He wasn’t certain what to say, nor what she meant, so he only stared at her.
She kissed his forehead. “If Mr. Foxcroft were alive, he would have nothing at all in his shop to heal what ails me. I am just an old woman who has no one to talk to save her dead husband and her little cat.” Her chuckle was tear-clogged. “Elias would think me senseless, would he not? If he knew I still talked to him?”
Tom remembered very little of Mr. Musgrave—a wiry little man, quiet-tempered, who never did more than nod his greeting to Tom in those early days. He had passed four months after Tom arrived in Juleshead.
“But never mind me, dear boy. You must forgive an old woman for a bit of melancholy now and then.” She pushed back to her feet, bustled into the kitchen with promises of a treat, and returned with a basket of freshly baked apple puffs. “For your first night at the cottage,” she crooned.
Tom laughed and said he could not promise the puffs would make it to the cottage. Then he bid her goodbye, headed out into the street, and resisted the strange niggling that all was not as well as Mrs. Musgrave promised.
He intended to find out why.
“Violet is feasting on raspberry rose flummery, and you have yet to eat anything.” Lord Cunningham spoke the words from her open bedchamber doorway.
Meg yanked the tortoiseshell comb through her hair, not glancing at him through the mirror of her dressing table. She couldn’t.
“I wish to speak with you, darling.”
“Do not call me that.” She combed harder, ripping through knots, then settled the comb back with forced calm. She lowered her face. “Please. I am undeserving.” For more than today. For whatever terrors in her past Dr. Bagot had spoken of. How much did the man know of Meg Foxcroft? Did he speak of the alley? The vengeful black-edged notes? Or something else?
She would have run after him, begged him to explain, had she been courageous.
She wasn’t.
“It is true, I left because of you.” Lord Cunningham took one step into her chamber. “But not to scour the countryside. I already knew you heard me discussing Mr. McGwen’s new cottage, and I was certain, in your turmoil and uncertainty, it was him you would seek out.”
Heat collected at her cheeks. “You speak as if he means something to me.”
“He does.”
“Did.”
“Regardless, I was convinced that despite your temporary reluctance, after a day or so you would rejoice in the prospect of a life here at Penrose Abbey. You must know that even though you did not appear for breakfast, I finished my meal with vigor, not the least daunted by such a discouragement.” He stepped closer. “I left for Sunderlin Downs forthwith. If I was to wed you, I wished to do it properly and without any hindrance to either of our reputations. It is not yet whispered abroad of your situation. Very few, I daresay, know of your stay at the abbey.”
“I do not understand.”
“It is very simple.” Another step. He stood behind her now, hands hovering over her shoulders, hesitating for several heart ticks before he finally grasped them. “I invited a guest to Penrose Abbey. Your own companion—who, after our long tête-à-tête, has agreed to instruct you in all manners of becoming the most accomplished lady.” Lord Cunningham’s gaze found hers through the mirror. Weariness hung in his expression, darkness sagged beneath his eyes, evidence of the three sleepless nights in Violet’s chamber. “I realize now my blunder.” A weak smile. “My hopes were quite in vain.”
Pity constricted her throat. She was torn betwixt the niggling desire to squirm out of his touch and the throbbing need to soothe his internal wounds. “My lord.”
“I shall make any arrangements you deem necessary. You can ask nothing too much. If you wish your own townhouse in London or your own trip abroad with friends, you shall have it.”
She bit her lip. Thoughts, decisions, flitted through her in a troubling mass of bewilderment. She had determined to reject him. The words lodged in her, along with Tom’s story of Tobias Graham, Dr. Bagot’s distrust, and a thousand other things she had no bravery to pour out before him. “Perhaps I am not the lady you think me.”
“Nor I the gentleman you think me.”
With a weak touch, heart sinking, she laid her fingers across his. This was right. For her sake and even more for his. “I have no friend save you, and every other place in the world is strange to me.”
“I shall give you a new life, anywhere you wish.”
“I already have one.” She stood on legs that were unsteady. “With you.”
The cottage room was different this time of night. The dying flames licked and sparked from the hearth, putting out the scent of smoke and Joanie’s hare soup. Everything was soft and shadowed. The nighttime breeze tickled coolness along the back of his neck.
“Gyb, no.” Joanie extracted the kitten’s claws from her nightgown, but other than a protesting meow, the room was quiet.
Melancholy.
Empty.
