Tears welled. Hot, terrible tears that threatened to rise up and choke her. “You knew what my father was like. You knew. But it seemed I let the shark into my own bed. What a laugh that must have been for you, David.”
“Oh, yes. I’ve been laughing for nine fooking years.”
“And what did you do for those nine fooking years tucked in Ireland? Spend your days in hospitals? Slay evildoers at night? Practicing for the day you could resume your fight against me? Cheers for the winning team. They brought you out of retirement so you can finish your precious job.”
His eyes nearly blue in the sunlight, he looked down at her standing in the snow, wrapped in his cloak, waiting for him to respond. “God only knows…whether you like it or not, I am your only hope of survival, Meg.”
“There’s a name for people like you, David.” She backed a step and tripped on her cloak in the snow. “Hypocrite.”
“Priest,” he said, his eyes shuttered.
“Pardon?”
“County Wicklow, Ireland.” He held Old Boy’s reins as the stallion danced a circle, turning his head to look at her over his shoulder. “That’s where I went after I left the Foreign Service nine years ago.”
Stunned, Victoria watched him ride away and would have followed if her feet weren’t already beginning to feel like frozen stumps.
“Impossible.” Her voice caught up to her thoughts, but David had already reached the wooded ravine. “You never even believed in God!”
Chapter 9
“Peepaw says I should wear spectacles in places of poor light,” Bethany said idly. “Or I shall be blind by the time I am your age.”
A single glass lantern swayed from a hook attached to a heavy wooden rafter above the workbench where Bethany was helping Victoria label glass jars of newly dried medicinal herbs.
“My age?” Victoria arched a brow. “Please don’t put me in my grave, yet.”
Bethany perched herself on a three-legged stool behind the bench where she and Victoria had been working for most of the morning. “Tory Birmingham gave me these spectacles when we were in town yesterday. She said that spectacles are all the rage in Mrs. Winston’s reading circle. I think they make me look older.”
A red kerchief restrained Bethany’s hair. The spectacles magnified her eyes and made her look like an owl. Victoria tried not to smile. “You look quite old enough.”
“Maybe Lord Chadwick will attend Tory Birmingham’s Yule soirée this year.” A hint of eagerness tinged the girl’s tone. “Have you thought any more about a new gown for me?” Bethany set aside the jar she was filling with dried herbs and grabbed another. “All I would need is fabric and I could make my own gown.”
With an exasperated sigh, Victoria returned her attention to the jar of peppermint in her hand. “Please, can we not have this discussion again?”
Bethany’s eyes, more gray than blue beneath the light, regarded Victoria with concern. “You didn’t used to be such a recluse,” the girl said. “Or cry out in your sleep at night and jump at shadows everywhere.”
Startled that Bethany would notice that and a little ashamed, Victoria averted her gaze to the jar at her elbow. “I haven’t been feeling well of late.”
“Are you afraid to go anywhere we might see Nellis? Is that why you haven’t wanted Nathanial home?” Bethany asked. “Because of Nellis?”
Victoria wiped her hands on her apron. “It’s complicated, Bethany. If I could send you to Nathanial, I would. But your grandfather needs you when I can’t be here.”
“Peepaw doesn’t need me. He only needs you. And sometimes Mr. Shelby with whom he plays rummy.”
“That’s not true, Bethany.”
Bethany retrieved an empty jar from the stack and moved down the bench to the chamomile. “He has a mistress,” she said quietly.
Victoria’s eyes widened. “Who has a mistress?”
“Lord Chadwick. Melinda told me yesterday when you and Peepaw were at the apothecary. Her father owns the general mercantile on Main—”
“I know who Mr. Carter is. We see him every Sabbath.”
“Countess Cherbinko’s servants shop at his mercantile. He carries rare spices that the countess likes. Servants talk. I saw her leaving Goodchilds Boutique. She is beautiful. Doesn’t it bother you that Lord Chadwick keeps her at a town house?”
Victoria set down the jar. She’d listened to the same gossip at church the past two Sundays. She didn’t want to think about David’s nocturnal activities. What he might or might not be doing behind closed doors with Pamela. In another woman’s bed. Yet, thoughts of him, his past—and hers—had filled her every waking moment these past weeks since he had ridden off and left her in a field to walk back in the snow.
“Lord Chadwick’s private life is not our concern.”
“But you’re his family. And he paid the taxes on Rose Briar. I thought he was different from Nellis.”
“He is different from Nellis. Now can we please change the topic?”
As she watched Bethany move down the bench, Victoria found the pencil she’d set aside to begin labeling the next set of jars on the shelf, but her mind no longer focused on the task.
In the days that followed Stillings’s attack on the bluff, she had been careful to keep her distance from David, though she shouldn’t have bothered. He had stayed away from her. She had not seen him since he’d helped her take Mr. Doyle to Widow Gibson’s. He’d brought her home afterward and not returned until yesterday, when he’d stopped by the cottage and spoken briefly to Mr. Rockwell. He didn’t even see her as she walked around the cottage and watched him ride out of the yard, or scarcely seemed to care where she went as long as Mr. Rockwell was with her. Clearly, not only did he want nothing to do with her; he didn’t trust her to be alone for a single moment. Or maybe it was more.
David had been correct when he’d said her father relished the chase. He was a man who enjoyed the game more than he enjoyed winning the prize. Yet she’d not once considered that the footprints she’d followed after the storm had been Colonel Faraday’s. She had gone after the culprit, thinking those prints belonged to one of Tommy Stillings’s men, only to betray herself in David’s eyes.
Why it mattered to her, she didn’t know.
Except he had promised to deliver Rose Briar out of Nellis’s hands, and had done so. He had already begun the process to put the estate in a trust for Nathanial. She had seen the papers in Sir Henry’s surgery office that morning, picked them up and nearly wept in relief, realizing she was in danger of admiring her husband, realizing she was traversing the very same emotional path she’d traveled when he’d entered her life before.
David was a man who acted on his promises and never promised what he couldn’t deliver. She’d learned from Esma what he’d said to Nellis in the family’s defense and what he’d done for Sir Henry afterward. He’d been kind to Mr. Doyle as well.
And she was beginning to realize what had drawn her to him all those years ago, what was drawing her to him now despite the apocalyptic threat of doom he brought to her life. Beneath the mask he oft wore hid a man of deep principle and courage. There was goodness inside him whether he realized it or not. A sense of duty to law and truth. To people. Whereas Meg Faraday was a thief.
Her life was and always had been filled with duplicity and deception. One huge lie from the beginning to now.
Yet, ten years ago, she had somehow touched David’s life in the same way he had touched hers. And a strange sort of miracle had happened amid the chaos and tragedy surrounding them. They had fallen in love with each other. She was sure of that now.
Then they had done the only thing they could.
They had run.
Now, needing to talk to David had suddenly become a reason to see him. A reason to ask a hundred questions on her mind. She wanted to touch him again, and might have remained content with her years in a celibate state had he not kissed her, then boldly underscored that act with the promise of giving her more.
&nb
sp; Was he still a priest?
“…someone is living in Mr. Doyle’s cottage.” Bethany concentrated on a tiny leaf in her hand and, as Victoria looked up, she realized Bethany had been talking for some time. “Mr. Rockwell said he works for Lord Chadwick. A big Irishman with red hair. I saw him yesterday when I went past the cottage on the way to Rose Briar.”
The statement put the skids on her thoughts. “You went to Rose Briar? Alone?”
Bethany lowered her chin guiltily. “Esma made apple pies. I thought it would be nice to take one to Lord Chadwick.” She drew tiny hearts in the loam at her elbow. “He thanked me. Then brought me home like an errant schoolgirl and told me never to go back to the house alone. I saw him talking, rather testily, I might add, to Mr. Rockwell before he rode out of the yard—without even saying good-bye, mind you.”
So that was why David was here yesterday. Victoria wiped her hands on her apron and stripped it over her head. He’d hired men to watch the bluff. No wonder he wasn’t worried about where she went. He probably had other men following her everywhere.
“He was right to bring you back,” Victoria said.
“We haven’t had any trouble in weeks,” Bethany said. “I didn’t think it would be dangerous in the light of day and, since you don’t seem interested in courting his friendship, even after everything he’s done for us, I thought I would.”
“The fact that it has been quiet of late doesn’t mean the woods are safer or that it’s proper for young unmarried girls to go flitting about bachelor’s houses alone.” Victoria gathered up the labels and pencils and set them in a wooden tray. “Family or not.”
“You just told me I was grown up. I’m almost eighteen.”
“In ten months, Bethany. He’s old enough to be your father.”
“But we could be his family.” Bethany set her chin. “I want to own a dress that hasn’t had the seams let out of the bust for the past two consecutive years. I’m tired of going to sleep at night wondering if someone is going to steal my beautiful horse again and use her for illicit purposes and their ill-gotten gains. All thieves should be hanged! I hate them!”
Disturbed by the girl’s outburst, Victoria dropped the soiled apron in a basket beside the shelves. “I wish I held the power to fill yours and Nathanial’s world with eternal sunshine, Bethany.” She wished she had the power to keep them out of danger and safe forever. And shield them from the horrors of the world. “But sometimes life isn’t fair and you get what you get. One cannot choose one’s parents.”
A stricken look passed across the younger girl’s porcelain features. “This isn’t your fault, Victoria. I know you loved my father, but would it be so wrong to invite someone else into our lives? Maybe Lord Chadwick hasn’t any other family to love him.”
Victoria dipped her hands into a bucket of icy water and washed the soil from her palms, her hair falling over her shoulders and shielding her face. She didn’t know if David had any family. In truth, she knew little about his life, except that he had gone to Ireland after leaving the Foreign Service.
And he had a son.
Every day these past weeks, she’d awakened with the thought that today would be the day that she would tell him. Then she thought of the life she and her son had built here with Bethany and Sir Henry. She was not so much afraid of telling David the truth about Nathanial as she was afraid of what that truth would do to her son’s life and to Sir Henry.
She didn’t know where to turn when intuition kept warning her to run, and the deeper she rooted her heart into the ground, the more she began to question if she possessed the strength to withstand the upcoming storm, wondering when David would decide to suspend the investigation and take her to London for the tribunal.
Or worse, wondering when her father would find her—and in finding her, learn about Nathanial. David had been correct when he’d said that he was her only hope at survival.
Yet her reasons for needing to see him today were ingrained in more than survival. They were personal, for there were certain truths he had inadvertently revealed to her. Why would someone leave the Foreign Service and become a priest? She knew only that the fire spiraled wildly around her and she lay undefended in its path.
Perhaps so did he.
“Do you think Mr. Rockwell will want some apple pie?” Victoria absently blotted her hands on a rag.
“I wouldn’t know.” Bethany snapped the lid closed on another jar.
“Why don’t you ask him on your way back to the kitchen? I’ll wager he’s doing some chore outside the cellar door as we speak.”
“I don’t like him, Victoria. He’s…he treats me like a child.”
“Please, Bethany.”
“But I’m not finished here.”
Victoria lifted the lantern from its hook. “I have other work to do today. I can’t be here to supervise this.”
Another lie, she realized as she watched Bethany climb the stairs out of the root cellar a few minutes later. Victoria looked down at her work clothes; a pair of form-fitting boy’s riding trousers and woolen shirt that she’d taken to wearing when she worked in the dirt. She’d learned long ago, it was easier to wash trousers than a skirt and petticoats.
Dragging a chair to the sliver of window, she peered outside toward the stable, then glanced at the cottage, before she wrapped David’s cloak around her shoulders and snuffed out the lantern.
She eased the door open and stepped outside, ready to jaunt across the yard to the stable, only to stop in her tracks. Ian stood next to the woodshed, muscular arms crossed, leaning a wide shoulder casually against a tree.
“Mrs. Donally,” he said, as if he hadn’t just caught her in subterfuge. His breath hung suspended in the chill air, yet he wore nothing heavier than a woolen shirt, tucked into work trousers.
“Don’t ever startle me like that again.” Victoria didn’t even pretend she wasn’t attempting escape and shut the root cellar door. “Why aren’t you inside eating pie?” Like any normal younger man, she wanted to add, defiant in her unwillingness to accept a man younger than she was as her jailer. Even if he did have broad shoulders and a dimple where he smiled. “And don’t call me Mrs. Donally.”
His green eyes twinkled. “Donally told me if I ever let you out of my sight again, he would have my ball—head. And he usually does exactly what he says he’ll do, my lady.”
“Is he at the manor house?”
“I believe today he is.”
“I really need you to remain with my family.”
He nudged his chin in the direction of the barn. “I’m not the only one watching over your family. Donally brought in his own people. They’ve been here for a week.”
Stepping from beneath the trellis into the bright afternoon sunlight, she tented her hand over her eyes. She didn’t see anyone and looked at Mr. Rockwell doubtfully. “Who are they?”
“Honestly?” He lowered his voice and leaned nearer, giving her a whiff of his soap. “I suspect they’re Donally’s Fenian bodyguards from Ireland. Criminals,” he whispered with his usual boyish charm that had its way of softening Victoria’s dislike for him. “An Irishman’s answer to British toll collectors and certain local smugglers, so I’m told. Clearly, our Lord Chadwick has an affinity for criminals.”
She set out for the stable. It was just as well that David treated her like a criminal, someone he could never trust. And she told herself she didn’t care.
Yet another lie so easily spoken.
Even to herself.
Chapter 10
“I’ll fetch His Lordship at once, mum.” David’s stoic butler eyed Victoria’s attire, clearly not trusting her alone in the foyer. “If you will await him here.”
“Rest assured I won’t steal anything,” she promised facetiously beneath her breath as he walked up the staircase to the second floor.
Even as she wondered where David had found someone so perfectly persnickety in such a brief time, the balding man disappeared. She glanced nervously at the tall clock i
n the entryway, the tick-tick counting seconds in the silence.
After a moment of restless pacing, she walked into the drawing room and set her cloak on a chair, surprised and a little saddened to see the furniture still draped in ghostly canvas. Dust layered everything. Throwing open the golden damask draperies, she let in the sunlight. Beyond the low stone wall, the white valley below stretched into the old orchard. Victoria traced a finger over the painted red rose stained glass at the top of the door, before wrapping her arms around her torso and turning back into the room.
Rose Briar once contained a beautiful collection of Flemish Mortlake tapestries and paintings. Walking to the middle of the room, she stopped beneath the Venetian chandelier and, making a slow turn, raised her gaze. The ceiling motifs still shone gold, made even brighter in the afternoon sunlight. This wasn’t her home, yet it was. For it had become the keystone on which she had built the last nine years of her life.
With a sigh, she looked toward the sound of approaching footsteps.
David walked through the archway, saw her, and stopped. His hands gripped the ends of a towel draped around his neck. His hair, almost black against the white of his linen shirt, was tousled and damp with sweat. He didn’t look pleased to see her.
“No apple pie from Esma this time?” he asked.
Victoria pushed her chin up a notch and managed to smile. “Thank you for bringing Bethany back home yesterday.”
A dark brow rose slightly. “For some reason, I don’t believe that is why you are here. Should I be worried that you’re armed?” he asked, looking her up and down.
Her boyish attire revealed more than it hid. He could have been born an aristocrat, she thought then, letting him look. It was in the way he held his head, his uncompromising bearing, and the dark fire in his eyes. Never mind that those eyes had the ability to strip her bare. Easily they could. For they knew what lay beneath her clothing.
She tightened her arms over her chest. “Are you still a priest?”
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