Wherefore Art Thou.

by Melanie Thurlow

  She steadied her right arm on the wall, careful not to put too much weight against it, the other clinging to the thin railing, and carefully lowered herself down another step. She was in remarkably less pain than she’d been in before, but the weight on her leg still made her hiss in pain.

  Lord Thornton turned to look over his shoulder at the sound, his large frame seeming to shrink the narrow staircase so that it seemed like there was hardly any room between them. She smiled—a false reassurance—and moved to take on the next step, but her right arm protested under the pressure as she pushed it into the wall. She gasped in pain as the burning sensation tore through her shoulder, and she stumbled forward, right into Lord Thornton.

  The man stiffened at her reluctant touch, not moving a single hair for several seconds before he growled, “Are you all right?”

  “Just dandy,” she squeaked, trying to be snarky despite her pain.

  “Here,” he said, his tone as hard as his corded muscles, “take my hand.”

  His coarse hand engulfed hers, steadying her as she slowly descended the stairs that ended in a small, dark hallway. She straightened her shoulders and her skirts, ignoring the pain and pretending that this large man was not mere inches away from her. That she couldn’t feel his warm breath all over her.

  Lord Thornton’s hands came to her shoulders, held her still, and he leaned in. Her eyes went wide, wondering if he was really going to kiss her and trying to decide if she should stop him. He drew closer and she closed her eyes, parted her lips in anticipation.

  But he didn’t kiss her; he moved her slightly to the side and peered over her shoulder into a room beyond. Then he said, “That way,” motioning to a doorway.

  She rolled her eyes, the corners of her mouth forming a frown, but she followed his command—though it was painfully done—until they were outdoors.

  Finally, she could breathe the fresh air. Not that the air so close to the inn was very much fresh—the exit had deposited them almost directly behind the stables, after all. But it was much more pleasant than the stuffiness of her room.

  She looked about the area lit by a single lantern. It was, what she could only guess to be, the servant’s entrance. It certainly smelled like the servant’s entrance.

  “Wait here,” Lord Thornton told her in a gruff voice as he scurried out of sight.

  She did as he said, standing beneath the flickering light of the lamp burning above the door, her small satchel of belongings a bundle in her arms.

  “I must speak to you,” came a whisper from the darkness as she waited just outside the inn.

  She jerked her head to the side to see a woman, larger than any she had ever seen, approaching from the shadows as if summoned out of Hell. She easily stood over six feet tall and had the build to match the size.

  Pushing herself back against the door, she felt her skin pale as the blood stopped cold in her veins, even as her heart began to beat in double time. She could do no more than stand there staring at the woman, lacking the courage to speak or to move, fear holding her sedentary.

  “Come now,” the woman said, taking her by the arm and pulling her around to a dark corner—dragging was a more fitting descriptor.

  “What are you doing?” she gasped in return. “Unhand me at once!”

  Her legs were not quite about her yet, and when she tried to plant them into the muddy ground—the mud that she could not at all be certain was actually mud—a sharp pain radiated through her right hip. Unable to free herself, she was forced to skitter along behind the buxom woman. She wanted to pull her arm back, away, but fear of her injured arm, held in the woman’s firm grip, being ripped back out of the socket ultimately had her forfeiting the fight and following complacently.

  When they were shrouded in shadows, the woman released her iron-tight grasp on her arm. She rubbed her flesh, finding the woman’s fingers imprinted on it.

  “Who are you?” she trembled, barely noticing the pain in her side through the adrenaline fear had wrought.

  “You came to see me four days ago,” the woman answered, her voice callous, lacking all comfort.

  She shivered as gooseflesh rose on her arms and down her spine.

  This woman knew her?

  It was impossible.

  She swallowed. “I apologize, but I do not know you. I’m afraid you must have me mistaken with someone else.”

  She wasn’t at all sure that she didn’t know this woman. However, she was certain that she didn’t want to know her. It was possible that what the woman said was true, that she had known her, but she was willing to stay in the dark as to why, how.

  “Yes, I understand,” the woman said, waving a hand at her, but she felt as though the woman was speaking in some special language, a code to which she hadn’t been given the combination to. She understood what? “I merely came to return your money.”

  “My money?” she asked, as a small purse of coin was deposited into her hands. “Where did you get this? Who are you?” she demanded.

  “It’s the money you gave me. I’ve been hoping I would find you so that I could return it. And here, I brought you some tea. It has tansia oil in it. In case you still wish to relieve yourself of your situation.”

  “My situation?” she mimicked, cutting the woman off.

  She could barely make out the woman in the darkness of the evening, but she felt the world spinning just the same.

  What was this woman talking about?

  “You’re with child.”

  Her thoughts were drowned out by the sound of horse hooves and wheels, but she spoke above the din, her voice unable to be controlled. “What? Who are you?” she screamed, pedaling backwards, away from the woman.

  The woman followed. “We don’t deal in names, remember?”

  “No, I don’t remember! I don’t know who you are!”

  They were back in the flickering light of the lamp just outside the inn, where the woman looked no less confused than she herself felt.

  What was going on?

  She wanted to scream. She wanted answers. She wanted to pry them out of this woman’s hands, even as she wanted to run from her company.

  “I demand you tell me who you are at once!”

  She didn’t know from where she had summoned the courage to stand up against someone she was clearly no match against, but she cherished it all the same. She couldn’t live forever in the dark. She needed answers, and this woman had them. She would pry them from her enormous fingers if she must.

  She wasn’t given the opportunity.

  Lord Thornton came running into sight and, as she registered his approach, the woman turned tail and ran, but not before thrusting a small package into her hands.

  “What? What is it?” Lord Thornton shouted as he ground to a halt before her. “What happened?”

  His concern was so real, so passionate, and her fear and confusion were so elevated, that not a single of her senses battled for what to do next. She simply acted, throwing herself into Lord Thornton who promptly embraced her in an insecure hug. She nestled her face against his chest, trying to slow the beat of her heart down to the pace of his as her sudden and unexpected strength melted away.

  When she looked up, they were alone in the faint light. “There was a woman.”

  She breathed in deep as Lord Thornton tightened his thick arms around her back, hugging her closer to his chest. She felt safe with him; as equally secure in his unusually large arms as she had felt panicked at the hand of the woman’s strong grip.

  He spoke into her hair, his voice a gruff, warm whisper. “Whoever she was, she is gone now and she won’t be bothering you again. Hurry now,” he motioned to the carriage that had pulled up before them.

  She did not hesitate. That woman was as frightening as she was tall. Worst of all, she feared the woman was telling the truth, that she really was with child. And if she was, would she ever remember who the father was? Was she married, or was the child a bastard? Would she ever have answers to anything? O
r would her entire life be spent in the dark?

  She couldn’t answer those questions. And she couldn’t stay here. She didn’t know what Lord Thornton was running from, but he had spent the better half of the last week protecting her, and she felt certain that he would continue to do so now. However, that did not mean she would brush aside the questions revolving around him.

  And when she was firmly seated in his spacious, though not so luxurious, carriage, she demanded them.

  *****

  There was no way to explain what had happened. What required such a swift departure.

  No way to sanely explain it, that is.

  It wasn’t that Desmond wanted to leave, precisely. The lady needed time to heal, to rest—she should stay in bed until they found her family. Whenever that would be.

  However, staying at the inn was no longer an option.

  He had seen a dead man.

  A man who he knew was dead because he had died in his arms eight years ago in Portugal.

  And yet, there he’d been, standing in the courtyard. A ghost. A nightmare come to life.

  And then there was a knock, hours later upon the door to his rented room at the inn. He couldn’t be sure if the sound was real or not, but he was certain he didn’t want to find out.

  He was going crazy, that was the only explanation, and he needed to be away. He needed to go home, where things were familiar and he could more easily keep track of the present and not confuse it with the past.

  There was still the whole ordeal of finding the lady’s family, but they would have to do it from his home in Cumbria.

  “What happened?” she demanded again, And again he ignored her. He was too busy planning a way out of the mess he had created. He was in a hole quite a bit deeper than he had ever intended to be in.

  How had that happened? How was all this happening to him?

  The ringing began to blur the world, her words.

  She raised her voice as though she could hear the ringing too and was trying to speak over it. “Tell me what happened this instant, or I swear I will jump from this carriage!” She punctuated her threat by moving closer to the door and placing a hand upon the handle.

  Her face wasn’t particularly revealing of her emotion, but her eyes certainly were. Daggers, these eyes were not. Her eyes were the color of the smoke that came after a cannon was fired—a very light grey that was almost no color at all. They were fierce, and he didn’t exactly wish her to go blasting out of the carriage.

  Desmond grabbed hold of her hand so that she could not make good on her threat.

  “Tell me,” she ground out.

  “I saw a man.”

  “And?” she said, raising her free hand in a gesture as if to say, “You’re point?”

  Desmond closed his eyes. “He wasn’t supposed to be there.”

  He felt her eyes narrow on him by just the sound of her voice. “Are you in some sort of trouble? Because if you are, I want no part of it, my lord.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Then tell me what it is like!” she demanded.

  Desmond cursed, low but volatile, and certainly not meant for a lady’s ears. “I cannot.”

  “You must!” she demanded. “I read the paper; you’re considered a hero of war. You came back from the grave, but you never came home, were never celebrated. You practically dropped off the face of the earth after your release, seeking adventure over stability for six years. But now you’re back, and they’re throwing parties in your honor. You’re the talk of the town. And you just disappeared once more, ran away from it all. You’re running. As we speak. There has to be a reason for that. Tell me.”

  She was only making it worse. The more demands she made, the more she pushed him toward the edge of the cliff he was standing on, the louder the ringing got, until he couldn’t take it anymore. The back of his black lids were turning red with the heat of his rising anger.

  He was being pressed, but it could only continue for so long before he exploded.

  “I owe you nothing!” Desmond roared, unable to withhold his temper. “I have expended my own capital to care for you for the past four days, going against my better judgement to commence looking for your family immediately, per your request. You have no right to require anything of me!”

  Her mouth neither fell open nor snapped shut, and his speech did nothing to shut her up. She was not so easily intimidated. In fact, his words urged her on.

  “How dare you,” she hissed. “I might not know who I am, but I am a lady and you will treat me as such. You want payment for your troubles? Well, here you are,” she said, thrusting a bag of coin at him. “It’s yours. Now stop this carriage at once!”

  Desmond looked down, startled by the jingling purse in his hand, then back up at her. “Where did you get this?”

  Her derisive snort filled the space. “Stop the carriage,” she ordered.

  “Where did you get this?” Desmond asked louder.

  She banged on the wall. “Let me out!”

  The carriage slowed.

  “Where did you get this?” He was feeling a bit like a bird, repeating the same tune over and over, and still no one stopped to listen.

  “My lord, you are in no position to demand anything of me. You are not my husband and my money is of no concern to you.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  He felt a pull on the door as the outrider tried to open it. Desmond held it firmly shut over the lady’s hand.

  “Let me go.” It was a demand, not a plea.

  “No.”

  It was not a discussion. She was at his mercy.

  Chapter 12

  The truth was that she was more than a bit irritated.

  For four days she had been kept in bed, healing from injuries she didn’t remember sustaining. And now she was being held against her will in a carriage. She was not so very much unlike a prisoner.

  She didn’t know who she was, but she did know that she was in quite the predicament.

  Possibly pregnant and a prisoner, with no memory of who she was or from where she came? She might as well roll over and die now because it was going to be a miserable existence.

  She looked down to the pouch she held in her hand, the tea the woman who had accosted her had thrust into her embrace before disappearing.

  She understood the words between the lines the woman spoke. It would relieve her of at least one situation. Then, perhaps, things wouldn’t seem quite so bleak. Maybe then she wouldn’t want to jump out of the moving carriage.

  Oh, she knew that Lord Thornton didn’t mean to take her as a hostage. He was doing what he thought was best for her. But what right did he have to assume that he knew what was best for her? She could take care of herself.

  At least, she was pretty certain that she could.

  She gripped the package tighter.

  What was she thinking? Of course she couldn’t take care of herself. And she certainly couldn’t take care of a child.

  She rather suspected the woman was not lying about what she had said. If she could trust anything in her uncertain world it was her instinct that the woman was telling the truth. No one dressed as that woman was would readily hand over that much coin. If that wasn’t a sign of honesty then she wasn’t certain what was.

  She knew who that woman was or, at least, what she did. She had paid that woman for her services and, for whatever reason, she did not go through with it. She’d run away before the woman could perform the procedure.

  She must have had a good reason for that.

  She set the package of tea down beside her on the seat.

  Perhaps she had overreacted before, demanding answers from Lord Thornton when her own secrets were likely much darker. But she couldn’t help it. She was lost, and Lord Thornton was the only one she could unleash her frustration upon.

  She was alone. In her heart, she knew it. She had taken with child and her family had disowned her, and now she was on her own. There was a reason her fac
e wasn’t plastered on the cover of the newspaper. They weren’t looking for her because they didn’t want to find her. She wasn’t missing; she’d been thrown out.

  Perhaps she had lost her memory because she didn’t want it to come back. Perhaps it was too hard, too painful for her to remember, so her brain let her forget.

  For the past days Lord Thornton had been protecting her and her reputation, and for what? She was already ruined.

  She looked to the man in question. His eyes were closed now, but she knew that behind those lids were irises of a tortured brown, the color of scotch. That same torture played out on his face.

  She watched the rise and fall of his broad chest, amazed by how well he faked sleep. He had perfected the steady rise and fall of his chest, but the beat of his heart still ticked an anxious pulse at his neck. No, Lord Thornton was not sleeping, he was trying to retain control. Over what, she wasn’t sure. But if the vice-like grip he had on his knee was any indication, then it was substantial indeed.

  “You do realize how inappropriate this all is.”

  Brown eyes flickered open and fell heavily on her, as though they were physically weighing her down, pressing her back into her seat. But she held steadfast. She needed to talk, needed to give sound to the voice growing inside of her that she hadn’t even been aware of until the second that she spoke.

  “I don’t know what I was doing that caused our meeting, but I’m already ruined. At least, in all the ways that Society cares about. What’s the point in finding my family? They won’t have me now. I might as well find a quiet dwelling and live out my life in obscurity in the country.”

  Lord Thornton grunted, closing his eyes once more. “We will find your family.”

  She could have rolled her eyes, but something from within her stopped the gesture. Instead, she said, “My lord, excuse my skepticism, but you really cannot believe that my family will want to find me. They haven’t even posted anything in the papers. Doesn’t that seem a bit odd? They’re clearly not looking for me.”

  When his eyes opened, Lord Thornton did not look at her. Instead, haunted brown eyes found a spot on the upholstery beside her head and he focused his attention there. “I have to find your family,” he said, his hard voice in no way softening, “to gain your father’s permission.”