Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Molly opened her eyes but she saw absolutely nothing.
How could she when the world had ended? There was nothing left for her now. All that she had hoped for, all that she had thought may happen to bring her happiness, had gone.
“Whatever you decide to do with your life, Molly Kimble, perhaps there are better gifts to give a gentleman on Christmas Day than lies.”
Molly shut her eyes again. It was easier if she just pretended she was asleep again; anything to ignore the physical pain that was battering her heart, bruising it.
She was lying on the makeshift bed that she and Edmund had made just one night before. Sleepy wintery sunlight was seeping through the windows, so it was morning. How had she managed to sleep with such agony in her soul?
Molly brought a hand to her face and brushed away some of the salt that had dried on her face from her incessant crying the night before. Exhaustion then, it seemed, had been the only way she had fallen asleep.
Everything was quiet.
Tom and Jack had gone, their petty threats absolutely destroyed by Edmund’s savagery. The moment he had disappeared, her brothers had seemed lost, unsure what they were even doing there.
“Just be grateful that he did not want to take you with him,” Jack had said, his good heart attempting to bring her a little joy. “He seems like a terrible man, no gentleman at all.”
And he had stared at her with absolute horror as she had yelled at him, “You have no idea what you speak of – you do not know him at all!”
Tears had broken through her resolve at that moment and both her brothers had stared at her with abject horror.
This was Molly. Molly did not cry.
They had left not too long after that, abandoning her once again in the house that now represented so much of what she hated about herself, about them, about their family.
Their mother would have cried, too, to see what had become of her babies.
The Bletchley brothers had not locked the door. She was not trapped there, no longer kidnapped, but no longer with her knight and that was what hurt the most. It was like Tom had stabbed her with that ridiculous knife he always kept on his person.
Tom had not stabbed her. It was Edmund who had caused her the most pain.
“God damnit, Molly, you have proved him right. You are just like the rest of them, like your brothers. Everything you are saying is a lie.”
A tear rolled down her cheek and Molly did not attempt to brush it away. How could she argue with such words? She had barely been able to then, and she certainly could not know.
It was impossible to know why she had chosen such a strange path, but every step down the path of the lie made it almost impossible to step back to safety, to honesty, to truth.
Because of the way he had looked at her. Edmund had looked at her as though she was the most beautiful woman in London, and she had felt it.
“That was an orgasm. You came for me, Molly, and there is no higher compliment for a gentleman.”
Molly lay back down on the makeshift bed. This was the place; this was where Edmund had kissed her, had loved her. This was where he had shown her what it was to be loved, what making love between a man and a woman should be.
She had never experienced such a connection; beyond the pleasure, and there was quite a lot of it, there had been something else. Something between them. Something that felt special, different from anything else she had ever experienced.
It was love. She knew that now, knew it as soon as her secret had been revealed.
“Those were my brothers. I had met with them to attempt to persuade them to leave their crimes behind them – as I have!”
Another tear escaped her eyes, falling into her hair as Molly stared up at the ceiling.
It was not fair, and yet she had brought all of this misery onto herself.
This place where she had been her happiest for years, where she had experienced the best Christmas of her life; it was where she had become whole again.
And now she was broken. Now that Edmund had gone, and forever for she knew he would never want to see her again, he had taken a part of her heart with him. She would never be whole again, and what was perhaps most surprising was that she did not want to be whole again.
Something about Edmund had completed her, and now that she had lost him, she did not want to still feel whole. It would not make sense. It would make the loss of him somehow more real than he had been.
There was a loud knock on the door. Molly’s eyes snapped open. She had dreamt it; she had surely drifted into painful sleep as she thought about Edmund and how much she cared for him.
But no – another knock on the door resounded loudly around the room and Molly, startled and a little dazed from hunger, scrambled to her feet.
“Ed-Edmund?” She whispered, her voice cracking. “Is that you?”
The door handle twisted and as it opened, it was immediately clear that the person knocking on the door was not Edmund. This person was smaller, more rounded, and laughed like a foghorn as she entered.
“God almighty, I do not think I have ever been mistaken for an Edmund before!” She chuckled. “Edwina, perhaps, but – Molls? Is that you?”
The woman stepped into the growing wintery morning light, and Molly recognised Sal, sister of her late husband. A woman of true courage, and one who had been at her side when – at the time – she thought she was experiencing the very worst a woman could.
“Sal,” Molly’s voice croaked.
Sal stepped forward and took Molly’s hands in hers with a kind smile on her face. “Oh, Mollsy. What trouble have you got yourself into now?”
And those softly spoken words, said without judgement, were all that was needed to tip Molly over the edge.
As she burst into tears and wracking sobs, all she was able to say was, “K-kidnapped…with my knight.”
Every footstep felt heavy as Edmund stomped along the street until he saw something familiar. There; the King’s Head. He was but a mile away from his lodgings and for every step he took, he was another step further from Molly.
Molly Kimble. Her shock and sadness at his last words were seared onto his eyes, and he could not look away.
She would never forgive him – he would never forgive himself. It was a ridiculous situation they found themselves in, one that he would not have believed, and yet the way they had met, the lies she had told, what he had believed…
So lost in his own thoughts, Edmund lurched suddenly as he realised he had walked past his lodgings. The repeatedly mended door was slightly open and the smell of thinly watered stew was pouring from it.
Edmund’s nose curled as his stomach rumbled. No matter how hungry he was, he was rarely famished enough for Mrs Bird’s lodgings.
But if she was in the kitchen, that meant he could probably sneak past her, and…
“Mr Northmere, your rent is due!”
Edmund flinched. He had only managed to put one foot on the stairs but instantly Mrs Bird had appeared in the hallway, glowering at him with a menacing ladle in one hand.
“Your rent is due and it has been due for three days – and I have not seen hide nor hair of you to demand it!” Mrs Bird spat, her eyes narrowed. “Give me my money!”
Fury and bitterness had been simmering just below the surface as Edmund had walked home, the pain of his last encounter with Molly still burning in his heart, and so he did not respond as he typically did.
“You will have your money,” he said coldly, taking another step up towards his bed chamber, where there would surely be warmth, and soft though hardly clean linens for him to collapse into. “Just give me a few more days, Mrs Bird, and I can – ”
“Days?” Mrs Bird did not speak, but screeched. “You are no good, Mr Northmere, and you are no good for your rent money!”
Edmund swallowed down his temper, forcing himself not to pour all his bitterness and resentment at her. Whatever Mrs Bird was, she was not the one who had broken his heart.
The thought of it made him shiver.
“I am always good for it, Mrs Bird, you know that,” he said, allowing the exhaustion to seep into his words. “But I have had a very tiring few days, and all I wish to do at this moment is sleep. You will have your money.”
He held his landlady’s gaze and eventually she looked away. “Busy Christmas then, by the sound of it. Did you get anything nice?”
Edmund bit his lip. He had unwrapped the most fantastic, the most unexpected gift in the whole world. Now he had lost it, and he doubted whether he would ever be permitted to unwrap Molly Kimble again.
“Yes,” he said, holding his voice steady as much as he could. “Very nice. Good morning, Mrs Bird.”
Edmund had taken just one more step towards his room when Mrs Bird’s voice cut through his thoughts like a hot knife through butter.
“I told them to wait.”
He paused. The words did not quite make sense, but what was perhaps more concerning was the gleeful, slightly mischievous tone of her voice.
Edmund looked down and saw that an evil glint of a smile was on Mrs Bird’s face. “What do you mean, madam?”
Mrs Bird’s smirk grew wider. “Them two men who arrived for you. Knew you by name, they did, and asked where the knight was. I told them there were no knights here, but I did have an Edmund Northmere, and that they could wait.”
Ice fell into Edmund’s heart as he croaked. “W-Wait?”
She nodded, her smile broad. “In your room. Which you have not, at this moment, paid for.”
His frozen heart now stopped. Surely not; why had the Bletchley brothers followed him here, how had they known where he was lodging?
Had the last few days been part of something bigger, something more devious and darker? Had they known about him for days, weeks, months even, and now the next stage of their plan is about to come to fruition?
Edmund stared into the grinning face of his landlady, and found to his surprise that his pain came not from the imminent fear of meeting Tom and Jack again…but that Molly Kimble had truly played him for a fool.