Chapter 2
Something scraped across her face. Rough, like callouses moving in circular motions. She smelled too many things at once. The revolting odor of fish. The choking linger of smoke.
Then something softer.
Fainter.
The sour, grassy smell of a wool coat in her face. Help. The whimper lifted, but she could not hear her own voice—and it didn’t matter anyway, because the jostling didn’t stop.
Clomp, clomp. Horse hooves trotting faster.
Reins snapping.
Heavy breathing.
“You won’t die.” A command—whispered, hoarse, like a lifeline she was meant to grope for. The blackness grew heavy. Her mind screamed, then silenced.
The next time she awoke, the bumping and jarring had ceased. The arms clamped her tighter, until the wool was suffocating and her head split with pain. Let me be. Everything hurt, as her weight lifted, as a door groaned into airy coolness. Please. Let me be.
She must be asleep, because nothing was real to her.
Sometimes she saw a pink pinafore with white lilacs brimming from the pockets. The tiny petals floated, carried by sunlight and wind, and she swatted her hands to catch them. They melted away before she had the chance.
Other times she climbed onto a window sill. She brushed back a frothy curtain. Someone laughed in her ear. Two yellow-beaked puddle ducks waddled into view, quacking, but they wandered away as quickly as the laughter faded.
No.
Loss churned through her, pushing tears to her closed eyelids as she touched her hand to the glass window. The curtain whipped at her face, harsh and dark.
Stay, please.
“Lie still, Meggie.” The voice drew her back from the dream, as he situated her body on cold, dewy grass. “They’ll find you here. I promise.”
Whimpering, she latched on to the scratchy woolen coat. She strained for a name, for a face to accompany the voice, but the calloused fingers pried her loose before she could remember. She was back with the pink pinafore and blooming lilacs.
Then the white-paned window, and laughter, and ducks.
Then the darkness.
The terrible, enfolding darkness—where she was entirely alone.
He should have gotten there faster. He should have run when he heard the scream.
Another shiver wracked through Tom, despite the warm morning sun cutting through the fog. His steps slowed outside the rubble-stone blacksmith shop with its iron-barred windows and jettied first floor.
He couldn’t go in.
He couldn’t go anywhere.
What do I do? Meade, the blacksmith, must have already started the fire before his daily walk to Kingfisher’s Tavern. Heat poured out of the wide, open entrance doors, pulling at Tom with a force he couldn’t resist.
Inside the workroom, he sagged into a chair by the forge. He had to think. He just needed to sit here, breathe, make sense of all the jumbled pieces flailing in his brain.
Meg was gone.
Disappeared.
No.
He shook his head and stood again, wiped his face, choked in the familiar smell of hot steel and soot. All night long, he’d combed the village like a madman. He’d banged on doors. He’d awakened the groom at the livery stable, then the servant boy at the nearby coaching inn.
No one had spotted an injured girl, nineteen years of age with hair the color of nutmeg.
No one had seen anything.
Fury sizzled inside him, like the blue-orange flames in the brick forge. He groped for something. Anything. Metal tongs—and he sent them clattering into the opposite wall.
“Do that again, and I’ll be beatin’ it o’er your head.” Meade filled the workroom threshold. His puffy, red-tinted skin already gleamed with sweat, and corded muscles strained beneath his rolled-up shirt. His eyes hardened. “Looks like someone already did.”
Tom dragged his sleeve across his mouth. He tasted blood, ashes, terror.
“I heard.” Meade grabbed his cowhide apron from the peg. His movements were stiff, measured, as if he weren’t certain what to do or say. “Down at the tavern. Blabber of the fishermen.”
“Mr. Foxcroft didn’t come out.” The words nearly stuck in Tom’s throat. “He should have had time.”
A nod.
“He was hurt.”
Another nod.
“Someone stole Meg.”
Meade pumped the bellows. Fire whooshed, sparks snapped, and when he finally glanced up, his features blazed a shade redder. “Turn around.”
“I have to go—”
“I said turn, boy.” Meade seized Tom by the arm, forced him around. He said nothing about the burnt holes in the linen of Tom’s back. Or the endless cuts. Or the oozing, swelling blisters. “Sit down.”
“I have to look for her.”
“Sit down.”
Tom sat back into the chair, grasped the splintery wooden armrests, while Meade ripped the shirt from Tom’s back. He hissed in pain.
Neither spoke.
Meade’s breath was heavy and ale-scented on Tom’s neck as the man rubbed cold alkanet ointment into the burns. His fingers were rough. Careful too. Like the man himself.
When he’d dabbed the last cut with a rag, he gestured toward the door in the back of the workroom. “Go upstairs. Get a new shirt.”
“I don’t know what to do.” Tom clenched his fists when all he wanted was to pound them. He looked at the ceiling. Then the floor. Then the stoic face of Meade—as if the man who had housed Tom for the past seven years could somehow make everything right.
“Only two things I know of.” The blacksmith frowned. “Take to the bottle of gin behind that keg over there.” He motioned to it without meeting Tom’s eyes. “Or pray.”
“Miss, can you hear me?” Rustling, then a brush of smooth leather along her hairline. “No, no, such an idea is preposterous. She cannot be so disturbed. Not in this state.”
Agony rippled across her temples with breath-stealing power. She grasped the hand on her face, though she wasn’t certain if she should thrash it away or hug it closer. Help.
“Ride back and return with the barouche.”
“With all due respect, my lord, I am uncertain if such a carriage can endure this slope. The gig perhaps—”
“Impossible. She will need room to remain prostrate.” A sigh. “I shall examine her myself when we arrive home, and it is my greatest hope this forehead gash is the only injury rendering her unconscious.”
A monotone voice answered, then horse hooves pounded—as if she were now alone with whoever cradled her face.
“I am uncertain if you can hear me, miss, but I shall do my best to alleviate your discomfort as quickly as possible. For what it is worth, I have read every volume on modern medicine that could be found in my father’s library. I hope the knowledge shall finally meet its use.”
Too many words. They swished and sloshed along the painful walls of her mind, like a porridge she spooned through but didn’t wish to eat. Of their own will, her eyes slitted open.
Light stabbed her. Branches swayed, budded with green, then a face dipped closer than she was prepared for.
“Your consciousness returns. That is excellent.” He shifted her closer. He smelled of horse liniment and cinnamon, a curious scent, and his blond hair gleamed lighter in the sunlight. His cheeks, lips, eyes, possessed little color.
But he seemed confident.
Intelligent.
Someone she could trust.
“You are in a remarkable amount of pain, I presume.”
She wasn’t certain if it were a question. Or if she should answer. Or if she could.
“I keep an impressively overstocked medicine chest at Penrose Abbey. I am certain we can find something to soothe you while we await Dr. Bagot. He is a mere two-hour journey from here. A manservant is already in route to fetch him.”
Water. Her tongue slid over dry, cracked lips.
“You must be parched. I am sorry I have not anything to offer you. Not out here.” Darkness doused the sun. Black, then light. Black, then light. She blinked over and over again, and then not at all.
“How you ended up out here alone beneath this elm is quite a curiosity.”
Stay.
“I suppose I shall discover it all soon enough. As soon as you are able to speak.” He stroked her hair as if she were a child. “I do not suppose you can manage a name, can you?”
She cracked her lips, ready to test her voice, but nothing came to her. Alarm settled in. She scampered about her head, desperate for the answer, but the flood of darkness ebbed again.
“Never mind. Do not think. We shall know all soon enough.”
She wanted to believe him, this stranger.
More than that, she wanted to cry the name of someone she loved, someone she knew, someone who would settle her confusion.
She just couldn’t remember a name to call.
“I want to see him.”
“I am eating breakfast.” The justice of the peace, Mr. Willmott, crunched into strawberry-lathered toast, sending a glare to his footman across the drawing room. “Who let this pup inside, anyway? I thought I made it expressively clear yesterday, Mr. McGwen, that even my position has limitations.”
“The prisoner is no longer in the care of a nursing maid.”
“No.”
“Nor in the village lockup.”
“No again,” Mr. Willmott growled as he wiped jam from his multi-layered chin. His unmodish, brown periwig fumed a rancid floral scent. “And before you present me any other facts of which I am already aware, allow me to enlighten you further. I released him this morning.”
Tom blinked, brows knitting, as a slow fury wormed through him. “What?”
“He is a ratcatcher from the east side of Juleshead. He had already been summoned by Mr. Telfner to eliminate rodents the following morning, and having arrived early, decided to linger on the street until dawn.” Mr. Willmott scooted back his chair.
“It was all very simple. He heard the intruder, realized the situation, and rushed in to assist.”
“With a knife?”
“Your imagination, I fear, has always been unduly ingenious.” Mr. Willmott rose. “Not that I cast any censure upon you. I admit, the situation was dire. You cannot be blamed for misinterpreting their actions—although I daresay, Mr. Foxcroft might have made it out alive had you not.”
Pressure swelled in Tom’s chest until it was harder to will in air. “He is lying.”