Chapter 5
He couldn’t look at the place.
The air still smelled like smoke, ashes, and death. Not even Mrs. Musgrave’s rout cakes, as she ushered Tom and Joanie into her millinery shop, could banish the stench from his brain.
The lass stood close to him, as if she feared being abandoned in the colorful room of hats and feather plumes. Likely, she feared Tom too. She knew the story.
Unless she remembered it herself.
“You have not been eating enough.” Mrs. Musgrave settled into her chair by the window, motioning to a platter of freshly baked desserts. He tried not to stare at the apothecary’s burnt remains through the curtains. “Sit down and eat something. Both of you.”
He glanced at Joanie and nodded, but she shook her head in bashful protest. “We are not hungry,” he said instead.
“Pshaw. Growing children are always hungry.” She chuckled. “Perhaps old women too, hmm?”
“This is my sister.” The words felt short, even to his own ears. He was not certain how to say it gentler. “Joanie.”
“Most wonderful to meet you, my dear.”
“She will be staying in Juleshead.”
“I see.”
“Meade has not enough room, and I thought perhaps—”
“You are certain you do not wish to try one?” Mrs. Musgrave swooped up her tortoiseshell cat from the floor and smiled at Joanie. “Sit here in my chair and eat as many as you like. I shall get you a cup of tea.” Hobbling toward the side door, she waved at Tom. “You will help me, won’t you, Tommy?”
No part of him wished to follow her. She’d only say what everyone else already had.
Except it was more than that.
He sensed it in the way she walked as he followed her into a tiny timber-framed kitchen, where a copper kettle boiled in the hearth. She plopped down Lenox. The cat scurried under a cupboard as fast as Tom wanted to.
“Tommy, dear, you know this is not right.”
Frustration locked his jaw. “Ye know I cannae be leaving her with Meade.”
“You cannot leave her at all.”
“I know nothing about lasses.”
“You knew about Miss Foxcroft.” Mrs. Musgrave’s eyes misted, and her hand shook a little as she grabbed a cracked teacup from a peg. She filled it with steaming tea. “Did you go to the grave?”
They had already placed a marker for Mr. Foxcroft? How had Tom not known?
“The churchwardens wanted to do one for Miss Foxcroft too.”
“She is not dead.”
“I know.”
“They had no right to—”
“Now, now, Tommy. We shall have none of that Scottish temper of yours.” She edged closer to him and took his hand in her wrinkled ones. She demanded his eyes.
Because she knew.
That he kept stealing glances out the window to the apothecary. That he could not eat. That he could not get rid of the smell, and that he was dying, and that nothing would ever be the same again.
“Take the young child home with you, and if Meade says a word about it, I shall come after him myself with a hat pin.”
“Meade willnae listen.”
“You are the one not listening.”
He pulled away, shaking his head, another wave of anger gaining momentum—but she grabbed his elbow before he reached the door.
“Very well, my dear. The child may stay. After all the times you have wandered over here to fetch my poor kitty from the tree or unclog my chimney, I suppose I can do no less for you.”
Tom reached into his pocket for a fistful of coins.
“I think not.” Mrs. Musgrave folded back his hand. “You may repay me by eating well. Miss Foxcroft would wish you to take care of yourself, would she not?”
Tom nodded, and like a torturous addiction, his eyes roamed back to the window. A breeze stirred the ashes. He almost wept.
What Meg wanted was to be found.
He had strength enough for that and nothing else.
“Tomorrow,” Lord Cunningham said over a dinner of fricasseed rabbit and marrow pudding. “I shall accompany you, of course, and we may even take my king’s chariot, if that is agreeable.”
She nodded, thanked him, but the food remained untouched. Her knees bounced beneath the table.
How could he smile so easily over this?
As if they were planning an outing. One where they would go hunting for ribbons, or browsing the bookstore—not putting back the pieces of her life she had lost.
Pieces she wasn’t even certain would fit together.
Or make the picture she hoped.
Excusing herself from the dinner table with murmurs of a headache, she retired to her chamber and draped herself across the bed.
She watched the colors in the stained-glass window fade to black.
“Look at the ducks.” The voice from her past. A comfort, somehow, though it seemed fainter and less distinct with each memory.
Like someone she had not heard in years.
Remember. She rolled to her back. Pressed her hands to her head. Squeezed. Remember, remember. She could not go tomorrow. She could not face the world—and the past—without some sort of footing to hold her up. Why was everything void? What was wrong with her?
She was empty.
So utterly, utterly empty.
Lord, I’m scared. Her hands fisted in her hair. Pulling, as if the tension would turn the key. But it didn’t. Tears leaked from her eyes so fast the dark room became a blur.
Then a knock. A quiet “Miss Margaret?”
Her chest deflated. Lord Cunningham. Why did he have to come now? He had called her courageous this afternoon, and even though she swiped at the tears with her sleeve, he would hear cowardice when she spoke.
“Miss Margaret, may I speak with you one moment? Please, I shall not bother you long.”
She sighed. Pushing her hair from her face, she slipped to the door and cracked it open.
He widened the crack. He entered, when it would have been far more appropriate had he stayed without. “I was not being modest when I told you I rarely possess insight on the delicacies of human emotion.”
She held back the quiver in her chin by sheer force of will. Her tears were not half so obedient.
Lord Cunningham smiled again. Slower this time, as if he understood her turmoil.
“You poor, lost pet.” He hesitated, then touched her hand, then pulled her against him in an embrace as warm and sweet as cinnamon.
“Whatever we discover tomorrow, I wish you to know that you are not alone. If the situation is unfavorable, or you find by some strange chance that Penrose Abbey possesses greater allure to you, then home you shall come.”
Home. Despite the bulwarks she built to conceal her fears, a sob leaked into his linen tailcoat. She wasn’t certain what the word meant. Whether home was here or there or if she would ever recall what the word had once meant to her.
But the desperation to remember drained from her as fast as the tears.
She could face Juleshead, whether the lady in the pink pinafore or the man with the soft voice awaited her or not.
Because she was not alone.
Nor half so empty as she allowed herself to think.
Of all the blasted insanities.
Tom chewed on the cold slab of venison Meade had left out for him in the kitchen, but he couldn’t swallow. The lump had been in his throat since he left Mrs. Musgrave.
Maybe before that.
Blast.
Joanie hadn’t said anything when Tom told her. She’d stared at her shoes. The raggedy ones. The ones Tom was supposed to replace.
“We shall get along quite well, Joanie and I and Lenox,” Mrs. Musgrave had said, draping an arm around the child.
Joanie stiffened. Shy, the little lass. Even when Papa first brought her home with her tangled hair and dirty dress and fearful head tilts, she had taken days to babble her first words.
He remembered the first time she’d smiled.
How the family had all gathered around her, clapping their hands, pulling her in for hugs and kisses. Even the dog had yapped in excitement.
He wished she’d smiled today instead of looking at him the way she did. Horrified, devastated, as if pleading with Tom not to—
“Figured you’d be up.” Meade’s shadow appeared in the crooked kitchen doorway. “I see you got rid of the little mouse.”
Tom shoved out of his chair a little too hard. It toppled behind him.
Meade shrugged. “Had to be done.”
“Anything on Hector?”
“Word is he caught a coach northbound.”
“When?”
“After the fire.” Another shrug. “Day or two later.”
“Which coach?”
“Don’t matter. He’s gone.”
Tom suppressed a growl. He grabbed the dry bread from his plate, the last hunk of venison, and his tankard of milk. “Leave the light in the window.”
“Where you going?”
Tom wasn’t certain himself until the words were out, “To get my sister.”
The village stirred something inside her. The unshakable desire to rip off her satin gloves, pull the flower-trimmed bonnet from her head, and take off running down the mossy cobblestones.
A blush pinched at her cheeks.
Lord Cunningham leaned closer to her in the landau, surveying their surroundings with mildly interested pleasure.
He had resumed his demeanor of treating their journey as if it were some trivial outing.
As if he were the gentleman and she the fine lady, and they had chosen the sleepy village of Juleshead for a day of courting and adventure.
He had no idea what sort of creature she was.
How uncivilized her thoughts.
“I say we take a small ride about the main streets, in the event anything nudges your memory. Mr. Willmott has waited this long. I do not suppose another half hour shall be of consequence.”
Meg murmured agreement.
On both sides of the street, honey-colored shops and houses jutted their steeply pitched gables into the air. Everything smelled different. Cool, fresh, like last night’s thunderstorm and morning.
Rain still glistened on the square-trimmed bushes, the brown-and-gray cobbles, and different-colored shingles swaying from shop fronts. Shelves and books and hats and shoes and dresses were displayed behind the endless windows.
She had lived here?
“Look there.” Lord Cunningham pointed across her. “Fires are most unfortunate. I daresay, though, it speaks well to the competence of the villagers. That they were nimble enough to stop such a blaze before it spread is remarkable.”