How to Climb a Lady’s Tower

by Wolf, Bree

  Miss Hawkins nodded and then watched him closely as he proceeded downward, feet braced against the trunk, his hands on the rope. Once he’d reached the ground, he signaled for her to follow before his gaze swept his surroundings, ensuring that no one had taken note of their escape.

  Looking back up, he watched as Miss Hawkins tightened her hold on the rope, her feet braced against the trunk as he had shown her, and then slowly allowed herself to fall back, trusting her own strength, her own ability to see her safely down.

  Zach was tempted to reassure her, to tell her how impressed he was by her bravery. Still, he held back, afraid to draw someone’s attention.

  The skirts of her dress swayed in the slightly chilled night air as her booted feet moved downward along the trunk. Her face was flushed, and he heard her somewhat rapid intakes of breath. Of course, she was not used to such exercise. Indeed, what young lady would be permitted to engage in such activities? Oddly enough, Zach thought that that was exactly why Miss Hawkins so longed to try this; because it was something kept from her, a choice denied her.

  When she reached the lower half of the sturdy tree trunk, Zach could not help but reach up and guide her down, his hands on her lower back. He told himself he was only ensuring her safety in case she slipped and fell. But deep down, he knew better.

  “It looks easier than it is,” Miss Hawkins commented when her feet once more had firm ground beneath them. Her arms trembled as the strain of supporting her own weight fell away, and she moved them about, opening and closing her fingers.

  “You did well,” Zach told her, loving the glow of her deep green eyes, almost black in the dim light of the moon. “You’re right; it does take practice. I assume you’ve never climbed out your window before?” he said as he drew her aside and deeper into the shadows of the wall.

  Miss Hawkins smiled. “Of course not.” She sighed, and her gaze rose to look up at her open window. “But I wish I had.” Her eyes found his once more. “It feels…liberating to know that walls cannot hold you, that even if my uncle were to truly lock me in, I could leave.” For a moment, she closed her eyes and inhaled a deep breath of the night’s fresh air.

  “Does your uncle lock you in your chamber, Miss Hawkins?” Zach couldn’t help but ask as she turned toward the back of the gardens where a tall hedge ran near the outer wall, hiding them from the house.

  A small smile played across her lips. “Would you call me Rebecca?” she asked, her watchful green eyes fixed on his. “Or would you deem that wrong?”

  Zach chuckled. “Society would.” He glanced around the dark, solitary garden. “However, they would deem this wrong as well.”

  Miss Hawkins – Rebecca – scoffed. “Of course, they would. That, I know. But what do you think? Do you think it’s wrong to address people you come to know, people you might care for by their given name?” She shrugged, her gaze gliding over the shadows lining their path. “I’ve always felt a formal address also implies a distant relationship.”

  People you might care for? Zach was surprised by how freely she’d spoken her mind. Never had he met a woman quite like her. “Do you mean to imply that you could care for me?” he asked, raising his brows in a teasing manner as he grinned at her. Still, his insides twisted and turned with longing at the thought of what her words suggested.

  Smiling, she rolled her eyes at him in that way that seemed to be unique to her. “Don’t for a moment think I’ll allow you to answer my question with a question of your own!” Her brows rose in challenge.

  Zach laughed. “Did you not do the same only a moment ago? I believe I asked you if your uncle ever locked you in your chamber if I’m not at all mistaken.”

  Her teeth sank into her lower lip as she dropped her gaze for a split second. “You noticed that, didn’t you?”

  Zach nodded. It seemed he noticed just about everything when it came to Miss Hawkins – Rebecca.

  “Very well.” Throwing up her hands, she met his gaze head-on. “Yes, my uncle has locked me in my chamber before. Fortunately, it is not a common occurrence. Mostly, I manage to walk that fine line between…”

  “Being yourself and adhering to his rules?”

  When they came to a lone stone bench surrounded by lattices through which vines found their way ever higher, she stopped and turned to look at him. “You seem to know of what I speak.” Her dark eyes shone with curiosity as well as the hope to have found someone who would understand.

  Zach nodded. “My father…he didn’t leave England because he was the second son, because there was nothing here for him, because he didn’t want to stand in his brother’s shadow. From what he told me, it was clear that his own father – my grandfather – believed that to be the reason. He never understood why my father felt the need to leave.”

  Watching him intently, Rebecca pulled the cloak tighter around her shoulders, and yet, Zach doubted that she was cold. What he saw in her eyes was something far deeper than a physical discomfort. “Because here, he could not be himself,” she whispered then, saying out loud that which hung in the air between them.

  Zach smiled. “He wanted to…accomplish something. He had ambition. He loved science and the idea of using machines to facilitate our lives. Whenever he would find something new – no matter what it was – he would spend days, weeks trying to learn how it worked.” He chuckled, remembering the many times his father had come home, his clothes disheveled and his fingers stained. “In America, he found a life he loved, and I think he never returned – despite his success – because he always knew that his family would not have seen it as such. They would have looked at him with disappointment because he did not fulfill their expectations of him.”

  Her eyes closed, and a lone tear slipped out the corner, slowly rolling down her reddened cheek.

  “Rebecca?” Stepping toward her, Zach reached for her hand, carefully taking it within his own. “Are you all right?”

  Blinking, she looked up at him, tears still clinging to her lashes. “I always thought of myself as…odd.” She scoffed. “People even called me that – or peculiar – whenever I dared voice ideas that were so unlike anything they would have ever considered.” A deep smile came to her face, and he felt her hand squeeze his as a sigh left her lips. “It feels good to know I’m not the only one. You are like him, are you not?”

  Although he knew he ought to release her hand, Zach could not bring himself to do so. “In a way,” he whispered, surprised how good it felt to speak about his father, about himself, the man he’d once been, the man he’d all but forgotten in the past year. “Science doesn’t fascinate me as it did my father,” he admitted, “or my brother. But I understand the passion they have always felt to discover something new, to test themselves, to seek out something outside of the world they know.”

  Joy glowed in her eyes as she looked up at the moon, then turned and settled herself on the bench. “Will you tell me what it is that you enjoy?”

  As he sat down beside her, Zach glanced at her folded hands, remembering the soft warmth of her skin against his own and wondered when he would feel it again. If at all. “I like to be out in the world, to go where few people have gone before. I long to see places untouched by civilization, to climb a mountain and know I’m the first one to have done so. I like to push myself, my body, to its limits and past, to see what I can do, what I’m capable of.”

  Her smile deepened. “So you climb in and out of windows not because it is an unusual route of escape but because it reminds you of you are?”

  “Of who I was,” Zach mumbled as regret wormed its way into his heart. “Ever since the day I set foot on English soil, I feel like I’ve been losing a little bit of who I am.” He turned to look at her. “I’ve become someone I’m not, someone I never wanted to be…and I admit I’m sick of it.”

  “Do you want to go home?” Rebecca whispered, and he thought to see her hands clench in her lap. “Back to America? To…Boston, was it?”

  Looking into her dark eyes, Zach reali
zed that, for the first time, he felt torn when contemplating his return home. “Not without my father’s ring,” he told her as something wide and heavy lodged in his throat, something he hadn’t seen coming.

  She swallowed. “But once you have it?”

  Zach nodded, noting the way she bowed her head as though his answer pained her. In truth, it pained him as well. He would miss her. Oh, how he would miss her! The realization was nothing but a shock, and it knocked the air from his lungs.

  “You called me Rebecca,” she said as her gaze rose from her hands to meet his once more, a brave smile on her lips. “May I call you by your given name as well?”

  Zach chuckled. “My name is Zachary, but my brother always calls me Zach.”

  “Eugenie calls me Becca,” she said, brushing a dark red curl behind her ear. “I like Zach. It suits you.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “It sounds simple, straightforward, bold, dauntless…”

  Zach laughed before he glanced upward where the hedge blocked his view of the house. “I suppose I shouldn’t have asked,” he said, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “Now, I shall only disappoint when I’m unable to live up to these expectations.”

  “They’re not expectations at all,” Rebecca told him, her green eyes open and directed at him in a bold way where doubt had still lingered before. “It’s not what I expect from you, but what I’ve observed in you. You are all that and more, and I’m glad that you are for otherwise I wouldn’t be here, under the moon,” she glanced upward, leaning back and onto her hands resting on the edge of the bench, “without a chaperone.” She turned to look at him then, a devilish glimmer in her dark eyes.

  Zach laughed. “That was the first item on your list, a midnight stroll without a chaperone?”

  “More or less, yes. Does it seem insignificant to you?”

  “Not at all. I’m simply wondering what made you think of it, what made you want that and not something else?”

  The expression on her face turned thoughtful, and the faraway look that came to her eyes told him that whatever she would tell him was not a notion born in the moment, but one she’d dwelled on for a long time. “Sometimes, I wonder if I truly wish for these things,” she said into the night, her thoughts returning from the place in her mind where doubt and fear and disappointment lived, “or if I merely want to do them because I am forbidden to, because I feel the need to rebel against what others would force on me or deny me no matter how.” She sat up straight, her eyes clear as they met his. “I don’t know what I truly want. All I know is that I want the chance to find out. I want to have a choice and discover who I am, free from the dictations of this life.”

  “You don’t want to marry?” The moment the question left his lips, Zach wondered why he’d asked it.

  Rebecca shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps. Perhaps not.” She inhaled a deep breath, and her teeth ground together, squaring her jaw. “But I know I do not want to marry him.”

  The reminder of her uncle’s plans for her sent a jolt of outrage through him, and Zach felt his own muscles tense as though to mimic hers. “You mean Lord Tedious?” he said lightly or tried to, for the thought of Rebecca as that man’s wife seemed utterly wrong.

  She smiled at him then, and he knew it was because of his use of the nickname she’d given her boring suitor. “Yes, I mean him. He is wrong for me, and I am wrong for him.” She threw up her hands. “Why does no one see that? Why doesn’t he?”

  “I think the problem is not that no one sees that you’re ill-matched when it comes to who you are, your character. I think it is simply that that is not a compelling reason for them not to match you. Their priorities lie elsewhere.”

  “They’re wrong,” she said, crossing her arms, anger and frustration radiating off her.

  Zach smiled despite the sense of irritation that gripped him. “I agree.” Without thought, he reached out and placed a hand on her arm. “You deserve better.”

  For a second, she glanced down at his hand and he feared she might push him away. But then she smiled, her eyes lighting up in way he knew he could spend the rest of his days watching and never tire of seeing it. “I’ve always thought so.”

  Zach laughed at the teasing tone in her voice. “And that is why you’re here?”

  “That is why I’m here.”

  “It has nothing to do with me?” he teased lightly, but his heart tensed, afraid to hear her answer.

  Devilish joy stood in her eyes as she watched him. “Are you worried I’m only using you to achieve my own selfish goals? Am I not offering you my help in return?”

  Zach felt himself relax as he had many times before in her presence. Her way of expressing herself made him feel at ease, as though they’d known each other forever and he was free to be himself without worrying how he would be perceived. “Indeed, you did offer your help. Though I must admit that I am at a loss in this regard. In what way do you think you can assist me in retrieving my father’s ring?”

  Rebecca shrugged. “I’m not certain yet.” Her nose wrinkled slightly as she pinched her brows together in thought. “You have a list of suspects, do you not?”

  “How do you know this?” Zach frowned. Was there anything she didn’t know?

  “Everything you told Eugenie, she told me.” Smiling at him, she shrugged, suggesting he was a fool to not have made that connection.

  “Of course.”

  “How did you come by it?”

  Zach sighed, wondering how much to tell her. Still, he could not deny that he felt no reservations – none at all! – to share his deepest and darkest secrets with her. How could that be? He barely knew her! “A friend of mine provided it.”

  “Lord Markham?”

  Again, he stared at her. “And how do you know that?”

  She grinned at him. “I’ve got eyes, don’t I?”

  Zach couldn’t help but laugh. “I swear, I shall never underestimate you again.”

  “Good. Then tell me how he came by it.”

  Zach shrugged. “That, I cannot say for certain. All he told me was that he was well acquainted with those below stairs. Perhaps he knows someone in Mortimer’s household who told him about the men there that night.”

  “The night of the card game?”

  “The night of the card game.” Shaking his head, he looked at her. “I admit I’m still surprised your cousin was able to provide information on such a…scandalous topic. It would seem the women of your family are quite unusual.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I hope that is a compliment.” A hint of warning rang in her voice, but Zach knew with a certainty he did not understand that she was merely testing him.

  “Nothing but,” he assured her, lifting his hands in surrender.

  “Well, then what about the men on the list? Were you able to cross any off?”

  Zach heaved a deep sigh. “Some appear to be dead.”

  “Like Lord Remsemere’s brother?”

  Zach knew he ought not be surprised, however, he couldn’t help it. Still, he could not deny that he loved her quick mind, the way she put all these puzzle pieces together and saw with such swiftness something that had taken him quite a while to figure out. “Yes, however, he might have simply ended up on the list because Markham wanted me to go to Ravengrove and meet my cousin.”

  Rebecca frowned. “You didn’t want to meet her?”

  “I did. I simply…” His hands curled into fists. “I feared she might not be too happy to see me.”

  Her eyes narrowed in thought. “The way your father feared his family might see him after taking up actual work?”

  Zach nodded. “I know now that I was wrong to think so. I suppose Markham suspected it all along and simply thought he would help me reach that conclusion faster.” He chuckled. “He can be quite impatient.”

  “He sounds like a good friend.”

  “He is,” Zach mumbled, wondering about the man often referred to as the Black Baron. “I know very little about h
im, and yet, I have no doubt that he’s a friend. Is that foolish?”

  Her hand reached out and gently settled on his, warm and comforting, as she smiled at him, the look in her eyes reassuring. “We don’t have to understand something to be certain of it.”

  Zach all but held his breath as every fiber of his being wanted to reach for her, to draw her closer, for the soft touch of her hand felt utterly right. More than that, it righted something deep inside him, soothed doubts and made him feel at peace.

  As though he’d finally come home.

  As though he’d finally found the place where he belonged.

  Zach’s head began to swim with the implications of the deep desire that grew within him, and he remembered the way his father had often spoken to him about his mother. Zach didn’t recall the words his father had used, but what he recalled was the look on his father’s face as though he had strayed into a dream, as though he couldn’t believe that such a blessing could be real, as though he feared he could wake at any moment.

  Lost in a dream, that was how Zach felt in that moment.

  That was how Zach had never felt before.

  “Do you know when these men died?”

  “Mmh?” Jarred from his thoughts, Zach found two brilliantly green eyes looking into his. “I’m not certain.” He cleared his throat, trying to regain his faculties when he saw the amused smile tickling her lips. “Why do you ask?”

  Rebecca shrugged. “I was wondering if perhaps their names had only been used to hide others’ identities. From what my cousin told me,” she all but wiggled her eyebrows at him, “it seems that Lord Mortimer’s card game is a well-known secret. Many attend, but all pretend that they’ve never heard of it. Everybody knows, but no one admits to it. Is that not how society works? You are free to do as you wish as long as you manage to hide it?”

  Zach frowned as a heavy boulder settled on his heart. “If that is the case, then…all is lost.” Shaking his head, he met her eyes. “If these names are useless – and I must admit, your theory makes sense – then there is no way for me to find out who was there that night and who might have won my father’s ring. Of course, since everyone is trying to hide their involvement, no one will admit to anything.” He scoffed. “And I cannot search everyone’s home. It would take a lifetime to do so.”