Chapter 3
Dusk bled hues of blue and purple across the countryside, dimming the patchwork meadows and rutted road. If Tom rode through the night, he’d make it to Sunderlin Downs, a neighboring village, in nearly three hours.
That is, if he didn’t bang on the door of every cottage or hovel he passed.
Mayhap he should.
The chance that some work-worn farmer or busy fishwife had been awake the night Meg was stolen seemed preposterous. That they had glanced out the window and could tell him who took her, why, or where was even more of an impossibility.
But he had nothing else.
No traces to follow, save for the ratcatcher. Meade was on it now.
Help me. The words rose up inside him, without direction, as if he spoke to the soul of every man and woman in North Cornwall. Meg would tell him to pray to God.
Meg didn’t know he already had.
Once.
Digging his heels deeper into the hide of his mount, he leaned forward and trotted faster. The rent of the mare had dwindled the spare shillings in his sock. What little he’d saved for his bride. For their cottage. As if it mattered now.
Why?
Moisture stung his eyes. The wind in his face, not tears.
Why them? The Foxcrofts were friends to everyone in Juleshead.
They went wassailing the streets at Christmastide.
They fed the stray cats out their back door.
They visited the sick during lazy afternoons, occupied the same box pew every Sunday at church, and hung caricatures on the shop windows to make passersby laugh.
No one should have ever wanted to hurt them.
Maybe Tom.
But not them.
The twilight faded to night, and only a pale glow of moonlight illuminated the winding country road. His legs twitched. The horse slowed. For miles, hours, he focused on hunting his brain for anything amiss these past weeks.
Had Mr. Foxcroft been more irritable? Had Tom missed an uneasiness in the man he should have detected—something more than his usual grumbling and ill-humored complaining? Had Meg been hiding something? Did she, like Tom, have secrets she was never brave enough to tell?
His shoulders drooped forward. He shook his head, forced himself upright again, but a yawn already stretched his lips. He had not slept in too long. His muscles cramped, his wounds burned with as much pain as the night Papa had dragged him behind their small brick cottage in North Brumcastle.
“Hands on the wall.”
Papa’s face a splotchy red. Moisture at the edge of his eyes.
The shirt ripped from Tom’s back as he faced the house.
Whack.
Birch twigs lashing across his skin. Cutting but not cutting deep enough.
Whack.
Palms grinding brick.
Whack.
Then nothing when there should have been more. The birch rod thrown to the ground. Papa walking away, his shoulders deflated, while the family dog barked in excited confusion at his heels.
He only turned around once. “I wish ye were not my son.”
Tom flinched back awake, but it was too late. His body slumped from the horse, and he hit the road with a grunt. Instead of remounting, he secured the whinnying mare to a buckthorn tree, then leaned against the mossy stone wall and closed his eyes.
Just a moment.
Then he would shake himself back awake and start again. Mind numbing, he slipped his hand into his trouser pocket and crunched the letter he’d been ignoring ever since Meg disappeared.
The letter calling him home.
Back to a papa Tom was not certain he could face, whether the man was dying or not.
“I wish you to be as candid as possible, doctor. Have you any experience with such a case?”
“In profession? No.” On the other side of the door, a bag snapped shut, as if Dr. Bagot were as finished with his doctorial duties as he was with her. “I have witnessed a head injury to cause paralysis. Once, the inability to speak.”
The polished, wooden floorboards were cold against Meg’s bare feet. She should not have feigned slumber. Nor crept to the door, putting her ear to the crack like a common eavesdropper.
But if anyone needed the truth, it was her.
They had no right to lie to her.
She wanted nothing of their pacifying smiles, their cheerful assurances, as if she were a glass trinket ready to fragment. She wasn’t. If she knew nothing else about herself, she knew that.
“But this.” The doctor’s voice drifted farther down the hall. “This complete inability to remember anything aside from her name is utterly preposterous.”
“Preposterous in that it cannot happen—or that it never has before?”
“Both. Neither. I do not know.” Their footsteps paused again. “Frankly, my lord, this entire case baffles me. Perhaps the shock of whatever she suffered has muddled her mind. In which event, I imagine her memories shall return as quickly as her strength.”
“Or?”
“I have already notified the St. Alban Asylum, in the likelihood she has been admitted there or elsewhere before.”
“She is injured, Doctor. Not insane.”
“You seem very certain.”
“I am.”
More footsteps. Then, far enough away she only barely caught their whispers, Lord Cunningham called out, “One more thing, Doctor, before you depart.”
“Yes?”
“You seemed, a moment ago at her bedside, as if something occurred to you. Am I in error?”
“You are never in error concerning anything, my lord.”
“Do enlighten me.”
“I am uncertain my theories would be welcomed.” Lord Cunningham must have nodded the doctor on, because he spoke a little louder, “I know more of the body than I do of the mind. But I comprehend enough of human nature to know this.”
“Yes?”
“We sometimes forget what we do not wish to remember.”
“You think she is in pretense.”
“I think I would exercise great caution.” A long pause. “If she is not soon recovered, you may be wise to write St. Alban yourself.”
She missed someone.
The emptiness caverned through her, ratcheting her heartbeat, as she faced the oval-shaped mirror on the bedchamber wall. A stranger stared back at her.
Brown, copper-streaked hair. Messy and tied in a braid across her shoulder.
A thin face, sharp jaw.
Brown eyes.
She knew herself, but in an absent way—like a face she’d passed once in a carriage but had long since forgotten.
Her chest swelled. Hours ago, a younger maid had entered Meg’s chamber with a white muslin dress draped over her arm.
“In case you should feel strong enough for dinner,” said the girl, with a tentative smile.
Meg had driven her away.
Then she’d scrambled into the dress—not because she intended to venture downstairs or partake of dinner, but because she needed something more than the thin cotton nightdress if she was to escape at dark.
A spasm of panic—then longing, then pain—awoke in the bottom of her stomach. Her hands quivered. They needed someone to still them. The one she missed.
The one who wasn’t here.
Mother. Father.
She framed her face. Then traced the four-inch gash across her forehead.
Brother. Sister.
Tears.
Friend. Husband?
She was someone. She had lived among people who cared for her, cherished her, and belonged to her. Hadn’t she? Why had they not found her?
Dr. Bagot had said she’d been beaten.
That she’d sustained not only blows to her head but hand-print bruises on her arm, burns on her skin, and a broken nose.
Her clothes were ripped, frayed, and singed.
Her feet bare. Had she been robbed? Assaulted by a highwayman?
Why would anyone injure her this way, then situate her under the elm, alone, as if hoping she’d be found?
Rubbing her arms, she shook the cobweb of questions from her mind. No matter. She did not need answers. Not tonight. She had one thing to think of now: running.
Where, she didn’t know.
To what, she had not strength to imagine.
But she could not stay here. Not in this chamber, with the white mantel and pink bed curtains and potted begonias and perfect oil-painted portraits. Not with a wrinkled maid who sneezed too often, or the younger one who smiled too much. Or a doctor who deemed her mad.
Or a gentle-toned lord whose kindness would doubtless wear thin.
Perhaps already had.
Squaring her shoulders, she backed away from the mounted looking glass. She was doing the right thing. She would not be locked away for what she could not remember. Too many days had passed already, and the last thing in the world she could bear was an asylum.
She had to go home.
Wherever that was.
She prayed whoever had left her for dead was not waiting when she returned.
Coming here seemed wrong.
He was used to Meg walking next to him, tucking her arm in his, despite the waggling brows. He never entered a church without her. Sometimes it still felt wrong, even when she was beside him. Like a slap in the face of God.
If there was a God.
Tom’s footsteps echoed in the spacious nave, bigger than the village church back in Juleshead.
The vaulted ceiling, decorated with faded gold swirls and panels of the life of Christ, speared him with painted eyes.
He walked faster. The air bothered him, that stagnant scent of incense and burning wax and age. “Excuse me.”
The rector—an older man, already graying at his side whiskers—glanced up from behind his pulpit.
“Oh.” His expression fell. “Deed. I thought you were the doctor, come to see about this leg of mine.” Shutting a large Bible, he gimped his way down from the three-decker pulpit.
“Help you, can I? Just about to head back to the vicarage for the night.”
“I will only be a moment. I am looking for someone.”
“God is the one who looks for lost sheep.” The man grinned. “I stay busy keeping up with sermon notes and tithes, if you know what I mean.”
“She is young. Brown hair.”
“A runaway?”
“No. Kidnapped.”
“Then it is the constable you should be speaking to.”
“Already done. He knows nothing. I was hoping ye—”