This way.Why did his words bounce back off her?This way.
Her legs moved, but the floor shifted. The glass slipped between her fingers. Shattered.No.She must have kept moving, led by his hand, dragged through endless waves of people, because the old arch-framed door blurred before her …
Her body careened.
She plummeted forward, knees whacking floorboards.No, no.Her muscles spasmed. Colors dotted across her vision.Lost, lost, lost.
A scream floated somewhere above her, but it was distant and unreal.
Her body melted into the floor.
The wood smelled like mildew and cobwebs and soil and death.God, help me.She was not ready to die. She had too much to remember.Please.
Arms gathered her up. Her face squashed into a solid, earth-smelling chest—but when she squinted up, there was no perfect black kerseymere tailcoat or white neckcloth or shiny pale skin.
“Out of the way!”
“What are you doing—”
A mild oath. Then fresh, cool air. Then grass beneath her back, hands in her hair, with shouts of wine and laudanum. The sky was too big, too black. The darkness reached down and stole her away.
But not before she felt her face itch with the softest lips and beard.
For the faintest second, she was not lost.
She had never been here before.
Not in his chamber, with its cracked plaster walls and messy makeshift bed. His patched clothes—and one of her socks—hung from pegs beside the door. The window bore no curtains. The air smelled of salt and soot and whatever Meade had baked downstairs a few hours before.
Tom tucked his woolen blanket under her chin.
Strange, that she should be here now.
In his bed.
When she didn’t even know him.
He had the faint urge to grab her stolen sock from the peg, place it next to her, to return the moment she awoke. She probably had dozens of socks now. Ones that weren’t threadbare at the heels and discolored from age.
For the first time in three hours, her head curled sideways on his pillow. The ringlets had long since lost their hold. He’d taken the pins out himself.
Her hair was everything it had always been—messy and smooth and wavy across his pillow, like honey he was starved for but forbidden to touch.
Behind, the door squeaked open again and Lord Cunningham’s voice whispered into the chamber, “How does she fair?”
“Still asleep.”
“My own esteemed physician should be arriving any moment. As soon as she awakens, I wish to transport her to the nearest inn and secure her a proper bed.”
As if the pallet on the floor were not good enough. Maybe it wasn’t.
But Tom had carried her here anyway.
With Meg collapsed on the assembly room floor, Lord Cunningham had seemed too unraveled to make any decision. As villagers crowded in, trying to assist, clamoring remedies, Tom had done the only thing he could think to do.
Get wine down her throat, ten drops of laudanum, and bring her home.
Where he could sit as close to her as he could.
