Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14

No. Horrors of the cabin—of running, but not running fast enough—drained the blood from Simon's veins. He flung through the anteroom, flew up the red-carpeted stairs, aware of every thud and footfall above him.

When he reached the second floor, two maids and a trembling Mr. Wilkins surrounded the nursery door. The butler wielded a candlestick like a sword.

"Move." Simon shoved them back, but a timid grip stopped him from entering.

"The children are not in there," Mr. Wilkins panted. "Mrs. Fancourt had requested to see them before she fell asleep and they were visiting in her chamber when this—"

Simon lunged at the door. It budged open to a crack but no further, as if the intruder had shoved furniture against it from inside. "Go and get more footmen. Hurry."

"Yes, Master Fancourt, but I fear he has a gun. Perhaps you should wait until—"

Simon busted through with his shoulder, the same time a gunshot exploded next to his head. He ducked, rolled into the room, scampered behind a child-sized bed.

Another shot struck the pillow, smoke and feathers exploding. The man would have no bullets left. Not unless he had time to reload.

Which he didn't.

Simon rose from behind the bed, stepped over it, fists balling.

Even in the evening shadows, without any wall sconces lit, the figure was exposed. The turnkey. Lucan. He flattened against the nursery wall, next to the window, and pulled a knife from his worn coat. "Already used this on you once, bloke."

"Drop it, and no one gets hurt."

"Mebbe that's what I come for." With a ringing yell, the turnkey charged, but Simon caught his knife hand before the blade had a chance to plunge.

He kneed the assailant in the gut. Whooshed him backward. Slammed him against the wall, picture frames clanging, and banged the man's arm until the knife fell to the rug.

Lucan sank his teeth into the flesh of Simon's forearm, freeing himself. He raced for the open window, climbing out to the sill just as Simon groped for him.

He must have seen, recoiled, because his hold slipped. With a shriek, his body plummeted.

Simon leaned out the window, but it was too late.

"Simon." Behind him, feet pattered in.

Gripping his arm, he glanced back to see Miss Whitmore coming toward him, while the maid and butler peered in with panicked expressions.

She started for the window, but he pulled her back. "He is dead."

"Who?"

"A turnkey from Newgate. The one who soiled your cousin."

She took the news without a shift in expression, until her gaze dropped to his arm. Only then did her cheeks redden. He sensed that if she had been brave enough, she would have pried his hand away, dabbed the blood from his bite wound, and bandaged him with fingers more gentle than any that had ever touched him before.

Guilt stung him more than the teeth marks.

Because if he had been brave enough, he would have let her.

If she had known the children were here, she would have never requested to see them.

Georgina sat in the large chair by the bedchamber hearth, aware that one of Simon's shirtsleeves was draped across the back. The room smelled of him. Perhaps it looked like him too. Dark and masculine colors, clean and inviting, with oddities spread about. His rifle leaning against the black-painted mantel. His open sketchbook on the stand by the bed. His faded, worn trunk beneath the window, appearing rustic and handmade compared to all the other gleaming furniture of the room.

"Papa killed him?" John sat next to her chair, fiddling with two tin monkeys in the candlelight. "He can fight anyone. Like Blayney."

"Blayney?"

Mercy, snuggled on Georgina's lap, pulled her thumb from her mouth long enough to answer, "Him kills bears!"

"He does," John affirmed with a serious nod. "I will too when I'm grown."

"He sounds very exciting."

John nodded.

"You must miss him. And your home." And your mother. All the things Simon had told her rushed back. The children hiding in the loft. The loss of the one they needed. The hardships of their journey across the sea.

The last thing she wished to do was think of their hurt.

They were too young.

Too little.

Too easy to press close to her, to laugh with, to protect, to need, to love.

No. Instinctively, she nestled Mercy closer. Of course she did not love these children. They were not hers. Never would be…

The door came open.

Georgina jumped to her feet, jostling Mercy from her near-slumber.

Simon hesitated in the doorway, as uncomfortable to see her as she was to be here, it seemed. "Wilkins told me you came to sit with the children."

"You were attending…" The dead body? The man who tried to kidnap John and Mercy? "Other things," she finally stammered. "I wanted to sit with them until you were finished."

"May I speak with you?"

She nodded, though already heat sizzled beneath her cheeks. Would he reprimand her? Certainly, she had overstepped her boundaries. She should have gone home.

Nausea swirled, as she settled Mercy in the chair and rubbed John's hair as she walked past him. Facing her town house again, those dreadful yellow flowers, knowing Mamma and that man were in a nearby room—

The bedchamber door shut quietly as Simon eased her into the hall. He stood close. Sweat darkened his hairline, his sleeves were rolled to his elbows, and although the blood had been wiped away, red teeth marks still punctured his forearm. "I took the liberty of returning your driver and carriage without you."

"What?"

"Another figure was spotted outside the Sowerby gates tonight. He was gone before the footman could stop him, but it is unsafe."

"Perhaps for you or the children, but not—"

"Anyone involved with me is in danger." Tiredness hung in his eyes. "For that, I am sorry."

"It is not your fault."

"If you wish it, I will return you tomorrow." He opened his mouth, as if he wanted to say more, then looked the other way. "One of the maids is awaiting you at the top of the stairs. She will show you to your chamber."

"Thank you."

He turned back for his door, grabbed the knob, then paused. He looked back at her with fierceness tightening his face. "I know it is not my place, Miss Whitmore, but I do not think you should go back there."

His words echoed the sickness in her gut. "To my town house."

"Yes."

"But I do not know where—"

"Other arrangements can be made. Tomorrow. But until we have a chance to find out more about the man your mother married, I do not think it wise or safe to return."

"I suppose you are right." She knew he was right.

"Good night, Miss Whitmore." With a faint nod, he slipped into his bedchamber and shut the door, and she continued down the dimly lit hall with a growing heart rate.

How would she ever find out the truth? Would the stranger still confess now that he was married to her mother? Where would she go while she searched for answers?

The wave of uncertainty threatened to drown her until Simon's words finally penetrated.

He had said we.

As if this was something she no longer faced alone.

Georgina awoke before the sun peeked through her guest-chamber windows. She dressed in the same gown she had worn yesterday, as she had no luggage, and surveyed herself in the looking glass with a frown.

Without a comb and Nellie's nimble hands, her hair was only tolerable.

But her eyes were worse.

They testified to a lack of sleep, burdens, questions, sadness. Her throat constricted. Would she ever be free of such emotions? Would the unknown, both of the past and future, ever cease to plague her?

Unable to remain in her chamber, Georgina left the room and navigated the dark, quiet house. She found her way downstairs, into the drawing room, just as the first hints of golden morning light glowed from the windows.

The serenity pulled her in.

How long before the house became alive? Before she sat, perhaps in this very room, with Simon across from her—trying to decide what to do with the problems she had stacked upon his own? Was that wrong of her? Had she been selfish to cumber one already so afflicted?

All the furniture, the familiar smells of this room, brought her back to simpler days. She walked to a stand, tugged open the drawer.

Inside were faded whist cards.

She smiled, touched them. La, but they'd been so young then. She'd sat beside Simon in this very room, with all their other comrades gathered about, playing whist or charades or solving each other's silly riddles—

"You are like a sparkling diamond."

Georgina slammed the drawer shut as she turned. "M—Mr. Oswald."

He strode into the room, appearing as livened in the early hours of the morning as he did at the start of a ball. He grinned. "A diamond. Lovely to spot on the neck of a beautiful woman, of course, but utterly tantalizing to discover hidden, unexpected, in a crevice of the earth."

"What are you doing here?"

"I shall try not to be offended." He walked around the chaise lounge, nearer to where she stood, and lit a cigar. "I shall also try to ignore the chagrin I sense in your voice. You are very transparent, Miss Whitmore."

"Does Simon know you are here?"

"Simon? My, we are quite unceremonious with him, are we not?" He puffed out smoke. "But perhaps that would be obvious by the fact that you are in his house at the break of dawn—"

"Oswald." A hard voice sounded from the doorway.

Both turned.

Simon stepped into the drawing room, eyes like ice, shoulders tense and broad. "What do you want?"

"I should think that would be obvious." He swept a hand across the room, as if gesturing the house—but his eyes flicked to Georgina.

Heat burst on her cheeks.

"Get out."

"I fear a prior engagement with your mother makes that impossible." Mr. Oswald tapped his cigar on his finger, heedless of the ashes that fell to the rug. "Sir Walter shall be arriving soon, and then we shall get to business with the details of the deed."

"I have more time." Simon stepped forward. "The house belongs to us until—"

"Perhaps you should take up such details with your mother and friend the barrister. They seem as eager to get this over with as I do." He shrugged. "But I, in no way, wish to be discourteous. I have waited this long. Perhaps, if it will amend disagreeable feelings, I shall delay my appointment with Sir Walter and bid him to return another day." When Simon answered him with no more than a glaring stare, Mr. Oswald chuckled. He glanced at Georgina. "In truth, I did not expect to find you here at all, Miss Whitmore."

"There is nothing improper in her being here," said Simon.

"I did not say there was." Mr. Oswald held her eyes. "It is only that I expected Miss Whitmore to have arrived at Hollyvale by this time."

Confusion struck her. "Hollyvale?"

"You did, of course, receive the invitation?"

"To what?"

"I should have known my sister would be incompetent in even this. I suppose you have heard nothing of the house party?"

She shook her head, wariness filling her.

"It begins tomorrow. You are invited, of course, and may stay as long as you like." Mr. Oswald grinned back at Simon. "You may even bring your friend, if you so wish."

"I am certain we could not—"

"We will be there." Simon cut off Georgina with steel and stepped forward. "Now I will see you out."

"I spoke in haste." Simon found Georgina alone in the breakfast room, already seated with a plate of toast and scotch eggs. "You will not go."

"It is a solution to both our troubles," she answered.

"Mine, not yours."

"I would rather be entertained at a house party than face my own abode."

"You have more choices than that." He pulled a chair from the table. Turned it backward and straddled it, a habit that seemed less wretched before Miss Whitmore than it had Mother. "You can stay here."

"Forgive me, but that is a comfort even you shall not have soon."

"While the house is mine, you will stay."

She shook her head. "I shall go to Hollyvale."

"He is dangerous."

"One whispered disagreement cannot convince me of that. Besides"—she scooted away her half-eaten plate, as if appetite had fled her—"it is just the excuse you need. You may explore the possibilities of his guilt without hindrance."

"It is more than Alexander Oswald I want answers from."

"Oh?"

"His sister. Eleanor. How much do you know of her?"

"Very little. Only that she has spent a great deal of time abroad and that she is near my age without ever having married."

Married. The word snagged. Too many things attacked him. Ruth and the worn gold ring he had slipped on her thin, calloused finger. The rafters of the old church, with bird nests above their heads and creaking floorboards beneath their feet.

The cabin.

The hanging quilt.

The smell of forest in her hair and…

"Simon, Son, I wish to speak with you a moment." Father's hand resting on Simon's twelve-year-old shoulder in the Sowerby yard. "Do you see little Miss Whitmore yonder?"

He had nodded.

Alone, she occupied a bench beneath the flowered pergola, dainty and childlike hands clasped in her lap. White-blond hair waved over her shoulders. Sunshine had already pinkened her cheeks, and her expression was one of delicate sweetness.

"Many years ago, her father and I made an important decision." The grip on his shoulder had tightened. "We promised the two of you in marriage."

Simon had understood so little concerning marriage at the time, but the notion warmed him. The girl was so lovely. She was all the things he was not certain he could capture in a painting if he tried.

Then the hand left his shoulder. Father walked away and Simon started for the bench, but not before two other young lads swarmed the girl.

She laughed, and blushed, and teased them as they teased her.

"Mr. Fancourt, what is it?" Now, two feet across from him in the breakfast room, the same girl stared at him. He wondered if she still blushed at other gentlemen. If she still teased them.

If he should have married her at seventeen years old.

If he should marry her now.

No. Fear, guilt—whatever it was—slammed him so hard he hurried from his chair. "I must prepare for our stay at Hollyvale. I will send a servant to retrieve your luggage."

"Thank you."

"You are welcome." He left the room with an odd regret pulsing through him. He was either the wisest man in the world.

Or a fool twice over.

"Do you think it wise to leave the children?"

Simon climbed into the carriage and found a seat across from her, the evening light illuminating dust motes about them. He waited until the wheels pulled into motion before answering. "They will never be safe until I have answers."

"But without you here—"

"I enlisted more footmen from one of Mother's neighboring friends." True to his word, he had been gone the length of the day. First, he said, to see Sir Walter concerning how many days he had left of the house. Then to recruit able-bodied servants to guard his children. "Mr. Wilkins has moved the nursery to one of the servant chambers. Even if someone did break into the house again, they would not discover the children."

"Good." She felt as if she should say more. As if she should thank him, somehow, for accompanying her to the house party—even though it was for his own benefit, as well as hers.

Wheels creaked and crunched.

Birds chirped melancholy evening songs.

Simon leaned his head back, closed his eyes, though she could not tell if he slept. Did he ever sleep these days?

The exhaustion never left his face. Oh, how she wished he'd never come back. He should have stayed in America, where his little ones were safe and the world was all still right for him.

Nothing was here for him except pain.

The fact that she was a part of that pain—that she was the object forced upon him by a domineering father—made her even more determined against accepting his marriage proposal. He was not the kind who could marry with such indifference.

He felt things too much.

He loved too wholly.

She wished he loved her. That someone loved her. Had she anyone at all? Was there one person in her life who had not been wooed away?

Who had not left her?

Jostled, she gripped the door of the carriage. Evening countryside blurred faster out the carriage windows. Mercy, was the driver afraid they would not make it before dark?

She tried to relax her muscles, but the speed increased.

Simon jerked awake. He glanced at her, confused, before peering out the right window. "We're on a hill. Too steep to be going this fast." He slung open the carriage door and it banged like an alarming yell. "Driver!" Securing his grip, Simon leaned out.

"Mr. Fancourt." Her breath caught. "Careful—"

The carriage lurched.

Simon disappeared.

Everything flipped—the carriage roof beneath her, the seats above her, as her body flailed. No, no. Another flip. Her head swam. Pain splintered through one of her arms and she cried out, but something struck her forehead.

She was faintly aware that everything was finally still when blackness swallowed her whole.