Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

He slowed and circled, halting beside her, the horses blowing and snorting.

“Is it Mary?”

“She wouldn’t use a fire torch. Looks like the thieves from the village have noticed our absence.” Angelika unbuckled her saddlebag. When she produced her pepperbox pistol, the look Will gave her was a mix of horror and utter admiration of her self-sufficiency.

“What are you going to do?”

“We are looking after the house, as Victor charged us to do. Who knows, maybe my husband has delivered himself to me. I have six shots,” she added, holding up the expensive weapon, engraved with A.F., naturally.

“Shoot once into the air, to scare them. Angelika. Look at me. Promise you will not be rash.”

“I promise. We’ll ride behind the house, keep to the grass to stay quiet.”

The drawing room window was open, with a young man standing beneath it, holding his arms up for a bag that was being passed down.

“Oh, hello!” Angelika called out in a friendly voice, raising her arm. “You’re stealing from me, are you?” She shot into the sky and rode out Percy’s sideways spin. When she was facing the house again, there was only the abandoned bag beneath the window.

A window opened on the upper floor.

Mary’s face peered down at them. “Thank heavens you’re here, Master Will,” she said, completely ignoring the gun-toting Angelika. “There’s still one downstairs. I’m locked in my room. Come on, hurry up, get ’em out. I’ve got to heat your bathwater.” The window closed.

Will forcibly took the firearm from Angelika. “No more shots.”

Angelika found it deeply vexing that Mary had not considered her a savior. Abruptly, she was sick of everybody. “You can go and be the man of the house, like Victor wanted.” She scowled up at Mary’s window. “But please know this. I am not a helpless maiden.”

They dismounted and put up their stirrups. Will handed her his reins. “I could never think that. Stay outside, until I tell you it is safe.”

Angelika unsaddled the horses and turned them out in the orchard as an apology for not rubbing them down. They bolted off, bucking and skittish. She sat down on the low stone wall, with their warm leather bridles hung on her arm.

She did not feel particularly concerned for Will. He had her gun, and the thieves looked to be barely in their teens. Indeed, if she sharpened her senses, she could practically hear the calm negotiations that would be happening inside.

He’ll be explaining to our thief why he’s done wrong, but that he understands why. Angelika pictured the unfortunate villagers of Salisbury. She hated riding through there; everywhere she looked, she saw a crying child, a sad-eyed woman, a man in rags. He’ll tell him that times are hard, and jobs are hard to come by, and the crops did poorly, and scarlet fever has taken even their strong ones. Stomachs are empty in Salisbury. She wiped sweat from her temple. If I know Will, he would think a bag of candlesticks and silver would make a suitable donation. And tonight, as I think about it, I’m inclined to agree.

Angelika found herself having an odd daydream about what a silver candlestick might be able to buy. Warm bread, curls of butter, wedges of cheese? A bag of apples, like those ripening on the trees behind her?

“My goodness. I’m sitting here daydreaming about villagers’ larders and not my own first kiss?” She tapped her knuckles on her temple. “What has happened to me tonight?”

She was preparing to stand, listening for Will’s call, when she heard a stick snap behind her. With a dry mouth, she whispered, “Who’s there?”

Silence was the reply, but she felt their stare on her seated body. She took back her earlier declaration: she was a helpless maiden. Rogues were out in the village, strangers were in her house, and there was someone behind her. Frozen, she could hear the slow press of footsteps approaching, and the trembling jingle of the bridle buckles on her arm.

“I’ll give you what you want,” she said to the night air. “Don’t hurt me.”

When a hand touched the top of her head, she closed her eyes and nearly lost consciousness. It was a slow stroke, from the crown of her head, down her back, to the tips of her hair. When it lifted away, she let out a whimper. “Don’t.”

It happened again. She was being stroked like a horse in a field. Man, or ghost? Impossible to know. The moment the touch lifted away was the worst part. Would the next touch be on her side, sliding around to her breast? Or hands, wrapping around her throat? She flinched when the touch resettled on her crown. Surely this was a joke, before the tearing of clothing began. Nobody in the village had any fondness for her.

“He’ll come,” she said through her clenched jaw, shuddering through the next downward stroke. “He’ll come for me.”

“Angelika,” Will’s voice called at a distance. The touch stopped. When Will walked up to her, he found her still sitting on the stone wall. “It’s all over. The boy in the library was terrified. I gave him a coin, and we had a talk, and he promised not to come back.” He took the bridles from Angelika and laid them aside. “Are you all right?”

“I’m not. I’m not. I’m not—” She began hiccupping for air, and Will enfolded her in his arms. “Someone was here, and . . .”

“Someone? Who?”

“They were behind me. Right behind me. And they were touching me.” She felt the swell of horror in Will’s rib cage. “My hair. A hand, stroking down my hair. It was the most disgusting thing I have ever felt. But it also felt like my mother.” She gave a hysterical bark of laughter. “They could have snapped my neck, or cut my throat. And I just sat there.”

“Come inside,” he urged, and when she could not walk, he put an arm under her legs, lifted her, and carried her toward Blackthorne Manor. “At daylight, I’ll go and look for footprints. Perhaps there was a third thief, hanging back. Or could it have been . . .” He looked toward the barn.

“Victor is chasing him, miles away. He’s angry at us, besides. I’m sure he would not have been so gentle.”

They were at the kitchen door now, and Will called, “Mary, help.”

Angelika was still in a wheezing heap when she was laid down on a bed and saw a sideways bear. This was Will’s bedroom. “She’s had a shock,” Mary said. “I’ll fetch smelling salts, and whiskey. I’ve been telling Victor that there’s someone in the orchard.”

“Angelika,” Will said, unlacing her boots. “Please, come to your senses. Did he touch you anywhere else?” When she shook her head, he let out a shaky breath. “I’m sorry. I was intoxicated by the thought of protecting the house, but I did not protect you. Victor should hang me.”

When Mary came back, they urged Angelika to sit up and drink several mouthfuls of liquor. “You’re all right,” Mary said brusquely. “But what am I always telling you?”

Angelika’s throat felt like it had closed completely. She could not repeat the mantra that Mary had drummed into her for so long, and the old woman said it now with angry force. “No hesitation, no politeness, run. Did you do that? Angelika, did you do as I told you?”

“She was terrified,” Will defended her. “She was frozen solid. Don’t be hard on her.”

“Someone has to be,” Mary returned. “She is a simple fool.”

“I—” Angelika could not explain. All she knew was that Mary’s expression was full of deep disappointment as she left the room.

“Don’t talk,” Will told her, closing the door. “Don’t try to talk. We will wash your hair.”

It was marvelous, having someone understand exactly what was needed in this moment. He guided her to his tub, prepared earlier by Mary. With shaking hands, they worked Angelika’s riding habit loose, until she was sinking down into the water in her muslin underdress. “Just like when we met,” she croaked, and Will skimmed the warm water over her shoulders, washing her with urgency. She was not the only one in shock. Her hair was lathered and rinsed, and he applied the sponge to each of her fingertips.

“I’m so sorry,” he told her, and his voice cracked with emotion. “You didn’t deserve this terrible fright.”

“It could have been worse.” She closed her eyes and focused her breathing. And gradually, she sank back into her own body again, hearing the lap of water, and became aware that the wet muslin on her body must have been translucent. But she trusted him and the careful way he handled her body, and he repaid that trust. There was nothing lecherous in his eyes as he kept them firmly on her face, checking her mental state.

“I’m all right. I think I am myself again. What an odd experience.” She blew out a breath, and a smile quirked her mouth. “I was sitting there, imagining you counseling the thief on the moral error he had made. I was right.”

“It seems you know me well.” Will thought about that for a minute, rubbing the sponge along her arm. “How you can know me when I do not know myself is a mystery.”

“I don’t know who you are, but I know what you are. You are good. And you make me want to be good.” She raised a hand and touched his jaw, seeking his attention. Under her wet fingertip, she felt his pulse tick faster. “I thought of you, I waited for you, and I knew you’d come for me. You saved me.” She didn’t want a sponge all over, she wanted his hand. Was it the whiskey in her stomach? The fading terror? The wet cling of fabric, all over her body, tangling up her legs like vines? “I wish you’d kiss me again.”

“I know what you want,” Will said evenly. “You do not hide it. Your eyes tell me everything, all the time.”

“I cannot hide much right now.” Through the wet cloth, every freckle on her body was visible. “I have seen so much of you. I should let you see me. ’Tis only fair.”

He did look at her body now, with such male admiration she felt her cheeks grow warm. “If our positions had been reversed, and I was making my dream woman, there is nothing I would replace or change about you, Angelika.”

A fine compliment, but also a gentle rebuke. “Victor insisted on reassembling you. I’d been reading a lot of anatomy books, and whilst I said I’d have you as you were, he convinced me some improvements could be made.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Is this your way of explaining I had a small cock?”

“You had a perfectly good cock, and everything else was lovely, too, but spoiled Miss Frankenstein went hunting around like a child in a toy chest to see if she could improve on perfection. I only thought of the musculature, not the spirit inside. And I want you to know that if I could go back in time, I would not change a thing about you, either.”

“Even my hands, with a wedding ring?”

He’d known all along? “I was mad with jealousy. I had found my dream man, with a face that stopped my heart, and he possibly belonged to another? I know it was wrong to lie to you, but I want you to know this: She didn’t love you like I do. She didn’t try to bring you back.”

“Not everybody has your resources or intellect,” Will reminded her with quiet censure, not acknowledging her love declaration. “People love in different ways. Just because a wife with no scientific knowledge doesn’t beat back death doesn’t mean she is less caring.”

“You’re in my world now, and it does mean that. Why aren’t you more surprised to be married?”

“You’re just confirming something I have suspected. How else could I resist?” He gestured wryly in her direction.

“You’ve always known deep down that you belong to another. It’s why you feel unfaithful. Pass me that soap bar, please.” She pointed to the basin stand. The change of subject would head off the swell of bad emotion inside. “When Lizzie and I dragged Victor to Paris, we found this tiny soap store tucked into a laneway. They supplied Marie Antoinette.”

“If it was good enough for the queen of France, and Princess Angelika, it’s fine for nameless, nobody Will,” he said, fetching it. “I shudder to imagine the cost.”

“I have never smelled anything as divine as your soap.” She cupped the cake in her hands and inhaled deeply. “I can smell you all around the house. I chose this scent for you, long before I ever saw you.”

“That’s why I am finding it hard to trust you now. If your first attempt at a husband had worked, you would have given him your favorite soap.”

Angelika tried to picture it. “I’m quite sure I would not.” But she had been infatuated many times before with total strangers.

He was patient. “I cannot know that it is me you love when you do not know me. I understand why you didn’t tell me at first about the ring. But it changes things, and I now have to investigate new threads tying me to my old life. My death may have been a catastrophe for my family.” He hesitated, then made an admission. “It made me sick to think of myself as your fourth. I want to kiss you again, too. But these thoughts are chased by the idea that I am not free to make a new choice. I may have children who depended on me, and now they might be stealing to survive.”

Emotion swelled inside her because he was a very good man indeed.

She spilled the truth.

“Your ring has an engraving, but we were too careless to even look at it. There, now you know everything. All of my terrible wrongdoings and lies. You were found by the worst person.” She laid her head down on her folded arms and shivered as he cupped water across her shoulders. “We will follow that ring to the ends of the earth, and with it I hope you can unlock your entire past. Your family, your wife . . . You will go home to them.”

She added some salt tears to the bathwater.

“I probably will. But don’t worry yourself tonight. Lie back.” When she did, he pillowed her head on his forearm. “My poor love, you have had such burdens, being so lonely up on this hill,” he said with total understanding, and her tears came in earnest. After keeping these details from him, she’d expected a scolding, but now he just carefully washed her face, cleansing her tears like he couldn’t bear them. “You were good to confess the full truth, and more so, I never had to press. You give me everything, at every chance you get. I love my new boots, by the way.”

“I’m so glad.” She reveled in his touch as he stroked the sponge across her face.

“This is what you did for me on that first night. I was in the most unspeakable pain, right through my bones. It was the way you washed my face that made me want to keep living. Who would think a sponge and warm water could be so soothing?”

She tried to lighten her tone. “The sponge is from the store in Paris, too. Only the best for you.”

He wouldn’t allow her to sidestep her emotion. “I felt how much you cared for me.”

Maybe he was asking her to feel that now, too, so she closed her eyes, and it felt real. He was tracing and stroking the sponge across her brow, cheeks, lips, neck. Over and over.

This was forever love, till death parted them.

“I will tell you what I know now, in this moment. You are the most beautiful woman who ever lived,” he told her with quiet certainty. “The most brilliant, the most witty, the most brave.”

Angelika could not find a reply.

He continued. “I need you to know I am in awe of everything you are. Even the bad parts of you. But this resurrection pastime is not a game. You need to give life, and death, the respect it deserves. It is not up to you to make these decisions. You are not God.”

Angelika was not used to such gentle censure. “I see it now completely, and I will be better. I promise.”

He completed another pass with the sponge across her face. “I would like to see you make some changes in your life. Look around yourself. See your privileges. Find ways to help the people of this village who are struggling to survive. Show mercy and kindness to them, because you can afford to.”

Angelika’s voice was small. “I know I have lived a self-absorbed life.”

“I know you will improve. I have faith in you.”

Faith.

Somewhere along the way, the Frankensteins’ distrust of the church had erased that word from their vocabularies. Will accepted all these good and bad parts of her, tended her near-naked body like it were art, and he was confident that she could, and would, do better. Angelika had dreamed of a declaration of love for her entire life.

This one felt monumental.

This felt like a preview of what their life together would be like: Riding through fields as equals on adventures, each supporting and saving the other. Bathing companionably, a debate, a laugh, then curling together in French linen sheets to lusciously defile each other. No other person could breach this little world they had created together, and no man could ever replace him.

And just as she was reaching for him, to put her hand into his hair, to bring him down to her mouth, he evaded her. “You do not hide what you want,” he repeated to her. “But I wish you would. From the neck down, I do not believe we should wait. And I need to leave now, before I lose my head completely.”

He was out of the room, closing the door quietly behind him, and she was left behind to soak in the freezing water in his bathtub.