Chapter Four
He crouched on the ground in the dell, out of the sharp autumn wind, wishing he might build his fire up enough to warm him through. He dared not. The smoke from such a blaze would most surely expose him to discovery.
His horse, which bore the unimaginative name of Midnight, grazed nearby, or tried to. With the arrival of autumn, the green had died back and there remained little of value to the beast. He would have to find a way to buy or steal some proper feed before the horse became famished.
As famished as its owner’s heart.
He had discovered over the course of the past seven years that a man’s heart could live on very little. Sometimes no more than the crumbs of promises.
When he’d been a young lad growing up in the small world of his mother’s inn, he’d thought he wanted nothing more than to see the world.
Distant lands he’d read about in books. The Far East, and Egypt with its pyramids.
He would carry his possessions in a pack upon his back, sign on to a sailing ship, live for the moment and take in, with amazement, all the world had to show him.
That was before he’d seen Torie Henshaw for the first time.
She’d come into the innyard with her father, their mare hitched to a trap, limping.
He’d seen Torie—Victoria Henshaw—before, to be sure.
One could not live in a town as small as Tordall and fail to know the vicar, and the vicar’s family.
But on that occasion, when he’d looked up from his book where he’d been accompanying Marco Polo on his trade route, and straight into her eyes…
Something had happened to his heart.
A wound, it had been, of the most pleasurable kind. He had not known then that over the ensuing days and weeks, in moments stolen from ordinary time, Torie Henshaw would insert herself into that wound and claim his heart for all time.
After coming to know her, coming to love her, he’d surrendered every dream but one. She became his wonder and his single treasure. His goal, a life with her.
Forbidden, as it turned out.
All through that summer, a time lit so brightly in his mind it still threatened to blind him, they’d met.
At first openly and innocently, as friends do.
They had a great deal in common, both loving books and music and poetry.
Both educated by their mothers, each of whom had married a man that perhaps she should not have—hers the daughter of a minor lord, his a canny businessman’s child.
When her father had forbidden the association, labeling him a half-breed gypsy—aye, Torie had spared him none of it, pouring out her grief as honestly as she did her love—their meetings had turned clandestine. For neither of them could, by then, imagine giving up the other.
Days out upon the moors, in sunshine and in rain. There’d been a ruined shepherd’s hut at the top of High Fell, where they’d weathered the latter.
The place where she’d given herself to him.
So sweetly had she done that, so earnestly and gracefully, the act had become something almost sacred, cherished in his mind.
He could scarce think about it yet.
The continuation of their association had been discovered. He never found out who it was that had gone running to Vicar Henshaw with the tale. One of her sisters, perhaps. Or a parishioner.
I saw your daughter, vicar, with that scamp o’ a lad from the inn.
He should have known word would get out.
But he’d been making arguments for their running off together.
Gretna Green was not so far. He had a bit of money set aside from the extra work he did, both at the inn and down the village.
He had access to a coach and team, and it was just a matter of planning when.
He’d waited too long. Discovering the truth, the vicar had locked Torie in her room. Taking pity on her, her sister, Patience, had let her out and they’d met to make their plans. He would bring the coach and meet her the next night at the foot of High Fell, if she could get away.
She had come with all her possessions in a cloth bag, hidden beneath her cloak. He’d been waiting with a light rig and his father’s horses, but before they could start away, the vicar had appeared out of the darkness with a stout band of his neighbor men at his back. And a rope.
They’d taken Torie away, two of the neighbors had. They’d taken her away screaming. The vicar and the other men, ominously silent, had remained.
At first, he’d been certain they meant to hang him. But trees were few at the foot of the fell, and though they fought him down and placed the stout noose around his throat, it had not been in order to string him up.
Instead, they’d tied the rope to the saddle of one of their horses and ridden off across the moor.
He’d been certain—very certain—he was going to die. Even then, his thoughts had been for Torie. How would she find out about it? What would she do without him?
He was convinced neither of them could exist without the other.
Then his thoughts had turned inward—shock, pain, and terror overwhelming him. Fortunately, when he could run behind the horse no longer and lost his footing, he landed on his back, and though his clothing soon shredded, it served to protect, in limited fashion, the flesh beneath.
But the noose—aye, that choked him as well as if they’d strung him from a tree.
He soon lost consciousness. They must have left him for dead way out upon the moor. Left his body to rot like the trash they deemed him.
He had not been dead. Badly injured, aye. And he’d got the message. If he followed his every desire, went back and tried to see Torie, if he so much as returned to the inn, it would become his last act upon the earth.
He still remembered waking there on the moor, cold to the bones, only the pain telling him he lived still. Abraded flesh. Two broken bones, as he found out later. And his throat—
What to do? He’d made a promise to Torie, he had, that he’d never leave her. That his love would endure forever.
Forever, my love.
He would have to go back for her. On that terrible night, lying on his back where they’d left him, staring up at the stars and a sharp crescent moon, he’d had no idea how.
It had taken him many years, but he’d returned. What he did not know was how her life had gone during that intervening time.
Had they told her he was dead? To be sure, they would have—for it was what they’d believed. Had she moved on with her life? Forgotten him?
Nay, never.
But she might well have married. Women did. Her father, in all his propriety—his vicious propriety—would expect it of her.
By the time he’d recovered sufficiently to think clearly and make plans, Jamie feared it was too late. If Torie had moved on and married, she could not be his. And his return might ruin things for her. Cause her more pain.
It had been that—only that—keeping him away.
But though he had recovered, slowly, and found a patron in a man to whom a kindly fate introduced him—one Master Elroy—though he traveled with that good man and helped to build up his horse stock, though he’d seen some of the world even as once he’d craved doing, his heart could not forget.
Upon Justin Elroy’s death, when the dust cleared and he found himself freed of obligations, he knew he must return. Because he had to know. Even if Torie was married with babes at her knee—not his—he must find a way to return without anyone knowing who he was. To see her without being seen.
That meant keeping away from his family and, God knew, hers. Keeping clear of anyone who might recognize him, yet still at large to roam the countryside. To find her.
A highwayman was anonymous. He came and went swiftly in the dark. He might thus learn the lay of the land. Was Torie still in the district? Alive, or dead?
Surely, surely by returning to Yorkshire he would hear, see, learn something.
Then, three nights ago, his patience had been rewarded. As had his hope.
When she’d stepped down out of the coach into the road—well, at first he’d not known her.
Lord Beckenham, the coachman had said, and he’d thought to make another escapade of it, playing at his role, maybe relieve them of a few trifles.
When he’d fired at the outrider, who appeared little more than a lad, he’d been careful to miss.
Yet she’d caught all his attention. Something about her had, as if his heart knew her even though she appeared so changed.
It had been seven years.
Gone were the wild, nut-brown curls. The ease of movement that, to him, had always made it seem as if she danced rather than walked through life.
This woman was gathered tight, wrapped in a dingy black cloak, even her hair strictly confined.
His heart told him the truth, and when she spoke—
She had not known him either. He’d been sure of that. Well, mayhap there at the end…
After all, she must believe what they’d told her, that he was dead.
Crouched beside his meager fire, he felt his heart quail at the pain of that. How had she survived? Had it changed her?
Aye, unquestionably. The woman standing in the road alongside Lord Beckenham’s carriage was not the girl he had known. No more than he was the lad she had known, the one with the merry heart.
But he’d learned something valuable, had he not? She was not living at the vicarage, nor did it appear she had wed. Somehow, she was part of Lord Beckenham’s household.
Which meant he knew where to find her. If he dared.