Chapter 13 #2
She kissed his forehead. “If Mr. Foxcroft were alive, he would have nothing at all in his shop to heal what ails me. I am just an old woman who has no one to talk to save her dead husband and her little cat.” Her chuckle was tear-clogged.
“Elias would think me senseless, would he not? If he knew I still talked to him?”
Tom remembered very little of Mr. Musgrave—a wiry little man, quiet-tempered, who never did more than nod his greeting to Tom in those early days. He had passed four months after Tom arrived in Juleshead.
“But never mind me, dear boy. You must forgive an old woman for a bit of melancholy now and then.” She pushed back to her feet, bustled into the kitchen with promises of a treat, and returned with a basket of freshly baked apple puffs. “For your first night at the cottage,” she crooned.
Tom laughed and said he could not promise the puffs would make it to the cottage. Then he bid her goodbye, headed out into the street, and resisted the strange niggling that all was not as well as Mrs. Musgrave promised.
He intended to find out why.
“Violet is feasting on raspberry rose flummery, and you have yet to eat anything.” Lord Cunningham spoke the words from her open bedchamber doorway.
Meg yanked the tortoiseshell comb through her hair, not glancing at him through the mirror of her dressing table. She couldn’t.
“I wish to speak with you, darling.”
“Do not call me that.” She combed harder, ripping through knots, then settled the comb back with forced calm.
She lowered her face. “Please. I am undeserving.” For more than today.
For whatever terrors in her past Dr. Bagot had spoken of.
How much did the man know of Meg Foxcroft?
Did he speak of the alley? The vengeful black-edged notes? Or something else?
She would have run after him, begged him to explain, had she been courageous.
She wasn’t.
“It is true, I left because of you.” Lord Cunningham took one step into her chamber. “But not to scour the countryside. I already knew you heard me discussing Mr. McGwen’s new cottage, and I was certain, in your turmoil and uncertainty, it was him you would seek out.”
Heat collected at her cheeks. “You speak as if he means something to me.”
“He does.”
“Did.”
“Regardless, I was convinced that despite your temporary reluctance, after a day or so you would rejoice in the prospect of a life here at Penrose Abbey. You must know that even though you did not appear for breakfast, I finished my meal with vigor, not the least daunted by such a discouragement.” He stepped closer.
“I left for Sunderlin Downs forthwith. If I was to wed you, I wished to do it properly and without any hindrance to either of our reputations. It is not yet whispered abroad of your situation. Very few, I daresay, know of your stay at the abbey.”
“I do not understand.”
“It is very simple.” Another step. He stood behind her now, hands hovering over her shoulders, hesitating for several heart ticks before he finally grasped them.
“I invited a guest to Penrose Abbey. Your own companion—who, after our long tête-à-tête, has agreed to instruct you in all manners of becoming the most accomplished lady.” Lord Cunningham’s gaze found hers through the mirror.
Weariness hung in his expression, darkness sagged beneath his eyes, evidence of the three sleepless nights in Violet’s chamber.
“I realize now my blunder.” A weak smile. “My hopes were quite in vain.”
Pity constricted her throat. She was torn betwixt the niggling desire to squirm out of his touch and the throbbing need to soothe his internal wounds. “My lord.”
“I shall make any arrangements you deem necessary. You can ask nothing too much. If you wish your own townhouse in London or your own trip abroad with friends, you shall have it.”
She bit her lip. Thoughts, decisions, flitted through her in a troubling mass of bewilderment.
She had determined to reject him. The words lodged in her, along with Tom’s story of Tobias Graham, Dr. Bagot’s distrust, and a thousand other things she had no bravery to pour out before him.
“Perhaps I am not the lady you think me.”
“Nor I the gentleman you think me.”
With a weak touch, heart sinking, she laid her fingers across his. This was right. For her sake and even more for his. “I have no friend save you, and every other place in the world is strange to me.”
“I shall give you a new life, anywhere you wish.”
“I already have one.” She stood on legs that were unsteady. “With you.”
The cottage room was different this time of night. The dying flames licked and sparked from the hearth, putting out the scent of smoke and Joanie’s hare soup. Everything was soft and shadowed. The nighttime breeze tickled coolness along the back of his neck.
“Gyb, no.” Joanie extracted the kitten’s claws from her nightgown, but other than a protesting meow, the room was quiet.
Melancholy.
Empty.
Like him.
From his position on the floor, arms draped over his knees, he tightened his lips around the pipe. He puffed. The bitter tobacco filled his senses like salt to open wounds, because Meg had always known he’d do this.
“You’ll sit in a chair. One of those big soft ones, with damask cushions and everything.
” She had drawn the shape of one with her hands.
“And then we shall invite over Mrs. Whalley. I’ll serve her tea, and you’ll smoke your pipe and say things like ‘yes, indeed’ and ‘fine weather, is it not?’” She had laughed as if such a picture were the funniest thing in the world.
At the time, it was.
He pulled the pipe from his lips. He almost tossed it into the fire, but instead, jumped to his feet and glanced at Joanie.
She did not look up. Cross-legged by the window, she entertained Gyb with a ratty blue ribbon, but her lips curved downward.
Chagrin swarmed him. What kind of brother was he?
Joanie should be laughing, playing, and feasting over the apple puffs in delirious celebration. He should be cheering. They should be happy—right now—because the cottage was theirs and tomorrow they’d paint it red and maybe soon he’d build enough furniture to make it a home.
If Joanie needed anything, it was that.
He would give it to her.
Whether Meg was here or not.
“A thing or two we’ll be needing to settle, lass.” Tom grabbed his hat from the peg and whipped it against his thigh to remove the dust.
Joanie squinted up in confusion. “Where are ye going?”
“Stay here.” He darted out of the cottage, jogged to the slightly withered crab apple tree, and plucked four or five unripened fruits. When he burst back inside, Joanie had her arms crossed in confusion.
“We can’t eat those.”
“They’re not for eating, lass. They’re for determining.”
“Determining what?”
He emptied his hat, then tossed it across the room. “Who does the dishes.”
“Tom.” She laughed, likely because she already knew he would not do them even if she did triumph in his little game. But when he backed to the farthest wall and chucked a green-yellow crab apple across the room, she joined him.
“You missed.”
“Hush with ye.” His second apple landed squarely in the hole of his hat. The third rolled out. The fourth smacked the wall.
Joanie snickered as she gathered them and took her own turn. “Do not look at me.” She missed a second time. “Tom, please. You must not watch or I shall do terrible.”
“Ye already do terrible.” He did a fast spin and threw one with his back turned. He roared when it landed. “ ’Tis a bonnie life of dishes ye’ll be having. Accept yer defeat.”
“I would not be a McGwen if I did.” She rolled up her sleeves, rubbed the apple between her palms, then beamed up at him with an adoring blush of pleasure. Just like she’d done years ago. Like all the children had done.
Something unexpected pinched his throat. Everything in his whole world was wrong right now.
But this was one thing right.
The next morning, one of the maid’s awoke Meg with a gleaming, cerulean-blue gown draped across her arms. “She said you should wear this, miss.”
Meg resisted the urge to crawl back beneath the coverlets. “She?”
“You best hurry.”
Yawning, Meg allowed the maid to assist her into a soft linen chemise, then the stays. “Not so tight,” she gasped. “It is constricting.”
“Her ladyship said everything must be done to precision.” The maid motioned to the dressing table once Meg was fully adorned in the silk, flower-netted gown. “The papillote iron is already hot.”
Meg seated herself and stared in the oval mirror—watched as the limp copper hair transformed into tight, dramatic curls and a braided coil atop her head.
She rubbed her eyes. Would Lord Cunningham notice they were swollen?
She had not slept half the night. Even when she did, her slumber was restless.
Until the dream.
Somewhere between tossing and flipping her pillow upside down and glancing at the window to make certain no one lurked, sleep had conquered. She’d been somewhere strange. The edge of a cliff, early in the morning, with sea gulls gliding below sun-crested clouds.
She’d stared out across the sea and nearly stumbled.
Pebbles shifted under her feet.
Her body careened—
And then him. Tom McGwen, yanking her from the ledge, crushing her between his powerful arms and heart-racing chest. She told herself to push away. She should. She wanted to.
But at the same time … she did not want to.
She allowed him to kiss the top of her head, then her cheek, then her neck, then her lips. He was warm and soft. Sensations ruffled through her like the wind, staggering them closer to the cliff.
“Miss?”
Meg jerked. She glanced at her face in the mirror, touched her cheeks to will back the heat. Such a dream meant nothing. Tom meant nothing.
She knew enough of his character to be certain of that. Didn’t she? Then why was she still so affected by him?