Chapter 11 #2
All the feet had pattered on the old, leaf-strewn floor—Isaac, Moses, his sisters. Seconds later, they had all squeezed through the crumbled doorway and disappeared.
Tom had glanced up. The ruins of Satchwell Priory stared down at him, with their broken cloisters and lichen-covered stones and narrow six-foot walls. What had possessed him to climb the wall? To leap across the eroded window frame?
He should have known Caleb would follow him.
Caleb always followed him.
Everything had been quiet while he waited, the smell of blood nauseating. Dry leaves had skittered with the wind. Forest trees had creaked. The sun had blinded him through a glassless window, harsh and wretched, making the sweat slide down his face.
“Please, God.” He’d been afraid to move Caleb from where he’d fallen, so Tom bent over his chest and grabbed his shirt.
The same one Tom had worn last year. Caleb had grown into it with pride. He always wanted what Tom had. Always wanted to do what Tom did. “Please, God, dinnae let him die. Please, please. I beg of Ye, dinnae let him die.”
Now, Tom sucked in air and yanked the reins to his chest once again. He would find Meg tonight. She would be safe. He would save her.
And he would do it with nary a prayer.
They were unheard anyway.
That much he knew.
“Why do you read these?” Meg reached across his legs to grab the medical book. The spine was cracked, and a few loose pages fell into her lap. “You believe Violet might be cured?”
“I believe anything is possible.”
“And Dr. Bagot?”
“He, among other physicians, imagines it to be some form of cancer. There is much we do not know.” Lord Cunningham gathered the wayward pages. He tucked them inside the red hardback. “But my obsession with medicine, I fear, cannot all be laid to Violet’s charge.”
“You studied before?”
“Yes.” He hesitated, and she was certain he would say no more when he sighed.
“You see, this is not my first experience with a terminal illness. By the time I was eleven years old, my father was confined to his bed or, on occasion, a wheelchair. Thus began his feverish obsession with these.” Lord Cunningham raised the book.
“He suffered insurmountable pain. Doctors knew nothing. It”—another sigh—“it changed him.”
“I am sorry.”
“At thirteen, I was sent off to Westminster for schooling. When I returned later for Michaelmas, my father’s steward awaited me on the steps. He explained that Father had declined in my absence. He died shortly after my departure. No one told me, I imagine, so as not to affect my studies.”
“Then you were never given the chance to say goodbye.”
“You must cease being so tender, my dear.” Lord Cunningham pulled her head back onto his shoulder.
“It was many years ago. Perhaps we do not ever fully recover from our tragedies, but we certainly learn to bury them. I have no wish to unearth mine at present.” His yawn whispered into the night.
“Close your eyes, darling, and rest. I shall keep watch for anything astir.”
He spoke as if she were a child, frightened of shadows beyond her bed curtains. “I shall watch too,” she whispered.
But the sound of his breathing slowed, his shoulder slumped beneath her, and the lulling roar of the water stilled the rushed pattern of her heart. Her eyes became heavy. Stay awake. She stared at the hillside—the faint yellow flowers in the moonlight, the lifting fog, the carriage.
Then the moon was gone.
Everything was faint and empty, and a cottage appeared in the pink light of sunrise.
A woman stood in the garden. She flung something from her pinafore, and the ducks all waddled to her side, quacking.
Meg rushed to the woman too. “Mamma.” The arms swallowed her.
Gentle, delicate, then soft lips fell to her cheek.
Just as quickly, the cottage was gone.
The woman gone.
Different lips roved over her. Hot, demanding. Clammy fingers slid across her skin and into her hair—
Meg flinched, opened her eyes.
Lord Cunningham.
She leaned back, startled, wiping the taste of him from her tingling mouth. “My lord.”
“We are already compromised, my dear. Look.”
She glanced around them, disoriented. How long had she been asleep?
The sun burned a line of orange across the water, and the sky had transformed from blackness to a cloudy blue.
Her skin was moist with dew. Soreness ebbed and flowed throughout her muscles in protest of both her position last night and the fall.
Lord Cunningham reached for her face—
She gasped and scooted away from him, wiping tangled hair out of her eyes. “Do not touch me.”
“Whoever finds us now shall make no delays, I am certain, in spreading the latest on dit among all of the parish. Scandal is always rousing to the ears, I am afraid.”
“You had no right.” She pushed to her feet, stumbled away from him. She turned for the hill.
“Where are you going?”
Her shoes slipped in the wet grass. She flung them off, climbed with her hands.
“It is not safe, Margaret! Be reasonable.” He shouted more, words that she muffled consciously.
All she listened for was the ocean, a steady roar—her own throbbing heart, the tear of her dress, the seagulls in the distance.
How could you? She wiped her mouth, for the second time, with her shoulder.
Panic strengthened her climb. When she finally reached the road, she stood alongside it with limp arms and choppy breaths and perspiration that had nothing to do with the exertion.
She never wished to be kissed again.
Tom drew the reins of his horse as he rounded another curve.
Midway down the straight stretch, a yellow-and-black mail coach had halted its route, and more than one gentleman peered down the edge of the hill.
Then Meg.
She emerged from behind the coach, an oversize coat draped over her shoulders. She wore no shoes. Hair fell around her shoulders as she called something down the slope.
Tom picked up speed, relief unsnagging the hook in his chest. Thank mercy.
By the time he neared the coach, three gentlemen were lugging a groaning Lord Cunningham into the already crowded carriage.
“Now, load up! We’re six deuced minu’es behind.” A short, nubby man—presumably the coachman—waved a hand at Meg. “We’re loaded seven already, so’s unless yew wants to be waitin’ for me to send someone back, yew’ll have to climb on someone’s lap.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Tom swung down from his horse. “I’ll be returning the lass.”
The coachman growled. “Yew know this man, miss?”
Meg’s eyes flew to Tom. Her cheeks paled, and for a second, he was certain she would shake her head. She said instead, “Yes.”
“And yew’ll be pleased to ride with him?”
Another long pause. “Yes.”
The coachman nodded, mumbled something about eight minutes lost, then jumped back on his perch and whipped at the four mismatched horses.
Tom did not approach her. He stood by his horse, rubbing the animal’s face, and watched her glance about.
“I lost my shoes.”
He nodded. She always did.
Instead of looking for them, she tucked her hair behind her ear and approached him in the massive chamois coat. She seemed uncertain, a little afraid. Of Tom? Or something else?
“Here.” He took her waist and swung her up. “I’ll walk if ye want. We’re not a far piece from Sunderlin Downs.”
“No. We shall be much faster if you ride.”
He mounted behind her. He was too conscious of everything—his arms sliding around her, her sleeves brushing his, the smell of her hair in his face. He gave a quiet cluck, cluck with his tongue, and the horse trotted forward.
They rode in silence.
Birds tweeted a bonnie morning song, their tune bouncing from treetop to treetop across the countryside. The fog had lifted. The yellow-green grass shimmered with dew, and the chilled air settled in his lungs. He tried not to hold his breath.
Or speak first.
Or ask her all the things he had to clench his jaw to keep back.
“I instructed the coachman to deliver Lord Cunningham to the doctor’s office. He will be gone still, of course, but I have heard mention of a most capable nurse.”
“Is he injured badly?”
“I believe it is only his ankle.”
“And you?”
“I am unharmed.”
He knew the tone well enough to know something was amiss, but he would not press. He’d done that enough.
“Lord Cunningham kissed me.” She grabbed the horse’s mane in a white-knuckled grip. “You kissed me.”
Heat fired beneath his cheeks.
“And both times, I was …” Her breathing came faster. “I was afraid. Why?”
Dread cropped through him. He had never imagined being the one to … explain what had happened that night in the alley. If she had forgotten, had he any right to remind her?
“Mr. McGwen.”
“I think this is not the time to speak of it.”
“Now is very much the time.” Her back stiffened. “I want to know.”