Chapter 4 #2
She needed to stay here. She must wait. For what, she was not certain—but she had as little right to leave this chamber, to explore the house, as she did to wear the silk and satin gowns hanging in her wardrobe.
If Lord Cunningham wished to see her, he would.
That was that.
But two hours later, after a maid had delivered dinner on a flower-painted tole tray, Meg abandoned her resolutions. She slipped into a hall fading dim with dusk, where newly lit wall sconces guided her way to the stairwell.
Her breathing slowed.
She scolded herself every step down, but a sense of familiarity—perhaps even pleasure—cloaked her. As if she had done this before. As if the nighttime, the darkness, was wont to luring her away and she was addicted to the thrill of untowardness.
What sort of girl was she?
At the bottom of the stairs, she slipped beyond two ionic pillars, moved left into a hall, and passed dark doorways until she reached one with a sliver of light.
His study.
She raised her hand to knock, thought better of it, and was just ready to scuttle back to her room when—
The door threw open. “I think you should look at—” Lord Cunningham stopped short, eyes widening. “Oh. Miss Margaret.” Something about him was different. No, not really. His hair was still intact, his tailcoat wrinkleless, his cravat knotted to perfection.
He backed into his study with a smile that seemed strained. “Forgive me. I was expecting someone else.”
“I did not mean to disturb.”
“On the contrary. You are just the intermission I am in need of.” He circled his desk, hurried shut a large leather book, and nodded for the door. “Shall we take a turn about the garden? It is near dark, but I imagine the moon shall suffice if we are brief.”
“I do not wish to take you from whatever business—”
“I need fresh air as much as you, my dear.”
Something in his voice, the desperation, stirred her pity—and confusion. “Very well, my lord.”
“If you will await me outside my study.”
“Of course.”
She turned to leave, but not before she saw the wrinkled handkerchief he swept from his desk and thrust into a drawer.
Perplexity struck as she stepped into the hall.
It was bloodstained.
Tom slowed his steps to match hers. Strange, because he was used to Meg half clinging to his arm, running barefoot to keep up with him, like they could take off soaring into the air if they wanted to.
Not dogging behind him with raggedy shoes and a hem with a three-inch mud stain.
Sun burned the back of his neck. He’d be red again by late afternoon. Maybe blistered. He welcomed pain he could grit his teeth through.
“My foot hurts.”
The first time Joanie had spoken all day. Yesterday, Tom had delivered her meals, brought up one of Meade’s ropes and taught her how to tie a knot, then slipped back out at dusk and spent half the night discovering more about the ratcatcher.
All Mr. Telfner remembered was the name Hector. Few in the east side had heard of the man. Or so they said.
Motioning Joanie into a cobblestone alley, into the damp shade, Tom pulled up a crate. “Here.”
Without looking at him, Joanie plopped down and unlaced her left half boot.
Tom tugged it off. “Where’s it rubbing?”
She pointed to a fresh, round blister on the side of her arch.
“Might as well take them both off. We’ll be there soon.” As soon as he figured out where there was. They’d been roaming the village for three hours. With the banknote Joanie was sent with, there would be enough for proper lodgings—and someone to look after her.
Something Tom could not do.
Even if he wanted to.
Which he didn’t.
“Mamm says good ladies don’t take off their shoes.” The quiet words, with her chin ducked to her chest, followed a timid glance at his face.
He should have smiled at her. He should have reassured her that soon he would buy her more shoes, that she need not worry over where she’d sleep tonight, and that somehow he’d find a place for her, even if that wasn’t with him.
But he untied her second boot and motioned her up. “It’s not far now.” Mrs. Musgrave was just around the next street corner.
If anyone would take in a child—and take pity on Tom’s plight—it was her.
“Two things I require of you, my dear, if you shall be so kind.” Lord Cunningham stood outside her bedchamber doorway, wearing a bright green frock coat, white leather breeches, and spurred top boots. “One, that you accept my most express apology for neglecting you these past days.”
“You hardly owe me—”
“And two, that you shall accompany me this afternoon for what I boastfully refer to as a ride in my king’s chariot.”
She should have exclaimed yes. After all, he was offering her the very thing she’d been in need of—a diversion from her own troubled boredom and a chance to spend an outing in his company.
Instead, her eyes searched him.
For a bandage on his finger.
A nick on his fine, smoothly shaven face.
But even that would not explain the doctor arriving in a black carriage at the crack of dawn, marching into the abbey, and leaving an hour later without ever once visiting Meg’s chamber.
“I realize I was not myself last night in the garden.” As if his subdued conversations were the cause of her hesitancy. “But I do promise I shall be in brighter spirits today—as shall you, I imagine, once I share the news.”
News? About her?
“I shall be but a moment.” She smiled to soften the sobriety of her voice, then shut herself back into the chamber. As she fumbled through the motions of replacing her morning dress with a blue crepe gown and white spencer jacket, Lord Cunningham’s soft whistling echoed outside her door.
As if he hadn’t a care in the world.
She knew he had.
Pulling on white kid gloves, she met him again in the hallway and followed him outside the abbey, into the massive, yellow-painted stables with a slate roof. In the adjoining carriage house, he swept his hand to the shiny vehicle.
“My ostentatious indulgence.”
The landau, with its lowered roof and cushioned seats, was a brilliant blue. On the sides were delicate hand paintings of Aesop’s Fables, each scene depicted in gilded oval frames, like something one would view on the ceiling of a church.
“My father found moral lessons from the Bible rather overdone, so he illustrated life lessons through the magic of ancient Greek fables.” Lord Cunningham motioned the stable boy to hitch up the matching bays.
“This rather eccentric reminder of all he had taught me was given as a …” She was not certain if he deliberately left the sentence unfinished or if he were only distracted by giving another order to the servant.
Either way, five minutes later she was sitting next to him on the cushioned seat, the sun in her eyes, as the carriage took her away from the only place in the world she knew.
With the only man she knew.
Despite his assurances he would be of a more cheery countenance, he said very little as the road wound them deeper into green countryside.
Her hands perspired inside the gloves.
Anxiousness stole through her, bouncing her heart as recklessly as the carriage jostled with the road ruts. She smelled cinnamon. She smelled earth. She smelled the endless scents of blossoms, grass, morning air—the aroma of freedom, even though she was the last thing in the world from free.
“You had news to tell me.”
He glanced at her with a reluctant smile. “You are remarkably courageous, dear girl. It was my thought to conceal this as long as I could, but you make that impossible.”
She sat straighter. “You discovered something.”
“Yes.”
“Who I am.”
“Yes again, my dear.” When he reached for her hand, she did not resist. The squeezing warmth of his fingers injected her with calm. “My steward was handling business in Sunderlin Downs yestereve. He returned last night with this.” Lord Cunningham pulled a folded newspaper from his coat.
She laid it in her lap, eyes blurring as she read over the circled print.
WANTED. INFORMATION CONCERNING THE CITIZEN MARGARET FOXCROFT OF JULESHEAD, N.
CORNWALL. CITIZEN IS NINETEEN YEARS OF AGE, FAIR COMPLEXION, brOWN HAIR.
THOSE WHO ARE ABLE TO GIVE CERTAIN INTELLIGENCE OF THE WHEREABOUTS OF MISS FOXCROFT, BEING LIVING OR DEAD, ARE REQUESTED TO DELIVER IT TO THE JUSTICE OF THE PEACE, MR. WILLMOTT OF JULESHEAD, IMMEDIATELY.
“I shall send two footmen to the village forthwith. I think it wise to investigate before returning you to unknown and perhaps dangerous circumstances.”
She closed the newspaper with a sickened pulse of her heart. “That will not be necessary.” Her chest shuddered. “I want to go home.”
“But Miss Margaret—”
“I want to go home. Now.”