Chapter 1 #2
Least of all those in his own house.
A scream pierced the sleepy night air, raising the hair on Tom’s arms. He spun back. The buildings were motionless, the windows black, save for the street lamps glinting off their panes.
A dog yowled in the distance.
A broken shutter clickety-clacked back and forth in the breeze.
Nothing. He yanked the wet shirt back over his head, but instead of taking the alley to the smithy, he backtracked. Meg would despise him for returning.
He would tap on her window, make certain all was well, but she would call him ridiculous and say he fabricated the danger to see her again.
Mayhap he had.
A grin worked at his lips and that same odd sensation sparked through him again.
She had kissed him. Why that was significant he was not certain, but it rattled something in his chest. Perhaps because she’d always been timid to his kiss—a little frightened, a little uncertain, her lips always quivering beneath his like a bird ready to take flight.
But tonight was different.
She was different.
Her arms had pulled him closer, deeper, than he’d ever been. Her lips had explored him. She’d still been afraid—he knew that—but in a new way, and it emboldened her affection instead of dimming its power.
Hopping over a puddle, Tom crossed the street to the apothecary and glanced through the white-paned glass. Blackness stared back at him. Should he truly summons her?
His luck, Uncle Owen would stumble out here with his knotty cane and uncouth words. If nighttime excursions riled the old goat now, the prospect of a marriage would send him thundering to kingdom come.
Perhaps it was just as well Tom would be away for a fortnight.
Give Meg time to soften him.
If such a thing were possible.
Smoke. The smell slapped Tom in the face, mingled with the cloying odor of whale oil. What? The window fogged. A muffled crash—
Tom darted for the door, heart faltering, as he jerked at the brass handle.
Locked. “Meg!” Another bang inside the shop, distant as if it were in the bedchambers.
Voices lifted, ones he didn’t recognize.
“Meg, open up!” Backing up, he grinded his teeth and barreled into the door with his shoulder.
The hinges groaned but didn’t give. He charged again.
Glass showered over him, pinging to the ground, as he busted through and stumbled inside.
Heat blasted him in the face.
Behind the rear counter, flames licked up the knob-drawered cabinets, flashing light into the darkness, illuminating the room. Broken delftware pottery. Overturned leech jar. Tangled wet hair sprawled on the floor—
Meg. His gut clenched as he drove his knees to the floorboards next to her. He swallowed her up against him. Her head craned back over his arm. Blood on her face, in her eyes, her hair, everywhere. God, save her.
The prayer came too quickly. Before he could pull it back.
He was not certain anyone heard or not.
“Meg, ye’re fine.” He staggered to his feet, started for the door, but a gunshot in the back of the shop splintered him with panic. Mr. Foxcroft. Shouts lifted, a guttural scream, one Tom knew by heart.
Coughing, smoke stinging his eyes, he lunged outside and eased Meg onto the smooth flagway. He shook as he palmed back her hair. Then smeared the blood. Then probed her neck.
A weak pulse throbbed his fingertips.
Alive.
Barely.
Meg, Meg, my Meg.
“Tommy?” Mrs. Musgrave was already bustling out of the neighboring millinery shop with her cat, and across the street, Mr. Telfner thrust his head out of the stationer’s shop window.
“Lawks, what goes on there?” he yelled, yanking off his nightcap.
“Fire!” Tom stood on knees that jellied. “Get men over here. We need help.” He sprang back toward the door, but gray-haired Mrs. Musgrave hustled in his path.
“Dear boy, you cannot think of going back in there—”
“Stay with Miss Foxcroft.” He darted past her, into the building, and pulled his damp shirt over his nose. The flames had reached the ceiling. The standing clock in the corner was gone. The rear counter black. The brass scales a discolored silver.
He ducked his head and hurtled through the flaming doorway, into a sweltering hall, where Mr. Foxcroft’s bedchamber door stood ajar. A body lay limp across the threshold, the face and neck blood splattered.
No.
Bent backwards over the bed, Mr. Foxcroft screeched out a curse, struggling against the man atop him. A knife flashed. Then plunged.
Tom leaped on the stranger’s back and slung him sideways. They crashed together into a full-length mirror. It toppled over them. Shards everywhere. Puncturing his skin.
Run. He tried to scream the warning, but all that came out was a low grunt as he rolled with the assailant. Pain jabbed in too many places. A fist cracked his jaw. He swung his own.
Blow answered blow like a blinding torrent.
Everything dimmed, black at the corner of his vision—except the shadowed face hovering over him, the smoke constricting his throat, the metallic taste spewing from his mouth and lips.
With raging power, he lunged his forehead into the man’s face. A sickening bash of skulls, then the figure fell back.
Tom pounced on him, hands throttling his throat. He squeezed until veins bulged in the neck, until the eyes bugged wide with a gurgling fear. Meg. Her face, the wretched wounds. He couldn’t let go. He couldn’t stop. For what this beast had done to her, to Mr. Foxcroft—
No. Some vague command, in the recesses of his mind, forced his fingers to uncurl.
He rained down his fist instead, until the figure no longer gasped or pleaded or stirred.
Tom’s heart stammered as he stood. Numbness—confusion—chilled the blood in his veins as he glanced about the room.
Hot orange and red light flickered up every wall.
The flames roared as loud as his questions. What is happening?
He turned to the bed.
Empty.
Except for the bloodstains. Mr. Foxcroft—
Sparks landed on Tom’s skin, fueling him back into action. He seized the man on the floor, pulled the weight over his shoulders, as something creaked overhead.
A blazing beam crashed to their left, blocking the door.
Tom whirled for the window.
With a heaving cough, he smashed his boot through the closed shutters and hurled the man through.
More creaking behind him. A snap of wood. Then white-hot pain lanced Tom’s back as he dove headfirst out the window. He tasted dirt and anguish. Groaning, he writhed against the flames, suffocating the pain, until his clothes and skin no longer burned.
Meg. His mind swam, like a ship bobbing in and out of a turbulent wave. Got to get Meg—
“Over here!” Voices anchored him back to the alley. He told himself to move, to crawl to her, but hands touched his face before he had the strength.
“Tommy, dear boy.” Mrs. Musgrave’s crooning tone. “You have lost the sense God bestowed you.”
God had bestowed nothing on Tom McGwen.
Least of all sense.
“Meg—”
“Lie still. You are burnt.” Shuffling footsteps, humming voices, the sickening smash of more timber caving. “All is well, dear boy. Do not fret.”
But when his vision finally cleared and the light brushed faintly across Mrs. Musgrave’s wrinkled face, the lines of her lips were hard and uncertain. As if there were something she had not told him. Something she didn’t wish to tell him.
Tom’s stomach gutted. “Meg—”
“Dear, I am so sorry.” Mrs. Musgrave sniffled. “Most terribly sorry. I turned for but one moment. Poor Lenox, my little cat, was wandering too close to the house, and I hurried over to fetch him, never imagining that—that I would find …”
Unbearable fear closed his throat. “Find … what?”
“That she would be gone.” Mrs. Musgrave dissolved into a sob. “Just gone.”