A Search for Refuge

by Kristi Ann Hunter

  Before Nash could turn and see what had garnered the other man’s attention, the door opened, allowing a slight breeze into the office along with Mrs. Lancaster. “Good evening, gentlemen.”

  Nash swallowed, trying to keep himself from panicking as Mrs. Lancaster waltzed right by Mr. Albany with Margaretta’s bag held in front of her. She nodded to the men and came around the desk to set the valise on the ground, out of sight. “I don’t mean to interrupt. Mr. Banfield simply agreed to help me with my deliveries today. These old bones can’t do quite what they used to.”

  She cackled, seeming completely at ease and ignorant of the tension her presence had created. Thankfully, Mr. Albany seemed equally ignorant.

  Mr. Fortescue, on the other hand, was staring at Nash’s desk as if he could see the bag sitting on the floor behind it. His gaze turned hard as it finally flicked up to meet Nash’s. “This . . . agreement. I trust you’ve seen to my interests in it? All of my interests?”

  Nash considered playing dumb, just in case Mr. Albany was more astute than he thought, but he couldn’t do that to the man. Any father who was willing to set aside his normal business and travel all the way to Ireland simply to protect his daughter deserved to know that she was safe. “Of course, sir.” Nash swallowed, but there was no moisture left in his mouth. “I’ll make sure that everything of yours is protected.”

  Mr. Albany huffed. “Yes, yes, isn’t that what we just spent that past several hours discussing? Now, let’s be off. I need to send my man ahead to inquire about passage to Ireland.”

  Tension Nash hadn’t known he was holding seeped from his muscles at the news that Mr. Albany’s man would be traveling with them. With one last glance, Mr. Fortescue rose and followed Mr. Albany to the door. He paused at the portal. “Any updates you feel this . . . agreement needs. You’ll send me word?”

  Nash nodded. “I’ll send it express, sir.”

  Mr. Fortescue looked sad, but he nodded and followed Mr. Albany out into the street.

  Nash collapsed into his chair, exhausted.

  Mrs. Lancaster smiled. “Well, that seems to have gone well.”

  A groan escaped Nash’s chest as he laid his head back on his chair. “What are you doing here, Mrs. Lancaster?”

  “You need to deliver this to Margaretta tonight. I don’t think my legs can take the walk up that hill again.”

  Nash couldn’t help the smile that rose to his lips. Mrs. Lancaster could probably walk halfway to Avebury before feeling a twinge, despite her strange shuffling gait. Still, he could never call her a liar. That didn’t mean he wanted to deliver the bag, though. He wasn’t ready to see Margaretta. Wasn’t sure he would ever be.

  She was with child. He knew what that meant in such vivid, horrid detail, knew the ultimate risk, the possible devastating outcome. And he didn’t want to think about it.

  “She needs her things.” Mrs. Lancaster frowned, an expression so foreign that her face seemed to crack in order to make the muscles move into the necessary position. “And you’re going to take them to her.”

  Chapter Ten

  Nash took Margaretta her bag because, well, because he couldn’t figure out a way not to. That didn’t mean he had to see her, though. He’d left the bag on the stoop and then knocked before running away like a pranking child, fleeing from the cottage as if it contained the plague instead of a baby and an expecting woman.

  He’d included a note, though, stating that her father and Samuel Albany were leaving town, their search for her suspended for the time being. The note was light on details and probably raised more questions than it answered. Was part of him hoping she’d seek him out and demand more information?

  If so, he was doomed to disappointment. Two weeks passed without a word.

  She didn’t return to Mrs. Lancaster’s shop, either, choosing instead to stay with the other women at the cottage. Cooking, gardening, and sewing were now taking up her days. He knew because his near daily visits to Mrs. Lancaster’s shop had continued. Even though he told himself he was better off without Margaretta in his life, he couldn’t help wondering how she was, what she was doing.

  At first, Mrs. Lancaster had been happy to tell him things, even saying that the women had a plan for Margaretta’s baby. As the days passed, though, Mrs. Lancaster’s updates turned into frowns and glares.

  Yet still, Nash returned day after day because it was the only way he would learn anything. If something important happened, surely Mrs. Lancaster would break her self-imposed silence.

  Though he knew he shouldn’t care.

  Nash stared at the papers in front of him. The same ones that had been spread across his desk for two days now. While it was true that life in the country moved at a slower pace than that of the city, his clients still expected him to actually do the work they paid him for.

  He grabbed a quill and set it to paper, intent on writing out the new dowry agreement for Mr. Jacobson’s daughter. It was a straightforward sort of thing, a sum of money determined by her parents’ marriage contract. It shouldn’t have taken Nash more than an hour to complete it.

  Yet here he was, taking the better part of the morning to even set quill to paper.

  He was two lines in before he realized he’d never dipped the nib into the inkwell.

  Throwing the quill down on the scratched but blank sheet of paper, Nash shoved away from his desk and stalked across the room. Looking back at his desk, he was haunted by the knee hole and drawers facing him.

  You’ve a partner desk but no partner.

  While it didn’t make sense for him to have a partner here in his little Wiltshire solicitor’s office, the statement seemed to echo around the empty halls of the rest of his life as well. He didn’t have a partner. Didn’t have anyone, really. Even the townspeople who he claimed to feel so beholden to, so protective of, he kept at arm’s length.

  But still he cared, knowing that one day death would knock on the door of those he’d become accustomed to seeing. Mrs. Lancaster would follow Mr. Lancaster to heaven eventually. Henry Milbank would be replaced by a younger, stronger person when he could no longer handle delivering coal to the businesses in town. Already the man was slowing down and talking of taking on an apprentice.

  Because he had no son to train. Life had left Mr. Milbank scarred, and he’d never tried again.

  But at least he’d tried. Like Lewis and Mary. Nash couldn’t claim such a feat.

  Nash had walked away from life, thinking he could limit his involvement and therefore limit his hurt. Just as he’d walked away from Margaretta. He couldn’t let her in, couldn’t give her his heart, only to have to bury it alongside her should she suffer the same fate as his sister.

  The idea that Margaretta might not survive the birth of her child rocked through Nash, sending him to his knees. He groped his way to a chair and pulled himself into it before dropping his head into his hands and taking great, gulping gasps of air into his lungs. The air rushed in and out of his heaving chest until his lips begin to tingle.

  It was too late.

  If Margaretta died, he would be crushed. Even the idea that she would suffer pain caused tears to spring to his eyes. And what if she lived? Would she change her mind and keep the child? Would she stay here? She had no money, no job, no place to live unless she stayed with her friends who, from all appearances, were already on limited funds.

  Nash knew, from all the contracts and documents he’d written over the years that her choices were more than limited. They were nonexistent. She would have to marry.

  And she would marry someone who wasn’t Nash.

  Because he had walked away from her. Did she ask Mrs. Lancaster about him? Did she feel betrayed by his absence? She had to feel like he’d rejected her. After all, he hadn’t been to see her once since her secret had been revealed. It was likely that she had—quite accurately—guessed that he was unable to handle her situation.

  But could he? If he could take back the past two weeks, if he could go back and assu
re her that the feelings that had grown unacknowledged between them were true and real, would he? Was there a way back from his quiet rejection?

  More than that, could he take the risk? He hadn’t fathered the child, but he could be the one to suffer if there were consequences. Did it matter?

  The door to his office clicked open, and he made himself stand to greet whoever came in. There was still a business to be run, after all, and it was distinctly possible that this business would soon be all he had.

  Margaretta rubbed the side of her growing middle. It seemed in the past week she’d gone from slightly rounded to obviously enlarged. It was enough to keep her inside no matter how badly she wanted more space to breathe fresh air. Marlborough was currently filled with England’s elite on their way to their summer abodes. She couldn’t risk word of her location or condition getting back to Samuel, even in Ireland.

  For now she’d have to content herself with circling the small room in Mrs. Lancaster’s cottage.

  A sudden lurch against her hand brought her stumbling to a halt. Was that . . . could it be?

  With one hand braced against the wall to steady her suddenly weak knees, Margaretta took her other hand and pressed it hard against the place that had just fluttered.

  There it was again.

  The briefest shift, barely anything and not much different that the other minor aches and pains she’d been experiencing, except that she knew it was different. She knew it was her baby.

  There was a baby inside her, a living thing, and no longer was it something she knew, like she knew her sums and who the King of England was. This was real. She was growing a brand-new human being. A child who would one day run and laugh like the neighborhood children.

  A son who would have to learn to grow up and be a man with someone else leading the way.

  Or a daughter who would have to be equally as strong as she grew up without a clear sense of belonging or purpose, bearing a dead man’s name, assuming John’s parents would even acknowledge her after Margaretta had claimed to be without child. They had no real motivation to claim her. For most, a daughter was simply a bargaining tool to be married off for social or economic gain.

  Margaretta slid to the floor and wrapped her arms around her middle, praying it was a son. She knew she’d have to leave him behind if it was, but Mrs. Lancaster had assured her that he would be taken care of in this small town. It’d be a simple life, not worthy of his father’s lineage, but he’d be safe, perhaps even loved.

  Leaving him would be in the name of survival, but Margaretta wasn’t sure she would survive it. It would difficult, but at least she’d know. She wouldn’t have to wonder every day for the rest of her life if he was well. Which would be worse? To watch her daughter struggle to find her place in life, trapped between her mother’s rich merchant upbringing and her father’s younger child aristocracy, or miss out on the smiles and hugs with her son?

  She’d seen Daphne cooing and laughing with her own son, had cheered along with Katherine when Benedict picked his head up all by himself and waved his little fist in the air.

  Margaretta’s trembling hand ran over her belly once more. There was every chance she wouldn’t be a part of cheering for this little one.

  Salty tears pooled against Margaretta’s lips as she leaned her head back against the wall. Mindlessly, she swiped at her face, almost surprised that her hand came away wet. Was she crying for the child or for herself? Did it matter? With that single flutter, everything had changed. Margaretta would never be able to completely separate herself from this baby ever again. Not in her heart, anyway.

  Just as she knew that even if she married again, it would be as practical as her first marriage.

  Fresh tears streamed down her cheeks. It hadn’t mattered that she’d told herself not to fall in love with the solicitor, that a life with him was as likely as a life in which she got to keep her child.

  It wasn’t fair. She wanted to scream at God and yell at the ceiling. She’d done everything right. She’d been the perfect model of what a young English girl should be, seeking to advance her father’s position by aligning with a family higher on the social ladder, even if he was a second son with very few prospects.

  She’d done everything right. So why was her life falling apart now?

  Nash stopped at the end of the alley, looking at the boys playing on the green, remembering an evening not too many weeks ago when he’d watched a similar scene, unaware of the fact that everything he thought he knew about life and himself was about to change.

  Three boys ended up in a pile on top of each other, laughing and squealing while the other four boys circled around them and cheered.

  Would Margaretta’s son play on this field one day? Would there be a child with pale skin and dark hair lining up with the other neighborhood children on market day, hoping that the sweets vendor decided to give them the broken candies for free?

  This was assuming, of course, that mother and child even survived the birthing process.

  Richard, the fourth son of an innkeeper, broke away from the pack, spinning some sort of cloth over his head. Jeremiah, the eldest son of the town banker, ran after him. The chances of the boys remaining friends when they were too old to run around on the green were slim, but the future wasn’t stopping them from enjoying life right now. Neither was the past.

  There was something to be learned from that. Perhaps that was what Jesus meant when he said, “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.” Perhaps that was what living for today was, because there was certainly enough right here and right now for him to concern himself with. And if he were living for today, why was he doing things to make his day so miserable?

  He nearly ran the rest of the way across the green and down the street to the little cottage. Was he really going to do this? Go through that door and do everything he’d vowed to never do?

  Yes, he was. Because he already loved her.

  The only question was whether or not he’d spend whatever was left of their lives together showing her how much. A smile graced his face for the first time in weeks, free because he’d finally decided to let go of that fear and hold on to the joy they seemed to bring each other.

  His knock went unanswered, so he pushed open the door, worry nibbling away at the fragile hope he’d just found. With three women doing their best to be forgotten by the world, shouldn’t at least one of them be home?

  The door creaked on its hinges as he pushed it open.

  He winced, hoping Benedict wasn’t sleeping in the main room.

  The baby was the last thing on his mind, though, when he saw Margaretta huddled in a ball against the wall.

  “Margaretta?” He half ran, half slid his way across the room until he was on his knees at her side. “My love, what’s wrong?”

  “Don’t—” she took a deep shuddering breath—“Don’t call me that. I don’t want to remember you calling me that.”

  He cupped her face and slid a thumb along her cheek to catch a tear. “I want you to hear it. I want you to know it. Because it’s true. You are my love, and I’m so very sorry that you’ve had to live these past weeks without knowing that.”

  Her answer was a shaky, trembling wail that shot to his heart, breaking down the last part of the wall he’d built to try to protect himself. He settled onto the floor next to her and scooped her into his lap. She felt so right in his arms, making him feel whole when he hadn’t even known he was missing anything. As she cried into his shoulder, he held her, rubbing a soothing hand across her back or over the curls that that had escaped her bun.

  A shot of guilt niggled at the back of his mind. He didn’t have the right to hold her like this, not until he knew she was in agreement with the direction his mind was rapidly taking. It was as if the moment he’d given himself permission to feel again, to join life again, he’d surged toward the one thing he wanted more than anything else.

  Margaretta.

&
nbsp; Already part of his mind was filled with thoughts of marriage, debating which church to read the banns in since she didn’t really live in the town. Perhaps he should take the stage into London and see about getting a special license so they could avoid the complications altogether and just marry quietly.

  He leaned his head back against the wall and tried not to laugh at himself. When he changed his mind, he did it wholeheartedly, didn’t he?

  A final sob escaped Margaretta, and she sat up in his lap, wiping furiously at her tearstained face. It was splotchy and a bit swollen, but he didn’t care. To him, it was beautiful, because it meant she was letting him in, letting him see her vulnerabilities and inner fears. It meant something when a woman let a man see her cry.

  “You don’t mean that,” she whispered.

  “Yes.” Nash swallowed. “I do.”

  She placed a hand on the middle of her belly and looked down. Curled up as she was, it was impossible to see the slight bump he knew was there, the curve that her loose skirts could almost hide until the wind pressed them against her body. Was she thinking his love didn’t extend to that part of her? To the baby she created with another man, a man he knew she hadn’t loved?

  Nash covered her hand with his. “I love your child, too. Our child. Or at least he can be.” The breath Nash pulled into his lungs made him shudder. “If you marry me, I can have you both—love you both. Show you that every day is made for living, just as God has showed me.”

  Watery brown eyes rose to meet his.

  “I haven’t been living,” Nash whispered. “I’ve been hiding from life, thinking that staying safe was the way not to hurt, but it was only a way to die before death actually came calling. I don’t want to be like that anymore. I want to live, with every breath God has left to give me. I want to live, and I want as many of those breaths as possible to be shared with you.”

  Something he thought was hope rippled through her eyes, only to be dimmed once more. She caught her lip between her teeth. “Samuel—”