“Miss Donaldson, someone followed you here,” he called after her.
She missed a step, steadied herself, and turned back. “Mr. Malin?”
“Whoever it was sent you running. That is how you fell. You were attacked.”
The young woman hugged her arms close about her chest and then, catching his stare on that protective gesture, swiftly dropped those long limbs to her sides. “It was just nasty village boys,” she said, her lips trembling in the cold. Only, this time, there was uncertainty in her gaze.
“You are wrong,” he said flatly. Nor was his merely a ploy to secure her trust or the post. “I saw the tracks, I measured the steps. Those weren’t the footprints of young boys.”
The blood drained from her cheeks, leaving crimson splotches of cold stark circles upon the cream-white flesh. “Wh-why would anyone seek to harm me?” Her slender body quaked. Was it the cold? Fear? Mayhap both.
“I don’t know the answer to that,” he admitted, beating his hat against his leg. He had an entire file with the limited details he was expected to know. Everything else about her and her past, present, and future was, and would remain, a mystery. “I only know what I observed. And the local villagers hardly seem the friendliest lot toward you. Now, I’d ask you to permit me to escort you home.”
A heavy wind gusted down the path, whipping up a whorl of snowflakes.
“And why should I trust you?” Martha Donaldson jutted her chin up. “You’re nothing but a stranger to these parts.”
“I trust those villagers you’ve known… what? The whole of your life?”
Martha Donaldson cocked her head.
Graham took a step toward her. The snow, increasing in intensity, swirled between them. “You were likely born here, grew up here, never left.”
A muscle jumped at the corner of her eye.
“Based on that, it hardly seems the length of a relationship means much in terms of reliability, Miss Donaldson,” he explained.
The young widow twisted her fingers in her cloak. He saw it. She wanted to send him on his way. She wanted to tell him to take his suppositions and head to the devil. “They were… not children’s footsteps, then?”
He shook his head.
There was a rustle ahead, deep in the brush, the tread of someone moving quickly away from them.
Martha Donaldson automatically took a step toward him. “If you accompany me home, there is no work for you there,” she said, her lips trembling.
He inclined his head in acknowledgment.
With that, she nodded, urging him on, and together they first gathered his mount and then started on for her cottage.
She’d not sent him away.
Now, how to go about convincing the stubborn minx that she not only wanted him in her employment but she also needed him.
Chapter 6
It was undoubtedly a mistake.
Having made countless of them in her life, everything about her decision this day had the makings, trappings, and indications of an error on Martha’s part.
I shouldn’t have allowed him to return with me…
And yet, he’d come to her rescue twice. He’d wiped the grime from her face with a tenderness not even the man she’d married had managed in any exchange during that false union.
Fool. You’ve always been and will always be a fool.
“Who is that?” Frederick asked spiritedly, darting from window to window and following the stranger inspecting his mount in front of their cottage.
“Drop the curtain, Freddie,” she whispered, setting her satchel down.
The excited little boy pressed his forehead to the frosted windowpane, and Martha sighed.
There’d been a time when Frederick had listened, when he’d been dutiful and hung on every word or request made by his mother.
“Did you find someone?” he asked, finally glancing at her.
“No.” He’d found her. She did not, however, no matter how desperate she was, intend to allow Mr. Graham Malin to remain on.
“Then what is he doing here?”
It was a fair question from the befuddled boy.
“He… helped me home.”
The curtain fell from Frederick’s fingers. “Did someone hurt you?” he demanded, his hands making fists at his sides.
“No,” she said quickly.
Except, her son now saw too much. “Your gloves are ripped.” Martha curled her hands reflexively. “They weren’t before.” He lifted accusatory eyes. “You and your cloak are covered in mud.”
“I fell,” she soothed. “That is all.”
Frederick stomped over. “You are lying. I know, because you’re a rotten liar. You get all quiet and talk in that fake voice.”
“I’m not lying,” she returned, taking his hands in hers. “I was rushing to avoid the storm and fell along the Birch Path. Mr. Malin came upon me and offered to accompany me home.” Which he had. While she’d braced for him to assail her about the position of servant, he’d asked not once. In fact, he’d not offered another word along the whole journey back. He’d merely requested to feed his horse before returning.
Frederick eyed her for a long while. “Who is Mr. Malin?”
“He’s… a stranger. New to High Town.”
“What is he doing here?” As if overnight, her son had gone from a ten-year-old to a twenty-year-old, challenging her at every turn.
And blast if her son, a mere boy, wasn’t correct—she was a rotten liar. Making a show of removing her gloves, Martha stalked over to the hearth and set them down to dry. “I couldn’t say. He’s passing through and asked that we allow him to feed his mount, and given his earlier assistance, I thought it would be fair.” Fair, even as the funds were so limited that it would strain their monthly allotment for feed. Unfastening her muddied cloak, she removed it. The sopping garment littered the floor with mud and remnants of the snowstorm.
“He helped you when you fell,” her son repeated, following her as she walked past.
“He did.”
“And accompanied you back?”
He peppered her with more questions than Lord Exeter had when he’d taken her father away. “Yes, and he’ll be on his way soon,” she assured him.
Except, it seemed she’d misread the reason for her son’s concern. “He helped you, and you are going to turn him out in a snowstorm for it?” Frederick scoffed. “That hardly seems properly appreciative to me.”
So this was what his questions were about. He wanted Mr. Malin to remain on. “He’s a stranger, Frederick,” she said, the matter at an end. Martha stalked over to the kitchens. Entering the small quarters off the main living area, she went through the rote movements of boiling a kettle of water for tea.
Undeterred, Frederick followed her. “He is a stranger who helped you,” he pointed out tenaciously.
“You know what I’ve told you about strangers.”
He lifted his shoulders in an insolent little shrug. “You’ve told me a lot of things. Given the way the villagers we’ve known all our lives have treated us, I hardly think it’s fair to judge a stranger.”
Martha frowned as her son echoed Mr. Malin’s earlier opinion.
“Mayhap he wants to remain on here and assist us,” he suggested, just as she reached for a teacup from the top shelf.
The delicate porcelain, one of the remaining pieces left from her mother, toppled to the floor and exploded, spraying the floral-painted remnants around the room.
Her son widened his eyes. “It’s what he wanted, isn’t it? The post? It’s why he’s here in High Town?” he asked before she had a chance to answer his first question.
Blast and damn. When had her son become so bloody perceptive? Her hesitation was enough to answer his question.
“That is it! He’s come for the post, and you’ve turned him down,” he cried.
“We don’t have the funds, Frederick.” Martha picked a careful path over the shattered porcelain and fetched the dustbin and broom.
“He
’s the first person who’s expressed an interest,” her son shot back as she returned and began tidying the mess. “The stables are falling apart, Mama.”
“They’re not falling apart,” she said defensively as she dropped to a knee and began collecting the larger fragments and dropping them into the dustpan. “They are in a bit of disrepair. But they aren’t as bad as all that.”
He stomped over, and hovering over her, he dropped his hands on his little hips. “Aren’t they? The stalls are a mess. The livestock needs looking after. We cannot keep up with the digging in.” With every word fired back, his voice pitched higher. “You don’t have the time to care for the house and your artwork and the stables.” Each accurately leveled charge struck, more painful because it came from her son. While children were supposed to see their mothers or fathers as invincible, capable of anything and everything, as she had her own father, her son saw only her failings.
Martha stared vacantly at the crimson flower upon the shard in her hand. Mayhap Frederick was better off. Mayhap seeing the failure she was as a woman and mother would cure him of unrealistic expectations. That way, he’d never be so blindly loyal, as she had been when she’d trusted her father and his decisions about the viscount.
“Are you even listening to me?” he cried.
She forced herself to look at him, this tiny person who’d once only ever been smiling, but was now riddled with suspicion and fear. “I am listening to you, Frederick,” she said softly. Both to the words he’d said and, just as important, the ones he hadn’t—he was afraid for the both of them. “We don’t have the funds to afford Mr. Malin’s services.” I require a bed, food, and a roof over my head. Frederick’s gaze bore into her, and for a horrifying moment, she feared her far-too-insightful son had gathered that she’d lied to him—again. “But we’ll be fine,” she rushed to assure him. Quitting her task, Martha came to her feet and took a step toward him.
Eyes flashing, Frederick took a hasty step away from her.
Since the state of her marriage had come to light, rejection was to be Martha’s fate.
It was, however, the first time that rejection had come from her son. It had been inevitable. She’d braced for it. Known it was coming. Dreaded the moment.
Nothing could have properly prepared her for how much it cut. “We’re doing fine, though, aren’t we?” she whispered, her voice cracking in a show of weakness that turned the query into an entreaty. “We aren’t doing so very terribly.”
“We are not fine.”
Her fingers automatically curved around the shard in her palm. Had Frederick shouted those four words, it would have been easier to take than the somber pragmatism from a boy who’d once had a joyous smile on his lips.
Frederick stepped around her, and coward that she was, Martha couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t follow his retreat. Suddenly, he stopped. “Do you know what I think, Mother?”
She winced. Mother.
Not the beloved Mama she’d always been. Her eyes stung. “What do you think?” she brought herself to ask when.
“I don’t think you fell. I think you were running from someone, and Mr. Malin saved you.”
Her mind stalled. How could he know that? How could a child whose greatest challenge one year ago had been finding the best hiding spot in games of hide-and-go-seek with Billy Lowery now suspect darker truths that she herself had, a short while ago, denied.
“And for that help, you’d turn him out in the middle of a snowstorm?”
“It’s hardly a storm.” Her voice emerged pathetically weak to her own ears.
A sound of disgust left her son. “I’m going to see if Mr. Malin requires any help with his mount.”
Martha dimly registered his quiet tread, the click of the door, and then silence as he went off.
Martha held herself absolutely still, afraid to move, afraid to breathe. Afraid that if she did, she’d splinter apart like the broken teacup and remain as useless as that beloved piece.
They were falling apart—in every way.
Despite Lord Exeter’s vow to see that their fortunes would remain intact and her future secure, all of it had been ripped asunder. What reason did her son have to trust in Martha’s ability to care for him? Why, when the extent of her caring for his sisters had been to send them away?
I don’t want to go, Mama. Please… Let us stay with you.
A sticky warmth wound its way down her wrist, and she looked at the crimson stain dripping on the floor.
Giving her head a hard shake, Martha released the jagged cup fragment, and it landed with a little clink atop another larger piece of porcelain.
She’d been wrong many, many times. Too many to count. Those errors had taught her to move through life more cautiously and to be suspicious of everyone. She was not wrong. Not in this.
Even as she told herself that, and believed it with each fiber of her cynical soul, her son’s charges against her echoed in her mind.
For Mr. Malin had come to her defense and escorted her home, asking for nothing in return but to care for his mount. And along the way, he’d been perfectly respectful.
And for that help, you’d turn him out in the middle of a snowstorm?
She groaned. Blast and damn.
She’d allow him to remain the night, and then he was gone.
Except, as she wrapped a kitchen rag about her hand and finished cleaning the mess, Martha could not rid herself of the worry that nothing good could come from Graham Malin being here—even for just a night.
*
The first thing that hit Graham as he entered the stables was the odor. More specifically, the stench of urine. It stung his nostrils and lingered. He briefly pressed his forearm against his nose to dull the strength of the pungent smell.
Letting the stable door hang open, he let some of the winter air spill into the previously closed-up space.
Doffing his hat, Graham scanned the darkened stables to assess this particular state of Martha Donaldson’s affairs. Row after row of stalls that were empty. Floors were littered with hay that was dusty and moldy from age. Rusted equipment, an ancient muck fork and rake, hung from one wall. A broom lay in the middle of the floor, as if it had been hastily abandoned by a worker who’d quit and never returned.
As a boy, as a young man, and then as a man, Graham had long thought of stables as his sanctuary. They had been the one place he’d escaped to and found joy. For there, he’d not been riddled with reminders of everything he couldn’t do. Instead, everything made sense.
Horses he understood. He’d long preferred their company to all—his mother’s company the only one excluded. Horses understood a person’s mood, what they were feeling, and they sought nothing that a person could not give.
He stopped and did a small circle, inspecting Martha’s stables. To see one in such a state of disrepair filled him with a restlessness.
He’d protested his assignment, chafed at being made a servant, and yet, Lord Edward had been correct—horses were his strength. The sole one he possessed. This was something he could set to rights… if the spitfire allowed it.
From the far back stall, a lone whinny split the quiet, forlorn and lonely in this empty place. As Graham approached, a white mare ducked her head over the top. “Hello, love,” he cooed.
The beautiful creature stomped nervously at the floor.
“You’re as wary as your mistress, I see.”
Big brown eyes stared back.
Fishing a piece of peppermint from inside his cloak, Graham held it out. The horse consumed the sugary offering in one bite.
“You’re short of company, I see.”
She stamped her foot in equine acknowledgment.
Stroking her between the eyes, Graham sighed and added another mental note to the report he’d construct that evening.
With just one horse to five empty stalls, the young widow had been forced to sell off her mounts.
He’d known Martha Donaldson less than two hours, and in that time, h
e’d surmised the lady was in dire straits: financial, emotional, and by the state of her stables… structural. Whichever member of the Brethren had sought to see her cared for had failed miserably on every score.
The mare’s ears pricked up, and Graham stilled, alerted to the presence of another before he even heard the approach.
“Hullo,” a little voice piped in from the front of the stables.
Graham found the owner of that child’s voice.
There’s a boy, too. A ten-year-old.
This was the son, then.
Painfully small, slender, and pale, he put Graham in mind of himself all those years ago. Back when he’d sought his father’s ducal approval. Back when Lawrence had been alive, and the Whitworth boys had been friendly to one another, children who’d delighted in making mischief together. “Hullo,” he called out in return.
The child hesitated a moment before drifting forward.
Graham followed the boy’s careful approach. The extent of Graham’s experience with children was consigned to… this moment and this moment only. Women—the boy’s mother excluded—Graham was utterly at ease around. Children… With their innocence and tiny sizes, they might as well have been creatures born to another planet.
The boy stopped several paces away. “My name is Frederick Donaldson. You may call me Frederick.”
Graham adjusted his collar. So this was how the nameless White Mount felt, then. Uncertain. “Uh… hullo,” he repeated, because, really, what else was one supposed to say to a ten-year-old boy? What would you do if he was a grown man? Names. Introductions. “I’m—”
“Graham Malin. I know,” the child said flatly, folding his arms at his chest. “My mother told me.”
They stared at each other for a long while, neither speaking.
In the end, the child proved far more capable of striking up discourse than a twenty-eight year old Graham. “I understand you found my mother.”
Just how much had the young mother divulged to her son? “Uhh…” Stuttering. This was what the Donaldson family had reduced him to.
The Rogue Who Rescued Her Page 7
