The kettle burbled, and she poured the boiling water into the tea pot. Proud of her housewifery, she picked the tray up from the table—the infamous table—and carried it into the parlor.
And stopped. She hadn’t been gone all that long, but Jack’s bearded chin rested on his chest. His eyes were closed, and he was…snoring!
She set the tray down, rattling the china with deliberation. The noise failed to wake up her midnight visitor.
What should she do? Nicola knew the man suffered from insomnia and bad dreams—all probably related to the train accident. His face was often drawn, his eyes shadowed, and she’d watched him cover his yawns several times.
She herself couldn’t remember much of anything from that day, not even in dreams, which was probably just as well. Just some snatches—a bad odor, the same feeling of hanging upside down from a tree limb as she’d done in her walled back garden as a girl, blood rushing to her head. Smoke and someone screaming endlessly.
Jack hadn’t even been there. Yet he knew more than she did, or imagined the very worst far better than she would let herself.
She bit into a cherry tart, then poured herself a cup of tea. She wasn’t going to watch Jack sleep, was she? That seemed almost rude. She wasn’t a voyeur, had never peered in windows as she took her daily walks. But it seemed a shame to wake him when his rest came at such a premium.
What to do? She stifled her own yawn and finished her half of the food. What had Jack wanted to show her? Nicola wondered if he’d gotten a jump start on their secret hand signals. She’d looked the card over herself today, trying to think of memory tricks to help her recall the positions. The letter B looked like two bugs kissing, or possibly a butterfly or a bow. H was easy—two hands lay flat against each other. The finger shapes for C and X resembled the letters themselves, but oh, the rest. She wasn’t sure she’d learn them all by teatime Saturday or teatime Saturday next year.
She would close her eyes for a little bit until Jack woke up. She had dutifully gone to bed every night at the assigned ten o’clock bedtime, no rebellion on her part, and her body craved routine. Just a catnap. She arranged herself on the sofa, resting her head on its arm and pulling the afghan over her legs, making sure her ankles were adequately covered.
But Jack had seen them and worse. She was in so much trouble.
Chapter 20
December 28, 1882
Yow, but his neck hurt. Jack opened one eye. It was gray and cold in the room, with near-dead embers in the fireplace. He had fallen asleep in his chair and had spent the whole night upright!
He had slept. A solid dreamless handful of hours. It was almost worth being stiff, his every muscle tight. He stretched, then rubbed the kink at his shoulder, twisting and turning to loosen things up.
Both eyes open now, he discovered Nicola curled up as innocently as a child on the sofa. Her hand was tucked under her chin, and her golden hair had come loose across her shoulder. Her breathing was regular, untroubled, and he hated to wake her. She resembled some sort of fairy princess, too much above his touch.
He stood up, somewhat unsteady. A tray lay upon the table, a linen napkin covering last night’s post-midnight repast that he’d missed. Jack flipped up a corner. It was too dim to see well, but his nose told him brandy and cherries were on offer. He snaffled up the tart in one bite, then savored the fruitcake, licking his fingers of crumbs.
It was too much to hope for that the tea was still warm—it had been hours since Nicola left him relaxing by her fire. And relax he had. Jack was a little embarrassed that he’d gone to sleep. What a dull dog he was. And after all his hard work. He’d figured out a way to tell her something with his hands and wanted to demonstrate.
I like you.
It wasn’t the most romantic of declarations. He wasn’t ready to use the other L-word, although he believed it was becoming true. All he knew was that he was at peace when he was with her.
Would that change if she could speak? He remembered a pub he’d seen somewhere in Leicestershire. The Silent Woman. The swinging sign showed a headless female form, not the most sensitive of images with a queen on the throne for forty-five years.
Women were more than entitled to reveal what was on their minds. Of course, one did not always like to hear what that might be.
Time to leave before the world woke up. Jack pulled his watch out of his pocket. Good God! It was past seven in the morning! The world had been awake for hours. How was he to get out of Nicola’s cottage without anyone noticing?
He was supposed to be at Primrose Cottage painting kitchen cupboards in fifteen minutes. He couldn’t very well turn up in his best tweeds.
Frozen with indecision, the rattle of the kitchen door made his mind up for him. He dived behind the couch, praying that keen-eyed Mrs. Grace would not notice him.
But she would notice that second teacup and plate. He popped up again just long enough to snatch them from the tray and shoved them under the sofa fringe. He wished he could crawl right under with them, but his size was a distinct disadvantage. It was cramped enough against the wall.
“Nicola,” he whispered, “wake up!” It was all the warning he dared.
He heard the springs in the sofa give, but no footfalls on the carpet. She had merely rolled around a bit, oblivious to their danger.
Sleeping Beauty.
A humming—a hymn, if Jack was not mistaken—and quiet clattering came from the kitchen as Mrs. Grace began to prepare Nicola’s breakfast. Jack’s stomach rumbled at the smell of eggs and bacon and toast, and wished he’d had time to eat the second slice of the fruitcake before hiding.
“Huh! Now where is that tray?” Mrs. Grace asked the empty kitchen. Jack heard doors opening and closing, and a fair amount of confused tsking and muttering.
Lucky Nicola probably got breakfast in bed, whereas Jack had to be fully dressed, hair and beard combed, teeth cleaned. If he ever got out of Puddling, he’d have breakfast in bed for a week. Maybe a month.
“This is very irregular. Oh, well. I’ll just go upstairs and ask her to come down.”
Jack talked to himself all the time too, so he found no fault with Mrs. Grace’s musings. He strained to see around the corner of the couch. The housekeeper walked right by the parlor door and clumped up the stairs. When she got directly overhead, she gave an alarmed shriek that should have woken the dead. Still, Nicola didn’t move.
“Miss Nicola! Miss Nicola’s been kidnapped!”
Not the first thing Jack might have thought when he saw an undisturbed bed. He bolted from behind the couch and rushed into the kitchen, grabbing a piece of dry toast from the rack. One could wish for butter or jam, but he didn’t have time.
A quick look out the kitchen window showed him it was snowing again, and his footprints would be obvious in the drift. He’d have to run around to the front of the house, go down the path to the street. Any number of people would see him.
Where could he hide? He’d missed his chance to the front door, but had been afraid Mrs. Grace would look straight down the stairs in her panic and catch him fleeing.
Trap door. Cellar. Maybe this cottage had one like his. He gave silent thanks for Mrs. Feather’s industrious inspiration, and for the several hours he’d spent underground at Primrose Cottage making crooked shelves. To his delight, he saw an iron ring in the far corner, threw it open and didn’t bother with trying to climb down the ladder. Pulling the door down behind him as quietly as he could, he jumped to the floor, jolting his left knee a little.
Despite all his recent walking, perhaps he was not as flexible as he thought.
A narrow window let in a shaft of frosty gray light, so Jack did not feel like Jonah inside the whale. Shelves very like the ones he’d just built, only straighter, lined one wall, but he was crushed to discover no gleaming jars of fruit or crocks of pickles for his breakfast, not that he wanted to eat marinated cuc
umbers at this hour. All that bounty was upstairs in the pantry.
It may as well have been up on the moon. This cellar was even cleaner and emptier than his own. How long could he lie low down here? And lying low was no exaggeration—he could barely stand upright.
If he didn’t turn up at work soon, he’d be breaking the bonds of his Service. Would they think he’d run away? Did people ever fight their incarceration in Puddling? Jack had volunteered to give up his freedom—unwisely, said his stomach—but others were placed here under duress. Families had stashed their difficult relatives here since the beginning of the century.
The main road was closed off by a tall wooden gate, and if one did not know what to look for, would never suspect the wider world was just outside. On the other end of the village, Honeywell Lane petered out at the stream, which, because of its icy condition, would be crossable for the first time in years. The hills beckoned beyond, but when one was kept short of money and rations, how far could one get?
Mrs. Feather was probably looking under the bed for him right now, a pot of gruel on the range.
She wouldn’t be surprised to find an unmussed bed in the morning—Jack frequently sat up in his plain little parlor, falling asleep in his armchair in the wee hours if he was lucky. He’d watched the fire ebb more nights than not since he’d arrived in Puddling, sometimes seeing the sun rise in the winter sky over the Cotswold Hills. Listening for the mourning doves, the farm carts rolling on Honeywell Lane, the flap of laundry on his neighbor’s line.
He listened now, failing to detect any movement above his head. No floorboards squeaking, no thrills of joy that the mistress was simply sleeping on the sofa. In a minute or two, Mrs. Grace would discover Nicola in the parlor, and he would be stuck here for the rest of the day, waiting to hear good-byes and the kitchen door latch at the end of Mrs. Grace’s shift unless he could miraculously transport himself out of the cottage.
He was in trouble for sure.
No food. No warmth. No logical plan of escape. He was much too large to boost himself up and squeeze out the single window. It was clear he had not been thinking strategically when he plunged into the cellar. The panic of discovery had overwhelmed him. Not that he cared what happened to him. No, it was Nicola’s reputation that would suffer if a man was found in her house before breakfast. She might get thrown out of Puddling too, and Jack was relatively certain she didn’t wish to leave yet.
Unless she had a better offer. Was he ready to ask her to marry him?
He sat on a ladder tread, trying to contemplate his fate. After a few minutes of his mind being as untouched as the snow on the path outside, there was activity in the kitchen above. He heard snatches of conversation, all one-sided, of course. Jack hoped Mrs. Grace in her confusion wouldn’t notice the missing piece of toast.
Chapter 21
Nicola had been in a fog all day. She attributed it to her night on the couch and the blustery snow swirling outside. She had forced herself to put one leaden foot in front of the other, help Mrs. Grace with household chores, and begin a misshapen tiny pink sweater for some unlucky little girl.
Poor Jack must have left as soon as he awoke, only to find her asleep. What a vibrant pair they made. How could they possibly stay up for a New Year’s Eve party, even if it was a party of two?
She’d already made up her mind not to attempt a surreptitious midnight visit to Jack tonight. The weather was atrocious, and she’d had difficulty heading into the wind and so abbreviated her daily walk earlier. It was a pity she couldn’t contact him to tell him, but Mrs. Grace’s suspicions would be aroused if she tried to get a message to him through the housekeepers.
The woman was already fretting about a missing tea cup, saucer and plate, and had muttered something about toast at breakfast as well. It seemed odd that Jack had taken the china with him when he left, though he’d managed to find the tart and fruitcake on the serving platter and presumably ate them, leaving a fruitcake slice behind to her surprise.
At around three o’clock, Nicola had encouraged Mrs. Grace to go home before it got much darker, and thus had to answer the urgent knock on her cottage door herself a few minutes later.
It was the head of the governors, Mr. Sykes, bundled up for the weather. His fierce eyebrows and eyelashes were dusted with snowflakes, and he wore a grim expression. Nicola immediately felt guilty. The man should be a judge—one look from him, and everyone would confess to crimes they’d never even committed.
In this case, though, Nicola was guilty. Good heavens, did Puddling know about Jack coming here last night? Was she to be interrogated and tossed out into the cold for breaking the Puddling Rehabilitation Rules? Nicola tried to arrange an innocent smile on her face. She was sort of innocent—nothing had happened that she wished would have happened anyhow.
“Forgive the intrusion, Miss Mayfield. May I come in? I need to ask you a few questions.”
Heart knocking in her chest, Nicola nodded and stepped aside. She led him to the parlor, and he warmed himself before the fire for a few seconds, then turned. She pointed to the tea service Mrs. Grace had prepared before she left, but Mr. Sykes shook his head.
“I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m here. We’re making a house-to-house search looking for one of our Guests, and I wonder if you’ve seen him. You know him as Jack.”
Nicola felt faint. Mr. Sykes noticed and grasped her elbow before she slid to the carpet.
“Sit down, please. I don’t want to alarm you—I’m sure he’s all right. Somewhere. It’s just that he didn’t turn up for work today and his cottage is empty. His bed wasn’t slept in, though Mrs. Feather says that’s not unusual. But she is in quite a state anyhow. I assured her he couldn’t have got far on a day like this. Only a madman—well, he’s not exactly that, is he? We’ve had madmen here before, and he doesn’t fit the profile.” Mr. Sykes paused, looking down at his largish feet as if they would tell him how to proceed without scaring her further.
“You have spent a little time with him, I think. Christmas lunch and whatnot. He didn’t say anything to you that would—uh, that would lead you to believe that he’s—that is to say—very unhappy here?”
Each stumbled word was worse than the other. Nicola was as alarmed as she’d ever been. It was obvious Mr. Sykes thought Jack might harm himself.
He wouldn’t, would he? He’d seemed full of energy last night before he’d suddenly fallen asleep sitting up in her parlor. Wanted to show her something. Was pleased with himself. Nicola tried to recollect everything he’d said when he arrived.
A black cat. The Countess’s barking dog. Two-hundred-something steps. He’d eaten the peaches with relish and wanted brandy. He wouldn’t run off in a snowstorm for brandy, would he?
Nicola was uncertain. Should she tell Mr. Sykes that Jack had been here last night? Was he buried in a snowbank between her cottage and his, however many steps it was? He could have tripped and fallen—the steep streets were coated with ice despite ashes tossed upon them. Unsafe. She’d had an accident herself.
But someone would notice a body on the lane. If they were going from cottage to cottage, gardens would be inspected, although why would Jack be in one? Not digging up another bush, surely.
She shut her eyes, seeing that vision again of him lying inert. Helpless. Blood in the snow.
“What is it, Miss Mayfield? You—you almost spoke!” Mr. Sykes’s eyebrows were lifted in surprise.
Nicola pulled her notebook—the notebook that Jack had given her—out of her pocket.
I do make noises sometimes. Not very often. Dr. Oakley is encouraged.
Of course, he wasn’t aware of what she was doing when she made sounds. What Jack was doing to her. With her.
“That’s excellent news. We pride ourselves in Puddling for restoring our Guests to good health. Which is why it’s so vexing to think that Lo—uh, Jack has gone missing. No one intuited that
he wanted to leave before his term was up. And he hasn’t taken any of his belongings—Mrs. Feather was sure of that.”
Oh. Worse and worse. Nicola bit her lip to prevent herself from crying. She needed to look concerned but not bereft. The continuation of their friendship depended upon it.
If it was to be continued. If Jack had truly disappeared—
This morning Mrs. Grace had thought Nicola had been kidnapped, a very silly idea. Who would do such a thing to an ordinary twenty-six-year-old woman? But Jack had scientific skills which would prove useful to any number of people or countries. His mind was valuable.
“He’ll be all right, I promise. We’ll do everything in our power to find him. You haven’t seen him today then?”
She had seen him after midnight. Should she say so?
No. Nicola was quite convinced Jack would not want her to. She shook her head.
“All right. I’ll be off. If you do happen to bump into him—although I do not advise you to go out in this storm—please tell him to report back to his cottage. Mrs. Feather will be spending the night there until he returns. She’ll have hot food ready.”
Which would be so awful he wouldn’t want to eat, knowing Jack.
I will. Good luck.
Mr. Sykes left her sitting in the chair, desolate. The front door blew shut with a bang, causing Nicola’s heart to stutter.
Where on earth could Jack be? Not in his cottage. Not at the worksite. Not striding around Puddling as if he owned the place.
Could his secretary have come to fetch him? No, someone would have had to open the gate to let him in to the village.
Perhaps he had left by himself. Climbed up a hill in the middle of the night, counting the steps to the next village, and was safe in London or Oxfordshire by now. Leaving her without saying good-bye. There had been no note, not that Jack would write one for Mrs. Grace to find.
Redeeming Lord Ryder Page 13