Chapter 4
No. This wasn’t right. This couldn’t be right. Papa would never have stood for such a thing, and Mamm would have cried against it.
“Know her?”
Of course he knew her. He had carried her about on his shoulders, pleaded with her to stop following him when he played, and planted her atop Sam, their family spaniel, for rides about the yard.
The same child lay curled in Meade’s wrinkled bed linens. Her hair was long, gleaming, a darker blond than it had been at four years old. Her cheeks were pale. Her lips thin. Her brow troubled, even in sleep.
“Been here two days now. I didn’t be knowin’ what to do with her.” Meade shifted closer to the bed, his candlelight twitching her eyelids. “I put her in here. Brought up food.”
“Ye kept her in here like a prisoner?”
Meade scowled, but said nothing in his own defense.
Panic drilled at Tom’s temples. He reeled back and shook his head. “Must be a mistake.”
“If you hain’t goin’ to be readin’ the letter, give it here.”
“No.” Another step back. Tom clenched the new letter in his pocket—alongside the old one. Why he could not read it, he wasn’t certain. Perhaps because he already knew what it said. “I can’t take care of her. Not now. Not with Meg …” He couldn’t finish the sentence.
He didn’t have to.
Meade blew out the candle. Darkness swathed them. “Tell you one thing, McGwen, you won’t be racin’ off again and leavin’ me with no child.”
“I have to look for Meg.”
“You heard me.”
“Meade, I—”
“Stay and take care of the girl, or the both of you can be takin’ lodgin’ somewhere else.” He staggered toward the door. “I mean it, boy. This hain’t no place for a child. No place for a girl. She don’t belong here.”
Tom’s chest whacked the same time the door yanked shut.
Meade was right.
His sister belonged anywhere other than Juleshead with Tom, the one person who had already ruined their family once. Papa must be desperate to send Joanie here.
That or dead.
This was not her.
Meg eased her hands down the light cotton gown, each dainty embroidered flower notching her discomfort. Pins jabbed her scalp. Her hair smelled burnt, evidence that the maid had left in the papillote iron too long.
A step ahead of her, a wigged footman pulled out a velvet-seated chair.
She scooted up to the breakfast room table.
Everything was perfect. The white tablecloth. The porcelain, hand-painted dishware. Gleaming silver teapot. Platters and bowls of fruit, buttered rolls, sliced ham, and lemon cream—all lifting up scents that twinged her stomach.
The footman disappeared.
She was alone—not only in this room, but in the world. She sat entirely still for three minutes. She knew, because she stared at the clock on the mantel across the table. I’m going back. She sprung from her chair the same time the breakfast room door hurried open.
“Then it was not a dream at all.” Lord Cunningham swept to the table wearing a well-tailored suit, voluminous neckcloth, and glowing expression.
He took a seat across from her. “Betwixt here and the library, I had almost convinced myself the maid was in error with her declaration you had decided to join me.”
“I am sorry.” The only thing she could think to say. “You must think me terribly ungrateful.”
“I think you many things, dear girl, but all of them good.”
Was he in earnest? He didn’t know her. She didn’t know herself.
They were both pretending.
That she should be wearing this dress. That she was good. That they were friends—her and a lord who was likely so far above her in station that had the situation been different, he might not have nodded to her on the street.
“I do not think I would wear this.” Embarrassment pinched at her. Odd, that. As if what she wore bore any significance when she did not even know her own full name.
“Your memory is returning?”
“No. It is just that … the dress is lovely, but it feels …”
“Unfamiliar to you?”
She nodded.
He nodded too. “As does everything else, I imagine. This must be gravely overwhelming.” He glanced at the breakfast spread with disinterest. “I confess, I am not hungry. Are you?”
“I could not eat.”
“Then we must do something to distract you. Something that shall make you more comfortable. The library perhaps. What do you say?”
She told herself to deny him. Somehow the need to resolve this—to heal herself and remember who she was—chiseled at her with painful urgency. She didn’t wish to squander time in the library. She wished to find answers.
“I confess to being intelligible concerning many topics. A gift my father passed down to me. But like him, I am not quite as adept at interpreting matters of the heart.” He crossed the table and held out a gloved hand. “Tell me what is wrong, tell me what to do to remedy it, and I shall oblige.”
“There is nothing you can do.”
“Then please.” He tugged her up. “Do your best, if possible, to smile. We shall go to the library, and for a little while we may convince ourselves all is right and well in the world. Would you be so kind as to grant me that small favor?”
“Very well.”
“I fear you have already failed.”
She lifted a brow.
“To smile,” he urged.
The last thing in the world she wanted to do. But he had given her so much and asked so little, so she tucked her arm in the one he offered, glanced up at him, and thought of the only thing that made her happy.
A pink pinafore, white puddle ducks, and a loving voice speaking her name.
By all that was holy, she would find such a voice again. If that person was still out there. If they still loved her. If anyone loved her.
Her heart panged, but she smiled.
All night long, Tom had watched her from the rickety wooden chair in the corner of Meade’s chamber. Even with the window open, the room smelled of man—unclean bed linens, sweat, and lingering cheroot smoke.
Joanie was used to the tiny cottage bedchambers, always swept clean by Mamm. The house had smelled of fresh bread in the morning. Everything had come alive in such a sleepy haze as nine children laughed and fussed and scampered about to do their sunrise chores.
Tom rolled a kink out of his shoulder. He stretched his arms.
He should have already been gone.
First to find the ratcatcher, if the rat could be found. Then to search more villages—north, south, east, west of here. Tom had the whole world to comb.
He couldn’t just sit here.
And he couldn’t leave.
Sucking air in his cheeks, then blowing it out, he finally reached for the letter. He flicked it open with dirt-stained fingernails. He needed to bathe. He needed to eat. He needed sleep.
The sight of Mamm’s handwriting sucked him into a painful vortex of comfort and angst. He smoothed out the wrinkles.
Tommy, I would have posted the letter, but since you never answered my last, I thought it might be wiser to deliver it with Joanie.
Your father and I discussed everything two nights ago.
He has been sick for many years now, and I am tired.
Many of the girls are married now. Your brothers Isaac and Moses are off to sea, and the two youngest remain with me.
You may not have known, but your father took another wee one some time after you left.
More than anything, I wish to remain here at the farm.
It will not be easy to leave Caleb. I visit him often.
Joanie planted marigolds on his grave. I suppose, with both her and I gone, they will die now.
I am departing soon with the wee ones to Edinburgh, where I shall live with my sister, though she has only room for the three of us.
Joanie is eleven now. She will be married soon and it is my wish that you watch over her until she does. She is a good girl.
Tom turned the page and swallowed.
I am sorry you did not get to come home before the house became empty.
It would have been good to see you once more.
Your father died this morning. Most of what he inherited from his parents has dwindled, especially these last years with his sickness, but enough remains to see the children and I comfortable.
Joanie has a bank note in her coat pocket.
Your father felt at least this should go to you.
Our heart loved all our children, but you and Caleb were our blood. I wish I had not lost you both.
The bed squeaked.
Tom hesitated, blinked hard, then lifted his eyes.
Joanie sat up in bed, hair pushed behind her big ears and a look of bashful uncertainty pinkening her cheeks.
She was pretty. From the first time Papa had brought her home, after discovering her destitute in a pile of newspapers behind the village wheelwright’s, she had possessed a plain but pleasant look about her.
The gaunt, two-year-old urchin had blossomed quickly under Mamm’s tender touch. As did all the orphans Papa brought home.
They were good, Tom’s parents.
Better than he had realized.
Until it was too late.
“You’re crying.” Joanie still had the voice of a child. Her eyes were older.
Tom stuffed the letter back into his pocket and made for the door. “I’ll get yer breakfast,” was all he said as he did exactly what he’d scorned Meade for.
Left the girl alone.
Lord Cunningham had not joined her for breakfast in two days. He did not visit her chamber. Nor send a maid with a stack of books or magazines, as he had done other afternoons.
As if he had not thought of her at all.
Pacing back and forth along her bedchamber stained-glass window, Meg shook her head. This was ridiculous. The man had other matters to attend to, likely far more imperative than a pitiful ward. Had she imagined she would be the object of his attention ongoing?
No.
Of course not.
But she’d already thumbed through the last Le Beau Monde magazine, and if she had loved reading before, she despised it now. The room was stifling. Too many times, she’d wandered to the window and longed to push it open—but the old lancet design, with its sharp pointed arch, allowed for no escape.
A dull pain clustered along her forehead, where her cut still itched.