As it turned out, the way in was clear. But they didn’t get far. They were crossing the south transept when a fellow carrying a lantern hurried toward them.
“Sorry, gentlemen,” he said. “No visitors after dark. I know some like a broody atmosphere or want to be frighted out of their wits—”
“We’re not visiting,” Lisle said. “We’ve only come—”
“You must come back in the daytime. Very busy, I admit, with the workmen, but they must clear out, mustn’t they, before we can make a start of things. And now this matter of the crypt, and everyone pestering for a look at it.”
“That isn’t—”
“I can’t tell you how many scholars we’ve had, measuring and arguing. Last I heard, it’ll cost a hundred thousand pounds to repair the damage, but that doesn’t include the crypt, as they haven’t decided what to do. Half at least saying it must be dug out and the other half saying leave it as it is.”
“It’s not about—”
“You come back tomorrow, sirs, and someone will be happy to take you about and answer your questions and tell you why they’re disputing about what’s Norman and what’s Perpendicular.” He shooed them toward the door.
Theorizing that the watchman was slightly deaf as well as garrulous, Lisle said, more loudly, “We’re looking for two ladies.”
The man stopped waving his lantern at the door. “Ladies?”
“My aunties,” said Olivia, sounding uncannily like an adolescent male. Mimicry came easy to her.
Lisle glared at her. She always had to embellish.
“One about so tall,” said Lisle, holding his hand level with Olivia’s ear. “The other a trifle shorter. They wanted to see the church, and particularly the crypt.”
“Oh, yes, indeed,” said the man. “I told them to come back tomorrow. It isn’t at all safe, I warned them, but they wouldn’t have any of that. Before I knew what I was about, there I was, leading them about and answering questions. But I’m not employed, sir, to give tours at night, and I won’t be making any more exceptions.”
“Certainly not,” said Lisle. “But perhaps you could tell us when they left?”
“Why, not ten minutes ago, I’m sure. Maybe it was a quarter hour. I don’t recollect exactly. But they left in a hurry. Lost track of time, they said.”
“Did they happen to say where they were going?” Lisle said.
“The George in Coney Street, they told me. They asked for the quickest way back. Said they were late for dinner.”
“If they left ten minutes ago, we should have met up with them,” Lisle said.
“They might have gone another way,” said the watchman. “Did you come by way of Stonegate?”
“We did,” said Lisle. “Did they—”
“As I explained to them, the name refers to the stone brought to build the Minster,” their informant said. “It traveled from the quarries by water, and landed at Stayne Gate, below the Guildhall.”
“Do you think—”
“They were interested to learn that the author Mr. Lawrence Sterne lived in Stonegate in his bachelor days.”
“Do you think they went another way?” Lisle said in a rush.
“Mayhap they took the wrong turning, into Little Stonegate,” the watchman said. “I hope they didn’t go astray. I saw them safely out of the church, I promise you. The way is poorly lit, indeed, and with all this debris about, it’s all too easy to—”
A shriek cut him off.
Lisle turned in the direction of the sound. He saw nothing. Then he realized he saw nothing in the place where Olivia ought to be.
“Olivia!” he shouted.
“Ow, ow, ow,” Olivia said. Then, remembering that she was supposed to be a male, she added, “Deuce take it.”
Her voice wobbled. Indeed, the pain made her eyes water, and she wanted to cry, although that was mainly frustration. She saw no way to get out of this gracefully. “I’m over here.”
“Over where?”
The light of candle and lantern wavered over the various heaps of debris.
“Here,” she said.
At last the light swung toward her ignominious pose.
She lay, arse upward, half on and half off the pile of lumber and stone and whatever else she’d tripped over. A precious small pile, she saw as the men came nearer. But like the small hole that had finished Mercutio, it had been enough to do for her. She’d struck her knee—and that hurt—and landed on an elbow, which sent pain twanging up her arm. But that was nothing to what she felt when she tried to stand up.
Lisle passed his candle to the watchman and crouched beside her.
“This is why I tell them not to come at night,” the watchman said. “A man could trip and crack his head open. Even in the daytime you’ve got to watch where you’re going.”
“Stand back a bit,” Lisle said. “Hold the lantern higher.”
The watchman retreated and did as he was told.
Suppressing a groan, she managed to turn slightly. She didn’t care what Lisle saw, but she’d rather not have her arse center stage for the watchman to gape at.
“Where’s your hat?” Lisle said in a low voice.
“I don’t know.”
He ran his fingers lightly over her tightly pinned hair. “You don’t seem to be bleeding.”
“I fell on my arm.”
“If you hadn’t, you could have cracked your skull.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my head,” she said.
“That’s a matter of opinion.”
“It’s my foot. I can’t get up.”
“I’m going to throttle you,” he said. “I told you—”
“To stay close, I know. But I only moved a very little away. I was trying to get a quick look about before he ejected us. And then—”
“You tripped.”
“It wasn’t a bad fall, but my right foot won’t hold me. I think I twisted my ankle. Help me up, will you?”
“Is anything broken, curse you?”
“I don’t think so. It’s only the foot. It won’t cooperate—and it hurts like blazes if I try to make it cooperate.”
He said something under his breath in Arabic. She supposed there wasn’t an English curse strong enough to express his feelings. Then his hand grasped her right foot, and she nearly shot straight into the air. He inspected it, inch by inch, turning it gently this way and that. She had all she could do not to moan—and she wasn’t at all sure whether this was on account of the pain or the feel of his hands on her.
From her foot he made his way swiftly but gently up to her knee.
“I don’t think you’ve broken anything,” he said.
“That’s what I—”
She broke off because he was dragging her up into a sitting position. Before she could catch her breath, he caught her under the arms and pulled her upright. When her right foot touched the floor, she winced.
“Don’t put any weight on it,” he said. “You’ll have to lean on me. Luckily, we haven’t far to go.” While he spoke, he slid his arm under her coat and around her back. His arm, bracing her so firmly, was warm and hard. She was aware of his hand, under her breast. Her breast was aware of it, too, the skin tightening while morals-sapping sensations cascaded downward.
While propping her up, he fished some coins out of his pocket and gave them to the watchman. “Sorry about the trouble,” he said.
“I hope the young gentleman recovers soon,” the man said.
“Thank you,” Olivia said in her young male voice.
Lisle said nothing. He maneuvered her through the door, and slowly down the steps into the yard.
They proceeded in silence through the narrow passage into High Petergate.
Lisle didn’t trust himself t
o speak.
She’d frightened him out of his wits. She could have broken her neck or cracked her skull.
Even when he knew she was more or less in one piece, he worried—about broken bones, splintered bones, concussion.
It looked as though she’d done nothing worse than turn her ankle. The trouble was, it had taken him too long to reach that conclusion.
He’d put his hands on her head, her foot, and her leg. He’d examined her far too scrupulously and spent too much time doing it.
That was not intelligent. He’d been even less intelligent when he hauled her upright: He’d put his arm under her coat instead of over it.
Instead of encountering a protective layer of waistcoat, he felt the thin fabric of her shirt and the waist of her trousers. When she leaned against him, the bottom of her inadequately protected breast rested on the side of his hand. Under the shirt, the soft flesh was so warm.
It would have tried the self-control of a saint to walk in this intimate way: her breast bobbing against Lisle’s hand and her hip pressed against his as they made their way so slowly out of the church, down the steps, and out of the church yard and on. Holding her so close, he could smell her hair and her skin. . .
Keep moving, he told himself. One foot ahead of the other. Rathbourne’s stepdaughter. Remember.
“Lisle,” she said.
“Don’t,” he said.
“I know you’re angry, but there we were, and who knew when I should be back again, and I only went a little way—”
“Only,” he said. “Only this. Only that. And if you’d broken your neck, what should I say to your mother, your stepfather? ‘Olivia’s only dead.’ ”
He couldn’t and wouldn’t think about that.
He didn’t need to. She was alive. But he’d touched her, and every touch reminded his body of last night’s long, ferocious kiss and the way her bare leg had slid up his. Her scent was in his nose and her breast was pressing against his arm, and every instinct wanted to prove, in the most primal way—up against the wall of this narrow alley—that she was alive and he was alive.
She’s crippled, you pig.
“Yes, but I didn’t break my neck,” she said. “It’s so unlike you to dwell on what might have happened.”
“Unlike me?” he said. “You don’t know what’s like or unlike me. You only see me here, in a constant state of tension, bracing myself for the next debacle.” And trying not to do something insane and unforgivable and from which there’d be no turning back.
He was a man of reason and principle. He had a conscience. He knew the difference between honorable and dishonorable behavior. But he’d crossed a line, and his carefully ordered world was disintegrating.
“Really, Lisle, you’re making a great fuss over—”
“Every time I come home, it’s the same thing!” he burst out. “Is it any wonder I don’t want to live in England? In Egypt I contend with merely snakes, scorpions, sandstorms, thieves, and cutthroats. Here it’s all scenes, and creating trouble where there wasn’t any. If it isn’t my parents shrieking and sobbing and carrying on, it’s you, starting riots and trying to get yourself killed.”
“I don’t believe this.” She tried to pull away.
“Don’t be an idiot,” he said. “You’ll fall on your face.”
“I can lean on the buildings as I go along,” she said. “I don’t need you.”
He pulled her more firmly against him. “You’re being childish.”
“I!”
“Yes, you! Everything is a drama with you. Emotion first, last, and always.”
“I wasn’t born with a stone scarab where my heart ought to be!”
“Maybe you could use your head once in a while instead of your heart,” he said. “Maybe you could think before you decide to wander about a ruined choir at night. Or maybe—here’s a novel thought—you could have told me what you were about.”
“You would have stopped me.”
“And rightly so.”
“Only listen to yourself,” she said. “You go poking about in tombs and burial shafts.”
He pulled her into Stonegate. He kept rigid the arm holding her, because otherwise he’d shake her. “I know what I’m doing,” he said, and it wanted all his will to keep his voice low and seemingly calm. “I don’t act first and think later. I don’t rush blindly into everything that seizes my imagination for a moment.”
“That isn’t what happened! You’re twisting everything about!”
“And you can’t see yourself!” he said. “You can’t see what you do. It’s the same as you do with men. You’re bored, and use them for entertainment, never mind who gets hurt. You’re bored, and you barge into my life and deceive my family and yours, and disrupt who knows how many households—”
“Indeed, I’m sorry I did,” she said. “I never was so sorry in all my life.”
He should have stopped then. He knew, in a small, sane corner of his mind, that he should not have started in the first place. But that small awareness couldn’t make its way through the furious current of turmoil.
“I’m sorry, too,” he said. “I’m sorry I came home. I’m sorry I came within a mile of you. I should have stayed where I was. Yes, I’d rather go blind deciphering hieroglyphs. I’d rather roast in the desert and take my chances with the sandstorms and scorpions and snakes and cutthroats. I’d rather do anything, be anywhere that keeps me a world away from you and my parents.”
“I wish you’d never come home,” she cried. “I wish you’d go back. I’d gladly pay to send you back and keep you there. I don’t care what becomes of you. Go to Egypt. Go to the devil. Only go!”
“I wish I could go to the devil,” he said. “It would be like paradise, after two days with you.”
She shoved him, hard.
He wasn’t prepared. He lost his balance, falling back against a shop door, and relaxed his grip. It was only for an instant, but it was enough for her. She pulled away.
“I hate you,” she said.
She limped the few steps across the lane and started making her way, slowly, her hand against the buildings.
He stood for a moment watching her, his heart racing.
He didn’t cross the lane. He didn’t trust himself.
He started walking, slowly, he on his side, she on hers. And slowly, silently, and worlds apart, they made their way back to the inn.
Chapter 9
Monday 10 October
Jackass.
Beast.
It was a long, punishing ride, more than a hundred miles from York to Alnwick, Northumberland. Lisle began it still furious with Olivia and ended it furious with himself.
The things he’d said last night.
She was his friend. A demented and dangerous friend, true, but he was far from perfect.
His temper, for one thing. Too quick, he knew—but when before had he ever unleashed it so cruelly on a woman?
And this was the woman who’d loyally and faithfully written to him, week after week. This was the woman who’d always understood what Egypt meant to him.
Jackass. Beast. And that was only the beginning. By the time he reached Alnwick’s White Swan, some hours after sunset, he’d run through every epithet he knew, in half a dozen languages.
Aware that a long day’s ride, no bath, and no dinner, had played a part in last night’s debacle—though none of that excused him—he bathed, dressed, and dined before making his way to Olivia’s room.
He knocked once, twice. Bailey opened the door.
“I must speak to Miss Carsington,” he said.
“I’m not in,” Olivia called. “I’ve gone out. I’ve gone out to sell my wicked soul to Lucifer.”
Lisle waved Bailey away. She looked at her mistress, then at him. Then she stepped
aside.
“Really, Bailey,” Olivia said. “I cannot believe you let him intimidate you.”
“Yes, miss,” said Bailey. “Sorry, miss.” She took herself into the adjoining room. She left the door partly open.
Lisle walked over and shut it.
He turned to Olivia. His first glimpse of the room had told him she was seated at the fire. He now discovered why she hadn’t leapt up to rush at the door and try to push him out, or beat him with a poker, or stick a penknife in his neck.
Clothed in a dressing gown with, apparently, another frothy garment underneath, she sat with her skirts drawn up and her feet in a large basin of water. The hurt ankle. He remembered, and grew hot with shame. It was no good telling himself that she was injured because she’d acted like an idiot. She’d been hurt, in pain, and he had said appalling things to her.
He crossed the room to stand in front of her, the basin between them. “You must not hate me,” he said.
The wrong words. He knew it before she shot him a furious flash of blue. She said nothing, only returned that blazing gaze to her feet.
The silence seemed to beat at his head, his heart.
Don’t hate me don’t hate me don’t hate me.
He looked at her feet, so slim and white and vulnerable. He knew what to say. It was there, in his mind, somewhere.
Sorry.
A single word. But a weight pressed on his chest and he was slow, and she broke the silence first.
“I detest you,” she said, her voice low and throbbing. “You broke my heart. Cruelly.”
He stared at her. “Broke your heart?”
“Yes.”
He’d been beastly, yes, and said cruel things, but . . . her heart?
“Oh, come,” he said. “You know I did nothing of the kind.”
Another murderous flash of blue. “To compare me to your parents of all people—your parents!—when you know how often I’ve fought them on your behalf, when you weren’t there to defend yourself. And to say you’ve kept away all this time b-because of m-me . . .”
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