by Candace Camp
By the time she woke up, it was midday. The sun was streaming into the room, and she blinked, disoriented for a moment. Then the events of the night before came back to her, and she hopped out of bed and began to dress. She was eager to return to her patient and find out what had happened in the hours she had been asleep, so she made quick work of getting dressed and putting up her hair.
She found Miss Pennybaker and her patient in the same positions in which she had left them, though Miss Pennybaker had been joined in the kitchen by Mrs. Smithson, who came in with her daughter daily to cook and clean for them. Mrs. Smithson was bustling about in front of the stove, where several pots were simmering, and a delicious aroma floated in the air.
Priscilla drew a deep breath. “Mm…Mrs. Smithson, it smells as if you’ve outdone yourself.”
The cook, a short, no-nonsense woman with graying hair, turned to her with a smile. “Ah, Miss Priscilla, there ye are. I been wondering what was happening, with him in there, and herself sitting here.” She turned toward Miss Pennybaker with a disdainful sniff. “Not saying a word to anybody, as if I would be going telling the whole village your business. I’m not a gossip, Miss, and you know that.”
“Of course I do, Mrs. Smithson.” Priscilla wanted to soothe the other woman’s ruffled feathers. The cook, who had helped look after Priscilla when she was a baby, had always regarded the governess as an interloper and one who held herself above her station. Love, she was fond of saying with a dark look at Miss Pennybaker, was what was important, not reading and writing and such fanciness. “I know you would never dream of spreading gossip. But the fact is, Miss Pennybaker and I know little more than you do.”
Quickly she explained how the stranger had appeared on their doorstep the night before and the subsequent appearance of the two ruffians. Mrs. Smithson listened raptly, now and then interjecting an “Ooh” or an “Ah” or a “Bless me.” The two of them moved over to where Miss Pennybaker sat and looked in on the patient. He was lying with his eyes closed.
“Oh, but he’s a handsome one, isn’t he?” Miss Smithson whispered.
Miss Pennybaker shot her a look of disgust. Priscilla hastened to intervene. “I wonder where he’s from. And what he’s doing here.”
“Maybe when he wakes up, he’ll tell you,” the cook offered.
Priscilla shrugged. She had not yet told either woman about the man’s strange words last night, or his apparent lack of memory. She was hopeful that when he awoke today, his mind would no longer be muddled from the fever, and he would remember everything.
“Has he awakened yet, Penny?” she asked.
“Twice. He just looked at me. Once he asked for some water, so I gave it to him.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“He asked about you. He wanted to know where the other lady was. I told him you were getting your well-deserved rest, since you’d been up all night looking after him.”
Priscilla smiled faintly at her loyal friend’s words. Trust Miss Pennybaker to cast her as an angel in any scene. All three women looked at the man on the cot again.
As if sensing their stares, he opened his eyes. He gazed at each one of them for a moment, his eyes narrowed suspiciously. Finally he said, his voice rusty, “Who are you?”
Priscilla stepped into the room and walked over to his bed, leaving the other two women eagerly watching the scene before them. “I am Priscilla Hamilton. Don’t you remember my telling you that last night? And this is Evermere Cottage, our home.”
He nodded, sitting up slowly, seemingly unmindful of the blanket sliding down to reveal his bare torso. “Yes. I remember.” He looked at the two women by the door. “Who are they?”
“Miss Pennybaker and Mrs. Smithson. Miss Pennybaker helped me take care of you, and Mrs. Smithson is our cook.”
The corners of his mouth twitched. “It smells as if she’s a good one.”
Mrs. Smithson beamed. “I’m thinking you’d enjoy some nice soup right about now, wouldn’t you?”
He nodded, offering her an easy, charming smile. “You would be right about that. I feel very empty.”
Mrs. Smithson bustled off happily to ladle him up a bowl of soup. Priscilla reached down and felt his forehead. It was quite a bit cooler than it had been the night before. His fever was almost gone.
“You seem to be feeling better.”
He nodded. “Still weak as a kitten, though.”
He turned a little and leaned back against the wall. He looked at Priscilla, then cast a wary glance toward the doorway, where Miss Pennybaker still sat, hands folded in her lap, stoically watching him. Priscilla, following his gaze, had to suppress a smile.
The man shifted a little, uncomfortably, and turned back to Priscilla. “Why does she sit there?” he asked. “And when I asked for some water, she stood as far away as she could to hand it to me. Do I have something contagious?”
Priscilla did smile this time. “I’m not sure. But I don’t think that’s the reason. You see, Miss Pennybaker is sitting there because she rather suspects that you are a ruffian.”
“A ruffian?” He looked surprised. “Me? Nonsense.”
“Are you so certain?” Priscilla raised a quizzical eyebrow.
His face shifted subtly. “Well, I…ah, I suppose you’re right. I don’t know whether I am or not. Strange feeling. Still, I don’t feel as if I’m a ruffian.”
“Then I take it you still do not remember?”
He shook his head, and his gaze turned inward, as if he were searching for something. He sighed and shook his head again. “No. Nothing.”
“What are you talking about?” Miss Pennybaker stood up and took a few automatic steps forward. “Don’t remember what?”
The man turned toward her. “Anything, Miss Pennybaker. I am afraid I do not know where I am from, where I am, or even what my name is.”
The governess’s jaw dropped. “You don’t know your own name?” She looked at Priscilla. “Is that possible?”
Priscilla shrugged. “I have no idea. I suppose so. I remember that Aunt Celeste’s father-in-law lost all notion of who he was—or of who anyone else in the family was, either.”
“Yes, but he was eighty-four years old,” Miss Pennybaker pointed out. She turned and looked narrowly at the man on the cot. “You, sir, are not.”
“You have me there.” He grinned at the older woman, and her cheeks pinkened. Priscilla, watching, thought that the man definitely knew how to charm. Miss Pennybaker might be suspicious now, but Priscilla doubted that it would take the man too long to have her highly romantic friend eating out of his hand. “I know it seems odd, ma’am, but it is the truth.”
Mrs. Smithson came bustling in at that moment with a large bowl of soup for the patient. She set the tray down on his lap, and the man dived in eagerly. Mrs. Smithson smiled benignly at him as he ate, and even Miss Pennybaker seemed to soften at this sign of his obvious hunger. When he was through, and Mrs. Smithson had taken the tray back into the kitchen, Priscilla gently suggested that Miss Pennybaker join the cook, pointing out that it was past time for lunch. Miss Pennybaker was obviously reluctant to go, and Priscilla regretted the flash of hurt that passed briefly across her face. But she was determined to talk to their visitor alone, without Miss Pennybaker’s questions, exclamations and opinions.
When the two women had left, Priscilla sat down on the chair close to the bed, where she had sat through her night watch. The man sank back into a prone position. For a moment the two of them simply studied each other. Finally Priscilla began, “Is there nothing you remember?”
“Nothing past the last few days, and those are hazy at best.” He sighed and rubbed a hand across his face. “The first thing I remember is waking up in a hut. It had no windows. And I was naked. I’m not sure why.” He frowned. “I was tied up, too, and it was damned uncomfortable.”
“What hut? Where?”
“I have no idea. I saw the inside, mostly. The only time I saw the outside was when I escaped, and
that was at night. It was simply a shack—wooden, unpainted—in the midst of some woods.”
“How did you get out?”
“I managed to cut through my bonds. It took some time, but I was able to saw them upon some rough wood in the hut. It cost me a little flesh, but finally my hands were free. Then it was just a matter of untying the cord around my ankles and waiting for my guard.”
“Your guard?”
“Yes. Someone came to check up on me regularly, just glanced in and looked me over to make sure I was still bound. There were two different men, actually. They seemed to take turns doing it. The short one was the one I bounced on his head.”
“Honestly?” Priscilla was impressed. It sounded like the sort of daring escape her heroes were apt to make—but she had never met anyone in real life who had done such a thing.
He looked at her oddly. “Yes, of course, honestly. Why would I make up something like that?”
“I don’t know. It just seems so…bizarre.”
“It was. I have no idea who those men were or why they were holding me. They didn’t do anything to me, just arrived periodically and looked in to make sure I was still tied up. They were not very bright. They didn’t check any too closely.”
“You remember nothing of how you got there?”
He shook his head. “Not a thing.”
“It is certainly a mystery.” Priscilla wrinkled her brow in thought. “If they had meant to kill you, I would think they would have done so immediately. And they had obviously already robbed you of whatever you had. Why keep you bound up and come in to check on you periodically? And why take your clothes?” She paused, then brightened. “Perhaps you were wearing some sort of uniform, something that would make you easily identifiable.”
“That might make sense. But bound up like that, who would see me to identify me as in the military?”
“Well, if you escaped, as you did.”
“You think they planned on my escaping? Intended for me to?”
“Seems unlikely, doesn’t it? But perhaps they were just being very careful.”
“And why would they have captured me? They’re bound to have thought they would make money from it somehow.”
“Perhaps they were trying to ransom you.”
He nodded slowly.
“Or maybe you had to be somewhere on a certain day, and they were delaying you so that you would not make it. Someone paid them to hold you up for a week, say.”
“Why?” he returned skeptically.
“Say you were going to testify at a trial. What if you knew something that would free an innocent man, and someone didn’t want him freed? Or maybe you had the incriminating evidence that would put someone in jail, and he didn’t want you to show up with it.”
His eyebrows rose lazily. “You have a vivid imagination, I must say.”
“There must be some reason for it. What happened to you wasn’t exactly ordinary.”
“Well, delaying me for a few days wouldn’t do the trick. I could finish my task whenever they released me. Someone might have to sit in prison a few days longer or be free for another week, but the only way you could stop it for sure would be to kill me.”
“Perhaps the person was squeamish. Or maybe he thought you would take this as a warning, and that now you would refuse to go. Anyway, I never said that the person was smart. Only wicked.”
“I guess that’s true.” He smiled faintly.
“Or perhaps it would give them enough time to get out of the country, or destroy evidence, or something, and maybe that was all they needed.”
“Or it could be that I am one of them, and we had a falling-out.” He gave her an expressionless look.
Priscilla wondered if he was trying to frighten her. What he had said did, a little, but more because of the flat way he had said it and the blankness of his face than because of the words themselves. However, she was not about to reveal that he had rattled her. Priscilla prided herself on her calm even in the face of chaos, a state her family often seemed to find itself in.
So she merely returned his look, saying coolly, “I rather doubt it. A falling-out would have been a bit more violent, I should think. If you had stolen something of theirs, or double-crossed them, say, I shouldn’t imagine they would simply tie you and up and sit around looking at you. Do you?”
A reluctant smile touched the corners of his mouth. “You have me there.”
“It would seem to me that the task before us is to find out who you are and what you were doing in this area.”
“Before us?” he repeated.
“Well, you arrived here asking for help, after all. I can hardly turn you out, unclothed and ill, to fend for yourself, especially with two blackguards after you. Anyway, as I was saying, if we can determine who you are, I think it would go a long way toward explaining why those two men are after you.”
“And, how, madam, do you propose to do that, considering the fact that I have no means of identification on me and no idea who I am?”
“I can tell that you are getting tired and cranky. No doubt you ought to sleep. Just leave it to me. I shall do a little investigating.”
Tired he might be—and Priscilla was sure he was, given the pale, drawn look of his face—but the hand that lashed out and grasped her wrist was certainly quick and strong enough. “What do you mean, ‘a little investigating’?” he asked, his eyes narrowing. “You cannot go out there poking around with two ruffians on the loose.”
Priscilla raised her eyebrows in her best grande dame manner and glanced down pointedly at her wrist. Her pose seemed to have little effect on her patient; he simply continued to hold her wrist captive and glare at her.
“I think, sir,” she began frostily, “that it would be best if you released me. Now.”
“Not if you’re going to run out and do something foolish,” he retorted.
“I rarely ‘run out and do something foolish,’ as you say.” Priscilla knew that wasn’t strictly true; she wouldn’t be a Hamilton if she always acted in a sedate and conventional manner. However, she was not about to let this man paint her as a silly little thing who would make a mess of whatever she tried to do. “I shall plan quite carefully before I attempt any investigation.”
“No investigating,” he responded flatly. “You could get hurt. Look at what happened to me, and I’m twice your size.”
“Size is not always what’s important. Sometimes it’s better to be clever than huge.”
His eyes widened, and for a moment Priscilla thought he was about to start raging at her subtle insult. Instead, he began to laugh, and his hand fell away from her wrist. “You have an answer for everything, don’t you? Some man will have his hands full with you.”
“I doubt that, sir,” Priscilla retorted crisply. “I would not have a man who did not respect my capabilities.”
“I’m sure of that,” he agreed, still smiling faintly. “Now that I have been sufficiently rebuked for being the large and undoubtedly slow-witted creature that I am, let me point out to you that your cleverness does not change the fact that there are two rough characters about looking for me. And if you start snooping around, they may very well notice and realize that you know something about me. And believe me, cleverness doesn’t stop a fist very well.”
“I don’t intend to go ‘snooping around’, as you so elegantly put it. I will not be obvious about it. They won’t even know. I shall simply make a few calls around the village and listen to the gossip. If anyone knows of a stranger around here, I will hear about it. I won’t even have to ask. Believe me, an American of your size—indeed, of any size—in Elverton is definitely fuel for gossip.”
“American?” He seized on her words. “How do you know that I’m American?”
“From listening to you speak. You obviously are not from England. I have never heard anyone from any part of this country with that accent. Haven’t you noticed how differently we speak?”
“Yes, I suppose I have, but I didn’t pay attent
ion to it. It seemed rather minor compared to the fact that I don’t know who or where I am.”
“Well, I do know where you are. The village of Elverton, in Dorset, England, where you obviously are not a native. Of course, you could be some other sort of colonial, but I think not. I met an American once, a colleague of my father’s, and he had that same sort of flat speech.”
“American,” he repeated thoughtfully. After a moment, he shook his head. “It doesn’t spark a memory. Boston, New York, Philadelphia…none of them make me think of home.”
“Perhaps not, but it proves my point,” Priscilla pointed out excitedly. “You’re obviously more familiar with those cities than I. Their names came immediately to your tongue. You must be from the United States.”
“Then what am I doing here? In…what did you say? Elverton?”
“Yes. My supposition is that you were merely passing through, perhaps going to or coming from a port in Cornwall, say. If anyone here had been expecting a visitor from the U.S., I would have heard all about it at least three times over. This is probably just where they happened to waylay you. But if you were in Elverton any time in the last few days, you will have been seen and speculated on, and I shall hear all about you within three minutes of calling on the vicar’s wife.”
He frowned. “I still don’t like your walking about unprotected.”
“Why would those men attack me?”
“They obviously suspected that I had come here, or they wouldn’t have been knocking on your door last night. Perhaps this is the only house close to where I escaped. Or maybe they followed my trail here. God knows, I crashed through enough brush and stumbled through enough creeks to leave a track anyone could see.”
“That’s true,” Priscilla mused. “They may still be suspicious of this house. But if that is the case, then it is you, here, who are in danger, not me. They would be trying to get into the house and seize you again, not pounce on me going to the vicarage.”
