Shehadto remember.
Minutes stretched long and torturous. His stomach growled, more evidence that Mrs. Musgrave was right that he ate too little, and he snuck mulberries to alleviate the pangs.
When dusk deepened, he almost threw them up.
Heart hammering, he peered over the bushes and darted his gaze across the endless candlelit windows. All were still, save for one on the second floor.
A shadow passed back and forth, as if pacing. Then the candle blew out. The world dissolved into blackness—the one thing he awaited.
Tom emerged from behind the bushes, energy shredding his nerves.
Time to get her.
Time to bring her home.
Lord Cunningham was too good to her.
Meg burrowed deeper beneath the downy coverlet, her clean hair dampening the pillow with scents of rosewater. She curled her legs to her chest in the fresh nightgown. Upon their return from Juleshead, she’d scampered to her chamber with dust on her clothes and webs of terror in her mind.
She had expected Lord Cunningham to leave her alone.
By all accounts, he should have. Did he not have other matters to occupy his mind? Why must he always devote himself to her—as if she were something to him? Something more than a lost creature he had discovered beyond his gates?
After two minutes alone in her chamber, he had knocked on the door. “I am sending in a maid, Miss Margaret,” he had said. “Do take your time. Rest as much as you please. And if you should grow weary of solitude, know I shall be awaiting you downstairs with something I think you might enjoy.”
The maid had bustled in, cooing and fussing over Meg, with her copper tub of warm water and vials of rosewater. Her easy fingers kneaded gently across Meg’s scalp. Lathering soap. Dispelling the tension. Washing more than the dust away.
Then, clean and dry and wrapped in a soft blue gown, Meg did what she’d already told herself she would not do.
Found Lord Cunningham.
He awaited her in the library by a glowing silver candlestick, where he patted her next to him on the pillowed, scroll sofa. “I do not know about you, but a dosage of Lord Byron always sets the world to right.” He’d spent the long, quiet evening murmuring poetry into her ear.
Soft words like, “Peace to thy spirit” and “The dew I gather from thy lip” and “’Tis your friendship alone I request.”
Now, alone in her bed, the comfort of those words—of this house, this chamber, the man himself—caused her eyes to flutter shut in peace. She could almost blot out today. She could almost forget the shrieking woman in spectacles and the man with the blazing red beard.
Footsteps.
A creak outside her door. Had Lord Cunningham sent yet another maid? Or had he come himself—
Her door whined open and shut so fast she jerked upright.
A shadow whooshed next to her.
Fingers pressed against her mouth, stilling her scream, as a thousand horrors prickled her skin. She bit into flesh—
“Shhh.” He was closer to her, one hand in the back of her hair, his nose against hers. “I’m going to let go of ye, Meg, but ye must be quiet. Hear me?”
She bit again, harder, kicking back her head in protest.
“I willnae hurt ye, lass.” Something in his stance—the way he did not panic or move too quickly or alter his voice—dampened some of her panic. “I’m going to step back. It’s me.”
Me.As if that were supposed to mean something to her. It didn’t.
Easing backward, still facing her, he found his way to the window and fumbled to light the candle. A frail light glowed a circle around him, illuminating his face, the freckles across his sun-blushed cheeks, the open neck of his shirt, the bleeding palm he wiped across his trouser pants.
She had injured him?
