He was as lost as she was.
Or worse.
They were gone. The doctor had arrived, ministered to Meg, and given solemn instructions that she “rest in a more suitable setting.” With Meg still wrapped in Tom’s blanket, Lord Cunningham had gathered her into his arms and carried her to the waiting landau.
“You hid from her.” Meade tied on his leather cowhide apron as Tom leaned against the workroom window.
Where he had, in truth, been hiding the past hour.
“She does not want to see me.” The landau disappeared around a street corner. The insane urge to run after her choked him like an iron fist. “She … fears me.”
“She doesn’t know you.”
“She should!” He pummeled the wall with his hand. The window rattled. His chest rattled. “I have to get out of here—”
Meade grabbed his arm. “She needs time.”
“She needs protection.” Tom willed the fire to douse in his blood. “Something I cannae give her when she looks at me like I’m the blackguard who …” The sentence hung. He wasn’t certain Meade knew about the night in the alley anyway.
He nodded as if he did. “But you’re not. Prove it to her.”
Seconds ticked away. Tom shrugged out of Meade’s hold, grabbed his coat, and headed for the door. “I have to go.”
“You’re getting good at that.”
“What?”
“Running. Hiding.” Meade turned to his forge and lifted a half-filled bottle from the floor. He tossed it to Tom. “Might as well try this sometime too. For all the good it’ll do.”
Tom wedged the bottle between his vest and shirt. Then buttoned his coat. Then ran. He rented another horse from Brownie and galloped his way from Juleshead like the angels of death were nipping at his heels.
He went to the cottage.
The one he should curse and forget.
Spiderwebs stuck to his face as he entered the damp, mold-scented room and almost tripped over the wooden cask of paint articles. He opened the bag of red pigment. Rubbed the soft powder staining his fingers. Two days ago, he’d brought Joanie here.
They’d roamed the property together. She’d called it lovely.
Meg would have said that too.
Then, with the banknote in his pocket, Tom had located the owner, a local tea dealer on the main street in Juleshead. The man had ushered Tom into a shop that fumed of minty sweetness and, with a toothy smile and too-eager handshake, had agreed to the purchase.
Tom had less than half of his inheritance left.
But he had this.
Tossing off his coat, he kicked the wooden cask into a corner of the room and started with a broom. He swept bat droppings and old nests and leaves across the threshold. Then ripped moth-eaten curtains from the windows. Then stomped a wayward floorboard back into place.
All with the bottle stuck between his shirt and his vest. Sloshing against him. The glass cold and luring through the linen of his shirt. He itched to bite off the cork and guzzle away the sickness in his throat. Anything to get it out of his mind.
Her crying in his bedchamber.
He’d known her—och,lovedher—two years before he’d witnessed her first tears. They’d been crushing rhubarb roots at the rear counter late in the evening, with only a flickering candle to light the apothecary shop.
She’d used the mortar and pestle with deftness.
But he saw her tremble.
