She caught her footing in a tree crotch. Then she moved without thought—pulling herself down and over, looping through branches with movements so lithe and familiar she was certain she’d done this before. Had she climbed many trees as a child? Or did she still?
She landed on all fours in soft, damp grass.
Her head spun.
Run.Gathering the muslin dress in her fists, she slipped through what appeared to be a well-kept courtyard. Moonlight illuminated flowered bushes, tall boxwoods, and shadowed cloisters. She hurried to the only side not enclosed by the abbey.
A massive drystone wall. She sprinted the length of it, searching through vines. The door. The gate. Where was the gate?
In the distance, a bark struck the silence.
She flattened against the wall.
Her knees jellied as the sense of entrapment squelched what little courage she had left. She darted for the cloisters. The temperature chilled in the ancient covered passageway.
More howling. Lights glowed across the courtyard.
Hand covering her mouth, she hunkered against the stone plinth. The columns cast black, symmetrical shadows across the walk. She counted them. Lost count. Started again—
“Over here!”
More shouts, then a dog lunged at her from the darkness.
She screamed, covered her face.
Teeth snapped, but someone must have hauled the animal back, because they never sank into her skin. Instead, two hands peeled back her arms.
“Miss Margaret?”
“There is no gate.” Tears weakened her voice. She was ashamed of them because she had the sense she was not wont to crying. “I cannot find the gate—”
“The abbey, I fear, has no exit through its courtyard.” Lord Cunningham’s arms reached beneath her, pulling her against him. “I regret you were so frightened as to search for it at this hour.”
She buried her face into his banyan as he stood. Strange, but he still smelled of cinnamon. Stranger still, she didn’t want to smell anything else.
“Stevens, go awake Cook and have her prepare a platter of something soothing. Milk and honey and a bit of the laudanum the doctor prescribed.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“And see to it that another bedchamber is prepared for Miss Margaret. One with windows to the north, so that she might feel less enclosed. This is my fault, in truth. I should have realized such a chamber would be constricting.”
Servants scurried away.
The dog yapped once or twice more before the sound of his claws faded in the cloister.
When Lord Cunningham carried her a step, she clenched the silk of his banyan with a racing chest. “My lord, I can walk.”
“I fear you are much too exerted. You overestimated your recovery, I fear, in this—”
“I do not remember anything.” She pushed at him, until he finally set her down, and backed deeper into the passageway blackness. “I do not understand. Every time I strain to remember, the pain worsens.”
“Whatever gave you the idea, my dear girl, I expected you to try at all?”
“I will not be locked away.”
“Is that what tonight is about? If so, allow me to return your mind to ease. Dr. Bagot was in error, and even if he were not, I am not in the habit of surrendering anyone to such a torturous establishment, least of all …” The sentence lingered, and she felt, rather than saw, his overwhelming conviction. “Shall we go inside now?”
“One thing more.”
