“I fear all this reading has made me tired too.”
“Just a little longer. Please.” The last word—spoken without that usual demanding pitch—softened Meg’s resolve. The child was unruly. She was pampered.
But she was as destitute as little Margery Meanwell in the children’s book. Not of shoes, care, food, and shelter—but of company, affection, and hope.
Meg nestled next to the girl under the coverlets, a little surprised when Violet cuddled into Meg’s chest. For a long time, she prayed.Help Violet to be well.Her hair was damp and cool against the pillow, and Violet’s skin was warm against hers.Do not let Lord Cunningham suffer greatly. Make him happy. God, make me love him.
Violet’s breathing turned heavier, slower, a little wheezy.
Keep me safe.Meg’s eyes slid shut.Make me a better woman than I was.Sleep drifted, like a fog settling over her, then lifting again.Help Joanie. Help …She pulled back the name Tom, because she was afraid to think of him.
All evening long, he’d crowded on the outskirts of her mind, and if she lowered her bulwarks once, he would barge in.Help him, God.The prayer came anyway. She must have been too tired to keep up the walls.
How quiet he’d been today as she stood two feet away and stroked paint onto his cottage. “Ye’re doing it wrong,” he told her once. He’d walked over, grabbed her wrist, and swept the brush up and down in a smooth and vertical motion. “See?”
She had nodded. “You must forgive me if I am inept. I have never painted before.”
“Yes, ye have.”
Her pulse had sprinted, and her skin tingled a little where his work-roughened fingers had touched her bare wrist. She should have worn gloves. But how could she have known he would touch her?
He spoke next to nothing over the next two hours. He never did put on his shirt.
But when Joanie finally emerged from the cottage, declaring dinner would be finished soon, Tom took Meg to the water pump, watched her clean the paint, then did the same himself. He rode her back to Penrose Abbey on the back of his horse.
“If it is agreeable to you, I shall come again in a day or two. I do hope our second lesson shall be a trifle more enlightening.”
He had swung her off his animal without dismounting himself. “Ye willnae come alone.”
“No, I will not come alone. Good day, Mr. McGwen.”
He looked at her a second longer than he should have. Slow, careful—not angry or exasperated as she had first suspected. Almost … wary? Of her? He rode away without saying anything.
That silence haunted her into sleep.
CHAPTER 15
“You were not kind to her.” Joanie slipped onto her knees next to Tom, where he’d already spread out across his pallet for the night. She twisted backwards. “Will you button me, please?”
He leaned up and fumbled with her button. “There.”
“Thank you.”
“Now go to sleep with ye.”
She felt her way to the other side of the room, blankets rustling as she settled into her own pallet. She sighed. “Tom?”
“Lass,” he growled.
“Just one thing more, and then I won’t talk.”
“What?”
“Why were you so unkind to her?”
“I wasnae unkind.”
“You didn’t talk.”
