Mistress by Midnight

by Nicola Cornick

  “I am a little stiff, that is all,” she said. “And cold.”

  And so very lonely…

  Garrick drew her into his arms. She could see nothing of him. He felt more familiar now, though, treacherously so, as though she had learned how to be in his arms. The brief rub of his cheek against hers was rough with a day’s growth of stubble now, all evidence of the elegant Duke extinguished. The smell of him—lime cologne and the scent of his skin—was reassuring. It soothed her senses. Merryn was too tired now to try to distance herself from him either physically or mentally. Instead she tangled her fingers in Garrick’s shirt and drew him close, her head against his chest. She felt his breath stir her hair, then his body relaxed, his arms going about her more closely and holding her against him softly and protectively as though she were a child. Sleep crept around the corners of her mind again like mist. She let it claim her.

  She woke again some unmeasured time later, her heart racing, the panic fluttering through her blood again as she gasped for breath. In her dream she had been thirteen years old, running through the meadow near her home at Fenners, the grass whipping her legs, her skirts tearing. She had to reach Stephen, had to get there in time because it was the only way to save him. Her heart was thumping with the effort of running but she knew it was already too late, knew Stephen was sliding away from her, dead, gone and it was all her fault… She gave a sob, coming fully awake, the tears choking her throat and the ghosts of the dream filling her mind.

  Someone was holding her in a strong grip and for a moment she fought it, before she recognized his touch and all the fight went out of her.

  “Hush,” Garrick said. His voice was a soft rumble in her ear and it soothed the frayed edges of her fear. “You are safe. All is well.”

  Still dazed with sleep, her mind cloudy and dull, Merryn allowed herself to relax into his arms again. It was gentle and sweet and for a moment she clung to him. She was too exhausted to pretend to either of them. She wanted Garrick to comfort her, wanted his strength and his tenderness. For one long moment she allowed herself simply to hold him and be held and then she sat up, pushing the hair back from her face, made clumsy by both tiredness and acute physical awareness.

  “Did you sleep?” she asked.

  “I was honor bound not to, if you recall.” There was an undertone of humor in his voice. “So no, Lady Merryn, I did not sleep.”

  “Thank you.” Suddenly Merryn wanted to see him. She was so tired of this darkness. Except when they were next face-to-face in the full light of day it would be the moment she walked away from him forever. Her heart lurched and she felt sick and torn.

  “It must be past dawn.” Garrick had let her go and stood up. She heard him move a little away from her. She felt cold and repressed a shiver. “The quality of the light is different in here now,” he said. “You can see the chinks of daylight appearing. Soon we may be able to find a way out.”

  Merryn scrambled to her feet, mad hope soaring within her. “Oh, let us try now!”

  “Such haste!” Garrick sounded ruefully amused. She knew that he thought she was desperate to escape him and it was true; she was. Or perhaps it was herself she was trying to run from, and the persistent instinct that told her to seek comfort in his arms.

  Garrick’s movements, too, were slow and stiff. She could see his outline now, a dark shape against the lighter blackness. He was right. The quality of the light had changed. Tiny specks of daylight were seeping into their prison, illuminating tumbled piles of brick and stone, and cold dark water lapping at her skirts. Merryn had almost forgotten how it felt to be warm and dry.

  “Careful!” Garrick’s voice stopped her as she stumbled against a rough pile of brick. He caught her before she tripped and for a second he held her close again, a perfect fit against his side, as though she had been made specifically to lie within his arms, safe and secure. Then he put her from him with exemplary courtesy and for some reason Merryn’s heart tumbled into her soaking boots and she wanted to cry.

  “I need to…” She paused delicately, unable to think of a way to express various urgent physical necessities to a man.

  “I need to, too.” He sounded gentle and amused, easing her discomfort. “I will move a little away and turn my back. I undertake not to turn around.”

  “Thank you.” Teeth chattering, cold, stiff and shaking, she hurried to do what she had to do.

  “I hope you are not too hungry?” Garrick’s matter-of-fact tone as she rejoined him eased her embarrassment.

  “I’m famished!” Merryn confessed.

  Garrick laughed. “I am sorry that there is nothing we can do about that at present.” He held out a hand to her. “There is less danger of you falling if you hold on to me.”

  After a second’s hesitation Merryn took his hand. It was warm, reassuring and slightly rough. She rubbed her fingers across his palm and felt the cuts and abrasions he must have suffered when the walls had first come down. She heard his sharp intake of breath and realized with a strange skip of the heart that it was a reaction to her touch. The thought made her feel confused, heady, powerful, a little in awe to be able to do such a thing to such a man with so small a gesture. For a moment she paused in the caress, then, unable to resist, stroked his palm again, aware this time of each tiny cut and chafe, sensitive to the tension she felt now in Garrick’s whole body and the way that the air between them seemed to shiver.

  “Lady Merryn—” Garrick spoke very slowly, his tone was a warning.

  “I’m sorry,” Merryn said, allowing her hand to lie limp as a frightened mouse in his.

  Garrick sighed sharply and took a stronger grip on her, drawing her forward. She followed him carefully over piles of rubble that shifted disconcertingly beneath their feet, around fallen walls, under hanging beams. Garrick seemed very surefooted, stumbling only once and biting off whatever expressive oath had sprung to his lips. Merryn followed, her hand tight in his now, every sense she possessed aware of him, of the roughness of his palm against the softness of hers, the sound of his breathing.

  “Where are we going?” she whispered, and he turned his head, so close that she felt his breath feather against her cheek.

  “Toward the light.”

  It sounded simple, but the light was elusive, skipping a little ahead of them all the time. Merryn caught her foot in the hem of her gown and almost fell again and Garrick went down on one knee and then she heard a ripping sound and the bottom twelve inches of her skirt and petticoats came away. “What on earth are you doing?” she gasped.

  “Preventing you from breaking a leg.”

  “And for that you needed to…to disarrange my clothing?”

  In the growing light she actually saw him grin. He straightened up. “Don’t tempt me,” he said.

  Merryn looked up into his face. He was standing so close to her that she could feel the heat radiating from his body. She felt her stomach swoop at the intimacy of it. She wondered if she would ever be free of the acute awareness she had for him.

  For a long moment they stared at one another and then Merryn tugged on his hand. “Come along,” she said again, sharply, compensating for the warmth of her feelings with the chill of her tone. “Toward the light.”

  She was not sure whether it was getting hotter in the darkness or whether she was starting to develop an ague. The gloom was disorienting now, with tiny pinpricks of light dancing before her eyes, tempting her on only to lead to deep pools of stagnant beer or piles of rubble that were impossible to traverse. Their progress was excruciatingly slow and when, finally, they were confronted by a blank wall with only the tiniest hint of light beyond, Merryn could have cried out of sheer frustration.

  Garrick was kneeling on the floor; she heard the scrape and chink of metal on stone and then a strange, hot breath of stale air engulfed her.

  “All these houses have open cellars beneath them,” Garrick said. “They lead on from one house to the next.” He straightened up, dusting his palms. “I need to go do
wn and see if they are flooded. If not we have a good chance of getting out that way—”

  “No!” Merryn was shocked by the terror that hit her as hard as a tidal wave. She grabbed him and shook him. “Don’t go!” she said. “It’s dangerous. You might drown—” Her voice broke on a sob. She realized that she was holding Garrick so tightly that the material of his coat was scoring her sore palms. She felt frightened, an inch away from losing all control. All she knew was that he could not leave her. With him she was stronger. Without him she felt lost. And if anything were to happen to him… She could not bear the thought of it.

  And then his arms came about her and they felt like steel bands, so strong and firm, and his lips were pressed against her hair and she could hear his heart beating steadily against her ear.

  “Merryn,” he said, “I have to go. It’s the only way we can get out of here—”

  “No,” Merryn said. She burrowed closer into his arms. “You might be hurt—”

  Garrick put a hand under her chin, forcing it up so that she was looking at him. Her heart was pattering like a trapped bird but she could still feel the steady beat of his against her hand and when he spoke, his voice was very calm, too.

  “Nothing will happen to me,” he said. He bent his head. His lips were very close to hers. “I’ll come back for you,” he said. “I promise. I won’t leave you.”

  I’ll never leave you…

  The words trembled on the air between them.

  Merryn prized her fingers from his jacket and took a step back. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “You have nothing to be sorry for.” He sounded fierce. The kiss he gave her was equally fierce, brief, forceful, setting her head spinning. He turned to go. Merryn closed her eyes and prayed hard that he would not be gone for long and that he would find a safe way out.

  Barely a second later there was a scraping, sliding sound that started softly but grew to a ferocious roar, and then without warning the world was falling again, the dust thick as a cloud about them, the brick and stone plummeting down and the only constant was Garrick’s arms about her and his body shielding hers as once again he stood between her and destruction.

  “GARRICK! GARRICK!”

  Merryn’s voice sounded a very long way away and it came from a place Garrick did not want to go back to. He knew that to return would hurt; even now, with consciousness lapping at the corners of his mind, he could feel the pain eating at him in a dozen different places. But Merryn had never called him by his name before and that mattered. He did not know why, but it mattered profoundly. She sounded frightened and lonely. She was so brave. He had to help her.

  He tried to move. Nothing happened. No response at all. Oh, well… At least he had tried. He started to slip back.

  Something brushed his face. Her hair. He could smell the scent of bluebells—astonishing when they had been trapped with beer and dust that Merryn Fenner could still smell of fresh flowers. Then her hands were moving over him, shifting aside some of the dead weight that was pressing down on him and robbing him of breath. He felt something else against his face, something warm and wet… Tears?

  “Don’t die.” She sounded furious. “Damn you…” More tears, though he heard her sniff as though she were trying to dash them away.

  “I’m fine.” The words were no more than a croak. His throat was full of dust. So were his eyes. He could not seem to open them.

  “I’m not going to die.” With an enormous effort he forced himself to move. A hundred muscles screamed in protest. He ignored them. “See?” He half sat. “I’m alive. I wouldn’t dream of robbing you of your revenge by leaving now.”

  “Oh…” There was a world of emotion in her voice. Garrick cleared his throat and blinked the dust from his eyes. He could see Merryn now, kneeling beside him, a pile of stone next to her. They must have been crushed beneath it and she had wriggled free and arduously dug through the rubble that trapped him. Her hands were bleeding and filthy.

  Garrick shook off the remaining debris. He was aching all over, battered from the onslaught of falling masonry, fresh cuts oozing from his arms where the sharp edges of several bricks had caught him. He felt the warm, sluggish seep of the blood. He looked around. They had been more than lucky this time. One of the roof beams had fallen from two floors above, spearing the ground not three feet away from them. He shuddered to see it.

  “You saved my life again.” Merryn sat back on her heels, resting her battered hands in her lap.

  “You saved mine, too,” Garrick said. They stared at one another. “It could become a habit,” Garrick added.

  She gave him a hesitant smile. “Well… Thank you. Again.”

  “My pleasure.” He raised his brows. “Have you noticed anything?”

  “Only that you look extremely disheveled… Oh!” She clapped a hand to her mouth. “I can see you properly!”

  He could see her, too. In the narrow shaft of light that now penetrated from above she looked like a dusty angel. Her hair was almost white with dirt, a stiff, tousled halo about her face. Her skin looked unnaturally pale under its coating of grime but her eyes gleamed as bright as sapphires. She was filthy, her skirts in tatters, the skin of her hands and arms chapped and rubbed raw, but in a heartbeat she had regained all her courage and confidence. Garrick felt his heart jerk with admiration. Gently bred women were not raised to deal with disasters such as this. When danger struck they showed whether or not they had that core of steel and Merryn had shown character through and through. She had been brave beyond measure.

  Her brow had wrinkled. “Why are you smiling at me like that?”

  Garrick hastily wiped the smile from his face. “Um…You, too, look most…disheveled.”

  She frowned. “You were laughing at me. How ungallant!”

  “You are right, of course,” Garrick said. “A gentleman should never make adverse comment on a lady’s appearance.” Yet still he could not take his gaze from her. The light was growing stronger all the time, illuminating the streaks of dirt on her face and the tracks of those fierce, angry tears she had shed when she thought she might have lost him. Her hands, as small and capable as the rest of her, were punctured with faint blue bruises among the cuts. Garrick raised a hand as though in a dream, and brushed away the smudges of her tears with his thumb. He heard her breath catch and felt her skin warm beneath his touch. He pushed the filthy hair away from her face. The back of his fingers brushed her cheek and she made the softest sound in her throat and turned her face against his caress like a cat seeking the sun.

  He cradled her head in his hand and drew her forward for his kiss. This time it was not a kiss in anger or passion. It was gentle and sweet but so deep that when he let her go he found he was shaking. They gazed at one another, the moment spinning out, the dust motes dancing in the light that seemed to surround Merryn like a halo, and then she turned away and her face was in shadow and instead of pulling her back into his arms and kissing her senseless, as he ached to do, Garrick let her go.

  The latest fall of masonry had revealed what had once been a chimney and now it stood straight and tall among the debris of tumbled walls, offering a tantalizing glimpse of light and sky. It seemed a very long way up.

  “I assume,” Merryn said, looking up, “that we have to climb out of here?”

  “Yes.” Garrick cleared his throat. “We do.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” Merryn had already started to scramble over the rubble at the base of the chimney. Before Garrick could say anything she was reaching for footholds, clambering up like a monkey, clinging to impossible ledges and giving him a most enticing view up her skirts at the same time. Garrick felt distracted, hot and confused, left behind by her sudden energy. He had to make a very deliberate effort to get to his feet. His whole body seemed to rebel against movement.

  Ten feet above him Merryn stopped and looked down. A shower of grit and small stones rattled past Garrick’s head and he flinched.

  “What are you waiting
for?” she said it again. She sounded impatient. Garrick thought that it was probably not the moment to tell her that ever since he had fallen out of a tree at the age of five, he had been afraid of heights.

  “You will probably have more difficulty than I…” She had started to climb again and her voice sounded faint and far away. “Because you are much larger than I am.”

  “Thank you for that,” Garrick said. He set his jaw. He had to do this. Was he to sit here and wait for Merryn to climb out and fetch help? That would be intolerable. She had been afraid of the dark. He disliked heights. Neither of them could pander to their fear. Another rattle of stone had him clenching his teeth so tightly they ground audibly. He knew he had to concentrate on each handhold, each foothold, on climbing steadily toward the light. He could not afford to think about falling or to allow even a flicker of fear to loosen his grip as Merryn slipped and slithered above him, one foot swinging free of the wall, her skirts filling out like a bell.

  It seemed to take forever. Twice Garrick slipped and thought he would fall, and saw Merryn’s face, pale and strained, staring down from above him. Finally he was up at the top, his palms slippery with sweat, his heart racing, and he could feel the air on his face and it was fresh and cold, a whole world away from the dark, dank prison below. Merryn offered him her hand to pull him out of the chimney and he took it and felt the strength in her and saw her wide smile and he looked around and the world rocked and he almost fell.

  They were on what was left of a roof. Garrick felt a little dizzy. Merryn’s hand tightened on his. She gave him a brilliant smile, lit up with relief and excitement. “We’re free!” she said. “Isn’t it marvelous?”

  “Marvelous.” Garrick dared not look down. As far as he could tell the roof had fallen by perhaps five or six feet during the flood, which meant that they were still a good twenty-five feet from the ground since these houses were built tall and narrow, crowding toward the sky. Instead of looking directly down, Garrick fixed his gaze on the reassuring sight of the steeple of St. Anthony’s Church a few streets away. The sky behind the church tower was the palest white blue of early morning and beyond that, for street after street, he could see the skyline of London with its jumbled mixture of spires and towers, slates and tiles, stretching away to the frosty green hills beyond. The river curled like a lazy gray snake to the south, mist wreathing its banks, with tiny bridges and the smudge of roads barely visible in the dawn light. It felt very cold up here on the roof with the winter wind nipping at his exposed skin.