I knew how desperately Lucinda wished for a child after the untimely loss of her first husband and the child she had carried from that marriage. I was so grateful she had been given a second chance to be a mother. She would be a wonderful one.
Already in my mind I was sorting through my inventory at the toy shop and wondering which of the delights I should give to the baby, or if anything suitable had survived at all. I could invent something new entirely. Oh, the thought had merit. It would be such fun.
Dizzy and elated, I didn’t want the carousel to stop, but it slowed its wonderful spin. I stepped off the turning platform and fell into the nearest chair.
That was when I noticed David next to Oliver by the lectern.
Then the unnatural silence.
And the stares of everyone in the room had fixed on me.
Perplexed, I turned my gaze to Oliver. His mouth was set in a hard line, and his bright hazel eyes seemed to catch the light of the hot fire of the braziers within them. He looked as if he were about to cuff David over the back of the head.
David gave me a victorious smile as he lifted a glass of Eiswein and took a sip. His expression reminded me of a hunter striding through a pack of dogs, knowing he had a fox in his snare.
I felt the flush on my neck as the room became very hot and crowded all at once, in spite of the glass walls and piles of snow.
“What has happened?” I whispered to the kindly old woman to my right. She reached over and patted my hand. She shook with palsy even as she gave me a crinkled smile. “The earl just asked His Grace for your hand, dear.”
The significance of the moment was so far beyond me that the first thought to cross my mind was, He needs my hand for what?
But then her words settled and my mouth went suddenly dry.
He asked Oliver for my hand in marriage?
Oh, dear Lord.
David turned to me.
It took every ounce of strength I had to stand. I could feel my hands shaking. I tried to hold my head high.
“Miss Whitlock.” David smiled, so sure of himself as he strode forward between two of the blazing fires. “What do you say to becoming my wife?”
Everyone in the conservatory was grinning at me with gleeful expectations. I could feel the pressure like a physical thing pressing down on me even as I felt as if I were about to explode. “May I have a word with you in private?” I managed to force out.
David lifted his glass to the others. “Whatever you have to say to me, you can say to us all. They will be family soon.”
There were times when David’s confidence was a terrible, terrible thing. I had no choice but to give my answer. “My lord,” I said with as much force as I could muster. “I must refuse.”
The horrified gasp that resounded through the conservatory matched the sound my own heart was making perfectly. Determined not to lose my composure, I backed away.
“My apologies, Your Grace,” I said, nodding to Oliver. “But I should be leaving now.”
As I gathered my skirts, someone announced, “She’s daft” in an overly loud voice.
I turned my back to them all and walked out of the conservatory.
The sudden heat from the house felt oppressive. As soon as I passed into the hall, I broke into a hasty run. I needed to escape the house. I wanted to be home in my own workshop with my own things, free of the pressure of expectation.
The sound of my soles striking the hard marble echoed off the walls as I reached the front doors. I didn’t wait for a footman to open them for me. Instead I reached for the doors and flung them wide, letting the wind and snow pour into the warm house.
At the shock of cold air, I let out a gasp.
I had just been humiliated in front of several members of the Order. At least three served in the House of Lords. In the end it would be my reputation that suffered for it, not David’s. I would become the irrational shrew in their eyes, not a girl who had been carefully manipulated.
A familiar coachman approached, his brow creased with confusion as he looked at me standing in the winter chill. “Is there a problem, Miss Whitlock?” he asked.
“Yes. I need you to take me home at once.”
“As you say.” He nodded and returned to the carriage house.
My heart pounded as I waited for him to hitch the horses. I didn’t have time to linger. For a moment I considered walking back to my shop, but decided against it. The streets weren’t safe for a young woman, even in Mayfair, and I wasn’t dressed for a jaunt about town alone in the dark.
I took a step down onto the icy stone hoping to be closer to the carriage house the moment the coachman reappeared, but a strong hand grasped me by the arm.
I turned, wrenching my arm free at the same time, only to come face-to-face with David.
CHAPTER FIVE
“MEG, STOP,” DAVID SAID WITH a note of hurt in his voice. “I know that the proposal was sudden, but you didn’t have to humiliate me like that.”
Humiliate him? He’d humiliated me. “I asked to speak with you alone. You would have none of it,” I said, unable to contain my disbelief. “What in the name of the dear Lord were you thinking?”
David pulled on his collar in frustration. “I was thinking we are well matched. I have no desire to parade my title, my Amusementist lineage, and money around the Society while hungry mothers shove their witless daughters under my nose. I’d rather avoid the entire ordeal. Your name within the Order is as powerful as mine. If the rumors about the hidden Whitlock fortune are true, your wealth is as great.” He lowered his head a fraction, one of the few times I’d ever seen him do so. “You are the only woman I have ever met who could almost best my intelligence.”
I closed my eyes for the briefest moment, gathering my patience. “That was hardly intelligent, what you did in there. Did you think you could force my hand by making a spectacle? Or do you intend to force my hand in some other way?” A cold gust of wind cut through my cape and dress. People certainly married for all those reasons, but that didn’t give David cause to assume that the answer he wanted was the only one I could give.
David looked incredulous as he motioned back toward the open door. “I only thought that I would make you a good husband. Think of it. As a countess you would be able to do whatever you pleased. I could give you all of this and more.” He motioned toward the grand house. His voice softened. “Don’t act as if there is nothing between us. We shared a kiss.”
“You stole that kiss moments before we were flung into an icy lake. I chose to ignore your indiscretion, considering we nearly died.” I took a step away from him, fearing he might take liberties again.
As soon as I retreated, he pulled me into his body and whispered against my ear, “And what of the dance?”
For a moment I remembered what it had felt like to be in his arms. I could feel the rush and tingle of excitement and the confident strength of his arms holding mine.
No. It wasn’t right. I pushed him hard and nearly toppled myself over with the force of it. “You’re an earl. You are the product of more than seventeen generations of fine breeding, wealth, and refinement. You were born to be attractive. If I feel it, it means nothing more than that I am English and a woman. That is not love. At one time I may have mistaken such yearnings for love, but not anymore.”
David paced a tight, frustrated circle. “I know you fancy yourself in love with that Foundry worker, but truly, Meg—where is the future in it? Marriage is best served with practicality. Love can grow with time.”
“Will has nothing to do with this.” Will had been a loyal friend and ally to me in the darkest of times. My feelings for him ran deep. But even without Will, I couldn’t have accepted David’s proposal. There were things David said, and small actions that I couldn’t ignore.
“Do you think I’m a fool?” David asked.
“No, I have never thought that, never for a moment,” I replied. “But you are misguided. I was born above a shop, and I keep one now. These hands have bl
ed while I’ve spent hours on my knees blackening grates day after day as a housemaid. You imagine some fortune that should be mine, but I still must work to earn my bread. I am not whatever it is you have constructed me to be in your mind. You treat me like some fantastical beast at a circus, one you can keep in a cage to show to your many admirers.” I held out my arm with bravado. “Look here! It’s the amazing woman inventor. The rarest of breeds, she can perform sums as well as a man.”
David took me by the arms and held me out, forcing me to be still. “You have a gift, Meg. You are rare. Think of the minds our sons could be gifted with. Think of all that we could give them.” He lifted his proud chin, and I saw in him a brief flash of the raw ambition that had ruined his father.
I hadn’t even thought of children. Certainly he hadn’t thought of how bearing those children before I became a full member of the Order would ruin any future I had as an Amusementist. It wasn’t as if I could attend my lectures and nurse my babes at the same time. Children wouldn’t inconvenience him. And I knew for certain that denying him his conjugal rights as a husband would.
“I will not marry you.”
“You’re being ridiculous.” He took a step toward the door. “Come back inside. It’s cold out here.”
“No.” The cold was reaching deep inside me, and I had to clench my teeth to keep them from chattering. “I’ve said my piece.” I knew he wanted to abide by the will of his late father. Lord Strompton had handpicked me for David’s bride when I’d been little more than an infant. I couldn’t ignore the political implications of a union between us either. But as I looked at David now, it was raw jealousy that tortured him.
He slashed a hand through the air, then fisted it so tightly, his knuckles turned white. “You can’t know what I feel,” he shouted.
His words twisted through me, and the sharp sting of them bit more fiercely than the cold. I took a step back, afraid of him. What he felt for me was not a burden I should have to bear. I hadn’t asked for his affections. I hadn’t tried to break his heart, and I did know how he felt. “I’m sorry, David,” I said gently. “I never meant to hurt you.”
The sound of hooves clattered against the flagstones, and a pair of fine grays emerged from the carriage house, pulling the duke’s coach.
I gathered my skirts and turned back to him.
“Will asked me to marry him once, and I refused him as well,” I said.
David watched me with a guarded look. “You take too much for granted. Don’t be surprised when you turn around and it is gone.”
My ears burned as I took the hand that the coachman offered and stepped inside. Within the security of the coach, I sank against the back of the seat. The first thing I lost control of was my breath. I had to hold it to fight the panicked gasps struggling to claim my lungs. I closed my eyes and tried to block out the ringing in my ears and the pressure I felt in my heart and in my head. It took all my strength to gather my composure.
“Take me home,” I said softly to the coachman before he shut the door, enveloping me in the darkness.
I looked back and watched as Oliver joined David at the stairs. The duke wrapped an arm around him and led him back inside.
The fine home disappeared in the dark winter evening, and as it did, I felt all connections to the home fading. Oliver and Lucinda were moving on to a new phase in their lives. I was being left behind. I knew in my heart that, as much as I loved them, they couldn’t be the same friends they had been just a year before. As for David, he might have made my search for my grandfather easier, but it would have come with a heavy cost indeed.
As the lonely carriage rumbled through the streets of London toward my broken and ruined home, I realized I’d have to find the strength to help my grandfather myself.
There had to be a way, and I needed to find it quickly.
We finally reached the toy shop. The snow softly fell as I looked at the dark shop with the windows boarded up. My friends had nailed my closed sign to the board on the front window. The coachman helped me down, and I walked to the broken window and touched the rough wood covering it.
I looked down at my elegant dress, and a heaviness settled in my heart as I opened my door.
“Will you be a’right, miss?” the coachman asked.
“I’ll be fine,” I said as I slipped through the door.
A chill ran down my spine as I found myself alone in the dark. The shop was so silent. I could hear carolers on a distant corner. I lit a lamp, and saw the breath drifting around my face. Fear became a palpable thing as I lifted the small lamp and carried it through the ruined gallery to my parlor beyond. I hadn’t made it this far the other night.
As I opened the door, my breath pushed from my lungs and wouldn’t return.
Papers littered the parlor, scattered over the disturbed furniture and the broken tea service. A single red ribbon rested at my feet like a trail of blood across the floor.
The papers were my letters from Will.
I always kept them in a neat bundle by the fire. I dropped to my knees, my skirts pooling around me as I gathered as many letters as I could. Some were rumpled and had even been trod upon.
Dear Meg,
I have finished reading Oliver Twist and find I enjoyed it much better than David Copperfield. I am very glad you recommended it to me. Perhaps another day, I will make a second attempt to read the latter, but I have been busy with my work here and find I have little time for leisure.
A tear slipped over my cheek and fell onto the paper. It touched the precise block-looking letters that must have taken Will ages to write, and the ink blurred out into the damp.
I gathered another.
My dearest Meg,
It is beautiful here, possibly more beautiful than any other place I have known. It is hard for me to remember my childhood, but I think I have memories of the skies over the open roads. I used to walk beside our wagon and watch the clouds. London never had skies like this. Sometimes it was difficult to see anything but walls and stone. I wish you could see it too. I’m certain you would find some magic within the clouds that I don’t have the power to see. Or share a story of what it is like to touch them.
I hastily wiped my eyes with the backs of my wrists and gathered as many letters as I could reach, and returned them once more to a careful stack. We had fallen into the habit of writing every day at least. The record of quiet moments that I’d shared with Will through the letters had been disregarded and thrown about carelessly, instead of treasured.
Dear Meg,
The cabbage soup at the inn is awful. I’m a little baffled by how this could be. Though my knowledge of cooking is somewhat limited, boiling cabbage in water doesn’t seem too difficult a task. Perhaps I am missing something.
I am missing something.
I’m missing you.
I let out a sniff and then a chuckle. He hadn’t yet tried my cabbage soup. I was willing to place a wager that the soup at the inn at Inverness was by far the superior.
Looking down at the smudged and torn pages, I wondered if he had kept the ones I had sent in return. I had written stacks and stacks of letters filled with all the little things that I needed to share. I didn’t know if the day would come when I would run out of words and we could sit silently side by side knowing all there was to know about one another. I didn’t imagine such a thing was possible.
It seemed such a luxury. I let out a deep sigh. I wasn’t sure if we would ever find a way to be together so often that we ran out of words. We had very different goals. I only hoped whatever it was that linked the two of us was strong enough to keep us anchored.
Without Will, I felt adrift, but with every day that went by, my own life continued on. I wished that we could be together, but wishes and dreams make poor bricks for building. I wondered if time would eventually draw us completely apart.
A knock sounded at the shop door.
I clutched the letters to my chest as my blood rushed in my ears. I was alone. The lock was d
amaged and my alarms disabled.
The knock fell harder, beating against the wood with a grim insistence. The person knocking wanted in, and badly.
The pistol Will had given to me for protection lay uselessly within my workshop. If I retrieved it, I would have to pass into the gallery of the toy shop and closer to danger.
The iron poker lay against the fireplace. I grasped it, plotting where I should strike, the head or knee.
Knock, knock, knock.
I fervently prayed for the knocks to fall silent as I clasped the poker so tightly, my fingers felt numb.
“Meg! For the love of Pete, are you in there?” a voice called with a distinct Scottish brogue.
“Oh my goodness.” I dropped the poker to the floor and ran into the gallery as fast as I could. I couldn’t open the door fast enough. My fingers were shaking.
As I flung open the door, swirls of snowflakes danced about and landed on a familiar black tam. There at the threshold, in the swirling snow, a young man stood in a thick black coat. He seemed larger and stronger than the last time I had seen him. His work gave him a hale glow and, even in winter, a swarthy look to his tanned skin. The snow clung to the dark hair curling behind his ears, as if it wished to whisper to him a secret.
“Will!” I held on to the door, barely containing the urge to throw myself into his arms. “Whatever are you doing here? And at this time of night?”
“I’m standing at your door freezing.”
I opened the door slightly wider, then hesitated. I looked behind me. The house was empty. I didn’t have a chaperone. If we were caught together, we’d be forced to marry, and either Will would have to give up his position at the Foundry or I would have to give up my apprenticeship. “Come in quickly. Before you are seen.”
I grabbed him by his coat and pulled him inside. He slammed the door and pulled me against him into his warm embrace.
Finally in that moment, like the greatest of Christmas miracles, all the fear and darkness fell away and for that moment in his arms, I felt safe.
He held me tight, cradling my head against his warm chest. The velvet of his doublet felt soft on my cheek. “Why did you leave Oliver’s?” he asked. “You aren’t safe here alone.”
Shadow of the War Machine (The Secret Order) Page 4
