The Red Cottage

Chapter 1

Juleshead Village

North Cornwall, England

“We shall get murdered for this.” Frigid water numbed her legs as Meg Foxcroft abandoned the rowboat and plunked knee-deep into moonlit water. She laughed, out of breath from the shocking cold, as she waded for the rocky shore. “Hurry up!”

“Not sure what it matters now.”

“It happens to matter a great deal. It is dreadful enough I have lost my shoes, let alone the hour.” Before she could scamper up the rocks, his freckled hands snatched her waist. They pulled her back. “Tom—”

“Let him grumble.”

“You are not the one who shall be forced to endure scolding an entire fortnight.” A wave swayed them back and forth, seeping the water higher up her dress, more evidence that would be impossible to hide from Uncle. “Now let go of me, you terrible fool.”

“I wouldnae call terrible the hands that hold yer life, lass.” He dragged her deeper and she squealed.

“You would not dare—”

“Recant yer words.”

“Tom!”

“Do it or down ye go.”

“You are every ounce of absurdity. If I should come dragging home in the middle of the night, drenched without nary a stocking, he shall accuse us to no end and the village shall murmur for weeks.”

With a roaring laugh, he dunked her beneath the water, coldness engulfing her the same time her heartbeat thrummed in a mix of delight and fury. She broke the surface with a gasp, swiveled in his arms, raised a hand to slap him.

But he caught her fingers, as he always did, and his lips crashed into hers.

Surprise jolted her. He tasted of salt and power and unbearable sweetness, like the confections Uncle was always warning would make her sick.

Her chest hammered. Her mind swam—smoothly, softly, like the waves they stood in—until the only thing she understood was the red stubble on his cheeks, the tickle of wet hair on the back of his neck, the familiar firmness of his muscled arms.

“Ye are the one who is impossible.” He pulled back too soon and did as she’d asked.

As if she truly wanted to go home.

As if she ever did.

Silhouetted vessels bobbed on the water, and the foggy night breeze smelled of fish and sea and distant chimney smoke. She wrung out the skirt of her dress, then her hair, while he yanked off his dripping linen shirt and tossed it over his shoulder.

“Ready?”

She nodded, but she wasn’t. His fingers laced with hers. In the shadow of warehouses and decaying buildings and quiet alleys, they slipped through the village with neither lantern nor shoes, the cobblestones gritty against her feet.

In the morning, Uncle would tell her how many shillings a new pair would cost. He would ask how she could be so reckless and where she had lost them, but she wouldn’t tell him the sea had stolen them away.

Or that she had slipped into the night again with Tom.

That they had taken out the fishing boat.

That they’d found a quiet shore somewhere, built a sand cottage in the moonlight, laughed so hard her stomach hurt, watched the stars, lost time.

Uncle wouldn’t understand.

Neither did anyone else.

But the night held things no one could see in the day.

This was theirs, forbidden or not—and though people whispered now, one day she and Tom McGwen would build a cottage not made of sand.

She’d plant lilac bushes outside the windows, and he would paint the outside a bright and brilliant red.

They wouldn’t run about barefoot anymore.

No one would call him “Tom boy” nor her an unruly hoyden.

Because she would wear proper dresses, ones that hadn’t been patched and sewn from all her adventures.

And he would smoke a pipe every evening from his upholstered chair.

Together, they’d entertain the most esteemed villagers, including the clergyman, and not even tattling Mrs. Whalley would find blunder in them.

A sigh gathered at her throat when they reached the weathered, green-painted apothecary shop. The bowed windows reflected the orange streetlight.

“I’ll be by to see ye in the morning. Save me a bit of bread pudding if ye think of me.”

If she thought of him?

She thought of nothing else.

Sadness choked her, an unprepared pierce of longing and too many other things to count. He should not have kissed her tonight. In all the years she’d known him, he had only done so on the rarest occasion.

Always when she was unprepared.

Or when she was angry at him for some trivial thing.

Or when he was leaving.

Like now.

“I want to go with you.”

He shook his head and grinned, messing with the wet hair draped across her shoulder. But it was in him too, in his eyes—a reluctance to walk away.

In all these years, he had never departed Juleshead.

Neither had she.

“It will be fine,” he whispered, glancing at the window to make certain her uncle did not stir from inside. “I shall be back in a fortnight or sooner.”

“Unless they ask you to stay.”

“They won’t.”

“What if they do?”

“Ye worry too much, lass.”

“And you not enough.”

He pulled her under the arched doorway, finger over his lips, gesturing her to be silent. “Go on before that old goat comes out here waking the world with his uproar.”

Tears stung. She was ridiculous for them, she knew. But they flooded over anyway, in testament to her fears, and she closed her eyes when his calloused finger thumbed them away.

“Och, but there is a bit of softness in that ferocious heart of yers.”

“Do not tease me.”

“What do ye want me to do?”

“I want you to …” She glanced at his face, the splendor of every handsome angle and hard chisel of his jaw. Then his eyes. Blue. Alive. Like the sea, early in the morning, when the ripples twinkled with burning sunlight.

Then … his lips.

Her heart lurched in wild anticipation. Leaning into him for the first time, she swallowed his neck with her arms, kissed him, and pulled back so fast she had to fight for air. “I want you to leave before Uncle catches us. Go.”

He laughed but stilled her hand before she grabbed the door. “Meg.”

“What?”

“When I come back, I’m going to marry ye.”

Blood rushed to her face and her cheeks warmed with the same velocity as her soul. Before she had a chance to answer, he disappeared into the night and fog. Tom, wait.

He was a fool, because Uncle would never allow them matrimony.

Not when Tom was still without his own fishing boat and they were both penniless, and still as far away from their red cottage as Juleshead was to the moon.

But as she eased open the door with quiet steps, ecstasy raced in her heart. Her stomach fluttered despite all the reasons it should be sinking. Marry ye. His low voice, with its soothing playfulness and Scottish lilt and clumsy gentleness.

He was wonderful.

Whether he married her in a fortnight when he returned or in twenty years when Uncle finally relented and Tom had his boat, she would wait.

Something creaked.

Meg froze halfway across the dark shop, her hand grazing the front counter. Had Uncle heard and awakened?

But the noise had not come from the open doorway on the left side of the room, which led to Uncle’s private office, their small parlor, and two bedrooms.

Instead, it had come from the rear counter.

Air trapped in her lungs the same time a shadow darted along the shelves. Bottles crashed. Glass busted. An overwhelming fragrance of herbs and earthy mixtures struck the air in an aromatic warning.

Hunkering, Meg skittered across the room in her dripping bare feet. Thieves had broken inside more than once. Usually, a desperate farmer with a sick wife or child. Or a village street urchin eager to swipe something for trade.

But never in the middle of the night.

Not when someone was home.

Whoosh.

Another shadow lunged in front of her, blocking the doorway. Panic spiked. She stumbled back, screamed, just as the figure lifted something over his head and swung.

Wood and metal cracked her forehead. Uncle. Her body smacked the floorboards. The blackness deepened. Uncle, help—

“Use the gun.”

“Too loud.” Slamming, thumping, bottles and vials and bowls busting. “Light it up.”

A groan ripped from her throat. She rolled once, pushed up on her elbows, grabbed a cabinet and pulled herself up.

“Rumbold, the girl—”

A second blow struck the back of her skull, battering her with pain. Her mind flashed too many things at once. The crumbling sand cottage. Saltwater in her face. The boat rocking, rocking, rocking.

Tom.

Blackness sucked her under before she could cry his name.

He was every kind of an idiot.

Blood simmered hot in Tom’s veins, racing his heart, as he jogged faster down the blackened street. Too many impulses stampeded him at once. The urge to take off running. Leap and click his heels. Bang on one of the shop windows and whoop until he was hoarse that Meggie Foxcroft would be his wife.

But the sickness crawled through him again. With cold and festering power, it gnawed at all the good things in him, all the energy, until his steps were weighted.

He’d been so close to telling her the truth.

Tonight, as they’d sat cross-legged in the sand, with her hair tickling his face, her words tripping into laughs, their fingers bumping and grazing as they built shapes in the sand …

He had wanted to tell her.

He always wanted to tell her.

Strange, because she knew every other part of him.

She knew that he still ate raspberries late in the summer, despite the hives, because they reminded him of Mamm’s trifles back home.

She knew that he belted Gaelic songs when he took out the boat alone.

She knew that he only attended church because she wanted him to, that he fell asleep on any carriage ride, that he sometimes rearranged her uncle’s perfectly organized jars just to irritate the old goat.

She knew everything.

All of him.

Except what niggled his heart late at night, when he finally climbed into his pallet in the room above the blacksmith shop. Except how insane her fears tonight truly were.

No one back in North Brumcastle would beg Tom McGwen to stay when he returned tomorrow.