Chapter 8 #2
Violet clapped, though without any true enthusiasm, and Lord Cunningham continually whispered in her ear, “You are marvelous. Now again.”
By the time he had pulled and tugged her through the fleuret step and the basic formations of a cotillion, her breathing came faster and the curls brushing against her face were damp with sweat. “I think I have learned so much that tomorrow, I shall likely not remember any of it.”
His arm snaked around her back, pulling her against him. “I shall be there to remind you of everything.” The skin of his cheek brushed her temple. Smooth, clammy with sweat. His body squeezed her closer.
With a faint laugh, she extracted herself from him and did what she had wanted to do all afternoon: kicked off her slippers. “I think Violet is right. A little punting on the lake would be most restful, and I am certain not even Dr. Bagot could object to such a small adventure.”
Lord Cunningham shook his head. “The two of you are against me. Very well. I surrender.” But when the servants went about to fetch the punting boat, and Violet hurried another cherry turnover into her mouth, and Meg poured herself a glass of punch …
A hair-raising sensation prickled her.
She twisted every direction on the blanket. She glanced from the lake to the hillsides to the abbey and beyond.
Nothing.
No one watching her.
“Are you well, my dear?” Lord Cunningham settled next to her.
She nodded, but the bumps on her arms remained. Because someone was out there. Whether she had imagined it just now or not, that someone would be back. They would find her.
And they would finish what they’d already failed to do twice.
See her dead.
She was here.
The barrel wobbled beneath him as Tom stared through the smudged panes and paint-peeling slats of an assembly room window. Inside, candles glowed everywhere. They reeked of tallow and grease and memories.
Like the first time Tom had coaxed thirteen-year-old Meg into nighttime mischief. Or she had coaxed him. He couldn’t remember now which it had been, but either way, they’d planned everything so well.
Tom arm wrestled young Brownie into claiming he’d been horse kicked.
Meg baked the boy apples to make up for it.
When Mr. Foxcroft was called away to help the boy, just as the yellow summer moon came out, Tom was waiting outside her bedchamber window.
They snuck here in the twilight. Stood outside the windows on these very barrels and watched those who had enough coinage to pay for tickets to dance the night away.
“I wish I could dance.” Meg’s hair was down that night. Wavy to her elbows, catching moonlight, smelling of soap and grapeseed. “And wear one of those dresses, so I could swish-swish around.” She rocked the barrel with the pretend rustling of a gown.
“Why don’t ye?”
“Don’t I what?”
“Ye know.” He shrugged. “Wear a dress sometimes.”
“I wear one every Sunday. If you’d come, Tom McGwen, you’d see me.”
“I’ve no time for it.”
“Then I hope your ol’ boat sinks and you never catch a fish again.” She leaned closer to the window, closer to him without meaning to. Her hair tickled his cheek. “And I would not sit with you, even if you did come.”
“Ye never answered me.”
“About what?”
“Why ye dinnae wear dresses.”
“Uncle doesn’t like me to.”
“Why?”
Her bottom lip slipped beneath her teeth.
He was never certain if it was candlelight or moonlight or tears that made her eyes so glassy, but she didn’t answer.
“Don’t ask me things like that, Tom.” Then she pointed to some lady with a too-large feather plume, laughed when Mrs. Whalley spilled her negus, and devised plans they would not execute to break inside the assembly ball.
He had not asked her about the dresses again.
She told him her secret two years later.
He never told her his.
“You don’t learn nothing, do you, boy?” Meade’s voice behind Tom, yanking him from the past with all the cruelty of a punishing matron. “Some fools wear trouble ’bout their neck like dogs do chains.”
Tom hopped from the barrel and squinted into the darkness.
Two forms, not one, stared back at him.
“Joanie?”
“Told you before, boy. I’ll not be the one lookin’ after your strays.” But unlike his words, his giant hand was gentle as he guided Joanie forward.
And when she stepped into the light of the window, she wore her best dress and polished shoes, with a bright new ribbon in her hair. One Meade must have bought her himself.
“Here.” The blacksmith smacked Tom in the chest with two wrinkled tickets.
“Some buzzard at the taver—I mean, ahem, my friend had a few wot he couldn’t use.
Fellow was down with a toothache. Happens to him sometimes.
” Then he turned to Joanie and, whether it was the way she gleamed up at him or only the fact he’d had enough ale to make any fool cheery, his lips inched up into a smile. Barely.
But a smile nonetheless.
The lass was getting to him.
“Now make certain you don’t be bangin’ and wakin’ the dead tonight when you come home or I’ll be takin’ it out of your hide.” He nodded, grunted, then disappeared into the darkness.
Joanie’s hand slipped in Tom’s. “I hope you’re not angry,” she whispered. “I told Meade you wouldn’t want me to come. But I can wait right here on the barrel and you can come for me when you’re done; and I can give Meade back his ribbon if you think I should.”
“I think Meade would have no use for it, lass.”
Joanie smiled but slipped away from him and took her dutiful seat on the barrel. “I’ll only peek in the window once or twice. If you think no one would see.”
“Ye won’t have to.” Tom pulled her back off the barrel. “We go in, we go in together.”
Eyes wide, Joanie made a breathless sound half fear and half pleasure.
Tom took her hand.
As he led her around the side of the old building, up the stone steps, and to the brass-knobbed door, his stomach spun with the same trepidation.
Because the lass inside was not Meg Foxcroft, who trusted Tom with her secrets and looked at him with soft, trusting, eager eyes.
She was a woman with unnatural curls.
In a dress too low at her chest.
On the arm of a man she would have laughed at, with Tom, only weeks before.
“Tickets, sir.”
Tom handed them over, and when the entrance door squeaked open, caught his first sight of Meg’s glittering silver gown in the crowd. He couldn’t move his feet. Or his gaze.
His precious Meg was a stranger.
And all she would see was a man in plain brown clothes with an improper beard—who had nothing in the world worth making her look twice.