Chapter 23 #2
Whatever had troubled Vern seemed to diminish. His dark-circled eyes brightened a little, as he nodded, rubbed the apple against his rags, and left the room.
Orkey laughed. “He wouldn’t last no time without someone like me to watch out for him.”
“You do that very well, I see,” said Meg.
“Watch now.” Orkey bounded toward her. He landed one swift slap across her face. “You’re not so mighty and fine now, you little lady thing.”
The sting wrought heat throughout her face.
And fury.
Lord Cunningham straightened. “If it is money you require, you shall have it. No price is too grand.”
“After this is over, I’ll already have money.”
“Then influence. Of a certain, there must be some service I may render you.”
“I’m a simple man.” The boy broadened his chest. “I don’t need much. Something to eat. Someplace to sleep.” He dropped his hand back to Meg. This time, his fingers skirted along her jaw with softness. “Someone to sleep with.”
“Unhand her this moment,” gasped Lord Cunningham.
“Love her that much, do you?”
“You could not possibly comprehend the intricate passions of love. They are beyond you.”
“Well, seeing as I ain’t never had no one to love, you might just be right.” Orkey sheathed his knife behind his tattered coat. “What if I told you there was a way I’d let you go upstairs with nary a scratch on you? Safe’n sound with that little sick daughter till all this is over.”
“You already know I would give anything.”
“Anything, eh?”
“What do you want?”
“Not much.” Orkey hunched down, eye level with Meg, with a smokey darkness in his eyes that made her skin crawl. “Just her.”
A candle was waiting for Tom in the millinery shop window. He’d known, somehow, that it would be.
Without knocking, he slipped in the back kitchen door and padded with wet feet to the hearth. Pease pottage simmered in a cauldron over the flames, the warm scents of peas, onions, and carrots steaming into the air.
Tom hung his shoes on a chair.
Then unrolled his wet trouser pants, water dripping down his ankles, heat pinkening his skin. His eyes still stung. He never should have cried.
Too long, he’d sat in that grimy boat with his head between his hands. Once, he’d glanced up at the sky and blamed the murky heavens for his misery. He blamed God.
No.
He blamed himself.
And somewhere between wiping his eyes and smacking his fist into the mast pole, he found himself kneeling between the wooden slats. The dirty slush and nets had ground into his knees. The boat had swayed him. God, I know Ye hear me.
Maybe he’d known that all along.
Maybe it was never God he’d stopped believing in, but himself.
I’m sorry.
For disobeying Papa, for killing Caleb, for abandoning the things Mamm had taught him. For the bottle of ale he’d tried to drown his pain with. For going to church with Meg and cursing the Bible from a box pew.
He’d been a wretch, all these years, to make Meg his lifeline.
She’d become everything.
His salvation—when he already had one in Christ.
Ye know what’s right. I know that Ye do. I’m sorry. He’d wept the words, over and over. I want to feel Ye again. I want to love Ye again. Some of the weight in his chest shifted. His skin prickled, and that long-ago whisper of peace parted the sea of his pain. I want to be Yer son.
Even as he’d prayed the words, he knew he already was.
Had been, all this time.
“There you are.” A sleepy voice drew him back to the present.
Tom squinted in the firelight as Mrs. Musgrave shuffled into the kitchen with Lenox slinking behind her.
“Did I wake ye?”
“Tut-tut. I never sleep anyway.” She wore a loose white nightgown, her hair all tucked away beneath the lace edges of her mob cap. She glanced with a frown at the hearth. “Oh dear. I went to bed and forgot to douse the fire. Are you hungry by any chance?”
“Ye know I cannae say no to ye.”
She smiled with satisfaction and turned as if she were ready to find her bowls—then paused, eyes flickering back to his face. She stepped closer, studious, then bent next to him and touched his cheek. “Tommy. You have not been crying, have you?”
He turned his chin away in embarrassment and smiled. “Listen to ye. Just like a woman to be chattering her head off when a man is starved.”
“And just like a man to avoid the question.” She harrumphed. “Well, whether you shed a tear or not, you have a kinder look in your eye, Tom McGwen.”
He wasn’t certain what to say to that. He prayed instead, as Mrs. Musgrave bustled to prepare his food. Something about lifting words to heaven stilled the tension usually so rampant in his body.
He could get used to this.
Feeling lighter.
Less alone.
“Did you speak with Mr. Willmott today?”
“Aye.” Tom wrung the last little bit of water from his trousers. “He doesnae think Elisabeth was murdered.”
“Oh?”
“He thinks she killed herself.”
“Then he did not write our letters?”
“All I know is that he lied to me.” When she handed him an ironstone bowl, he dipped out a large serving of clumpy pease pottage. “I shouldnae believe anything the man says.”
“But you do.”
Tom hesitated. He glanced up at her face, where she stood behind the table, her wrinkles more defined in the flickering light. “Aye.” The word finally left him. “Aye, I do.”
A pulse of silence.
Then softly, “What will you do now, dear?”
“Tomorrow I’ll speak with the constable. We’ll ride to Penrose Abbey together.” He pulled out a chair and sipped from the bowl’s rim as he sat. “Mr. Foxcroft needs to be locked up. At least until we know more.”
“Yes.” Mrs. Musgrave turned away. “Yes, you are right of course.” When she didn’t speak or sit across from him, a weave of discomfort needled across Tom’s chest.
He glanced at her silhouette, made stronger and blacker by the candlelight. “Something wrong?”
“No, dear.” When she finally faced him, tears spilled from her wide, furiously blinking eyes. “Everything is finally almost right.”
He started to stand—
Something collided with the back of his skull, the force knocking his face into the table. The soup spilled. Searing hot liquid seeped under his nose as a hand grabbed his shirt and ripped him from the chair.
He toppled into the floor with spotted vision. Everything spun. The rafters above him, a stranger’s bearded face, then Mrs. Musgrave.
“You’ve burnt him,” she chided, swiping something soft across Tom’s skin. “I told you he mustn’t be hurt. Not him.”
Confusion ripped through Tom with a fresh shock of grief. No.
“Tie his hands and feet.”
Lord, please.
“Careful.”
His heart throbbed too fast, the rafters began to swim, and everything in the world faded into nothing. He drifted away on the wave of one thought. Not ye.