Behind the Mask

by Linda Winstead Jones

  He’d half expected Medora to appear, to try to coax him from his hideaway. To insist that he walk to the ocean or that he learn to feel his way around the large main room of the tavern. Perhaps that wasn’t an impossibility. In the past two days he’d become comfortable in this room. He knew where everything was, and he could walk from his bed to the table without tripping, without feeling so completely disoriented that he wanted to fall to his knees.

  With an effort on his part, could it be the same with the rest of the large house? And perhaps even beyond the comfort and safety of Wentworth Tavern?

  Several times since his self-imposed seclusion had begun, he’d found himself listening for Medora’s soft step in the main room on the other side of his door. Longing silently, reluctantly, for the sweet sound of her voice. How quickly he had become addicted to the soft and silvery tones.

  The crowd was suddenly quiet, the loud voices falling silent, the laughter dying away. A voice—Josh’s if Alex were correct—addressed the room, and a murmur followed. So many of the town meetings had been held outside this door. Arguments, the occasional fight, plans for the township’s future. Alliances, sometimes easy and often shaky, were formed over mugs of rum and ale.

  It had been in that room that Alex had first heard and listened intently to whispers of rebellion. At twenty, he had effortlessly embraced a cause so right and pure. And now, five years later, he knew too well that anything worth fighting for came at a price. A price that was higher for some than for others.

  Had he really fought for a nation’s independence only to lose his own? Did he have no strength left within him? Was that why Medora was here—to teach him how to fight again?

  A woman like her was worth fighting for. Already he knew that she was strong, sweet tempered, brave, and soft. Another kiss was worth fighting for. A kiss like hers was enough to make a man forget, for a few precious moments, that his life was over.

  Alex sat up slowly, combing his hair back with his fingers as he stood. Then he checked his clothing with his hands as he walked to the door, assuring himself that his shirt was straight, the collar smooth.

  One comment Medora had made stuck in his mind, even though in the past two days he’d done his best to forget it. He hadn’t been able to, any more than he’d been able to forget the feel of her face in his hands, of her lips against his.

  Your life isn’t over. It’s just changed.

  She, more than anyone, seemed to realize just how much his life had changed.

  Taking a deep breath, Alex opened the door.

  Her trunk was open and half of her belongings were neatly folded and stored there. She didn’t have much. Several plain gowns, one good one, a nightdress. Twice today she’d begun to pack, changed her mind and emptied the small trunk, and now she had begun again.

  She was a fool, had been a fool all along to believe that Alex would allow her to give comfort and aid. A nursemaid, he had called her before he’d ordered her to pack and be on her way.

  He hadn’t left his room in two days. Josh or Elias had delivered his meals, anxious to do whatever Alex asked. She couldn’t convince them, as she would have been able to convince Sarah, that Alex didn’t need to be coddled. They saw only a blind man, a helpless man. Alex wasn’t helpless. She refused to allow it. Just as he refused to allow her into his life.

  The room below had become quiet, and Medora was startled when a great shout went up. Someone called Alex’s name loudly, and in spite of her heartache she smiled.

  Opening the door quietly, she crept to the top of the stairs, standing to the side and in the shadows where she wouldn’t be seen. Alex stepped cautiously into the crowd, one hand lightly brushing a table. He was surrounded by smiling faces, was the subject of shouted and softly spoken greetings.

  Alex even smiled himself when he was welcomed home by an old friend. Someone pulled out a chair, and with just a brief moment of assistance, Alex was seated among the crowd. Medora smiled when the meeting continued as if it had never been interrupted, Alex at the center of it all, where he belonged.

  In the middle of his speech Josh lifted his head, saw Medora there and acknowledged her with a nod so small no one else seemed to notice. She backed away and slipped into her room to finish unpacking.

  Medora placed the coin on the table, just a few inches from Alex’s hand. “Pick it up,” she ordered softly.

  “What?” He didn’t move at all. Even his face remained stoic, impassive.

  “Pick up the coin I just placed on the table.”

  The main room was deserted this time of morning, except for the two of them. A roaring fire heated the large room, and in the noon hour it would be filled with townspeople seeking a meal and the warmth that fire provided. But for now, she and Alex were alone.

  Reluctantly, Alex spread his fingers and slid his hand forward, feeling for the silver coin she had placed there.

  “No.” Medora picked up the coin. “Listen this time.”

  She dropped the coin on the table again, in much the same spot as before, and Alex reached out. His fingers came close, and with a minimum of searching he lifted the coin. After just a few tries, his efforts were unerring.

  “Very good,” Medora said as she put the silver coin aside.

  “Yes,” he said wryly. “Clever Alex.”

  “You have to learn to use your ears,” she said, ignoring the bite in his comment. “To locate things and people by listening. It’s the only way you’ll be able to properly orient yourself. This tavern should be easy. You were raised here, and once you learn to fix yourself in any given room, you will be able to visualize the space around you and trust what the voices and sounds tell you.”

  Alex obviously didn’t enjoy the morning, grumbling and scowling as Medora passed him object after object and made him identify each. All the while, she walked around the room, making noises, snapping her fingers.

  But her strategy worked. He became sharper, his reactions and movements more confident. When she spoke he turned his face to her, as if he were watching her. The same stubbornness that had made him try to send her away would make him accept her help—grudgingly, because there would be no worse sentence for Alex Stark than to be helpless.

  “Let’s take a moment,” she suggested, moving to sit across the long table from Alex, “before we continue.”

  The next step would be more difficult. Actually moving around the room, learning to maneuver between the tables without fault, to find his way to the front entrance or the kitchen door as unerringly as he could now place a soft sigh or the click of a heel against the wooden floor.

  “Would you like to tell me what happened? How you were hurt?” The explanation of Alex’s injury and the resulting blindness had been brief—a blow to the head during the battle at Yorktown—but Medora wanted to know more. She wanted to know everything.

  “Is this part of the treatment?” Alex asked.

  “No.”

  He hesitated, frowning, and Medora could almost regret the impulsive question. It had not been her intent to make him unhappy. But she wanted to know how he’d been injured, and maybe he needed to tell someone who would simply listen.

  “I don’t remember much,” he admitted lowly, almost apologetically, as if his inability to remember were a fault. “Evidently, my horse was shot out from under me. He went down and threw me quite a distance. I landed on my head.”

  “What happened after that?” Medora pressed when she realized that Alex intended to tell nothing more without prodding.

  “It was days before I woke,” he said. “Josh had taken me to a nearby house, where a family agreed to put us up until I could travel. He engaged a physician who’d seen this sort of injury before.”

  “The physician who said there was a chance your sight would return?”

  Alex smiled, but his grin was bitter and cold. “I don’t anticipate any improvement, nor should anyone else. The odds are small, and the physician made it clear that with every day that passes with no improvemen
t, I’m less likely to recover even a portion of my sight.”

  He rested one hand on the table, and one finger tapped there nervously. Medora had an impulse to reach out and cover his hand with her own, but she didn’t. It wasn’t time for that, not yet.

  “Is it painful?” Medora asked.

  That question pushed too far, apparently. He snapped at her. “Can we talk about something else?”

  Alex waited, perhaps expecting her to apologize for being so impertinent. She had no right to pry, to delve into his mind, but she wanted to know everything. More than that, she wanted to be able to fix everything for him.

  “Sarah tells me that before the accident you were engaged to be married.”

  “I have headaches,” Alex said without hesitation, obviously preferring the previous unpleasant subject to the new one she introduced.

  Medora said nothing, and the silence hung between them like a cloud. A barrier. Did he feel it, too? His face told her nothing. If he would smile, or scowl, she would at least have a clue.

  “Her name was Meghan Campbell,” he said in a low voice. “She was a very sweet little girl, and the marriage was arranged by our fathers. It was all very medieval, an arrangement to join the Stark property and the Campbell farm.”

  “So you... didn’t care for her?”

  “I didn’t know her. Not really. The families threw us together on occasion, but—”

  “Was she as antagonistic about the arrangement as you?”

  Alex shrugged his shoulders and lifted his hand from the table in a gesture of surrender. “I don’t have any idea. Meghan was a quiet girl. I don’t know that she ever said more than three words in my presence. I would guess that she was as distressed as I was about the obligation.”

  “Distressed?”

  “No one likes to be told what to do, especially regarding such an important matter. The choice of a wife or a husband should be just that. A choice, not a mandate.”

  Medora had no answer for that, but her stomach knotted unpleasantly.

  “And what about you?” Alex asked, his voice changing, taking on a lighter note as he left the disagreeable discussion of his betrothal behind. “Are you married? Promised? I can’t see you, but I know you’re beautiful because I’ve touched your face. Your skin’s smooth, and your lips are full.” He paused, waiting. “I’ve shared with you all my secrets, Medora. What are yours?”

  “I was engaged once,” she said softly. “But the war changed everything.” Her voice quavered, and it was Alex who reached forward, who found her hand easily, without groping for it, and wrapped his fingers around hers.

  “I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  She didn’t answer, but she clasped his hand tightly and closed her eyes.

  “Medora?” She heard a hint of alarm in his voice. “Say something, dammit. I hate the silence.”

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?” Her voice was calmer, but still not as strong as it should have been. “The next lesson is going to be tough. You’ll likely come away this afternoon with a few bruises.”

  “In a minute,” he said softly. He held her hand as if he needed that touch as much as she did. More. He rocked his thumb across the palm of her hand. “I didn’t make you cry, did I? Mother will have my hide if I make a habit of upsetting you.”

  Medora smiled. Alex actually sounded contrite. He shouldn’t. She had been the one to ask prying questions. He was allowed to ask a few of his own.

  “No, I’m not crying.” She stood and leaned over the rough-hewn table. “See for yourself.”

  He reached up with his free hand, not even bothering to chastise her for her choice of words. Touching her jaw with the tips of his fingers, he brushed his thumb across her cheek, not once but three times. Even when he was still, his fingers resting against her cheek, he didn’t move his hand away from her face immediately.

  “Good,” he said as his hand dropped away. “I think I’ll have that coffee now to fortify myself against your planned torment for the rest of the day.”

  “I only torment you because—” Medora silenced herself quickly. Because I love you. That confession would betray her, and she wasn’t ready for that. Not yet. “Because your mother is providing free room and board,” she said as she released his hand.

  He growled as she left the room, but there was a touch of humor in his irascibility. In the safety of the kitchen, Medora closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She’d been so sure she could do this, but it was difficult in ways she had not expected. Heaven help her, she had no choice but to continue on.

  She filled two tin cups with lukewarm coffee, taking care not to fill them too full. Elias’s coffee was strong, bitter, best taken in small doses in any case.

  When Josh pushed through the door, she jumped. Until now, she’d managed to avoid being alone with Alex’s little brother.

  “Alex said you were warming the coffee,” he said, and she turned to face a wicked grin.

  “There’s plenty,” she whispered. “I’ll prepare a cup for you, too, after I deliver this to Alex. If you’ll just... wait.” She was not ready for this conversation!

  Josh leaned against the door, blocking her exit, sighing dramatically. “I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to speak with you privately... Medora.” Her name rolled off his tongue. “Or may I call you Meghan when Alex is not around?”

  “Hush,” she ordered. “He might hear you.”

  Josh shrugged as if he didn’t care. And he probably didn’t.

  “Medora is my second name,” she whispered. “My mother and sisters often called me Medora.”

  “Meghan Medora Campbell,” he responded in a low voice. “What the hell are you doing to my brother?”

  “I’m trying to help him.” That was the truth, and she was happy to speak the truth for once.

  “Why?” he shot back quickly.

  “Because I care for him,” she answered just as quickly. “I’ve always cared for Alex, you know that.”

  The stern expression on his face softened. “Are you ever going to tell him the truth? Don’t you think it’s cruel to deceive him this way?”

  “I don’t have a choice,” she whispered.

  He stepped forward and gripped her arm. Medora winced at the force against her tender skin, and Josh’s eyes narrowed.

  “What is it?” he asked, taking the mugs of coffee from her and placing them on the table. He returned his hands to her quickly and pushed up the loose sleeves of her gown. The bruises he revealed were not as black as they had been, but had become a mixture of blue and yellow.

  “My God,” he whispered. “What happened to you?”

  Medora pulled away from him. “It’s nothing.”

  “Nothing?” His lips hardened. “Shall I examine your legs for bruises as well? Who’s beat you? Who hurt you?” He reached for her skirt and she danced around to keep him from peeking beneath.

  She knew Josh well enough to realize that he did not make idle threats. While the bruises on her legs were healing nicely, they would still be noticeable on close inspection.

  “I fell down the stairs,” she said.

  Josh’s eyebrows lifted, and he wagged a finger in her face. “Fell down the stairs? You could have been killed.”

  “Well, I wasn’t.”

  “Meghan Medora Campbell,” he whispered, a warning in his voice as he demanded more of an explanation.

  Medora sighed, giving in, giving up. “I didn’t know what else to do when the letter came telling us what had happened to Alex, demanding that the engagement be broken. It didn’t take me long to decide that I wouldn’t run away from this, but I didn’t know what to do. How could I expect to help Alex if I didn’t understand what he was going through?”

  “What are you saying?”

  It wasn’t a secret, not really. Sarah, Elias, and Caroline knew what she’d done. Josh might as well know, too. “I wore a blindfold for a little more than a week. It didn’t come off, not night
or day. That’s why I knew the peas would be torture, why I knew that Alex would have to stay on the ground floor, at least until he learned to make his way around safely. I learned to move freely around the tavern with only sound and smell and touch to guide me, and I’m not leaving here until Alex can do the same. I won’t go until he knows that his life isn’t over.”

  “You were wearing a blindfold when you fell down the stairs.”

  “Yes.”

  The expression on Josh’s face was one of confusion. He obviously didn’t know if he should be angry with her or if he should be appreciative of her efforts on his brother’s behalf. “If you could learn on your own—” he began.

  Medora passed him and picked up the two mugs of coffee. “The difference is that I knew the blindfold would be coming off, that if I really needed to all I had to do was whisk the cloth away. Alex doesn’t have that option.” She glanced back at him. “Make your own cup, if you still want coffee.

  An uncommonly silent Josh stared after her as she left the kitchen.

  4

  He hadn’t thought he’d ever feel this content again. Almost happy. The kitchen was filled with familiar odors: spices and coffee, baking fruit. Fragrant steam filled the room, surrounded him comfortingly. He followed Medora, mentally cataloging her movements as she stirred a sweet-scented batter in his mother’s best and biggest earthenware bowl, as she tsked at the gingerbread she pulled from the brick oven that was built into the fireplace.

  “Sarah is a much better cook than I am,” Medora declared, the anxiety clear in her tired voice.

  “She’s had more practice than you have.”

  “Well, I hope she gets home before Christmas. If I have to cook a holiday meal everyone will be disappointed. The girls your mother hired to keep the kitchen running won’t work that day, and I’m most certain Elias and Josh can’t cook.” Her voice grew progressively faster, almost excited. No, more frantic than excited.

  “Come sit down for a minute.” He kicked the chair next to him out just slightly, and after a moment’s protest he heard Medora lower herself into the seat with a dejected sigh.