Chapter 31 Tangled
Tangled
When I woke, I stubbornly kept my eyes shut, choosing comfort and warmth over the facts that I must face when I stepped back into the world.
But the smells wafting through the room were a very strong temptation. Roasting meat. Harker’s smoky tea. Harker himself, and the smell I’d come to know as his—herbs, brandy, old books.
It was the tea—and my desperate thirst—that finally coaxed my eyes open.
I found myself for the second time on his comfortable reading chair.
A teapot rested on the nearby table, as did a bowl of the same medicinal water.
I worked a hand free of the blankets I’d been wrapped in and touched my neck; a fresh bandage covered my newly opened wounds.
My chair had been moved near the hearth, and there I saw a rabbit roasting on a spit before the fire. My mouth watered.
I tried to sit up, but between snugly wrapped blankets, weak limbs, and a bruised tailbone, it proved beyond me. I was about to call out for Harker when I heard boots on the stairs.
“You’re awake,” he said with relief, coming to me.
I eyed him helplessly. “I’m afraid I’m tangled.”
He knelt beside me, a soft smile on his lips as he gradually unwrapped me. My eyes followed his movements. He had put on a clean shirt and rolled the cuffs, exposing the smooth skin and lines of muscle in his forearms, and the knobs and ridges of bone in his wrists and hands.
As the last blanket was peeled back, my breath caught. I was wearing only my shift and corset. My laces had been loosened, too, revealing the curve of my breasts and some of the valley between them.
“Forgive me,” he said, his eyes touching mine as he raised the edge of the blanket to cover me. A flush stained his cheeks for the first time since I’d met him. “Your dress was rain soaked and . . . bloodstained. Your breathing was—”
“Thank you,” I said. Our fingers brushed as I pressed the blanket in place.
He reached for the teapot and filled a cup, placing it in my hands. “Are you warm enough?”
I was indeed. It was a mystery how the nearness of Harker’s cold body could raise such heat in mine. “Yes. I feel much better.”
“Good.”
I blew steam from the cup and drank. Mrs. Moyle was fond of saying, “Tea sets everything right.” Maybe not everything, but it at least gave you a moment to rest and think.
“Where did you get the rabbit?” I asked, a tremor in my voice because of the way he was looking at me. Like I might break, and like that might break him.
“In the oak wood. The poachers aren’t bold enough to set snares so close to the chapel, and the rabbits are prolific.”
“How did you . . . ?” I trailed off, realizing what a silly question I was about to ask. He’d probably chased it down and caught it with his bare hands. “I see,” I finished lamely.
He raised one of those hands in the air between us, hesitating a moment while my heart jumped out of rhythm. Will he touch me this time? My eyes flicked to his lips, and then realizing there was no way he could have missed that, I let my gaze drop, swallowing dryly.
A lock of hair fell in front of my face, and with his raised hand, he pushed it back.
“Mina, you saved my life.”
I gave a shaky nod.
“I might have killed you.”
I looked up. “Aye. But you didn’t.”
He closed his eyes, and I watched the wave of pain wash over him. “I would have placed no value on the life you saved, had I taken yours. I place little value on it as it is.”
“And if you had died, I would have blamed myself. I . . .” I took a breath, hoping to steady my voice. “I don’t think I would have gotten over it.”
We eyed each other, and I became aware of a desire I’d never felt before. I wanted—more than anything, so hard it ached—to be in this man’s arms. Not as his prey, but in the usual way. Afraid he would read this in my eyes, I lowered them again.
He rose quietly, moving to an armchair opposite the tea table. Some of the wholeness I felt when he was close now seeped away, and fatigue from loss of blood crept back in.
I was trying to understand why he should have this effect on me when he asked, “Where do you suppose Jack has gone?”
My belly twisted. There were things I needed to say to him that I feared might revive the old distance between us. But I couldn’t put it off any longer.
“After Jack shot you,” I said, “Goosevar came. Then Jack shot him, too—full in the middle of the chest.”
Harker’s eyes rounded. “Killed?”
I shook my head. “Goosevar just knocked him down and carried him off.”
Harker searched my face. “Is he—do you think he’s still alive?”
“I believe he is. I’ve had a dream—a kind of vision, much like yours—and I think we may yet save him.” I took a deep breath. “Though maybe you wouldn’t choose to.”
“The only thing I blame Jack for is his roughness with you. If you were my sister and I thought a man had hurt or compromised you, I would put a bullet in him, too.”
Though I was relieved Harker hadn’t lost all compassion for Jack, I hesitated, dreading how he might react to the rest of what I had to say. Before I could go on, he said, “We’ll discuss this. But first I would like you to eat something.”
He moved to kneel beside the fire, where he carved off a hunk of crisped meat and placed it on a costly-looking dish that rested on the hearthstones. Then he spooned something lumpy and glistening from a pot that hung over the flames. Stewed apples. Again my mouth watered.
He handed me the dish along with a knife and fork. Too hungry to worry over how it looked, I pulled meat from the delicate bones with my fingers, licking away the grease. Once I’d cleared the plate, he filled it again. I ate that, too, and drank two more cups of tea.
Sinking back with a sigh, I said, “That may have been the best thing I’ve ever eaten.”
He laughed. “You’re just depleted. I’m happy to see your appetite. It will help you get your strength back.”
He took the dish and handed me a towel so I could clean my hands and face.
“Do you feel well enough to talk more now,” he asked, “or would you rather sleep?”
“I think it best we talk.” I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep again until I’d told him everything.
“All right.” He sat back down in the armchair. “You said you’ve had a vision?”
“Yes.” The blanket that covered my chest had slipped while I was eating, and I tugged it back up. “It was almost exactly like the one you had, with even the small details you described. But Jack was in my vision, too. After the handfasting, Goosevar brought him to us—alive.”
Harker shifted in his chair. “I hope he is,” he said carefully. “But do you think it might simply have been a dream? Inspired by my vision, and your fear for Jack.”
“I know what a dream feels like, Harker. That’s not what this was. It’s still so clear and real in my mind that it’s like it actually happened. I think it may have come to me through your connection to Goosevar, because of your . . . connection to me.”
Color stained his cheeks again. The vigor that my blood returned to him had made him easier to read. In the same careful tone, he asked, “What do you think it means?”
I held his gaze. “Goosevar is offering us a way to save Jack. A kind of trade.”
His face was still. Too still. “You mean to say Goosevar is attempting to use Jack to force our hand. That he will spare Jack if we marry.”
“. . . Yes?” I was wary of his outward calm. “What I’m wondering is whether we can trick him into thinking we’re giving him what he wants.”
“Trick him how?”
“If we did marry, hypothetically—”
“No.” I flinched at the iron in his voice. “I am not marrying you, Mina Penrose. Hypothetically or otherwise. I don’t begrudge Jack his protectiveness, but neither am I willing to trade your life for his. I very much doubt Jack would want that, either.”
“It wouldn’t have to be that, Harker. Please hear me out.”
Might as well have lit a powder blast in a tin mine. “It would be exactly that! Have you forgotten what happened to my mother?”
“I haven’t,” I assured him. “But Harker, it needn’t be a real marriage.” Now my cheeks flamed, and I hoped I wouldn’t have to explain myself further on that point. “We could speak our oaths and get Jack back. Goosevar need never know anything else about it.”
“He will expect a child, Mina.”
I sniffed and adjusted my grip on the blanket. “He can’t force us to make one.”
Our gazes locked, and I would have bet all the coins in my chemist’s tin that both of us were imagining the same thing. I could almost feel his hands on my skin . . . his breath in my hair . . . his lips on my lips . . .
Was it possible that he wanted to touch me as much as I wanted him to? Not as his prey, but in the usual way.
His eyes broke away. “You’re not thinking. You couldn’t go back home with Jack. The ruse would require you to live here. You would never have a normal life. A real husband, or children of your own. None of the things you deserve.”
This last line tugged at my heart. And he was right; I wasn’t thinking.
I hadn’t let myself think beyond saving Jack.
Because I could never be happy in any future life if I had a way to save him and didn’t.
It didn’t matter how Jack had changed since our parents died.
It didn’t matter that we’d grown apart. Jack was my twin, and he would do it for me.
He already has. Continuing in a job that was eating his soul away.
Spending his free hours inside a bottle because it was the only way he could bear it.
When Da first took him to the mines, he used to talk about running off to seek his fortune.
He once told Da he wanted to go to sea. Probably he’d been thinking about the smugglers along the Cornish coast, which people loved to tell stories about.
Da told him the work was no easier and the food was worse, and for a week he had hardly spoken to any of us.
What had kept him from just walking away after Mum and Da died?
Me. I had no one else. He stayed because of me.
Now it was my turn.