Chapter 16

Sixteen

Minnie sniffled and wiped her nose on the handkerchief she’d brought with her, then breathed through her mouth as she watched the scene between Lawrence and Owen unfold outside the church. If she had not felt so utterly miserable, she would have thrilled at the confrontation, and at Lawrence’s incomparable acting abilities.

She could only just hear what was being said between the two men across the distance and through the glass of the church window, but she was able to make out the essence of the conversation.

“Is that man your husband?” the woman from the village asked as she watched from the other corner of the window, as eager to keep abreast of the situation as Minnie was.

Minnie sent her a sidelong look. She was uncertain which man the woman referred to.

“Neither are my husband,” she explained, earning a shocked look from Mary. She sniffled, dabbed at her nose, then said, “One attempted to marry me against my wishes, and the other….”

She stopped, the truth snagging on the part of her that valued her independence and strength. The other had not offered for her hand as of yet, but if he ever did, she would be hard-pressed to deny him, or her own wants.

She was spared having to explain as much to a woman she did not know, one who believed her to be a witch, by Owen suddenly shouting out, “I will return on the morrow to bring an end to this farce. Lady Minerva is mine! 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!”

“Oh, gracious!” Mary gasped as Minerva sunk below the bottom of the window once more to stay out of sight. “He is a nasty sort. I would choose the other one myself, even if he is a madman.”

Minerva fought a smile as she let herself sink all the way to sit on the floor with her back against the wall. As soon as she heard the carriage roll away, she deemed it safe to give her nose a thorough blow.

Lawrence was rather mad, she thought to herself as she worked to clear her head as much as she could while Mary glanced on with a queasy look. He’d been mad to agree to escort her to Wales when all the rest of the ton was engaged in politics in London. He’d been mad to humor her with silly stories and games throughout their journey. And he’d most definitely been mad to sit by her bedside all through the worst of her fever when to do so meant a risk to himself.

He was mad, but it was becoming abundantly clear to her that she loved him for it. She loved Lawrence’s strangeness and almost childlike moods. All the things that Lady Jessica had despised about Lawrence were precisely the things she adored about him. He most certainly was not stupid, he merely saw the world differently from others. But so did she.

“Minerva?” Lawrence whispered as he strode back into the church moments later.

Minnie sucked in a breath and pushed herself to stand, frustrated that her body was still weaker than it should have been and that the movement took effort.

Mary rose as well as Lawrence spotted them and marched toward them, looking intimidated, but with her eyes shining.

“Did you hear?” Lawrence asked as he picked up his pace so that he could help Minnie the rest of the way to her feet. He kept his arms around her once she was upright, either because he did not believe she could stand on her own or because he simply wanted to hold her.

Minnie hoped it was the latter, but there was something unusually stony and veiled in his eyes.

“I heard much of it,” she said, suddenly uncertain. “Mostly when the two of you had your voices raised. I could not hear some parts.”

Lawrence looked as though he would say something. Indeed, he hesitated for so long that Minnie wondered if some part of his mind was stuck on a point and could not let go. Something about that hesitation had her quivering with the feeling she had done something he disapproved of.

At last, Lawrence shook his head and said, “We must be away from here as swiftly as possible.”

“I agree,” Minnie said, grasping onto one area where they could be in accord. “Owen clearly will not back down. His pride and the pride of his family are at stake. And it is likely that my parents would stand behind him in his efforts to force me to the altar.”

“He’s got a special license, he has,” Mary commented unhelpfully from the side, inching closer, like she could be a part of the magnificent drama before her.

Both Minnie and Lawrence glanced to her with slight frowns, and Mary stepped back.

Minerva sniffed thickly, then released herself from Lawrence’s hold so that she could turn to Mary. She coughed, blew her nose, then said, “I am most appreciative of your help in remaining concealed from Lord Owen just now and I thank you, but your assistance is no longer required.”

“Thank you,” Lawrence echoed, paused, then added, “You may go now.”

Instead of doing as she’d been told, Mary pulled her shoulders back stubbornly. “I still have to clean the church,” she said.

Minnie sighed and rubbed her congested head. “Very well, then,” she said with a wet sigh. “Go about your business. But we ask for your discretion in this matter, for obvious reasons.”

“I won’t say nothing,” Mary told them with a nod. She then scooted to the side, then turned and hurried toward the opposite end of the church, where a broom and bucket waited.

Minnie turned back to Lawrence, giving him a wary look. “We should pack our things and be off,” she said.

Lawrence still had the sharp, almost calculating look in his eyes. It took him longer than it should have, once again, to answer, “Agreed.”

Packing their things in preparation for a flight took longer than Minnie would have liked it to. They returned to the house, where their abandoned breakfast was waiting for them, then decided it would not be a waste of time to consume that small meal.

Afterwards, Minnie found herself exhausted from the morning’s efforts. She began the process of rearranging the contents of her valise, but when she began to flag, Lawrence insisted she return to the bedroom to lie down for a spell.

That spell turned into hours. Minnie was forced to admit to herself that she needed rest. Her fever might have broken, leaving her well on the way to recovery, but she was not well again by any means. If she had been at home at the Oxford Society Club, she would have spent the entire day in bed reading, and possibly several days after that.

There was not time for lying abed, however. She forced herself to rise, then was startled to discover it was well past midday. Lawrence had prepared a small luncheon from the supplies left by the old woman, and he’d also laundered several of her handkerchiefs and dried them in the cold, November sun.

“I only regret that I will soil them all again within minutes, the way my head is,” she apologized amidst blowing her nose post-nap.

“There will be other opportunities to launder then and other handkerchiefs to be had,” Lawrence told her, rather stiffly.

As soon as Minnie was temporarily satisfied with the state of her nose, she frowned at Lawrence and asked, “Is something amiss? Did Owen say something I could not hear that has upset you?”

The length of the silence that followed her questions told her she was right and Lawrence was, at the very least, disquieted.

“It can wait,” he said, stepping past her to one of the cottage’s windows.

Minnie was not satisfied with the answer, but as Lawrence’s reason for looking out the window was that Silas had just returned with the carriage, there was nothing more she could do.

Silas reported that Owen had left the carriage willingly in the village and returned to the tiny inn where he was staying, but he was still deeply suspicious. Silas, too, glanced at Minerva as if she had committed some sin, but after a quick look from Lawrence, he said no more.

The remainder of the afternoon was spent loading the carriage once more. That, of course, involved replacing the heavy statue in the trunk at the back of the carriage, which Lawrence and Silas accomplished together. Minerva remained in the warm cottage, her shawl hugged around her, shaking her head and wondering how the marble remnant of Lawrence’s past heartache could cause so much trouble in the present.

Once everything was loaded, they consumed the remainder of the food that the old woman had brought to him, packed up the last of the medicine she’d provided for Minnie which, somewhat miraculously, seemed to actually be doing some good, then as soon as dark fell, Lawrence and Minnie, with Clarence placed carefully beside her, seated themselves in the carriage.

“It is a small blessing that night falls so early at this time of year,” Minnie said, one hand on Clarence’s parietal bone, hoping that her efforts to make conversation as they jostled onto the road would help Lawrence to confess whatever troubled him. “Our escape will be better concealed this way.”

Lawrence merely hummed and nodded, then crossed his arms and frowned out the window.

Minnie was desperate to know what had dampened Lawrence’s previously jolly mood. She was not fool enough to think it was not about her. Owen was precisely the sort of man who would attempt to undermine her in order to capture her. She merely needed to discover the right opening to bring the truth from Lawrence without hurting or offending him in any way.

Nothing came to her, they rattled on for a good half hour in silence, but Lawrence said nothing and Minnie did not know what to say.

And then the carriage suddenly pulled to a stop as Silas called out, “Hold!” to the horses in a rather loud voice outside the carriage and above them. Minnie was puzzled as to why he would be so vocal with the horses until he continued with, “Lord Owen, what are you doing here in the road in the dark?”

Minnie sucked in a breath so precipitously that it would have left to a coughing fit if she did not employ all of her powers of control to silence it.

“Damnation,” Lawrence grumbled, shifting forward a bit and attempting to peer out the window. “He’s not alone, either,” he said. “I cannot see much, but he might have a parson of some sort with him.”

“No!” Minnie gasped, searching around, as if some means of escape might show itself to her. She knocked Clarence off the seat as she did.

Something did reveal itself, though it was not escape.

“Stand,” Lawrence ordered her, moving forward and grasping the edge of the seat upon which Minnie sat.

Minnie made a sound of confusion, but sensing that speed was of the essence, she did just that.

A second later, she gasped as Lawrence yanked the seat forward…and the cushion moved to reveal the seat itself was hollow.

“Get in,” Lawrence ordered calmly.

Minnie’s heart thundered in her chest, and she nearly laughed as she picked up her skirts and did exactly as she was told.

“I am not going to ask why this is here,” she said, stepping into the concealing space and crouching down, pulling her skirts in around her. “At this moment,” she added. “I should like a complete explanation later, however.”

The moment was too fraught for Lawrence to give her any reaction other than the thinnest of smiles as she hunkered down, making herself as small as possible. A moment later, he slid the seat back into place, leaving Minnie in complete darkness, but also fully hidden.

Her concealment was completed just in time. Lawrence shuffled a bit, then the carriage creaked slightly as he opened the door, then stepped down.

“What is the meaning of this?” Minnie heard him say from just outside the carriage.

“Where are you going, Lord Lawrence?” Owen asked, his voice coming nearer to the carriage. “It is too late for travelers to be out on the roads.”

“When and where I travel are no business of yours,” Lawrence said gruffly.

“They are when it means you are abducting my bride,” Owen said.

Minnie frowned at his audacity, then panicked a bit as her nose began to drip without her being able to do anything about it.

“How dare you?” Lawrence growled, still near to the carriage. “Lady Minerva’s remains lay moldering in that church, and you would accuse me of abduction?”

“Lady Minerva is no more dead than I am,” Owen snapped in reply. “I’ll prove it.”

Minnie gasped as the carriage door was wrenched open, then squeezed herself to be as small as possible, and to prevent any sneezing or coughing, as, she assumed, Owen looked into the carriage, expecting to find her.

Her heart nearly burst with fright when Owen called out, “Ha! What is the meaning of this?”

She was certain her hiding spot had been discovered, particularly since she heard shuffling very near her head. But instead of pulling the seat cushion aside to reveal her, Minnie heard a very slight scraping, then Owen’s voice from outside the carriage saying, “This wicked thing belongs to Lady Minerva.”

Minnie winced. Clarence. Lawrence must have put him back on the seat above her.

“It does,” Lawrence admitted, his voice slightly farther away, as if he were attempting to draw Owen away from her. “Or at least it did. I…I kept it as a reminder of the lady I have lost.”

Owen snorted, his voice also slightly farther away. “It is an abomination,” he said. “I destroyed the rest of that macabre skeleton she insisted on keeping. I will destroy this now.”

Minnie sucked in a breath and did end up coughing, but Lawrence’s shout of, “You will not do anything to damage the memorial of my love,” covered the sound. That and Silas pretending to cough somewhere nearer to her.

A small silence followed in which Minnie thought perhaps she heard a struggle. She hoped and prayed it was Lawrence wrestling Clarence back from Owen.

“You will leave me be!” Lawrence bellowed at last. “If you wish to do anything, take this man of the cloth you have brought with you and give him your confession for all the sins you committed against the dear, late Lady Minerva. Ask for his forgiveness, and say prayers for Minerva’s departed soul.”

“You are being false with me,” Owen shouted. “The village woman said Lady Minerva was alive. What have you done with her? Is she concealed in the village?”

A dozen curses for Mary hovered on Minerva’s lips. Neither she nor Lawrence had noticed when she’d left the church earlier. Minnie should have known she would reveal all.

“The woman was mistaken,” Lawrence continued to lie for her. “How much money did you pay her to tell you precisely what you wanted to hear?”

“I—”

Minnie’s eyes went wide at Owen’s stilted answer. Thank God he had paid Mary. It was a thin straw, but it was something she could grasp onto. That sliver of doubt might just convince Owen to go away.

“Leave me be now, sir,” Lawrence snapped. “I am returning home to my family at Godwin Castle to mourn in peace. Silas!”

“Yes, my lord,” Silas answered Lawrence’s order.

A moment later, the carriage jostled as Lawrence climbed back in. It continued to move as Silas climbed up to his place. A few seconds after that, they were on their way once more.

It was another minute or so before Lawrence pulled the seat back so that Minnie could breathe deeper and emerge from her concealment.

“He’s let us go?” she asked, her head and nose full, as Lawrence helped her climb from her place. Minnie noted Clarence sitting on the seat beside him with a rush of relief.

“He has,” Lawrence said, still frowning.

She slumped to sit on the forward-facing seat with him, moving Clarence to the floor, as Lawrence replaced the seat cushion. She would have been content to stay there, pressed against Lawrence’s side, perhaps even hugging him, but Lawrence immediately moved to the seat opposite her. He regarded her with a frustrated frown that she could only just see in the light of the moon shining through the window.

A different sort of worry filled Minnie as she searched for a clean handkerchief and blew her nose. She wanted Lawrence to come out and tell her why he was suddenly so cold, but it seemed as if the cat had his tongue, even though something that required much discussion had just taken place.

“It was a good thing you told Owen we were heading to Godwin Castle,” she said once her nose was adequately clear. “He will travel in the wrong direction.”

“We are going to Godwin Castle,” Lawrence said stiffly.

Minnie blinked at him in the dark. “You cannot be serious,” she said. “Owen will continue to pursue us. He will follow and follow until he has me cornered.”

“And what will you do then?” Lawrence asked. “Feign your own death and sail away to Stockholm?”

Minnie snapped her mouth shut and sank back against the seat. She felt as though she’d been hit in the chest with a crossbow bolt, or perhaps a silver stake.

“How did you know?” she whispered.

“Lord Owen discovered your arrangements with the fishermen in Bristol,” Lawrence said. “They revealed that you planned to stage your own death, then take passage with them to Ireland before continuing to Sweden.” He paused, then asked, “Is it true? Were you truly planning to leave me and make me believe you were dead?”

The way his voice faltered with the question told Minnie that her duplicity and possible disappearance was, indeed, the reason he was now out of sorts with her.

“I made those plans before I knew you,” she said quietly.

“And did you intend to follow through with them after you knew me?” Lawrence asked. “After we?—”

He grew suddenly silent, and if the light in the carriage had been brighter, Minnie would have been certain he was flushed. She knew full well he was referring to their night at Tidworth Hall. They had not spoken of what happened between them since then. They had not had a chance.

It suddenly occurred to Minnie that Lawrence must have thought their night of passion meant nothing to her. She had already felt ill that morning, which had taken her thoughts. With her illness and everything else in the last few days, she had almost forgotten the deep change in their acquaintance.

Lawrence was hurt…and Minnie found it to be the most endearing thing she had ever known. Too many of the men of her acquaintance had been brash and uncaring. Whether or not they even had feelings was questionable. Lawrence, however, wore his heart on his sleeve. It was, perhaps, the reason why shallow women, like Lady Jessica, had rejected him and thought him simple.

Lawrence was not simple, he was caring. He was not stupid, he was sensitive.

He was still, and would always be, the most wonderful man of her acquaintance.

“I am sorry if I’ve hurt you,” she said, lowering her head, then scowling at herself as the necessity of clearing her nose once more ruined the sentimentality of the moment. “I trust your judgement, Lawrence. If you feel it is best we go straight to Godwin Castle, then I will not question you, I will simply go with you. Anywhere. Always.”

The silence that followed her soft declaration was heavy. It was clear that a simple apology was not enough to soothe Lawrence’s bruised heart. And perhaps they were both too exhausted and wrung out from the events of the day in any case.

There would be time for Minnie to make a deeper apology ahead of them. She clung to that belief as she settled in for a long drive. Whatever was needed, she would find a way to repay Lawrence for his kindness and prove to him that she was neither silly nor fickle. She was beginning to understand that what she truly was was his.