Behind her, the tavern on the corner was lavishing light on its sparsely filled taproom, the excess pouring invitingly into the square, but so far she and her little band were the only wanderers who’d been lured inside. She’d left Henry and Bartolome, their guide, polishing off dinner under the benevolent watch of the innkeep’s wife. Anna wasn’t hungry. Most of Bartolome’s conversation with the innkeeper had flown past her ears, but the sympathetic smiles she’d understood. Alistair was here, and still alive.
She’d meant to rush across the street immediately, but couldn’t somehow, a strange circumstance after five days of hard travel over a hundred and fifty miles. All throughout the journey, she’d felt threads of worry fastening round her. Now, here she was, fifty yards from Alistair and unable to move, pinned down by ten thousand Lilliputian doubts.
She tried to recall his letter, but the fervent ink couldn’t free her feet, though it had hurried her on from London and Oporto, upriver and over mountains, steeling her against chill wind, thirst, and the most terrifying lodgings she’d ever come across. She knew the feel of her pistol perfectly now, and the bruises on her bottom too.
Despite his protestations of love, the warming words, the plea—no, the command that she marry him, he hadn’t sent that letter. That had been Griggs. Chances were her coming would surprise him. Until this moment, she’d never considered the surprise might be unwelcome.
What are you going to do? Go back?
No. That would be ridiculous. And she’d have to think of excuses to give to Henry and Bartolome. It was a miracle Henry hadn’t finished his supper already and come chasing after her—a circumstance she could only attribute to the late hour and the long day’s ride. She’d imagined this meeting with Alistair hundreds of times and was sure of one thing only—she wasn’t going to do it with Henry clutching her skirts.
She hurried across the street and pounded on the tired-looking door. Before her heart could slow, the door yawned wide, coughing up a stooped figure gowned in grey and black who waved a candle in her face.
“Captain Beaumaris?” Anna asked, flinching away from the light. It dipped as the grey vulture in front of her conducted a scrutiny, protesting in voluble Spanish.
“I must see him,” Anna said, trying to edge her way around the knobby veined hand barring her way.
The protestations grew louder and sharper, words Anna suspected were neither polite or kind, but she firmed her chin.
“I’m English!” Anna snapped, pushing the woman out of the way and snatching the light from her hand. It flickered, making their shadows dance like demons against the plastered walls, slopping wax onto Anna’s hand and making her draw breath in a tight hiss.
“Estupido!” she spat, plowing her way to the stairs. She wasn’t as quick as Henry, but she’d gathered a few words. Fury mounting as she climbed the stairs, chased by the wailing lamentations of the landlady, Anna nearly stumbled into a full-moon face that appeared suddenly in her pool of light. His eyebrows shot to the ceiling as he leapt back, untangling their elbows before the candle could set her gown on fire.
“Griggs!”
“Mrs. Morris!”
“Where is he?”
Griggs jerked his head up the stairs, pressing himself against the wall so she could pass. As she marched up the remaining steps in a torrent of swirling skirts, Griggs called down a few laconic Spanish words, stopping the woeful moaning from downstairs.
“Thank you,” Anna threw back at him, as she crossed the upstairs landing and sailed through the open door.
“What the devil—” Alistair stopped. Anna froze too. His thin cheeks, pale under a few days worth of beard, the insufficiently stuffed pillows compressing as he struggled to push himself upright, his rough, tumbled hair—these details flew past her, scarcely heeded. Anna’s attention was stuck on the hollow under the sheets, as deformed and jarring as a sunken furrow of lips without teeth.
His face twitched, going even whiter. “Sawbones lopped it off below the knee,” he said finally, with painful bravado.
“I see.” Her hands banded together. She couldn’t make this worse by reaching out to steady herself on the nearby ladder-backed chair. And her face—she must do something with it, find a better expression than paralysis. Anna struggled for a moment, then gave up. Impossible to hide her shock. She had to speak. “Griggs wrote that you were ill, so—”
Alistair relieved her. “I certainly was. But they managed to save most of me. Don’t know what they did with the rest, though—” he huffed a silent laugh. “I was going to say part of me wonders where they put the trimmings. How apt.”
Anna pressed down on her unsteady lower lip and dropped herself onto the edge of the bed. She took up his hand, turning it over in her own, as if she were just discovering his elegantly formed fingers. The tip of one pressed softly, almost unnoticeably, against the inside of her wrist before he deftly slid his hand away, hiding it under the sheet.
“Where is my uncle?” he asked.
“I came alone,” Anna said.
Alistair swallowed convulsively. “Dear God. Why?”
The room was over warm, the fireplace piled high with coals. A dizzying wave of heat lapped up from her toes, swirling around her ears. Anna stared at the cracking plaster behind the bed, wishing she could simply dissolve, shimmering out of sight like a desert mirage. “Griggs sent me your letter.”
“I think I know the one,” Alistair murmured. “It was never meant to be seen. Forgive me. I’m just—surprised. You came from London alone?”
“I brought Henry, of course.”
“Of course,” he said weakly.
“We hired a manservant in Oporto. Bartolome. He’s quite invaluable.” He’d brought her here, so he could bring her back, presumably.
“I’m sure.” He seemed to choke, unwillingly drawing Anna’s eyes from her inspection of the scarred walls. Alistair was leaning forward, hiding behind his hand, his shoulders shuddering as he cursed softly, desperately. Perhaps it was her own extremity that made her reach for—or fall on—familiarity.
“Save the Lord’s name for prayer,” she said, shocked at how exactly she sounded like her mother.
“I am,” Alistair said, looking up at her with wet eyes. “This is as good as I can manage.”
His hands were clutching the sheets like he meant to shred them. She was too afraid to touch him. His eyes were strange and glassy, and he’d never looked at her like this before.
“Why did you come?” he asked.
“You were dying. And you’d asked me to marry you.”
“That letter.” Instead of cursing he exhaled. Somehow he managed a smile, but it was mocking, unkind. “Thought you’d be sensible. Dismiss my ramblings. Suppose you’d arrived only to find me at death’s door?”
“I would care for you until you mended. I’ll do it now, if you’ll let me,” she said, defiance setting her spine.
“I’d no idea romance was so catching,” he said softly. “I should never have written that.”
“Are you withdrawing your offer?” she demanded, stung and burning.
He looked away, smoothing the edge of the sheet with his fingers. “I think you should choose a man with better symmetry. Coming here . . . I’m honored by your sentiments. But it’s a declaration I can’t accept. No one would hold you to it.”
Anna set her teeth, clinging to pride, trying to forget the aches of long days in the saddle, thick mountain fog with icicle fingers, the vile substance she had downed when one innkeeper claimed it was stew.
“So you lied.”
He opened his mouth, but she didn’t let him speak. She couldn’t stand another word of protestations or abasement. “You don’t love me.” The words of his letter echoed in the pause, his promise that he loved her to madness.
“I don’t think how I feel matters anymore. I could have found a way to support a wife with two legs, but not as a truncated cripple. You wouldn’t want—”
“Don’t tell me what I want,�
� Anna snapped. “I came to you. Doesn’t that say enough? Of course I’d rather marry a whole man, but I don’t have that choice. I want to marry you. You weren’t thinking about money when you wrote me that letter.”
“It’s different now.”
“Of course it is!” Her fingers were shaking, so she pressed them against her skirts. She would never watch him ride again, secretly admiring the shape of his leg. He would never again sweep her around a room to the tune of a waltz—that one long ago dance was all they would ever have. A cruel twist, for back then she hadn’t even known she would love him. Well, life seldom unfolded as you wished it.
“Only a cold heart could make you an ineligible husband,” Anna said, trying not to let her lips quiver. “I know. The rest doesn’t matter as much as you think.” She’d come, undeterred, to this gritty room in a war-shattered town—and he thought he could deter her with warnings of twice-turned dresses, bargain cuts of meat, and the puny deprivations of the shabby-genteel? You should know me better than that.
Of course, it was one thing for her to forsake pride—by now she had very little. For him, it was all he’d ever had. Without money or a pedigreed lady-wife, he could scarcely be considered a gentleman, and without his leg he couldn’t be a fighting sword. “You are enough for me. More.”
He studied her for a long time with wet eyes. “Our children will be poor,” he said.
“Henry will help them.” He had money enough. It was an uncertain future, but was there really any other kind?
“He’ll have to keep me too.”
“You’ll be his papa. He’ll like nothing better,” Anna said. Henry had a warm heart, once you found a way in.
Alistair stared at the place beneath the covers where his foot should have been. “I’ve always been superfluous. A hanger-on. I’ve never been able to snap my fingers at the world, and I suppose now I never will. It isn’t easy, consigning yourself to leeching from a stepson.”
Anna reached for his hand. “But we need you. I’m not made to be alone. And Henry needs a papa to teach him.”
“Anna, you could find someone else.”
She shook her head, willing to be as stubborn as needed. He was weakening. “You’ve ruined me for anyone else.”
He swallowed. “You’re a fool, Anna.” But he was reaching for her shoulder and there was a wobble in his voice. Before he could move too far, she inserted herself in the warm hollow by his side.
“At least I’m a pretty one.”
He took her hands and pressed them to his stubble-roughened cheek. “What kind of lady goes traipsing through Portugal alone?” he muttered. His cheeks were damp, but she preferred him using her hands to a handkerchief.
“I’m not a lady.” Thank goodness, because ladies probably didn’t demand to be kissed and she was about to. But before she could speak, Alistair pulled her close, hiding his face in her hair. Her fingers tightened on his and her heart skipped, even as her eyes burned with tears. Whole or broken, he was hers, and she wanted him.
“You’ll marry me tomorrow,” she said. No excuses.
“Today,” he whispered back, his chin rasping her cheek and making her laugh.
It was delightfully impossible. She chuckled and shifted closer, her knees sliding onto Alistair’s lap as she raised herself to be level with his eyes. He pulled his face away. Winced.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Anna said, horrified.
“Stitches are still oozy. And the—the stump is swollen. Bruised.”
Anna swallowed. She would ask to see it, but not now, when all she wanted was to hide her face and leap back behind the chair. She’d hurt him. “Is it agony?” she mumbled, hiding behind her falling-down hair.
“A special kind,” he said, pulling her closer. “It hurt when they cut the leg off too. I was too fevered to understand. Thought I was in hell.” His words were light, but she’d never seen his face so shadowed, or felt so desperate and powerless to smooth away pain. She wanted to hide his hurts away in gently-cupped fingers, but they were too vast and formless to fit in her hands. As the first stirrings of fear shifted in her stomach, Alistair traced a finger down her cheek along the curve of her bottom lip. “If you’d look up, I think you’ll see I’m blushing too.”
He was, but it showed in his ears more than his face. It made him look younger and foolish, so Anna kissed him. He tasted faintly medicinal, but she liked it, continuing until she was breathless and almost raw from whisker burn. She’d never kissed an unshaved man before, let alone considered the hazards. Her face was probably redder than a case of the measles.
Perhaps if I kissed him only on the lips . . . .
“I’m a broken fumbler,” he cautioned.
“Maybe at first,” she grinned, taking his mouth back. Wounds healed, even the kind beneath the skin.
“Where’s Griggs?” Alistair asked.
“On holiday? I don’t care,” Anna said.
“Well, we should fetch him. Or someone. Before I really do ruin you.”
It would be more comfortable to laugh at him or simply ignore his words and enjoy the feeling of resting against his warm chest. This was an opening though, and she must take it.
“I’m sure traipsing here—you make it sound much easier than it was, you know—has done that already. But you see, I was ruined years ago—I warned you I was a bad bargain, remember? You needn’t fear for my reputation. I deserve none.”
“What do you mean?” Alistair asked, unconvinced and more interested in playing with her hair.
She paused before beginning, working moisture back into her mouth. This confession was essential, something she’d practiced, but no easier in spite of it. Anna flattened her slick palms against her skirts. Tell him. You’re done with secrets.
“Alistair, what did you think when you first saw me?”
He shifted. “I apologized for my error.”
“You needn’t have. You were right. Or not far wrong anyway.”
He shook his head. “I don’t believe you. I thought you were a lightskirt, remember?”
“Not that bad, but—a fast piece, definitely. I had lovers. Henry isn’t Morris’s son. I did it to hurt him.” Her lips faltered around the words. “Of course it only made things worse. He took Henry from me. Anthony was wild before, but after that he was truly reckless. The accident was almost inevitable.” She ducked her head, unable to continue, but Alistair didn’t speak and the hand was still in her hair. No choice but to press on.
“You picked me out of the crowd in that masquerade, and knew from a look exactly what kind of games I once played. Can you wonder that I was terrified when you discovered who I was and where I lived? I was trying so hard to be respectable, hoping to get Henry back. Not just for that, though. For myself too. Oh, Anthony deserved something, but what I did—I hurt myself and Henry as much as I did him. And I never felt any better.”
She traced a circle on the back of his thumb. “The first time you asked me to marry you, I warned you I was no good. I should have told you the whole then, but since you said it wasn’t real . . . if you no longer want to marry me, I won’t complain.” Aloud, anyway.
This was the safest way. Give him a chance to escape. Say the words for him so she wouldn’t have to hear them from his own mouth. But his arms tightened, pressing her close. “Good thing Morris is already dead,” he said, his tone flat. “Goodness, Anna. What did he do to you?”
She wasn’t spurned, then. At least not yet. Anna curled her fingers, tightening her grip on his fingers. “Married me without any love. Or even liking. I’ve made plenty of mistakes, but I won’t make that one twice.”
“No, you won’t,” he said. He pushed back her hair, dabbed at one damp eye with the loose cuff of his shirt. He kissed one eyebrow, then the other, then drew his finger down the bridge of her nose. “Anna.”
“You don’t mind?” She needed to be sure.
“I was playing games at that ball, too. I’m not—I haven’t always—well, love is a fine thing, and i
t took me longer than you to learn not to be careless with it. But I’m not careless anymore, and I won’t be with you.”
She replied with lips but not words, learning his worn face with soft touches. His stubble was raspy, his cheeks thinner, his skin cool, but her response hadn’t changed. And though it came a little late, this was the welcome she’d wanted.
“No more arguing then?” she teased. “Good. Kisses are better.”
“You’re quite convincing. I’d be a fool to resist. Wish I had all my pieces, though. I’d rather you married a perfect man.”
“Perfect!” Anna was scornful. “I couldn’t endure that. If such a man existed, just think how insufferable he would be!”
“I’ll remind you of that,” he said. “Go get Henry. Griggs too—I expect you’ll find him lurking at the bottom of the stairs.”
She protested, but when he threatened to hop down the stairs himself, she had to give in. Griggs wasn’t there, so Anna winged her way outside, expecting he’d gone to find Henry. Instead of a tired town she saw stars. It felt like her head might bump them.
Just as she thought, Griggs was in the tap room, plotting with Henry while Bartolome tiredly swirled his wine.
“How is he?” Griggs asked, looking up.
Smiles couldn’t grow big enough to break open, could they? Perhaps so, for it seemed like bits of her own were attaching onto Henry, Griggs, to the bar keep, to Bartolome, and the newcomer nodding from the corner. Color swept into her cheeks.
“He’s well,” Anna said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
London was quiet and cold, with snow-muffled streets and frost-sharpened edges. Lord Fairchild could have gone out for a congenial evening of company, cards and hot punch, but had elected to spend the evening alone in front of the library fire, hoping Georgiana would return from a compassionate visit to her sister. It was late now. The snow would have slowed her progress, if she had set out at all. Georgiana hadn’t much fortitude for travel, even under the best conditions, and might have extended her stay.
Incognita (Fairchild Book 2) Page 26