Chapter 6 #2
Then, just the sand along that quiet moonlit shore, where nothing mattered and everything was still. She had touched him with sandy fingers. She’d splashed. Laughed. Angered at him, then forgiven him, all in the space of a heartbeat.
The girl standing across from him now looked different.
But the same too.
Her stance was rigid, alert, and she wiggled her toe under the hem of her nightgown. She always did that. The reason her stockings ever had holes. Another matter Mr. Foxcroft scolded her for, as if the scuffed boots and lost hair ribbons and torn dresses were not enough.
In a second of unbidden impulse, he leaned forward and touched her lips with his.
Lightly.
His heart stuttered.
Then …
The sweetness of her, the wholeness, sucked him in like a maelstrom.
Meg. Safe. Alive. Here with him. He shouted at his mind to pull back, to stop his arms from pulling her close, but the weeks without her had severed his control.
She was all the things she’d never been before.
Cold and unyielding and scented of smells he did not know—
Her palm stung his cheek.
Twice.
Stepping back, he flinched when she wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her nightgown. As if the touch of him had soiled her. As if he were still the stranger she had spotted on North Chapel Street that first afternoon seven years ago.
“Get out of my chamber before I scream.”
“If ye were yerself, ye would want to know the truth—”
“I said get out!” With blazing cheeks and wild eyes, she groped for a glass pitcher on her nightstand and flung it at him.
Water sprayed his chest. Glass busted at his feet.
“Get out and stay out. If you ever dare come in here again, Lord Cunningham shall lock you up or worse, and I shall be glad of it.” For the second time, she rubbed at her mouth. Some of her composure cracked. Her voice weakened. “Just leave … please.”
Parts of him splintered like the glass he crunched over.
He nodded, fled her chamber, as the shocking realization knifed through him.
Meg was not found at all.
What was she doing awake? Tom slipped inside his too-tiny chamber, the open window bathing the room in milky moonlight and warm air.
From a pallet on the floor next to his, Joanie sat upright. She still wore her shoes. “Tom?”
Tossing his boots in the corner, then unbuttoning his vest, he sank down next to her. “Meade kicked ye out of his bed, did he?”
She giggled. “No, he’s too nice.”
Too nice. Harrumph.
“I said I wanted to sleep in here.” Joanie slid a glance at him, smiling. “With you.”
Tom pulled the shirtsleeves over his head, threw it against the wall, then stretched out flat on his bed. He pulled a woolen blanket over his shoulders. “Ye cold?”
“No.”
“Meade fed you?”
“We went to the market and bought apples and mangel wuzels. Then we went fishing. Meade let me hold the pole, but I wasn’t good at it.” The floor creaked as she rolled to face him. “He said he wanted to call you terrible names, but he couldn’t say such things in front of a wee lass.”
Tom rolled his eyes. He’d hear all the names himself, come morning. Morning. The word reached back out to slap him. Now what?
He hadn’t fished in too long. Who knew if Mr. Flemick would welcome him back.
What of Joanie? She couldn’t sit up here in this sweltering room all day.
Nor follow about Meade to hear him curse.
Or watch him drink. Or overhear the man throwing horse shoes across the room, in another ill display of temperament.
“Tom?”
“Hmm?”
“Who was the pretty lady? In the painted carriage?”
“Ye best go to sleep.”
“She must be very rich.” Joanie rustled her blankets. Her voice drifted softer, groggier. “She had such pretty shoes.”
Silence swept over the room, save for the night bugs chirping outside the window and a distant dog howling its misery. Tom’s eyes weighted. He willed his mind, his lips, not to recall tonight. He thought of the old Meg instead.
Chasing her down a snowy alley last Christmastide.
Swinging her into an arched, limestone doorway, where Mr. and Mrs. Baker hung their rosemary and holly.
“Tom, let me go this moment or I shall tell Uncle you cannot come for the feast.”
“Ye would never.”
Pushing at him, laughing, shaking her head. “I would. You can eat your ol’ bread and potatoes with Meade, for all I care.”
He tickled her for the threat. She hooted and ducked under his arm, then spun on him with a snowball.
The cold snow exploded at his neck, trickling past his scarf, but by the time he formed his own, she had already fled the alley. He ran, ran hard. “Meg—”
Something banged.
Tom jerked awake, one hand already reaching for Joanie.
“Boy, there’s something out here wot I think you need to see.” Meade’s shadow in the doorway, voice slurred.
Tom turned back to Joanie. “Back to sleep with ye.” Then he ripped the blankets from himself, fumbled to find his shirt, and hurried it over his head. When he stepped out into the hall, he eased the door shut behind him. “What is it?”
Meade took a long swig from his bottle before answering. “The ratcatcher.”
Harsh, orange-glowing lanterns lit the backyard of the galleried coaching inn. Figures clustered together in the small garden: Mr. Willmott, two hostlers, the constable, and young Brownie from the neighboring livery stable.
Tom preceded Meade into the sphere of lantern light. His stomach fell.
Sprawled out beside a shallow hole, a half-decomposed body stared heavenward among cabbage lettuces, gooseberries, and melons. The clothes were clumped with mud. The face indistinguishable. The bones already protruding through the dark sludge of his rotten flesh.
Mr. Willmott handed a handkerchief-wrapped item to Tom. “The hostler here found the fellow. It seems he and the cook had been flogging the poor dog unnecessarily for digging up the garden.”
“Ne’er was so persistent ’bout nothing.” One of the hostlers reached down to rub the ears of his liver-and-white colored mutt. “Figured I best bring a shovel out ’ere and see for myself.”
Tom unwrapped the handkerchief. A dull pocket watch with busted glass. He flicked it open and read the inscription: TO MY SON HECTOR.
“What happened?” Meade’s voice. “Word had it he paid fare for a coach.”
“The most unrewarding coins he ever spent, I daresay.” Mr. Willmott retrieved the pocket watch. “Some of you men gather his body, if you please, and deliver him to the church. In the morn, I shall talk with the vicar about arranging a hasty burial.”
Tom stepped forward. “Sir, whoever did this—”
“McGwen, I am in no temperament for your badgering tonight.” He waved dismissively.
“I have already been summoned from a very pleasant sleep, dragged out into this infernal mud, and been forced to behold a sight which shall likely unsettle tomorrow’s breakfast.” As Brownie and the hostlers draped blankets over the body, then loaded him into a cart, the justice of the peace marched away from the garden.
Tom followed. “Someone must have seen something.”
“A matter which shall be investigated fully tomorrow.”
“How did—”
“He sustained a devastating blow to the head, if his cracked skull is any indication. I do not suppose you had anything to do with this, hmm, McGwen? You were, after all, the only fool I know of who had interest in a lowly ratcatcher.”
“Ye know better than that.”
“Perhaps I do.” Mr. Willmott yanked open the door of his waiting carriage. “But plague me anymore tonight and I shall have the constable throw you in the village lockup on suspicion of murder.” Climbing inside, he threw back a wry grin. “Pleasant night, McGwen.”
Tom’s legs stiffened as the carriage rumbled away into the darkness.
Meade slapped a hand on his shoulder. “Looks to me like your bloodhound nose wasn’t far from the scent.”
Which mattered very little now.
The scent was dead.
“Our friend Hector must’ve known a heap more’n someone wanted told.”
“I’ll find him.” Because whoever had killed the ratcatcher was responsible for the fire. For what happened to Meg. For all the reasons she was lost and unsafe and alone—and unable to remember that Tom was someone she loved.
The kiss clung to her, like the echoes of a haunting dream. She lived it over and over and over again, even though she wished she hadn’t lived it once.
The uneven breath on her face.
The soft lips, feathering across her own. Then pressing deeper. Tingling her skin, gaining speed like a runaway carriage.
She’d been frightened, but too many seconds passed before she was able to pull back. Before she wanted to pull back. That rankled her. Had she ever been kissed before? Had she ever been kissed by him?
“I daresay, we have quite turned you into the proper lady, have we not?”
Meg turned to Lord Cunningham’s voice.
He strode into the sunlit morning room, beaming at her, with another poetry book under his arm. He inspected her sloppy needlework with pride. “A boy riding a cart?”
Meg bit her lip against a laugh. “It is the worst rendition of a cupid firing a canon.” She pointed to the open pages of Ackermann’s Repository from which she’d copied the example. “If I ever used a needle before, I must have only darned socks.”
“Nonsense. You could never be anything but wonderful at what you do.” He pulled the needlework from her lap, closed the magazine, then settled next to her in the plush window seat. “Thus, if it was socks you darned, rest assured you darned them to perfection.”
“I fear your confidence is undeserved.”
“You deserve the moon.”
Instinctively, she glanced away—across the room, to the porcelain urns, the pianoforte, anywhere but at his face.
“Forgive me if I am presumptuous, but when I entered, you seemed rather lost in your own contemplations.” He leaned closer. “Indeed, if I do not miss my mark, you were blushing.”
Heat soared up her face. A sensation rolled across her lips. Did he know of last night? Should she confess?
“I do not suppose I could be the object of such a fluster.”