“I'll be all right,” she whispered, her eyes huge with pleading. “Please, Matt, don't make it worse.”

“How the hell could I make it any worse than this?” he asked, his voice shaking. He looked up at Isaac with loathing. “You pack quite a punch for a pacifist. Get out of here. Nobody abuses women in front of me, no matter how righteous and pious they think they are. Leave. Now.”

“Come, Sarah,” Isaac commanded as if she were a dog to be ordered about. He showed no open remorse for what he'd done, but his expression had been wiped clean of anger and rage and was now blank.

Sarah started toward him, and again Matt held her back.

“Matt,” she said softly, glancing up at him. “It's all right.”

His eyes widened incredulously. “It s not all right! You're a grown woman. He can't come here and knock you around and drag you off by the hair! He doesn't have any say in your life.”

“He is my father.”

“That doesn't give him the right—”

“Matt.” Ingrid's voice drew his attention to the porch, where his sister had come to stand in the open doorway with her basset hound on her feet, and her arms crossed against the chill of the early evening. Her expression was both strained and guarded as she looked at him. “Let it go. Sarah knows what she's doing.”

He worked his jaw, fighting the urge to argue with her. Deep inside he couldn't escape the feeling that he was Sarah's protector, her knight in shining armor ready to slay any dragon for her. Some protector, he thought derisively. It was because of him her father had been driven to strike her. It was because of him she may be in serious trouble with her people. Once again he had managed to hurt her when his greatest desire was to love her and keep her from harm. Maybe she was right in saying he should go back to his world. It was becoming painfully clear that their separate worlds couldn't mix.

“Please, Matt,” she whispered tremulously, tears spilling past her lashes and down her cheeks. “Please.”

She was asking him to let her go. She'd told him she'd known all along their time together would be brief. He had fought the idea just as he had wanted to fight any threat to Sarah herself. He wanted to fight it still, but she was asking him to let go. If he followed his heart and fought for her, he would only end up destroying her. The selfish man inside him argued that they would still have each other and the love that had blossomed so quickly and so brilliantly between them. But he knew deep down that the cost would be too great. He couldn't force her to change, couldn't ask her to give up her family and her faith and her way of life. She wasn't willing to make that sacrifice for him and if he forced her to, how could their love possibly survive?

It took a terrible effort, but he pulledhis hand away from Sarah's arm and stepped back, conceding the battle to Isaac Maust. Sarah looked up at him with an expression that tore his heart in two.

“I'm sorry,” she said, the words barely audible. I'm so sony I hurt you.”

Matt felt the pressure of tears behind his own eyes as he looked at hen committing to memory her every feature. He reached out and brushed a drop of moisture from the crest of her cheek, “just don't be sorry you loved me,” he said, then turned and walked away, limping heavily and feeling old and beaten.

She was gone in a matter of minutes. Matt sat on a decorative iron bench beneath a maple tree on the far side of the yard and watched the black buggy pull out, white reflective tape glowing eerily in the dark as it made its way down the road. The last rays of the sunset had faded to black, a color appropriate for mourning, Matt thought. He looked out at the millions of stars that dotted the sky like fairy dust, his gaze fastening on the brightest.