Chapter 15

Fifteen

The sheer gratitude toward every divine power that he felt, seeing that Minerva had been spared an untimely death, made Lawrence giddy. He was well aware that Minerva was toying with him, seeking to be closer to him and to draw him in to a degree of intimacy that he should not be considering in their current predicament, but he was helpless against her pull.

He wanted her. He needed her. And as he emerged from the bedroom to find her dressed and preparing toast, while the two of them jested with each other as though all were well in the world, he vowed that he would marry her, come what may. It was only a shame that the parson was away, because he would have insisted the man marry them at once, were he there.

He was scrambling for some way to express that sentiment in reply to Minerva’s impertinent question when a racket sounded from the direction of the church. Never one to ignore a woman’s screams, and despite his horrific state of dishabille, Lawrence marched straight for the door.

“Stay here,” he cautioned Minerva as he turned the handle and pulled the door open, letting the crisp, November air into the otherwise cozy cottage.

“Stay here?” Minerva yelped indignantly, grabbing her shawl and charging after him. “Are you mad?”

Yes. Lawrence was convinced that he had gone utterly mad to give his heart so thoroughly to a woman who would never let him have a moment’s peace for the rest of his life. In the best possible way.

“You are still recovering, Minerva,” he scolded her as they walked out into the frosty morning together. “You should stay secure in the cottage.”

“I am not the one who has just ventured out in stocking feet,” she fired back, as feisty as ever, despite the soggy congestion in her voice.

Lawrence glanced down with a sigh, feeling the cold, hard-packed dirt of the path that led from the parsonage to the church a bit too keenly. There was nothing to be done now, however. Minerva had become the embodiment of determination as she hugged her shawl tighter and inched ahead of them in their race to reach the church.

Lawrence had only just begun to imagine what might be the matter when they stepped into the sweet building to find a middle-aged, slightly tattered woman, with her arms wrapped around his statue. At first, Lawrence thought the woman was trying to embrace it, but he quickly realized the woman was trying to move it from the baptismal font.

“Oh, dear,” Minerva blurted at the sight, then clapped a hand over her mouth to prevent whatever other words or sounds wanted to escape from her at the sight.

Lawrence sent her an embarrassed, sideways look. He had not yet had the time to explain to Minerva how he and Silas had removed the statue from the carriage and put it inside the church for safekeeping.

He did not have time to explain to her now as the woman straightened with a jerk, her eyes going wide, and screamed so loudly at the sight of him that Lawrence was certain his ears would never recover.

For a heart-stopping moment, Lawrence was afraid his statue would shift off the font and crack on the church’s stone floor as the woman leapt back, removing her arms from his work. Lawrence only just managed to leap forward to steady the marble, using his entire body to hold the statue and the font in place.

His sharp movements only made the woman scream louder.

“Villains! Brigands!” she shouted, dashing into the closest pew. She came out again, brandishing a hymnal, which she used to attack Lawrence. “What devilry is this? What brand of witchcraft have you cursed this house of God with?”

Lawrence ducked his head as the woman rained thudding blows down on his head and shoulders. She did not have the strength to do any real damage, but that did not stop him from cowering…with laughter.

“Stop! Stop, please!” Minerva called out, stepping closer to the woman.

Lawrence did not think the woman would stop, if not for Minerva sneezing loudly at just that moment. The woman was so taken aback that she stumbled back several steps, then held the hymnal in front of her, as if it were a shield.

“You’re the plague-carrier,” she gasped, holding the hymnal, with its etched cross on the cover, toward Minerva, as if she were a vampire. “Old Lucy said you were here and that you’d brought your foul disease with you.”

“She said what?” Minerva balked, pulling herself up to her full height.

It did not help the situation at all that she sneezed and then coughed directly after. The village woman took another step back, her eyes wide with horror.

Satisfied that the statue would not tumble off the font, Lawrence stood and sighed.

“Lady Minerva does not have the plague,” he said, trying for his most reassuring voice as he spoke to the woman, but mostly sounding irritated. “As you can see, she is well on her way to recovery.”

The village woman continued to look askance at her, still holding the hymnal up. “Old Lucy said you would most likely die. She said the fever had taken you. It’s all over the village that you’ve brought the plague to us.”

Again, Lawrence sighed. This time he pinched the bridge of his nose as well. “Lady Minerva is recovering from a head cold,” he said, downplaying the severity of her illness over the last few days. “She will recover quite soon.”

The woman relaxed a bit, but still eyed Minerva suspiciously. In a way, Lawrence could not blame her. Dressed in black as she was, her black hair with its silver streaks long and flowing around her shoulders and her face a bit sallow from her illness, aside from her bright red nose, Minerva did look very much like a witch.

She sounded more like the noblewoman she was when she asked, “I beg your pardon, but if you are so afraid of contracting the plague, why have you come all this way?”

The woman shifted a bit, finally lowering the hymnal. “I’m Mary,” she said. “I clean the church once a week, rain or shine, summer or winter, even when Pastor Cleverley is away.”

“I see,” Minerva said, then pulled out the handkerchief she had stuck up her sleeve to blow her nose.

“I came to clean,” Mary went on, “and then I saw this abomination desecrating the church!” She flung a hand out to point accusatorily at the statue. “What bit of Satanic filth is this? How did it come to crush the holy baptismal font?”

Lawrence’s shoulders relaxed a bit as he shrugged them and said, “Um, er, you see, the thing is, this statue belongs to me. It’s Primavera in Splendor.”

The woman’s eyes widened. “Devil worshiper! Spawn of Satan!”

Lawrence sighed and rolled his eyes. Although he supposed he did look less than holy in his current state of undress.

“This is all a terrible misunderstanding,” he said, trying to smile and present himself as kind and gentlemanly instead of half-dressed and deranged. “My driver found it necessary to unburden our carriage of all it contained so that he could take it to a wainwright in your good village, you see. He left two days ago, and I bade him stay in the village until the carriage was repaired rather than be bored to tears here by myself and Lady Minerva.”

“Lies!” the village woman said. “All lies and deceit.”

“Lord Lawrence does not lie,” Minerva said, glaring fire at the woman.

The woman flung her arm out again, this time pointing to one of the church windows. “Is that not your carriage and your driver now?”

Both Lawrence and Minerva turned to gaze out through the window. Sure enough, Silas was just stopping the horses as the carriage, looking much more balanced and sound, rolled to a stop.

“How fortunate,” Lawrence said, forcing a smile as the woman continued to glare at him. “He has returned.”

As glad as Lawrence was to see Silas and the carriage back and in good condition, he was immediately on his guard as he watched Silas jump down from the driver’s seat to open the carriage’s door.

Worse still, at the sight of a gentleman of middling years stepped down and looked around with a scowl, Minerva gasped and ducked, as if someone had thrown something at her.

“Minerva?” Lawrence asked.

“Owen!” Minerva hissed in return.

At first, Lawrence thought her fever had returned and she had called him by the wrong name. But when Minerva kept her stance low and hurried quickly to the window so that she could peek out while exposing as little of herself to outside view as possible, another possibility came to mind.

“He is your intended,” Lawrence said, uncertain whether he should have been angry or alarmed or jealous about the turn of events as he walked over to join Minerva. “We saw him at that other inn. You believed he had been following us since London.”

Minerva sighed, then sank to lean against the wall beside the window. She stared at Lawrence for several heavy seconds before pinching her face and nodding.

“It appears as though he has,” she said thickly, then took a moment to blow her nose.

Lawrence frowned at the sticky turn of events as he glanced out the window. Silas was arguing with the man, Owen. Lawrence had not informed him of the problem of Lord Owen Scurloch, but Silas was clever and loyal enough to have puzzled things out, he guessed.

“It seems Owen has caught up to us again after Tidworth Hall,” Minnie said once her nose was clear. “And it seems we can no longer count on the hope that he was merely returning to Wales by the same route as us.”

“He is most definitely searching for you,” Lawrence said, his frown darker still.

To the side, Mary from the village was still looking on, as though she were suddenly more interested in the drama playing out in front of her than her fear of demons and witches. Lawrence did not trust her not to dash out of the church, calling out to Lord Owen that Minerva was hiding inside the church. The only way he could be certain such a thing did not happen was if he got rid of Lord Owen as quickly as possible.

“I have an idea,” he said, marching for the church door. “Stay here,” he told Minerva firmly, then charged Mary with, “Watch over her. If she dies, I will hold you responsible.”

It was most definitely too much, but Mary’s eyes went wide and the color drained from her face, as if Minerva might drop dead at a moment’s notice. “Yes, my lord,” she said, dropping into a curtsy.

Lawrence caught a brief scolding look from Minerva before he pulled open the church door and stepped out into the yard. He was careful to shut the door behind him.

Silas and Lord Owen were still arguing as Lawrence paused for a moment to throw together a quick plan.

“…know that she is here,” Lord Owen argued, gesturing toward the house. “It is all over the village. I have tracked Lady Minerva’s whereabouts from London to this place. You cannot deny me my bride.”

Lawrence clenched his jaw and his fists at the man’s audacious assumption. If Minerva was anyone’s bride, she was his.

He stepped forward with a mind to pummel the arrogant toad into the ground, but a second idea flashed into his head as he closed the distance to the carriage. Lord Owen had heard all about Minerva from the village, which meant he’d probably been told she was dying of plague.

Silas noticed Lawrence’s approach first and leaned away from Lord Owen to gape at him. A second later, Lord Owen turned toward him as well and practically jumped in shock.

“Good God, you’re the man they said was escorting Lady Minerva,” Lord Owen said. He raked Lawrence with a glance, lip curled in distaste, then said, “What is the matter with you?”

His appearance. Lawrence knew he could use it. He pinched his face, staggered toward Silas, and did his very best job of acting as he collapsed against his friend’s shoulder.

“She is gone,” he wailed, sobbing for good measure.

“My…my lord?” Silas asked, genuine worry in his voice.

“She is gone,” Lawrence repeated, lifting his head and staring at Silas, willing him to see the subterfuge. “My dearest Minerva has succumbed to the fever.”

“Oh God, my lord!” Silas gasped, believing the lie.

Lawrence regretted it, and he would have to make it up to Silas later, but there was a chance that Silas’s belief would help convince Lord Owen to go away.

“Lady Minerva died of the plague?” Lord Owen asked, the picture of suspicion and disbelief.

“Yes,” Lawrence said, pretending to marshal all his strength to stand and face the world as a man should. “Yesterday. I knelt by her side and held her hand as she breathed her last. I suppose it was a peaceful death, but I do not know what I will do without her now.”

Lord Owen narrowed his eyes. “I wish to see her body.”

Lawrence pinched his face. He hadn’t accounted for that.

“You cannot,” he sniffled. “I…I have already buried her.”

Lord Owen’s expression turned even harder, and he looked around. “Where?” he asked, infusing the single word with doubt. “I do not see any freshly turned earth.”

Dammit, he had not thought this through.

“In the crypt within the church,” he said, praying the church actually had a crypt. Then again, how would Lord Owen know one way or another.

“I wish to see her,” Lord Owen said, starting toward the church.

Lawrence leapt forward to grab his arm, holding him back. From the corner of his eyes, he caught a flash of movement in the window that he assumed was Minerva ducking out of sight.

“You cannot go in there,” Lawrence said, assuming an expression of doom. “She died of the plague. The entire church may be infected now.” He gasped for good measure and said, “Heaven help me, I may be carrying the dread disease myself. I may have infected you with my very touch!”

Rather than inspiring Lord Owen with fear and the immediate need to flee to safety, Lawrence’s words only caused the man to shift back towards him, arms crossed.

“You are telling me that Lady Minerva has died,” he said flatly.

“She has,” Lawrence said, still trying desperately to be the picture of a grieving lover, but finding that ruse harder by the moment.

“Lady Minerva. Died,” Lord Owen said, utterly unconvinced.

Lawrence straightened and looked down his nose at the man. “Do not mock the dead, sir.”

Lord Owen stared at him like he thought Lawrence was a dolt. “My lord, in my recent investigations into my bride’s whereabouts, I spoke to not only her acquaintances, but also to others she has interacted business with in the last several months.”

Lawrence said nothing, but prickles of dread began to race down his back.

“That included a group of fishermen in Bristol,” Lord Owen continued.

Lawrence merely blinked.

Lord Owen went on. “Are you aware, my lord, that it was my bride’s intention to stage her own death by fall from a cliff and to seek passage with these fishermen to Ireland, from whence she intended to carry on to Stockholm?”

It took every ounce of control in Lawrence’s power not to burst into wild laughter, or to gape in shock. Of course Minerva planned to fake her own death so that she could escape the binds of a marriage she did not want. Which explained why she’d thought Sweden was Heaven before.

But that only complicated the predicament they were in now.

“How dare you suggest that Lady Minerva, whose fever scourged body lies swaddled in quilts under the stones of that church, would do anything as wicked as pretend to have left this world?” he hissed, jabbing a finger toward the church.

He advanced on Lord Owen, who stepped back in alarm, continuing with, “How dare you insult my grief at losing the most wonderful woman I have ever known, a woman with whom I wished to spend the rest of my life, by insinuating that I did not sit by her bedside as I watched her fail, that I did not whisper psalms over her as she breathed her last? How dare you tell me that I did not weep bitterly as I wrapped her delicate form in whatever sheets I was able to find, or that I did not carry her to the church, where I have been praying over her ever since? Do you not see the state of me, man?”

He gestured to his own rumpled appearance while simultaneously advancing on Lord Owen even more. He had the advantage of height over Lord Owen, and he was well aware that, even in playacting, he’d worked himself into a state that would frighten even the most stalwart of men.

“I…I am not…I cannot say….” Lord Owen scrambled for words as he tried to put as much distance between himself and Lawrence as possible.

“Silas!” Lawrence shouted, making his appearance as wild as possible. “Take this man back to the village! I want him out of my sight. He is a blackguard for inflicting deeper wounds on me in my hour of grief!

“Yes, my lord,” Silas said, nodding. He immediately turned to gesture for Lord Owen to enter the carriage through the already open door.

“This is not right,” Lord Owen said, inching toward the carriage, more out of fear than because he was convinced Lawrence was telling the truth. “None of this is right. I will leave so that you might compose yourself, sir,” he went on, pulling himself up into the carriage, “but I will return on the morrow to bring an end to this farce. Lady Minerva is mine,” he called out, as if he thought Minerva could hear him…which she most likely could. “She might have escaped one ceremony, but she will not escape another. I carry a special license with me, and the moment I find her, I will have the nearest holy man marry us, whether I have to hold a knife to her back to force her to say the words or not!”

With that, he snapped the carriage door behind him. It was a good thing, too, because the callous way he spoke of Minerva made Lawrence want to wring the man’s neck.

“Get him back to the village and then return here as swiftly as possible,” Lawrence told Silas in as quiet a voice as he could as he walked his friend to the front of the carriage. He whispered, “Lady Minerva is alive, but I fear we will need to make a hasty escape from this place as quickly as possible.”

Silas’s eyes went wide, then he burst into a smile. “The two of you will be the death of me, my lord,” he said as he climbed up into the driver’s seat. “And not from plague.”

Lawrence gave him the slightest of smiles before stepping back and assuming a posture of utter grief again.

He maintained that posture as he watched the carriage retreat, just in case Lord Owen glanced out and saw him. As soon as he was convinced it was safe, he dropped his sad look and turned to march toward the church. Minerva owed him answers and the entire story of her flight back to Wales, and he would have those answers now.