“Ask me anything.”
She smeared her dripping nose with a shaking hand. “I wish to discover where I am from. I want to go back there.”
“It shall be done. I shall send servants out in the morning.”
“And if my whereabouts … my identity cannot be discovered … I wish you to know I shall not go on troubling you. The moment you wish it of me, I shall leave.”
“You speak absurdity, dear girl.” He stepped closer. His fingers reached for hers—soft, without callouses. Why was that so strange to her? “Penrose Abbey is your home for as long as you have need of it. Whether you remember or not, whether you desire a harbor or merely a comrade, it is yours.”
She wanted to ask why he would be so benevolent to her. Why he would grace her with such kindly trust—a stranger—when she didn’t even know if she could trust herself.
But she was too frightened that if she did question him, her one foothold in a rocking world would shatter. She allowed him to guide her back inside Penrose Abbey, hand in his.
She was penniless.
Homeless.
Nameless.
But he seemed determined to convey, with every new squeeze of her hand, that she was not as friendless as she felt.
He was fevered, but he wasn’t sick.
Just like before.
That night seven years ago, when the brick cottage of nine children became soundless. When they all crowded around the bed, looking at each other, not saying anything. Mamm had dried her eyes with a raspberry-stained apron. Papa was stone. He was always stone—but as he leaned against the wall with a baby in one arm and little Joanie in the other, some of his steadiness seemed to crack.
Tom slipped off the chestnut mare, the lights from the whitewashed livery stable aching his eyes. Twilight had already settled over Juleshead. Crickets sang in the distance, that same chorus that had always lured him and Meg into their nighttime mischief.
His stomach protested the memory. He had forgotten what this felt like.
Losing everything all in a moment.
“Day late, yaw are.” Young Brownie, the six-foot stable hand, crossed his arms with amusement. “Yaw paid for four but was gone five.”
“I need another five.”
“When?”
“Morning. First thing.” Tom handed over the reins. “Give him plenty of oats. Brush him down good too. He rode hard.”
“I don’t think yaw have enough.”
“I’ll pay.”
“With what? Hankies and shoe buckles?” Nonetheless, Brownie led the mare back into the stables, asked no more questions, and said that the mare would be saddled and waiting come sunrise.
Tom nodded and crossed the street toward the blacksmith shop. Wind cut through him, smelling of salt and horse sweat.
His mind combatted too many thoughts at once.
Meg hurting. Meg frightened. Meg alone. Meg waiting for him, but he wasn’t coming. And then just the sound of her—her laugh washing over him with its breathy sweetness. That had been his salvation the past seven years. The only thing that kept him smiling.
He needed Meg Foxcroft.
She needed him.
Reaching the blacksmith shop, he tried both doors. Locked? Why? Meade should be inside, dousing the fire in the forge and nursing his tankard of gin for the night.
