Chapter 7
Meg wanted to see him.
Late evening wind rippled through Tom’s shirt, his burns no longer irritated by the scratch of fabric. He jogged to the end of the sagging quay.
Gray-blue water sloshed back and forth against the wooden posts, a soothing motion tampering down the tension spiking through him.
He should never have kissed her.
Too many times he’d wanted to clout himself in the head for doing the one thing she always feared. Before, she’d known her fears were ungrounded. That Tom wasn’t like the man in the alley.
Now, she didn’t.
He paced the edge of the wharf. The sun burned into the horizon, streaking the sky in shades of red and orange and pink. Any minute, the Creagh lass should be here. Whether this was another unfavorable attempt to entrap him or she actually had information, he was not certain.
But he needed something.
Anything.
He was weary of sitting on his hands, doing nothing, while whoever did this walked free. The ratcatcher was already dead. Mr. Foxcroft was already dead.
Tom had no intention of allowing Meg to die too.
“So it be true.”
Tom swiveled at the booming voice. He braced himself as Mr. Creagh stomped forward, rocking the wharf, with tufts of his unkempt hair ruffled by the wind.
“Caught me own daughter tryin’ to sneak out here. You might gallivant about at ungodly hours with that Foxcroft chit, but keep your bloody hands off my—”
“I’ll thank ye to say nothing more about Meg.” Too many emotions, too many furies, had been simmering in the bottom of Tom’s gut. His face heated as they flamed higher. “I came because yer daughter said she found something. In the dead man’s room.”
He scowled, dug into his pocket, and slapped paper against Tom’s chest. “Said she spotted it ’neath the bed.
The man must have dropped it. We keep e’erything that gets left, in case a gent wants to come back for it.
’Tis a matter of respect.” He all but growled the last word, like a dog spitting out a bloody tooth. “Stay away from my daughter, McGwen.”
Tom managed a nod when his instincts wanted to pummel the man into the ground. He didn’t have time for that. Not now.
When Mr. Creagh tramped away, Tom squinted his eyes at the folded, black-edged paper. The writing was tiny, severe, and said only:
You are not doing a wicked deed. Even God would want them dead.
“I do not want to disturb—”
“Come.” Lord Cunningham took her hand, the fiber of his gloves itchy against her fingers. He tugged her through the doorway into a chamber that stole her breath.
She did not wish to behold death.
Pathetic.
She knew that as much as she knew the old Meg would have raised her chin, squared her shoulders, and marched toward any unpleasantness. Perhaps the former Meg Foxcroft had been stronger.
With a thud of finality, the door shut behind them.
Pink-globed oil lamps were lit across the room, each flickering with a soft, surreal glow. A dollhouse sat before the hearth. Books lined a floor-to-ceiling shelf. The walls were papered with pink-and-green floral patterns, and the multi-layered draperies were silk and tasseled and lovely.
But it was the bed, in the center of the room, that drew Meg’s eyes.
Surrounded by plush cushions and downy coverlets, the child blinked at Meg in dull curiosity. “Who have you brought, Father?”
“Allow me to introduce the charming Miss Margaret, our newest guest.” Lord Cunningham skirted around Meg, sank to the edge of the bed, and pressed a kiss to the child’s tight, white-blond curls. “How are you, darling?”
“I am very bored.”
“What might I do to alleviate such a state?”
“I want a new maid.” The girl sent a pouting glare at the older woman, seated across the room. “Jenny is horrid, and I hate her. Make her leave and get me a new one, please.”
“Violet.”
“But I do hate her.”
“We cannot simply replace a maid as easily as we might order a new miniature horse.” He sent an apologetic smile at poor Jenny, as if the conversation were amusing despite its absurdity. “Now, tell Miss Margaret how old you are.”
“I am seven, but shall likely never be eight.” Her serious, pale-blue eyes held Meg’s. Her skin was snowy and perfect, like an ivory doll dressed in bows and satin. Perfect ringlets stuck to her head, short and gleaming, with one falling across her temple.
She was beautiful.
Haunting.
The unexplainable need to draw closer to the bed, nurture her, stir medicine, cool fevers, cure the illness … well, it was near choking. Had Meg assisted her uncle before the fire? Was tending bedsides second nature to her?
“How old are you?” Violet asked, as if expecting the information returned.
Meg hesitated. How old had the newspaper read? “Nineteen.”
“Father is two and thirty.”
“Though much younger in heart,” he assured.
The child tilted her head at Meg. “How long do you plan to stay?”
“I am not yet certain.”
“Father says he shall never marry again, but if I ask him to, he will. Won’t you marry him, please?”
“Oh.” Unexpected heat scorched the tips of Meg’s ears. The very idea. “I do not think—”
“Because I do so wish to have a party. No one gets married without one, do they? We might have cake and ice sculptures and lemon syllabub—”
“If you wish lemon syllabub, I shall have Cook prepare you a dish tomorrow,” said his lordship.
“But I want a party.”
“I fear the doctor would not be fond of such a scheme.”
“He is terrible. He spoils everything. I hate him too.” Violet yanked the coverlets over her head, and though Lord Cunningham attempted to coax her out again, she refused to budge. With a reluctant kiss to her blanketed form, he led Meg back into the hall, where he expelled a breath.
“You must forgive her temperament. It is only the illness that makes her so disagreeable.”
“Certainly.” Meg smiled to assure him, though something nagged at her. “She is rather a brilliant child, I think.”
“Yes. As was her mother.” He cleared his throat, and a rare flush of embarrassment extended beyond his cravat. “Of course, you are in no wise bound to wed me for the sake of lemon syllabub and ice sculptures.”
Meg laughed away the words. “You need not worry. I shall deter her against the nonsense at every opportunity.”
She expected him to agree, to make known his own mission to pacify his daughter by other means. But his eyes stayed still on Meg, heavy and focused and portraying a message that dropped her stomach in unease.
As if his daughter’s request were not nonsense at all.
The high-pitched meow echoed throughout the anteroom.
“Shh.” Tom cradled the clawing kitten back under his coat flap.
“Quit yer whining or I’ll let Meade feed ye to the dogs yet.
” He brushed away the orange-and-white hairs from his vest—and frowned.
He never paid his clothes much mind. Before, it never mattered when he snagged a hole in his trousers, because he’d always gone that evening to Meg and she had patched it up.
He never cared when his shirts bleached duller in the sun or when the sleeves were a little frayed, because Meade was always soot stained and Meg usually had no shoes and no one seemed to notice anyway.
Here was different.
He leaned against the pristine wall, next to a cherub-sculptural column, on floors that were black-and-white squared marble. Discomfort scratched through him. He combed his hands through his beard, then his hair, for the hundredth time.
He should have worn his Sunday waistcoat.
Or polished his boots.
“Mr. McGwen.” The squinty-eyed butler returned, sneezed for the third time, and motioned Tom to follow.
Their squeaking footsteps matched the pound of his chest. Sweat dampened his back, as the ornately carved drawing room doors swung open and the butler announced him.
Wiggling the kitten closer, Tom strode inside. The room swallowed him. Grandeur colors, the suffocating scent of roses, gilded mirrors, and intricate wall murals.
Then Meg.
Sitting on the edge of a striped sofa with her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes watched him with disapproving wariness. Her dress was gold embroidered and navy. Her hair pinned back. Her lips tight. “I am grateful you came, Mr. McGwen.”
Had she thought he wouldn’t?
“I have many questions, and it is my wish that you would enlighten me.” Her focus shifted to the moving bulge inside his coat, one brow raised.
“Brought this for ye.”
She did not move.
Nor accepted the kitten when he approached.
“Joanie went to calling it Pippins. Ye can call it what ye like.” He settled it on her lap. “Ye always wanted one, but yer uncle would have nothing of it.”
Her jaw hardened, but she swept the kitten to her chest anyway. The meows softened. Faint purring filled the room. “Won’t you sit, Mr. McGwen?”
He didn’t want to sit. He wanted to sweep her from the couch, pull out the hair pins, tug off the slippers peeking out beneath her delicate trim.
He wanted to catch her face and make her look at him.
Rub her cheeks.
Unwind her unnatural curls.
Make her laugh at him, like she’d always laughed before.
“Mr. McGwen.”
“I’ll stand.”
“I would rather you did not.” When he did not budge, she came to her feet.
Some of that old fury, that old fire, eroded at her stiff formalities.
“I shall be very frank with you. After our last two encounters, it is necessity alone that drove me to see you again. I wish to do this as quickly as possible, and then you may leave. Is that understood?”
“I suppose yer coddling lord will make sure of it.”
“How dare you insult him.”
“I’m insulting ye.” He grinned, but it trembled. “For letting him.”
“I do not have to listen to—”
“Ask yer questions, Meg.” He pulled her down onto the sofa next to him.
Her arm brushed against his coat. Jolts zipped through him.
“Ye hate porridge. Ye know how to make potions and medicines like most women know how to bake bread. And ye would never”—he reached up to flick her perfectly round curl—“wear yer hair like that.”
“Do not touch me.”
“Ye fight a lot.”
“With you?”
“And yer uncle.”
“Then we were not close.” Her lips flattened, and despite her efforts to look unaffected, disappointment moistened her gaze.
“He was an old goat. Always trying to make ye do what ye didn’t want.
Fussing with ye. One day ye’d be locking yerself in yer chamber and saying ye’d never speak to him again, and the next day ye’d be on his lap and laughing at him for hiding his smiles.
” Tom’s knees bounced. He looked away. “Ye fought with fierceness but loved the same way.”
“I am glad.” A whisper. “And you? How did we … I mean, how is it we first … became acquainted?”
“We were twelve.”
“And?”
“I was new in Juleshead. On my own.” He moved from the sofa a little too fast, thrusting his hands in his pockets. The memories pricked him like a needle in his flesh. He hadn’t eaten in two days. He’d been sleeping in an alley doorway at night and scouring the village for work from dawn till dusk.
He hadn’t minded the hunger.
His punishment, he guessed.
For Caleb.
“How did we meet?” she pressed.
“A wee gang of village lads thought to rough me up.” He turned his back to her. “Ye thought to stop them.” With her weaponized basket, which she swung at many a head. With her hair in messy braids. With her rolled-up trousers and her flushed face and her livid eyes.
When the lads scampered away, she’d stood over top of Tom with her hands on her hips. She knew he was hungry when no one else had bothered to notice. “Come to the apothecary shop tonight, and I’ll see that Uncle makes another plate.”
He had nodded, but he hadn’t gone.
She was everywhere after that—spotting him in the meat market, waving at him across the docks, even showing up at the blacksmith shop on an errand for her uncle after Tom found work and a room.
Maybe he hadn’t gone because a lass had rescued him. In some blundering way, she’d taken a swing at his pride and kicked him harder than the street lads.
Or maybe because he knew, all along, that Meg Foxcroft would see things about him he didn’t want known. That she’d make him happy. That she’d make him forget what he’d done when it was his duty to remember.
“I suppose it does not matter greatly.” Her dress ruffled as she stood. “Not now.”
As if it were all over.
As if there were no Tom and his Meg.
He was back to a world where she didn’t know him or love him or care if he stayed in the sun too long or ate raspberries or visited home. His chest tightened. He turned to face her.
She met his eyes with full strength. With one finger, she tugged at her fichu. A dark bruise discolored her skin. “I want to know who wants me dead.”
His blood chilled in shock.
Someone had hurt her.
Again.
No.
“Please, Mr. McGwen.”
Panic shredded his voice, “I dinnae know.”