Chapter 14
Weakness drilled Meg’s knees as the manservant lifted her down from the carriage. No, this could not be. Her mind deceived her. This was too ridiculous, too preposterous, to be true.
“Mr. McGwen shall return me.” She spoke the words without looking at either of the two footmen who had been sent to escort her.
They must have known her discomfiture, because one of them coughed away a smile and the other glanced again at the cottage. “Very good, miss.” After a look passed between them, they climbed into the carriage and whipped the reins.
Meg drew in a breath she couldn’t release. Who knew if they would report such a thing back to Lord Cunningham. No matter. The situation would last no longer than it took for Mr. McGwen to acknowledge her presence.
Which he did not do.
Even when she approached.
Humiliation sizzled beneath her skin as she stared from the dripping red cottage to the swishing paint brush to the red-pawed kitten playing in the grass. Anywhere but at … him.
She cleared her throat.
He cleared his.
“Mr. McGwen, you cannot be serious.”
“The color?” He slabbed more red onto the wall. “A wee bit gaudy, is it?”
“No. I mean”—she flustered, angered, then flustered again—“not the color. You.”
Sunlight glistened off the sweat on his back as he turned. Despite every plea within herself, her eyes skittered over him. Muscles shaped his arms, his shoulders, his red-haired chest.
He was solid and agile, with a readiness that made her certain he could outrun the wind or fight the wild. But it was his eyes that made her shiver.
Their softness.
The faint, sunlit twinkle.
She ignored the pull and crossed her arms. “McGwen, will you please put on a shirt?”
“Only got two. They’d not be worth a farthing after this.” He dunked his brush back into the copper bucket of paint. “Besides—”
“This is most compromising and—”
“Ye’ve already seen me without one before.” Before she had a chance to rage over the words, he angled his back to her again and pointed across his shoulder. “Fish hook. Ye dug it out yerself.”
She stepped closer and her breath dropped. Tiny scars pinkened his flesh, as if he’d been slashed in too many places to count. “You were injured.”
“Ye pulled it out.”
“No, not the fishing hook. Something else. The cuts.”
“What are ye doing here, Miss Foxcroft?” The way he spoke her name, the edge of distance in his voice, was altering. “I don’t think yer lordy would be pleased ye’ve come.”
“He is quite aware that I have. I assure you.”
“What do ye want?”
She had been prepared to tell him of the forthcoming matrimony, but the only thing that came out was, “I have spoken with Lord Cunningham, and despite his qualms, have decided it is imperative I discover all I can of my past.”
He stared, the sun in his eyes. “What are ye saying?”
“That I wish to know everything about myself.” Her heartbeat hastened. “And I wish you to teach me.”
“I’m not a good teacher.” He’d been teaching her things for the past seven years. How to maneuver cod traps. How to swim. How to put squid bait on a long iron hook.
This was different.
Wariness lanced him, and he ripped another vine of ivy from the cottage wall. “I’ve told ye everything, lass.”
“I want to see everything.” She moved closer to him, fervor glittering her eyes.
“I know I am the niece of an apothecary. I know my name. I know where I attended church, and now I know my own secret.” Her hands clasped.
“I want to know more. I want to know what I did in the evenings, what books I read, who I laughed with. My weaknesses and my strengths.”
“Ye didn’t read.” He slapped more paint on the wattle-and-daub wall. “And ye laughed at me.”
“I see.”
Slap.
“You do not wish to help me.”
Stroke.
“Why?”
His mind pulled in too many different directions. Eating roasted hazelnuts in front of the hearth last Allantide. Belting sea shanties to Brownie’s wheel fiddle one afternoon by the rocky shore. Grumbling as he worked and tugged the knots from her hair with that old bone-carved comb.
She always had tangles.
He always worked them out.
“I thank you for your time, sir, and apologize I have misused it so tiresomely.” He almost laughed as that old temper fired her voice and she spun to leave.
How she planned to do so, he was not certain.
The carriage was gone.
“Fine.” Tom threw the brush to the ground, fighting an irksome grin. “Go inside. There’s a shirt and trousers on the floor in the bedchamber. Joanie will show ye. Put them on.”
“What?”
“Ye heard me.”
“You cannot be earnest.” She glanced from her dress to the bucket of paint, understanding softening—but not diminishing—the concern between her brows. “I most certainly shall not wear your trousers.”
“Aye, but ye would.” He grunted. “What ye wouldnae do is let me paint the cottage alone.”
Several seconds fled in silence.
A breeze fanned through them, rustling the leaves of the crab apple tree, touching her curls, cooling the sweat on his skin.
Then she huffed in resignation and marched inside.
His reluctance swelled. He wiped his forehead. All this time, he’d had his memories—the old Meg, fresh in his mind, as far removed from the woman of Penrose Abbey as night was to noon.
He was not certain he was ready to reckon the two.
He could not lose them both.
The netted silk and spotless white linen piled at her feet, strange against the tarnished floorboards. She adjusted the gusset ties back of the waist. The woolen trousers were airy and itchy against her legs, and her elegant leather walking boots seemed ridiculous against the frayed hems.
Joanie pulled the soft white shirt over Meg’s head. The girl had been washing and salting a calf’s head in the main room, with a stewpot of sweet herbs, onion, mace, and pearly barley prepped by the hearth.
“You’ll need help,” she’d offered, then followed Meg into the tiny bedchamber.
Meg should have declined.
All of this.
But she popped her head through the shirt hole, annoyed that she still recognized Tom McGwen’s smell in the fabric—and that it was so pleasant a scent.
“Thank you.” She had expected herself to experience discomfort. To look at herself in this outlandish garb and feel as if she were stepping out of her own skin. Instead, a sense of freedom brushed across her consciousness.
She could move without restraint. No harsh stays pinched her ribs or tight neckline suffocated her bosom.
“Your hair was so perfect.” Joanie tiptoed and eased a hair needle back in place. “If we had undone the buttons, we might not have mussed it.”
“It is no matter.” Meg was half tempted to throw her head in a bucket of water and shake everything free anyway. “A maid shall remedy whatever disarray I have made of myself before dinner.”
“Would you like me to hang up these clothes?” Joanie lifted the dress and undergarments. “I shouldn’t wish them to wrinkle.”
“You are kind.”
“It is no trouble.” The girl blushed, eyes falling, everything about her features and manner in contrast to Tom McGwen.
He was rash, his face sharp, his hair blazing like the sun come close of the day.
Joanie was quiet. Her features were soft and fresh, her ways unassuming, and she had a thoughtfulness about her that made every movement seem deliberate and full of care.
“You look nothing like him.” Meg had not meant to say the words aloud, but Joanie only smiled and smoothed the dress.
“None of us did. Well, except C–Caleb.”
“There are more McGwens?”
“Nine of us now.” Joanie lifted the chemise from the floor. “We don’t share blood. We all come from different places but ended up in the same home. That’s how it was meant to be. Mamm says, anyway.”
“I never visited.” Meg tilted her head. “I never visited with Tom, else I would have met you before, would I not?”
“We were very far away.” Joanie hung all Meg’s garments on little knobby pegs, then pulled open the bedchamber door. She glanced back as if she wished to say more, but then only smiled. “Tom is waiting for you.”
She could not complain when she had asked for this. If it took laboring in trousers and a patched shirt to attain answers, she would. Meg started through the cottage—
“And Miss Foxcroft?”
Meg turned, a little startled by Joanie’s serious eyes. “Yes?”
“He is still my brother.” A pause. “He was a brother to all of us.”
“Yes. Of course.” Meg was not certain why the girl felt the need to defend him, nor why she tripped over the name Caleb, nor why Tom McGwen never once visited home.
She did not ask.
She came for answers about herself.
Not him.
“This was not what I expected when I agreed upon your little venture.” Lord Cunningham waited for her inside the anteroom dressed in immaculate black tailcoat and pantaloons, bright white socks, and buckled slippers.
He raised a brow at the smudges of red she’d left behind.
“I would hail the doctor and deem it blood did you not appear so collected.”
“Paint.” She had scrubbed as much from her hands and arms as possible but had been too afraid to soil the dress to change. “I have not missed dinner?”
“No.” He lifted his watch fob with an amused smirk.
“Though I daresay, I am not at all convinced you have ample time to make amends of yourself. Lady Walpoole prizes first punctuality and second formality, both of which you could not manage.” He placed her arm in his and patted her hand as they walked.
“Do not worry. I shall escort you to your chamber, where you may bathe and change. A servant shall send up a tray.”
“Thank you. I’m ravenous.”
“Without doubt. Should I be angry?”
“Angry?”
“That instead of presenting my betrothed a seat and cup of tea, securing a proper chaperone, and answering her questions, he has instead turned her into a boy-clothed hoyden. Did he harness you to his plow once you finished his painting?”
Meg was not certain whether to laugh or be furious herself. “There are no chairs.”
“Pardon?”