Chapter 24
Matthew dragged himself home well after sundown, his stomach grumbling and his chest sore. Death, of course, was part of his vocation, and further, a necessary part of life itself.
But that didn’t mean he had to like it.
The linkboy who lit his way back home bobbed and made sudden turns, his lantern dragging the light in horizontal lines like arrows for Matthew to follow along the darkened streets, and only spoke at the moment of hiring and dismissal, looking just as ragged as Matthew felt, though the lad couldn’t have been older than ten.
“Do you want something to eat?” he asked him before letting him go. “Do you need something warmer to wear?”
The boy shook his head. “Just more coin if you’ve got it.”
And Matthew had sighed and put a few more in his grubby hand before turning and unlatching the gate to the parish.
He was surprised to see the windows of the house still lit at this late hour. Rosalind was a woman of routine, from what he’d learned, and she liked an early night. He grimaced as he trudged across the garden, hoping that the lights weren’t a sign that there were visitors about.
Surely her parents or brother or even a member of the parish would not come calling so late? Perhaps one of her friends? Hannah or Mae or … or that bloke from Scotland?
Matthew frowned.
He could’ve sworn he’d seen him a couple of times now, lingering at the corners near the church.
It had just been flashes of overly oiled blond hair here or a tailored cut of tweed ducking into a café there, but his gut told him it was Douglas Muir and that he was loitering around here in search of Rosalind.
Had he finally come calling when Matthew wasn’t around to play chaperone? Would he have been so bloody bold? And would Rosalind have let him in?
Surely not, Matthew told himself.
Surely not.
All the same, he hastened his steps to get back into his house as quickly as possible, squishing a rotted fig underfoot in the process.
“Rosalind?” he called the instant he was indoors, stomping his juice-spattered boot against the mat on the threshold and then kicking both shoes off before walking any farther into the house. “Are you still awake?”
“Matthew!” She appeared at the top of the stairs, her face pale and her eyes a bit pink, like she’d been struggling to keep herself awake.
All that lovely, sandy hair was tumbling down over her arms, still damp from the bath as she hurried down the stairs and immediately threw her arms around his middle.
“I’m so glad you’re home. Are you well? Did she pass? ”
His arms came up in surprise at first and hovered for a moment before embracing her back, though he did not squeeze quite as tightly as he really wished to.
He let himself lower his head and inhale the fresh soap in her hair and sighed.
“She did. It was peaceful, in the end. Is that why you are still awake? You were waiting for me to come back?”
She leaned back, propping her chin against his chest to peek up at him with her wide, pink-tinged eyes.
“Well, yes, and because Lord Keaton came to the church today and I did not want to miss telling you if you had to leave again in the morning. But we can talk about that after you’ve changed and sat down. Do you want a cup of tea?”
He blinked at her, a little dazed at the fact that she was here, wedged into his arms, and nothing at all was amiss aside from some meddling visit from his most irritating church patron. “Tea?” he repeated, a little stupidly. “I … yes?”
“Good, sit down. Or go change. Whichever you prefer. I’ll put the kettle on,” she said, releasing him.
She hesitated for a moment, her bare feet going onto her toes to stop her from moving farther toward the kitchen, and then she spun back around and grabbed his face to plant a kiss against his lips.
He was so surprised, he didn’t even manage to kiss her back.
And then she was gone.
He peeled off the layers of his day, dropping them one by one on the arm of the sofa until he was just in shirtsleeves and his trousers, and then collapsed onto one of the cushions with a sigh, ruffling his hands through his hair.
It was a little ridiculous that he felt so wrung out, he thought. He hadn’t been doing hard labor. He hadn’t even been standing for most of the day. But he felt as though he’d run to Paris and back on foot without respite.
And every time he closed his eyes he saw that damned blond, tweed-wearing Scotsman lurking in the shadows, which of course was not Rosalind’s fault in the slightest, but some part of him wanted to ask her to fix it anyhow.
She came back out with a cup of tea that smelled of dark flowers and milk and set it on the table next to him before crossing around and tucking his discarded clothing away so she could take the cushion beside his.
“Your nightgown,” he said, watching her. “No buttons.”
“Oh,” she said, blinking down at the thing. “No, not tonight. No need, is there?”
He frowned. “I suppose not, anymore.”
“Maybe I’ll hurt my leg again someday,” she teased, nudging him with her shoulder, “and we’ll have them ready for it.”
He gave a dry chuckle, taking up his tea and sipping at it. “Maybe you can just wear them sometimes for the joy of it,” he countered. “Nothing is worth you being hurt again.”
She gave him a soft smile and nodded. “All right,” she said. “I will.”
He sneaked a look at her over the steam in his mug as he sipped, watching for any sign that something might be amiss other than just Lord Keaton’s mischief, but he couldn’t tell. The fact that he couldn’t tell worried at him, gnawing at his insides.
Shouldn’t he be able to tell? She was his wife, wasn’t she?
“So, what happened today, to make you give up your sleep?” he asked against the rim of the mug.
She sighed. “I do not want to make your burdens heavier, Matthew, but I see no way around it. Keaton came to tell us that the bishop will be attending a Sunday service, either this week or the next. I suppose that will be the time where you can finally speak with him about this entire mess.”
He sighed, blowing the steam in whorling coils toward her before lowering the cup into his lap. “The time has arrived, has it? And he sent Keaton to deliver the message? I suppose I always knew they were in one another’s pockets. Was he rude to you?”
She shook her head. “No. I think he is even starting to like me, in his way. He seemed almost apologetic by the time he told me what he was about.”
That got a surprised little glimmer of amusement out of Matthew, who stood and offered her his hand, taking both his wife and his teacup upstairs so that he could rest properly as they continued to discuss the unfortunate necessities of the day.
When he saw that she’d already laid out a set of pajamas for him, draped over his side of the bed, he felt something wriggle free in his chest and plop right down into the tea simmering in his stomach.
It eased his shoulders and at the same time spiked him with guilt.
Why had he thought she’d been in this house, canoodling with an old flame? What cause had she ever given him to suspect something so absurd?
“Do you ever get angry, Matthew?” she asked him, shrugging her dressing gown off and placing it on the peg as he started to change into those thoughtfully chosen pajamas.
“What?” he said, startling and turning toward her.
Had he been so transparent?
“Why would you ask me that?”
She gave a wry little twist of her lips and shook her head.
She perched herself on the pink and white chair he’d brought her from the vicarage office and started to braid her hair, her head tilted thoughtfully to the side.
“I never do. Or I thought I never did,” she said.
“My mother used to fret about it. She’d sit me down and explain that it was good sometimes to get mad instead of sad.
That being pushed in the mud at school should make me want to push back, not sit and cry and try to figure out what I’d done to be so disliked. ”
He watched her. He listened. He climbed into the pajamas as she talked.
“When Abe was drummed out of the Bow Street Runners for punching that magistrate, I was almost jealous of him, you know,” she said, her fingers twisting and threading nimbly as the plait formed down over her shoulder.
“Because if it had been me in that courtroom, I would only have felt sad and powerless instead of doing the thing that Abe did, and feeling proud of being righteous for the rest of my days.”
“He punched a magistrate?” Matthew repeated, leaving the top of his pajamas half buttoned and climbing into the bed as she tied off the end of the braid with a ribbon.
“Hm? Oh, yes,” she said, giving an absent little titter.
“Sometimes I forget the whole world doesn’t know about that.
Abe has always felt everything and never been sorry for doing so.
I always thought it was because he was a boy, but now I know so many women who do the same thing, so I know it isn’t that.
I know that now. It was only me, all along, choosing wounds instead of weapons. ”
“It doesn’t sound as though it was a choice,” he countered, fascinated as he watched her loop the ribbon several times and tie it off with a series of loops and layers like a sailor. “It sounds like that is just naturally what you felt.”
“Perhaps,” she said, glancing up at him. “But I’ve never seen you angry, and so I wondered if we might be the same in that way. I’ve wondered it before tonight but was too shy to ask.”
“Then why ask tonight?” he wondered as she stood and smoothed her hand over the faded pink cushion in the chair before turning to join him on the bed.