“When I come back, I’m going to marry ye.”
Blood rushed to her face and her cheeks warmed with the same velocity as her soul. Before she had a chance to answer, he disappeared into the night and fog.Tom, wait.
He was a fool, because Uncle would never allow them matrimony.
Not when Tom was still without his own fishing boat and they were both penniless, and still as far away from their red cottage as Juleshead was to the moon.
But as she eased open the door with quiet steps, ecstasy raced in her heart. Her stomach fluttered despite all the reasons it should be sinking.Marry ye.His low voice, with its soothing playfulness and Scottish lilt and clumsy gentleness.
He was wonderful.
Whether he married her in a fortnight when he returned or in twenty years when Uncle finally relented and Tom had his boat, she would wait.
Something creaked.
Meg froze halfway across the dark shop, her hand grazing the front counter. Had Uncle heard and awakened?
But the noise had not come from the open doorway on the left side of the room, which led to Uncle’s private office, their small parlor, and two bedrooms.
Instead, it had come from the rear counter.
Air trapped in her lungs the same time a shadow darted along the shelves. Bottles crashed. Glass busted. An overwhelming fragrance of herbs and earthy mixtures struck the air in an aromatic warning.
Hunkering, Meg skittered across the room in her dripping bare feet. Thieves had broken inside more than once. Usually, a desperate farmer with a sick wife or child. Or a village street urchin eager to swipe something for trade.
But never in the middle of the night.
Not when someone was home.
Whoosh.
Another shadow lunged in front of her, blocking the doorway. Panic spiked. She stumbled back, screamed, just as the figure lifted something over his head and swung.
Wood and metal cracked her forehead.Uncle.Her body smacked the floorboards. The blackness deepened.Uncle, help—
“Use the gun.”
“Too loud.” Slamming, thumping, bottles and vials and bowls busting. “Light it up.”
A groan ripped from her throat. She rolled once, pushed up on her elbows, grabbed a cabinet and pulled herself up.
“Rumbold, the girl—”
A second blow struck the back of her skull, battering her with pain. Her mind flashed too many things at once. The crumbling sand cottage. Saltwater in her face. The boat rocking, rocking, rocking.
Tom.
Blackness sucked her under before she could cry his name.
He was every kind of an idiot.
Blood simmered hot in Tom’s veins, racing his heart, as he jogged faster down the blackened street. Too many impulses stampeded him at once. The urge to take off running. Leap and click his heels. Bang on one of the shop windows and whoop until he was hoarse that Meggie Foxcroft would be his wife.
But the sickness crawled through him again. With cold and festering power, it gnawed at all the good things in him, all the energy, until his steps were weighted.
He’d been so close to telling her the truth.
Tonight, as they’d sat cross-legged in the sand, with her hair tickling his face, her words tripping into laughs, their fingers bumping and grazing as they built shapes in the sand …
