Whack.
Palms grinding brick.
Whack.
Then nothing when there should have been more. The birch rod thrown to the ground. Papa walking away, his shoulders deflated, while the family dog barked in excited confusion at his heels.
He only turned around once.“I wish ye were not my son.”
Tom flinched back awake, but it was too late. His body slumped from the horse, and he hit the road with a grunt. Instead of remounting, he secured the whinnying mare to a buckthorn tree, then leaned against the mossy stone wall and closed his eyes.
Just a moment.
Then he would shake himself back awake and start again. Mind numbing, he slipped his hand into his trouser pocket and crunched the letter he’d been ignoring ever since Meg disappeared.
The letter calling him home.
Back to a papa Tom was not certain he could face, whether the man was dying or not.
“I wish you to be as candid as possible, doctor. Have you any experience with such a case?”
“In profession? No.” On the other side of the door, a bag snapped shut, as if Dr. Bagot were as finished with his doctorial duties as he was with her. “I have witnessed a head injury to cause paralysis. Once, the inability to speak.”
The polished, wooden floorboards were cold against Meg’s bare feet. She should not have feigned slumber. Nor crept to the door, putting her ear to the crack like a common eavesdropper.
But if anyone needed the truth, it was her.
They had no right to lie to her.
She wanted nothing of their pacifying smiles, their cheerful assurances, as if she were a glass trinket ready to fragment. She wasn’t. If she knew nothing else about herself, she knew that.
“But this.” The doctor’s voice drifted farther down the hall. “This complete inability to remember anything aside from her name is utterly preposterous.”
“Preposterous in that it cannot happen—or that it never has before?”
“Both. Neither. I do not know.” Their footsteps paused again. “Frankly, my lord, this entire case baffles me. Perhaps the shock of whatever she suffered has muddled her mind. In which event, I imagine her memories shall return as quickly as her strength.”
“Or?”
“I have already notified the St. Alban Asylum, in the likelihood she has been admitted there or elsewhere before.”
“She is injured, Doctor. Not insane.”
“You seem very certain.”
“I am.”
More footsteps. Then, far enough away she only barely caught their whispers, Lord Cunningham called out, “One more thing, Doctor, before you depart.”
“Yes?”
“You seemed, a moment ago at her bedside, as if something occurred to you. Am I in error?”
“You are never in error concerning anything, my lord.”
“Do enlighten me.”
“I am uncertain my theories would be welcomed.” Lord Cunningham must have nodded the doctor on, because he spoke a little louder, “I know more of the body than I do of the mind. But I comprehend enough of human nature to know this.”
