had come. Linet needed Rose to stay her hand for the right moment and Rose needed her to instigate action.

And now the time had come. 

Emerging from the chilly water, Linet wrung her honey brown curls over her freckled shoulder. Sitting on the bank with her long legs stretched and crossed before her, she leaned back on her elbows and turned her face to the sun. A warm breeze rustled the leaves of the oak over her head. 

The soft approach of paws came from behind her. She didn't even bother to open her eyes. The massive black dog laid down on his side, pressing his back to her hip as he surveyed the stream with yellow eyes. Linet scratched him behind his ears.

"There yah go, boy," she murmured. 

Her blue eyes grazed the opposite bank. A horse and rider stood watching her. The preacher wore his clerical collar with a Bible tucked into the crook of his elbow. His large hand loosely held the reins. She knew him, of course, as she knew all the Hatfield men that her mother had cursed.

Reverend Elias W. Hatfield, handsome and clean shaven, studied her as he had that bleak morning when he'd caught her in the graveyard. They had seen each other once again since when Cordelia had invited him and Rivers Hatfield over for dinner one evening. Linet had avoided his eye until he turned to leave, giving him a hint of a smirk before looking away. 

It was obvious she concerned him, with good reason. But still, oddly enough, he had the look of a man transfixed by something he couldn't understand. Yet he wanted to know more. Linet almost found his interest amusing. 

Only in her underthings, she got to her feet. Why should she cover herself? He was the one who had interrupted her privacy without apology.

"This is Padfoot," she said, laying a hand on the dog's back. "Are you scared of him?"

"No." Elias Hatfield's voice was gentle, but unyielding. Maybe there was more iron in this man than first perceived.

"What then?" She pressed, cocking her head to the side with a crooked grin. "What you scared of, preacher?"

"I'm not frightened."

Linet scoffed and started down the embankment. "Sure you ain't."

Elias led his horse on the opposite side of the river, keeping in step with her and the dog. "You shouldn't be so far out here without anyone. You could fall off the rocks and hurt yourself."

"Why are you out here all alone then?"

"I was visiting a mountain family and bringing them some extra corn feed."

"How Christian of you, preacher." Linet tugged the plain, homespun gown down from the brambles where she'd put it and dropped it over her head. "You could help me with these buttons if you like."

"No, thank you."

Linet chuckled as she fastened the back of her dress. "Didn't think so."

Padfoot remained by her side, tense as he glared at Elias. 

"Where did you get that dog?"

Linet shrugged and crossed her arms over her chest. "Showed up one day when I was working my Uncle's fields and stayed by my side. 'Bout two years ago. He mostly goes his own way though, then finds me again."

"A black dog adopts you out of the wilderness and you accepted it?"

"What's wrong with that? Wouldn't have taken you for being superstitious." Linet smirked, holding his eyes. Elias was a handsome brute, but he was a Hatfield. That was enough for her. "You think I'm a witch or somethin'?"

Elias spurred his horse to the side with a tight laugh. "It's 1914. You're about two hundred years too late if you were one."

Linet hummed in her throat before turning on her heel. "Am I, preacher?"

Padfoot followed her as they disappeared into the brush, leaving the river and baffling Reverend Hatfield with her exit.