The Highwayman's Folly

by Daria Vernon

  Perhaps it was the banality of it, or perhaps it was the long-forgotten sensation of a woman’s hand in the crook of his arm. His eyes drew upward to the dark hallway ahead. Whatever pleasant thing it was that he was feeling now, some grim realities were about to sweep down and break the spell.

  The knob of his bedchamber door burned him with its cold, and a turn of it failed to open the rotten thing. Wordlessly, the woman at his elbow drew away to give him space. She backed herself into the shadows, leaving only her lips and chin in a crooked streak of light from a window at the hall’s end. The sight was menacing, the obscuration making her look dangerous and occult-like. It struck him that he must have looked much the same to her before his face was shown. He smiled then, intending to reassure her, but she gasped when he slammed his shoulder into the old door to make its hinges give.

  He held the door for her and, following her in, sagged at the sight of the place. It wasn’t that it was any different than it had ever been. It was no uglier or worse for wear than the last time the crew had come, a month back. No, it was just that she was in the room, and it made him feel an uncompromising embarrassment to expose her to it. The endearment he felt toward the old ruins all but evaporated.

  His room was furnished with naught but a basin in a stand and one small, ancient-looking bed. It was topped with a makeshift pallet that he’d once stuffed with a mix of every scavenged thing, soft and dry, that he could find on the property. The space was large, but the meager furnishings, and a few odd things on the floor, were all crowded near the fireplace.

  The French windows were mostly hidden behind thick brocade drapery. They were kept closed to defend the room from drafts, rather than light. The only places they gaped were where the stitches on their tabs had turned to dust.

  The woman wandered into the room, inspecting its yawning emptiness. Rhys watched her face curiously and frowned. His neutral mood was souring inexplicably.

  There was a rap at the open door, and Rhys turned to see Harry standing there, burdened with two sacks and a bucket of snow.

  “Thank you. You may set it down here.”

  Harry shuffled swiftly into the room to drop the things by the large hearth.

  Errand complete, Harry nodded, not only to Rhys but to the delicate stranger, whose eyes went wide at the lad’s courtesy. Then Harry scurried out, closing the fussy door repeatedly behind him until it finally latched shut with a slam. Rhys locked the door with a key withdrawn from his boot. When he turned back to the room, the woman stood at a gap in the curtains, staring out, as though she could see past the thick morning mists.

  Rhys touched the meager stack of firewood against the wall. Still dry. The stand of wrought iron fire tools had toppled. Rhys set them upright and crouched before the hearth, getting to work. There was a creak of the bed behind him as the lady settled herself on its edge.

  He looked over his shoulder often as he worked. He half expected to be shoved into the fire, knowing now what she was capable of. Catching glimpses of her though, that didn’t seem to be on her mind. She didn’t look like her daring self. All the challenge seemed to be drained from her eyes. Now they glowed stoically in the developing fire, concentrating on some distant inferno.

  He ruminated on what seemed to be her sudden surrender, wondered at her quivering, sparrow-like perch on the lip of the bed, then realized—

  She’d been locked into a room, a prisoner, with one strange man and one bed.

  He gave the fire a frustrated stab with the poker.

  What she must think of me.

  The flames took hold, bathing her in golden light, declaring her heat and vitality to the cold room. Only her spark was missing. He had taken it.

  The muscles of his abdomen clenched, struck by the fist of guilt. All he wanted was to be back on the horse with her, holding her, riding away from the folly, rather than toward it.

  He shook off the vision. The truth was hard but very real. There were things to be seen to. Why be so worried about the discomfort of one gently bred woman when his own men had hardly seen bread for more than five days in a row for the last three months? He owed them. People like her owed them. They’d see it through until they saw their reward.

  He stood up in time to see her drop the tattered cloak from her shoulders. Her shoulder. He’d almost forgotten because she’d been so calm.

  The cloth he’d put against it had dried to the wound. He observed her as she prodded gently at it, investigating. She moved to pull the cloth away—

  “Wait.”

  She froze at the abrupt command.

  He pivoted to kneel before her and inspected the edges of the cloth, testing them with a gentle pull. “It’ll start bleeding again when you remove it. Let me get some things first.” Removing his greatcoat, he draped it over her lap. He turned away and heard the soft rustle as she gathered up the coat against her. The sound made the cold more tolerable as it penetrated his shirtsleeves.

  With a healthy fire roaring, he put on the pot of snow that Harry had brought. He dragged one of his sacks over to himself on the floor, and he could feel the woman’s eyes on him as he dug for tools. Ripping a flask from the side of his sack he thrust it toward her. She cocked a brow in suspicion.

  “Gin or water?” she asked.

  “Gin.”

  She took the flagon and threw back a heartier swig than he’d expected. He let her keep it as he continued his rifling. The kit had to be in there somewhere. At last, his hand withdrew a scroll of leather. Unrolling it, he scrutinized the condition of his kit. It hadn’t been used since he was at sea. There were needles, waxed silk thread, some cheese cloth . . . It was a medical kit that had, in recent years, more oft been used to patch his shirts, but at least the needles had not gone rusty.

  His stomach rumbled hollowly, and he realized that she must be hungry too. Sustenance would help them both if he were to tend to her shoulder. Dragging over the other satchel, he pulled out a fabric-wrapped bundle. He was breaking off a little chunk of hard cheese when—

  “Damn.”

  Rhys looked up at the breathy exclamation. She still sat at the edge of the bed but held the crusty cloth away from her wound. It glistened with fresh red droplets. The look on her face—like that of a young child who was just caught making trouble—why, he might have laughed loudly at it had the consequence of her mischief not called for some urgency. Instead, it was she who laughed, wincing delicately as the chuckle, no doubt, brought on pain. Her brief sound of gaiety was so extraordinary to his ears that he hesitated before moving toward her.

  “I’m afraid I’m not very patient. I was too curious to see how bad it was, which is ridiculous. I can hardly see it from my angle at all.”

  Rhys took her gently by the arm and fluffed a hopelessly flat cushion behind her before pushing her to lie down. Her eyes flared briefly with what he imagined was distrust, but then she softened and succumbed to the reclined position.

  She swallowed and averted her eyes from him. “Impatience and curiosity—my flaws.”

  “Impatience, I suppose, is not often a virtue, but I might argue with you on curiosity.” The words drew her eyes back to him. “Or perhaps I only say that because I’m too curious for my own good too.” He knelt to scoop up the sewing kit from the floor.

  “What are you too curious about?” she asked.

  You.

  He took a moment to craft a different answer before he turned back to her. “People,” he said.

  “People? It’s possible to be too curious about people?”

  Rhys tore off a generous piece of cheesecloth with his teeth and dipped it in the heating water before setting himself on the edge of the bed.

  “A few years back, my curiosity about people got me in a lot of trouble.”

  “What happened?”

  He raised an eyebrow—why the devil should she wonder? It seemed she spoke
the truth about her penchant for curiosity. He hoped he might say something interesting enough to distract her while he cleaned the blood from the lesion.

  “Well, I was once too curious about someone’s actions and their motivations. Put more exactly, I was suspicious.” He touched the cloth to her wound and her lungs swelled beneath his hand as she held her breath against the pain. He waited until she relaxed before he started to clean it. “You see, I was under an obligation to trust someone, but something didn’t feel right about their actions. I nosed around in their affairs, and my suspicion only grew. I didn’t have the courage to approach them alone, to make them answer for it alone. So I dragged others in with me.” Rhys hadn’t recounted it to anyone before, even in so vague a manner. He honed his focus on cleaning the wound, walling himself off to a lump forming in his throat. “It didn’t end well for anybody.”

  There was silence between them. Her eyes were wide, not from pain, it seemed, but from her rapt anticipation of what came next. But he could give her no more.

  He leaned over her as he worked, propping himself up on his other hand, which he now realized was next to her face. A night of misadventures had shaken her hair loose, and tangled brunette waves spilled around his fingers.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “For whatever it was that didn’t end well.”

  Her words felt like a warm hallucination, something he only ever heard in his dreams. I’m sorry. He’d always thought that he might flinch at pity, but her words caused him the very opposite of pain.

  Her brown eyes didn’t flee from his gaze. It was easy to transport himself to a different time and place, where she might have welcomed him to lean down and press his lips to her cheek. To thank her for the small kindness—I’m sorry—that seemed to slip out of her as easily as breath.

  “How bad is it?” she asked. It took him a moment to shake loose his daydream, to catch up and realize that she spoke of her injury. He lifted the blood-encrusted bandage from her hands and displayed it for her. He pointed to a shadow in the middle, a bit wider than a guinea. “It’s this bad.”

  She winced. “That seems very round—very, open.”

  “It is. I’m surprised you’re not screaming.”

  “Maybe it would be best if you just . . . burned it shut.”

  The notion churned his stomach—just the mere thought of scarring her like that. Yet she stared up at him with a logical coolness as though it were the only clear solution.

  “No. Absolutely not. I can stitch you up. I’ve done it plenty of times before. It’s split right over your collarbone where the skin is very tight, and it likes to bleed, that’s all. Perhaps three stitches should do it?” He unrolled the sewing kit next to her and she looked at it with some trepidation, but she lifted the flask that she still had in hand and sucked down another swash of gin.

  “If you think it best.”

  Rhys didn’t wait for her to change her mind. He drew the bucket of snow, now melted, over to the bedside and dunked a strip of clean gauze into it. He selected a hooked needle and wiped it off, concealing his work from her as much as possible, hoping to postpone any anxieties.

  It was his own anxiety he should have been concerned for. The needle wobbled in his tight pinch, and it took a great deal of concentration to quell it.

  No different from any sailor I’ve patched up before. But it was different, wasn’t it? It wasn’t a sailor’s sun-leathered skin he’d be stabbing at. It was hers. It was ripped silk. And there she lay, looking placid as the waters of Blagdon Lake, in spite of it all.

  He borrowed the flask of gin from her and took a dram for himself. Perhaps its warm bite might bring some calm to his nerves.

  He passed it back. “You keep this. You’ll need it.”

  Rhys sighed his relief as he threaded the needle in one go. Ready.

  He stood up and leaned over her, quickly realizing that something wouldn’t work. He needed both hands for the task but needed to support himself somehow too. If he bent over her, he’d block what little light they had from a sliver of one gloomy window and the fire’s glow.

  He crossed to the other side of the bed, thinking. Her eyes seemed to be working with the same deft inquisition, but he avoided them. He knew how to make it work.

  “Please forgive this next bit.”

  He stretched out on his stomach along her injured side. She collected a deep gasp within her, but it was not audibly expelled. He draped his left arm across her bodice, feeling the rigid surface of her stays.

  “Explain this.”

  Never before had Rhys heard such softly spoken words carry such dark threat.

  “I regret that I’m not left-handed. I need to lean on you. We can try this sitting up if you like, but the wound loves to bleed, and I’d prefer if gravity were in our favor.”

  She nodded. He tested more of his weight on her. “Is that too much for you?”

  She hesitated then shook her head. “You may lean on me.”

  He settled against her. No matter how they proceeded, it was going to put them at odd angles. Her strong lungs pushed his heavy elbow upward with every steady breath.

  He pushed aside the frayed edges of her torn traveling habit and folded them under. As he did, his knuckles brushed against her skin. His calluses caught against her like splintered wood on satin. Different. They were so very different.

  A flash of bone was visible beneath the split, a fact he kept to himself. Gently, he tested the skin, pinching it closed. She breathed in sharply, shuddering, before her breath steadied with purpose.

  Just faint. It would make his task that much easier to see her unconscious of her pain. But of course, she didn’t faint, and he knew it was best to move quickly. He pierced the needle into her, and her body gently quaked again.

  Her fortitude was impressive. When he stabbed at her, he could feel those lungs working beneath his arm. He could feel her chase down every ragged breath and tame it before it became a scream. It was more than he could say for most sailors he’d stitched up. Though, he admitted, their wounds were often much, much graver.

  He pulled the first corner together—so tight. It would be more than three stitches. Again, he kept the knowledge to himself.

  On the fourth stitch, she cried out, and her whole body suddenly contracted around where he pinned her. Her hands flew to his shoulders, drawing him—the source of her pain—strangely nearer.

  She bit her lip, sucking air through her teeth. She’d drawn him down so hard that Rhys stiffened to keep them from knocking heads. He hovered over her, watching her chase and tame the demon of pain—her pupils working rapidly beneath clamped-shut eyelids. The scent of gin swirled in the warm breath between them.

  He waited. What else could he do? How could he get her through it? His thumb stroked idly at the soft skin adjacent to the wound. All he could feel was the rasp of his own skin, yet it seemed to soothe her. At last, the fingers that dug into his shoulders softened and slid tiredly back to the bed. It was an invitation for his own tension to depart, and his shoulders slumped as though a taut rope had been cut from between them.

  Her chin was tucked protectively downward, instinctively guarding her injury.

  “We’re almost there.” He coaxed her chin up with his palm, desperately hoping that his eyes ferried some reassurance. She turned her chin up, opening herself to the rest of the gruesome task.

  In a few more minutes, it was over. Wiping off the sutures with the cloth, he looked down at his handiwork. It pained him to see the skin puckered by a glover’s stitch, but it was significantly less grisly than leaving the wound to seep.

  He returned to the fire’s side of the bed and unraveled a fresh bandage, watching her. She hadn’t fainted, but she was glassy-eyed and spent.

  “It looks much better now,” he told her.

  “I’m sure it’s very pretty.” She gazed distantly toward
the gloomy window.

  He rattled the flask where it lay next to her hand. “You should have some more of this.”

  She rolled her head toward him with a sardonic half-smile.

  “Is getting me deep cut on rag water some part of your plan?” She said it even as she brought the drink to her lips.

  “You not being kept awake with pain is part of my plan. How do you know such language anyway? Have I accidentally nabbed a doxie instead of some daughter of the peerage?”

  Her cheeks pricked up in amusement. “It would serve you right if you did.”

  “It really would, wouldn’t it?” He wrested the flask from her hand just as she was about to drink again and set his own lips against it, smothering a grin. Her spirit had regained its edge.

  He dropped himself to sit at her side and they drank together in silence for a spell. If she had any high complaints about sharing a bottle with a poor blackguard, she didn’t make them known.

  His own quip churned in his head. A doxie or a peer’s daughter. Or neither? What if she wasn’t a lady? What if that entire carriage had been up to some scheme, her included? His eyes glazed over, teasing out every possibility.

  “Tell me Rhys, were you right?”

  His eyebrows raised, both at the question and at her use of his given name. It was much better than hearing Captain on her lips but a jolt just the same.

  “Right about what?”

  “About the man you were suspicious of. You say that it didn’t end well for anyone, but I have to know, were you right about him?”

  The woman represented her claim to curiosity well.

  “I was.”

  He took her hands and helped her upright. He began to wrap her shoulder.

  “So then, you did the right thing, did you not?”

  “I’ll never be certain,” he said.

  His response seemed leaden with remorse, and while Beth wanted to keep pressing, she could sense his lurking frustration if the conversation were not immediately concluded.

  The morning grew later, but the light that came in between the curtains didn’t quite seem like the light of day. It felt like it might never be day again. She was so tired.