Splinters in the banister prickled her flesh.
“Let me help you.” Hurrying up the steps, the child weaved a gentle arm around Meg’s waist. She smelled warm, like oatmeal scones. “His lordship just departed for the stables. That way he can see the doctor coming.”
“I—I need to sit.”
“This way.” The girl led Meg into a small kitchen, where she scooted a chair with peeling paint out from the table. The hearth fire crackled. “You can rest here. Move, Gyb.” She shooed a kitten from the seat, then hurried to dunk a rag into a bucket of water. She hesitated. “May I?”
Meg nodded.
The cool cloth swished at her chin, her neck, then the splotches on her silver-netted dress. The acrid taste of bile soured her mouth. “You were with … him.” Her stomach quivered. “At the ball.”
“Tom is my brother.”
“Oh.” Another person Meg should know. But didn’t. “Forgive me. I—I do not remember your name.”
“He probably didn’t speak of me.” With a careful stroke, Joanie leaned closer. “I don’t think he talked of home. Meade said he didn’t.”
“Meade?”
“The blacksmith. He’s outside with the constable. In case they come back.”
“They?”
“Whoever put camphor in your lemon—” She bit her tongue as her eyes lifted to someone behind Meg. Her cheeks pinkened. “My name is Joanie, Miss Foxcroft. You can call me Joan if you like. My sisters did.”
The hair on the back of Meg’s neck lifted. She sensed him behind her. Tom McGwen. In the doorway. Watching her, no doubt, with his troubling blue eyes.
“I hope you liked Pippins.”
God, help me.
“Gyb is his brother.”
Please.
“They’re very troublesome, Meade says, but I think they’re sweet.”
She should not have run. Nor struck him. Nor looked at him as if he were the one who had slaughtered her uncle and poisoned her drink and stripped her memory.
But the chamber had been too small.
The sickness had disoriented her.
She was weary—and frightened—of being in places she did not recognize with people she did not know. “Excuse me.” She stood faster than she meant to, bumping into Joanie and sending the kitten scampering. “I must f–find Lord Cunningham.”
“I will walk beside you, miss.”
Meg braced herself to face him, but when she turned to the kitchen doorway—Joanie on her arm—he was already gone.
Her heart faltered with a strange measure of regret.
Whether Tom McGwen was untoward or not, whether he was capable of the sins Lord Cunningham accused or innocent, one thing was certain.
Hehadloved her.
He must have.
Because as she clawed at him upstairs, in frightened delirium, she saw it on his face—in the stricken and shattering gape of his lips.
