“Och.”
“You do not believe me?”
“Nay.”
“Why not?”
“Because.” Heat flushed his skin, stoking embers of grief, stillness, memories, loss. He thought of the seashore and the fishing boat anchored among lichen-covered rocks. Sand under her fingernails. Her shoes washed away by the tide. “We would have never married, lass. Ye know we would have never married.”
“No. Of course not.”
“I made ye furious.”
“You stole my stockings.”
“Even before.” Hot liquid pooled at the edges of his eyes. “Even before ye forgot, ’twouldnae have worked.”
“No.” Her lips lifted to his. At first slow, moist, her kiss there then gone, like a feather tickling his senses. “Never.”
He hesitated.
She hesitated.
Then her mouth fell into his, her lips burst with vigor, and her hand raced up his cheek. She traced her fingers—her precious, blood-stained fingers—along his hairline. Her taste was sweet, her head angling with his as their lips slid back and forth in dancing motions.
All of his senses resurrected.
Like a whirlpool, he was sucked into the vortex of their love—a love he had not possessed since the night the apothecary shop went up in flames. He tried to remind himself this wasn’t Meg. This wasn’t the girl he’d snuck to the assembly ball with nor chased into Brownie’s loft with a bucket of cold water.
But she was.
Everything about her.
She loved him. Like she used to love him. Almost—maybe. He wasn’t certain because it felt old and new at the same time and he didn’t understand. He didn’t know if she wanted the cottage red or brown or green or yellow.
If she would have married him.
If he could have had this … this moment—her touch, her softness—for the rest of his life. He’d never wanted to hold onto life so desperately. Never longed so much, nor groped so frantically, to live.
Against his will, his hand slackened on her face. She faded. A door whined open and closed.
Mrs. Musgrave’s voice echoed across the dimming valley of death. “Someone is here. We have not time.”
Save Meg.Tom clutched her as the life seeped from his veins.God, answer me. This time. Please.
“We have to kill them both.”
“I won’t let you.” He was dead, and the room reeked of blood. The parts of her she knew—Margaret Foxcroft of silk dresses and abbey finery—wanted to fold her arms over her head and cower.
Against everything she wanted to believe, mayhap Mrs. Musgrave spoke the truth. Maybe Meghadbeen an instrument of death, as guilty as Uncle. If not for premeditation or wicked intention, then for ignorance.
For living with him, loving him, and never suspecting.
For always seeing good in his eyes when she should have seen iniquity.
Shoulder throbbing, mind dimming, Meg stood. She couldn’t look anywhere—not at the rug nor Tom’s hand sprawled open nor the enormous splotches of heavy blood on her clothes. Devastation permeated her bones. “You said in your letters God would not blame you for this. That you were doing what is right.”
“I am.”
