“I wear one every Sunday. If you’d come, Tom McGwen, you’d see me.”
“I’ve no time for it.”
“Then I hope your ol’ boat sinks and you never catch a fish again.”She leaned closer to the window, closer to him without meaning to. Her hair tickled his cheek.“And I would not sit with you, even if you did come.”
“Ye never answered me.”
“About what?”
“Why ye dinnae wear dresses.”
“Uncle doesn’t like me to.”
“Why?”
Her bottom lip slipped beneath her teeth. He was never certain if it was candlelight or moonlight or tears that made her eyes so glassy, but she didn’t answer.“Don’t ask me things like that, Tom.”Then she pointed to some lady with a too-large feather plume, laughed when Mrs. Whalley spilled her negus, and devised plans they would not execute to break inside the assembly ball.
He had not asked her about the dresses again.
She told him her secret two years later.
He never told her his.
“You don’t learn nothing, do you, boy?” Meade’s voice behind Tom, yanking him from the past with all the cruelty of a punishing matron. “Some fools wear trouble ’bout their neck like dogs do chains.”
Tom hopped from the barrel and squinted into the darkness.
Two forms, not one, stared back at him.
“Joanie?”
“Told you before, boy. I’ll not be the one lookin’ after your strays.” But unlike his words, his giant hand was gentle as he guided Joanie forward.
And when she stepped into the light of the window, she wore her best dress and polished shoes, with a bright new ribbon in her hair. One Meade must have bought her himself.
“Here.” The blacksmith smacked Tom in the chest with two wrinkled tickets. “Some buzzard at the taver—I mean, ahem, myfriendhad a few wot he couldn’t use. Fellow was down with a toothache. Happens to him sometimes.” Then he turned to Joanie and, whether it was the way she gleamed up at him or only the fact he’d had enough ale to make any fool cheery, his lips inched up into a smile. Barely.
But a smile nonetheless.
The lass was getting to him.
“Now make certain you don’t be bangin’ and wakin’ the dead tonight when you come home or I’ll be takin’ it out of your hide.” He nodded, grunted, then disappeared into the darkness.
Joanie’s hand slipped in Tom’s. “I hope you’re not angry,” she whispered. “I told Meade you wouldn’t want me to come. But I can wait right here on the barrel and you can come for me when you’re done; and I can give Meade back his ribbon if you think I should.”
“I think Meade would have no use for it, lass.”
Joanie smiled but slipped away from him and took her dutiful seat on the barrel. “I’ll only peek in the window once or twice. If you think no one would see.”
“Ye won’t have to.” Tom pulled her back off the barrel. “We go in, we go in together.”
Eyes wide, Joanie made a breathless sound half fear and half pleasure.
Tom took her hand.
As he led her around the side of the old building, up the stone steps, and to the brass-knobbed door, his stomach spun with the same trepidation.
Because the lass inside was not Meg Foxcroft, who trusted Tom with her secrets and looked at him with soft, trusting, eager eyes.
