A Name Unknown

by Roseanna M. White

  Blood was seeping out, staining her once-white shirt. The white rectangle of paper. She didn’t look down to see it. “I’m gonna find you! And you’re gonna regret ever tangling with Rosemary Gresham, you cursed fool!”

  The man’s crashing through the underbrush faded into nothing. Peter thought that perhaps then she’d sag. Realize she was in pain.

  Instead, she tried again to stand. “Of all the blighted, archaic things—a dashed arrow? Are you Robin Hood, you blazing coward?” This last she said at a yell again, aiming it at the now-silent trees.

  And she did that thing again—pronouncing archaic with a ch sound instead of a k.

  He wasn’t about to correct her, not this time. Not when her blood seeped a little faster with every move she made. And why hadn’t he ever researched how to deal with arrow wounds? He was a dashed adventure novelist, he should know these things. “Will you p-please be still? You’re . . . you’re making it worse.”

  “How in blazes can I make it worse? He shot me. With a blighted arrow!” She raised a hand again, probably to grab once more for the shaft. But her fingers shook.

  He gripped them before she could grab the wood. “I daresay he . . . he wasn’t aiming for you.”

  Only when she went still, her gaze latched upon him, did he realize she’d still been straining against his arms, trying to rise. “Do you think he was aiming for you?”

  He pressed her hand to her stomach and reached for the shaft. For the paper pinned to her shoulder. Carefully he tore it free. “I think . . . I think he was aiming for a . . . a tree.”

  “Well, he missed.”

  “Yes.” And if ever he learned who did it, there would indeed be a reckoning. “Come. Carefully. I’ll . . . I’ll help you up.” The arrow itself probably helped keep the blood from doing more than this trickle, but they had to get her home.

  Mumbling and grumbling and growling words no lady should know—but which he could hardly begrudge her just now—they got to their feet. She swayed a bit once she stood upright, which only made the anger snap back into her eyes.

  She snatched the paper out of his hands, no doubt to compensate. “Give me that. Let’s see what message was so important that he had to shoot me to deliver it.”

  He didn’t want to see. Not now, when she was standing there like a poor hedgehog, that long shaft her sole spine. Not knowing it would be some message against him. His fault, then, that she’d been injured.

  Dear Lord, touch her. Keep her well.

  She unfolded the paper with the arm opposite the arrow. “‘Someone should tell the Black Hand they missed one.’ Oh, for the love of—you’re not even Austrian!”

  Their gazes met. He drew in a breath.

  She spewed one out. “No. I don’t even care if anyone’s sending messages to him. We’re not going to go rushing in like a bunch of blighted heroes to make sure that old man’s all right.”

  Maybe they wouldn’t—seeing to this wound was priority. But someone had to. Mr. Arnold had no one but his servants to make sure he was well, and what if someone had found him on one of his walks?

  He slid an arm around her waist, on her uninjured side. Though she’d probably never admit in a century that she needed anyone to lean on, he wasn’t taking any chances of her falling over and making the wound worse.

  Her arm looped his neck, every bit as bony as it looked. And she glared at him. “You’re too blasted good for your own good—you realize that, I hope.”

  “Ready?” He looked down the two inches into her eyes, trying to find the pain beneath the anger, so that he could measure it.

  What he saw was the eyes of his friend, brown and as clear as jasper. Hurting because of him. He gripped her waist—too slender, too strong—and held that too-sparking gaze when he would usually have looked away. “Rosemary. I . . . I’m sorry.”

  Her bony fingers curled into his jacket. Into his shoulder. “It’s not your fault, Peter. None of this is your fault.”

  He’d brought her into this, hadn’t he? It had never occurred to him, when he’d hired the stranger from London with blades for shoulders, that she’d be injured because of her work for him. He should have sent her back to Town that first day.

  He set his gaze on the path. Drew in a long breath. And was glad, despite it all, that she was here.

  Rosemary marched into the village with fury enough to make up for the weakness she had denied feeling as she’d met Peter’s concerned gaze and insisted that, yes, she would still go to the pub tonight. Her shoulder was bandaged, and though she’d changed her shirt—she’d been tempted not to, just to make a point of it—the bleeding hadn’t quite stopped by the time she’d done so. New stains had soaked through the linen.

  Good. The mood she was in, she needed to shock the whole blasted village, and this seemed a fine way of doing it. Summer’s long light was still bathing the land in gold when she shoved open the door to the pub and stomped in.

  A gasp, and a clatter. It came from the right, but she kept her eyes trained on the echoing gasp from the bar, where Eseld tossed down a towel and made to round the wooden counter. “Rosemary! What happened?”

  “What happened?” It wasn’t Eseld responsible, that she knew. But someone here was, or knew the someone who was, or could find the someone who was, and in a village this small, word traveled. Let it. “I’ll tell you what happened. Some blighted idiot who thinks himself Robin Hood shot me with a blighted arrow!”

  “Shot you?” Eseld froze at the end of the bar, then rushed forward. “Who would do that?”

  “Now that’s a good question, isn’t it?” Stopping her friend with an outstretched arm—her bad one, just because she knew she couldn’t contain the wince, and just because she wanted everyone to see it. “I don’t know who in this supposedly God-fearing village decided it sounded like a fine idea to be medieval and shoot a stupid message at Peter Holstein, but he ought to have done more target practice before he tried it. Because now he’s gone and made me angry—and you don’t want to see Rosemary Gresham angry. Do you hear me?” This she shouted at the room at large. “You want Robin Hood, I can show you Robin Hood!”

  “Rosie . . .” Eseld eased forward another step.

  Rosemary’s nostrils flared. Only her family called her Rosie—and much as she liked Eseld, she wasn’t family. She hadn’t earned that right. Shaking her head, she backed up a step. “No. I just took a blighted arrow in the shoulder, because some idiot thinks Peter Holstein is his enemy. Well, he’s wrong. But he’s earned me as one, and he’s going to regret it. Because I’m not nearly as nice as Mr. Holstein is.”

  Footsteps, light and harried, and then Betty rushed to Eseld’s side. Concern darkened the circles ever present under her eyes. “I’ll help you! I’ll help you find who did it—I owe Mr. Holstein everything.”

  Blast. She didn’t want to go soft, not now—but Betty didn’t need to be involved in this.

  Someone else stood up from a booth in the corner. A man, though she couldn’t remember his name just now. “We’ll all help. He did right last week—he’s not our enemy. None of us thinks he is, not anymore.”

  Someone else snorted. “Well, some might still. But we’ll talk to them, Miss Gresham. We will. If they did this, they’ll pay. And if it’s not one of ours, then we’ll find out straightaway and run them out of Cornwall.”

  She had her doubts, when it came down to it, that any of these people would turn on their own—or that they really considered Peter one of their own, to stand for him against a stranger. She surely wasn’t to be counted among them.

  But she’d made her point. And she couldn’t well afford to go tearing out of here and do what she wanted—get a name and then steal every blasted thing the idiot belonging to that name held dear. All that would accomplish would be to land her in the cell next to Tim’s.

  So she spun on her heel and marched back out the door, and she ignored the calls of Betty and Eseld as she went. She’d get back to Kensey, she’d go into her cottage, and
she’d go to bed. She’d let the pain have its say. She’d take the aspirin Grammy had given her, but which Rosemary had only stuffed into a pocket.

  Those men in the pub had a point though. As she blinked away a haze edging toward dizziness and strode out of the village along that too-narrow road, she knew they did. Peter had won the hearts of plenty of villagers last Saturday night. The very ones she’d have thought most apt to hate him—the common people—now thought him a champion, if not a friend.

  But for every ally he’d made, he’d made an enemy too. Those with a claim to gentle blood had been grumbling all the louder about him. Those like his adversary in London. For all she knew, that was Mr. Jasper’s goal all along—to seed unrest against him even here. To send in men with shadowy purposes meant only to rouse the disquiet of the people.

  Men like that stranger in the bowler. Or, if Jasper was linked to Mr. V, her.

  Her stomach went wobbly. Mr. V had employed her as a thief—something everyone would label a lowlife. What other kinds of criminals would he employ? Thugs? Vandals?

  Assassins?

  Her blood chilled. Her breath felt heavy, made the distance between her and rest stretch into forever. What did she really know of her employer? What was he capable of? How deeply did his distrust of—or even hatred for—Peter Holstein go?

  She rounded a bend in the road, her attention snatched by a woman on a bicycle. Or rather, a woman not on a bicycle who obviously wanted to be. The large basket on the front seemed to have come unattached and spilled her packages all over the road, and now the woman struggled to fasten it into place and hold up the bicycle as well.

  Something she could help with easily enough. And frankly, a distraction from her current thoughts would be welcome indeed. So she called out, “Just a moment, I’ll give you a hand!” and trotted in that direction.

  Or perhaps not so welcome—Mrs. Teague looked up from her task, and the relief on her face changed to a sneer as fast as the wind could whip off the Atlantic. “I don’t need any of your help.”

  “Oh, really? Evidence says otherwise.” She ought to just leave her to fumble—it would serve her right. But then, it would irritate her more if she insisted on helping. Rosemary strode over to the wobbling bicycle and gripped the handles.

  Mrs. Teague’s glare would have been more biting had her hat not gone askew and were tendrils of grey hair not plastered to her face and neck in the late-June heat. The woman glanced once at Rosemary’s bloodstained shoulder, but it didn’t seem to soften her any. “I don’t. Need. Help. Especially from someone bleeding all over herself.”

  Rosemary pasted a cheery smile onto her lips and ignored the way her shoulder throbbed down into her arm. “Looks like what you need is a screwdriver to get that basket to stay on. Do you have one?”

  Mrs. Teague looked fit to snarl. “Does it look like I have one? Why would I have one?”

  “Because a girl never knows when she might need something like that.” Using a hip to hold up the bicycle, Rosemary opened the handbag she’d had looped over her good arm and fished about inside until she came up with the little screwdriver.

  The lock picks she left securely in the bottom, wrapped in their scrap of muslin that matched the lining of her bag.

  Mrs. Teague, of course, didn’t take it. “I don’t need your tool.”

  Was it possible to be in this woman’s presence and not roll her eyes? “You know, I’m all for stubbornness. Really, I am. Until it just makes you look stupid, at which point you ought to say thanks and tighten your blighted screw back into place.”

  “Stupid now, am I?” Knuckles white around the handlebars, Mrs. Teague bared her teeth. “Go back to Kensey. Better still, go back to London, you hussy. No one wants you here.”

  Her shoulder pulsed, sending pain all down her arm. And probably making her face go red—unless of course it had gone white with all that blood surging toward the aching limb. Rosemary gritted her teeth. Telling herself to just stomp away and leave the woman to her own devices. Telling herself to point out that Peter did want her here, so take that.

  Telling herself that the burning in her eyes was from her dratted shoulder, not the words spoken by a woman she didn’t even like.

  No, she wouldn’t be so weak. Not over the likes of Mrs. Teague. Holding her anger tight, Rosemary shook her head and dropped the screwdriver back into her handbag. “What the devil is the matter with you? You’ve hated me from the moment I showed up, though heaven knows why. What is it about me that you despise so, huh?”

  “I don’t hate you.” Though her voice fair to dripped hatred. “I don’t despise you. You’re not worth it.”

  Rosemary was eight again, standing on a filthy street, her shoes stolen by older urchins, along with her coat. Shivering in the winter wind and looking up at the irate woman brandishing a broom, ready to smack her for going through the rubbish bins in the alley, looking for scraps. “You don’t deserve any,” the woman had said. “Get you gone, you worthless rat.”

  Her fingers curled into her palm. Maybe she was worthless, by rights—but not anymore. What God and society hadn’t seen fit to give, Rosemary had taken for herself. And she wouldn’t let some self-righteous cow ruin it.

  Sneer in place, Rosemary stepped away. “It must make Peter proud, seeing how loving his people are to a stranger.”

  Mrs. Teague’s red face mottled. She lifted a finger, waved it. “I knew it! I knew what you were about, I saw it from the first! Calling him Peter, as if you’ve any right to do so.”

  “What in blazes are you talking about?” She didn’t mean to shout it, it just came out that way.

  “I know your kind. Nothing but a money-grubber, that’s what. Thinking to come into the house of some wealthy gentleman who everyone knows is awkward in society and . . . and seduce him!”

  Rosemary, mouth agape, just blinked. Blinked again. Then untangled her tongue. “I beg your pardon?”

  Mrs. Teague let the bicycle fall and came forward to poke that offending finger into Rosemary’s chest. “I won’t stand for it, do you hear me? That boy’s like a son to me, and if his sainted mother were here, she’d say the same. Peter Holstein is too good for the likes of you!”

  “You think I don’t know that?” And where had that come from? Disgusted with herself as much as with the housekeeper, Rosemary shook her head and took a step away. “I’m not after his blighted money, nor to . . . to seduce him, or marry him, or whatever else you think I mean to do. I’m here to do a job. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  And she’d do well to remember that herself. She was here to do her job, not to make friends. Pivoting, she pointed herself in the direction of Kensey Manor again.

  Mrs. Teague was on her heels, a dog growling over a bone. “Oh, and you expect me to believe that, do you? A job, she says. As if long walks to the cliffs are part of your job. Or trips to St. Michael’s Mount. Or rides into the village. Or going to a ball with him—”

  “You know what?” Her body felt strangely heavy. Or maybe light. Or perhaps just a bit wobbly, like Mrs. Teague’s discarded bicycle. She lifted her good arm. Or meant to. Pointed. Maybe. “I don’t care what you think. I don’t need your approval. I just need you to stay out of my way so I can . . . so I can . . .”

  The world went blurry around the edges. Tilted a bit. Or perhaps more than a bit. And what was the ground doing, rushing up like that to meet her?

  She blinked, trying to clear away the fuzziness. Trying to figure why she felt so blasted heavy. Or light. Or wobbly.

  “Rosemary?”

  She blinked again—but it was the kitchen ceiling at Kensey staring back at her, not the evening sky. Peter’s voice in her ear, Peter’s fingers about hers, not the condemning tones of Mrs. Teague. She lifted a hand to her forehead. “What happened?”

  Peter sighed. His hair was falling over his forehead, a golden wreck in need of a trim, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up. Blood—her blood—still dotted his waistcoat. “Did you . . . did you eat to
day?”

  Eat? “Of course. I had . . .” But she hadn’t had breakfast, not after last night’s big dinner. She’d been waiting for luncheon.

  But they’d gone out for that walk before luncheon. And then this blighted arrow, and the doctor had come, and Grammy had been fussing, and Rosemary had just wanted out of the house, away from all the bother, and . . . and she’d thought she’d eat in the pub, after she’d had her say, but stomping out had felt more dramatic. So . . . “I may have forgotten.”

  A bit of a smile teased the corners of his mouth. Just the corners. Just enough to, somehow, draw attention to that cleft in his chin that Elinor would love. He pushed a steaming cup her way, and then a plate full of sweets. “You . . . you fainted. On the road. Mrs. Teague . . . had to fetch us . . . to fetch you back.”

  It was the bleeding, that must be what had done it. She had no problem going without food for a day under normal circumstances. But her shoulder had leaked too much of her energy away, apparently. She reached for the cup but, given the shaking of her hand, thought better of it and lifted a fairing instead. The sweet ginger biscuit tasted like nothing to her tongue, felt too dry, even though she knew well Grammy was a master of fairings.

  Blast it all. She swallowed the tasteless bite and sat forward until she could rest her forehead on the worn, smooth surface of the table. “My shoulder hurts.”

  “I know.” His hand came to rest against her hair.

  Those stupid tears burned again. She could handle electro-magnetic alarms. Security dogs. Museum guards. She could handle disregard. Distrust. Outright hatred. But she wasn’t at all sure she could handle him being so blasted nice.

  Nineteen

  Rosemary breathed in one more long breath of the fresh air spilling through the window and then told herself to get back to work. She had only another hour in the day before she’d have to stop anyway and go dress for dinner. The Penroses were coming over to dine with them, and her mind was already going over the gown waiting in the cottage rather than the books still waiting in the library.