Aching for Always

by Gwyn Cready

  And last, but certainly not least, another surprising find in the Brand O’Malley archives: a full-color photocopy on a sheet of perfectly preserved parchment of a map of two small properties in East Fenwick, Sussex, with their borders redrawn to allow one owner to enjoy more arable land and the other access to a stream in the Sussex hills.

  * * *

  Joss gazed at Hugh in his fitful sleep, his head propped awkwardly into the corner of the carriage as they hurried toward Portsmouth. Despite the pills, he was still weak, and the adventure in the river had not helped him any. It had taken half a day and a trip to the market town of Taunton for Hugh to negotiate an advance of funds against his naval salary, funds they had used to rent this carriage and would need again to purchase passage aboard a ship bound for the North Atlantic. That was Hugh’s stated destination, though she wondered if his objective might change if she told him about the map in her tube.

  She had not brought herself to tell him about the map of East Fenwick, and she wrestled with her reluctance. Surely he was right: that people whose futures had been taken deserved to have it restored. Yet, if what he told her was true, none of them except Fiona had any idea what they had lost. Of course, if what he said was true, no one in the Brand family would realize it when their centuries of fortune and ease were stripped away, either—no one, that is, except Joss, who, being currently lodged in another time, would feel the loss upon her return most painfully and for the rest of her life.

  And while Joss had no doubt she could live with privation, it would be the rendering as false all the memories that had come with her life—her father showing her how to ride the ski lift outside their Aspen home, playing princess with her friends in the back of the family limousine, sitting on her mother’s lap for a surprise visit to New York or Disney World or Paris—that would make the loss painful.

  Balancing that was the notion of an old man in a prison somewhere in England who hadn’t seen his family in ten years. She felt an unexpected lash of guilt knowing that the power to reverse his fate sat literally and figuratively in the palm of her hand.

  She reached for the tube and it slipped, hitting the floor with a bang. Hugh opened his eyes.

  “What is that?” he asked, rubbing his eyes. “You’ve been clutching it since Pittsburgh.”

  “It’s nothing. My notes. I managed to save the map you took and the one of Fiona’s.”

  “Did you?” He sat up. “Why did you not tell me earlier?”

  “We’ve been a little busy.”

  “Shall we open them? There may be something even yet you haven’t noticed.”

  Tell him about the copies, Joss. Tell him.

  She remembered the feel of his hands upon her that night as she translated the Latin, and in his gaze relived both the spark of conspiratorial adventure and the undeniable desire she’d felt as she bared herself to him. That was twice she’d skirted the line of propriety, twice she’d betrayed Rogan, and still he—Hugh—had had the audacity to ask her if she’d had something to do with the tailor shop break-in. Self-centered man.

  She knew she’d been playing with fire. She needed to make a choice. She held up the diamond that had survived so much and looked at it. Is there a reason you’re still here?

  She looked up and Hugh looked away. He had caught her examining the ring.

  “How long will it take?” she asked, flushing. “To Portsmouth?”

  “A day, if you do not mind riding all night.”

  She did not. Contemplating the alternative, in fact, made her stomach churn. Given the telltale zippers and tailoring of their twenty-first-century clothing, they had taken care to dispose of them as soon as they could outside their host’s house, and Hugh now wore a suit that had once belonged many years ago to their host’s son. It was, according to Hugh, in a “decidedly old-fashioned cut,” though she had to admit the plum velvet and bleached linen gave him an elegance that surprised her. The pale primrose color of the low-cut silk she wore contrasted well with the blue in her eyes, and she had twice found Hugh staring at her since she’d descended at breakfast.

  He’d told her they would go to Portsmouth, where they could buy passage under assumed names on a merchant ship to the North Atlantic, hoping they might cross paths with Mr. Roark. Though Hugh had many naval captains among his acquaintance, he could hardly appear before them to ask for passage looking as if he had abandoned his ship.

  “Will they be worried?” she asked. “Mr. Roark and Nathaniel, I mean.”

  The corner of his mouth rose slightly. Had he noticed her omission of Fiona?

  “Worried?” He chuckled, as if the word weren’t in an English sailor’s vocabulary. “They will wait there until I return or until they’re down to five days’ worth of supplies.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Three months. Longer if they cut down to half rations.”

  “Then your hurry is for . . .?”

  “For you, Joss. I am quite sensible of the timing of your wedding.”

  The warmth on her cheeks turned to heat. He thought their unexpected voyage past Tarr Steps had ruined her chances of attending the ceremony. Little did he know that if her plans lay in ruins, she had only herself to blame. She thought of those hard arms and that furious kiss by Dollar Bank. “I’ll explain my absence somehow.”

  “A runaway bride?” he offered without the hint of a smile.

  “Full of regret.” She met his gaze.

  “You could blame me.” His eyes were unreadable.

  She knew it would hurt Rogan more if he believed she hated him than if he thought she’d slept with another man. “I’ll think of something.”

  For a long moment, the clanging of the wheels was the only noise in the carriage.

  “Thank you for saving me,” she said at last. “I was absolutely paralyzed. I’ve been terrified of water since I was a little girl. Never learned to swim.”

  He looked out the window as if he were gazing back into another time. “You’re welcome. I would have been unhappy to lose you. I’m afraid I’ve come to feel responsible for you.”

  She felt a flutter in heart, and the sound beneath the wheels changed. The carriage was crossing a bridge.

  “I was thinking of something you said to me,” she said.

  He stiffened. She was sure there were parts of the last few days neither of them wished to remember.

  “You said something about steps when we were in the river,” she added.

  His shoulders relaxed. “Tarr Steps, aye. ’Tis the name of that stone bridge.”

  “You recognized where we were?”

  His gaze returned to the window. “I have seen the place before, though from an admittedly more comfortable perspective. My parents—and I, I suppose, though I do not remember it—lived in Williton for a time before they died and my brother took me into the service with him.”

  “If you do not remember it, how do you know Tarr Steps?”

  His finger began to work the seam of his pants. “I came here with my brother once a long time ago.”

  “To visit relatives?”

  “To bury him. He lies in the churchyard at Crowcombe.”

  “Crowcombe?” she cried, for she had seen that very name on the inn in the town they had just passed. “We were just there. Shouldn’t we stop?”

  “No,” he said, paling, “I do not think—”

  “But when was the last time you were here?”

  “Then,” he said carefully.

  “Oh, Hugh, you were a boy. You must stop.”

  “’Tis not a happy memory for me, Joss.”

  She thought of her own mother’s ashes being scattered over the waters beyond Nova Scotia, a place Joss had imagined at the time was as far from Pittsburgh as her mother thought she could convince her father to take her remains. With no grave to be the focus of her mourning, Joss’s sadness had spread to fill every place she’d ever occupied. “Think of what it would mean to him . . . and to you.”

  He look
ed at her and after a long pause made a noise that she took as assent, though the sorrow in his eyes made her wonder.

  “Driver,” he called uncertainly. “Turn around.”

  He gazed at the distinctive round stones of the church and the noble, squat bell tower as he climbed the path. The hillside that rose above it clung to the last withered vestiges of summer, and the grave markers lay scattered there like ancient flowers, in varying colors and states of repair.

  He knew the sight of the hastily engraved stone would wrench his heart, and he ascended the hill reluctantly. The only things left for him to sell that day twenty years ago had been his brother’s medals, which he’d dug out of the box Bart had helped him make. He’d been too shamed to tell the silversmith he was selling them to pay for the headstone of the man who had earned them, even though it might have brought him a few shillings more. He remembered the long ride from Wych Cross, his home with Maggie, Bart and little Jo, to Crowcombe, lying in the wagon beside the casket and marker, hungry and alone, gazing up at the stars, wondering how he would ever pay for his return.

  And now here he was, two decades later, coming here without having swung the sword of justice on his brother’s behalf.

  He reached the end of the path and let his eyes trail over the meager stone.

  CAPTAIN BARTHOLOMEW HAWKSMOOR

  EXCEPTIONAL HERO IN THE CAUSE OF HIS COUNTRY

  BORN 1655, DIED 1685

  NEVER TO BE FORGOTTEN

  Bart had not been given the obsequies of an officer. He had left the navy a year earlier to hide his new family from Brand and broken all ties with the service as well as his seafaring acquaintances. So Hugh had made the words on the stone as fitting as his eleven-year-old imagination would allow. He had been the only person apart from the curate who stood in this churchyard when the casket was laid in the ground.

  He touched the cold stone. Granite for Granite, he thought, remembering that long-ago nickname. He dropped to a knee, wincing at the pain in his shoulder.

  Oh, Bart.

  His eyes began to sting, and as always he seized upon the thought of Alfred Brand to defend against the onslaught he feared would follow. The sorrow was no match for the anger, which had been carefully honed over time, made sharper with each passing year, until it stood like a chevaux-de-frise, capable of fending off even the most daunting attack.

  He felt the tension harden his shoulders and descend like steel over his chest. He closed his eyes, cutting the fuel upon which the sadness feasted.

  She was watching him from her perch in the churchyard, and he damned her for it—and for bringing him here—she the daughter of the man who had slaughtered his brother like a Christmas pig. He could still smell the fetid blood and hear the buzz of flies and his own harrowing sobs.

  He thrust himself to his feet, his chest girdled in pain.

  I have failed you, Bart. In the worst way possible. But Maggie’s daughter lives. You must see I cannot hurt her. I saved her that day. And even if she weds the man who profits from Brand’s terrible crime, you must see my hands are tied.

  The steel tightened around his chest until each breath was like the plunge of a dagger.

  He hated that she lived, hated that she warmed Reynolds’s bed, hated that she had her mother’s eyes, hated that her existence kept him from holding Bart’s knife to Reynolds’s throat and making him confess the extent of his crimes.

  But she would not keep him from reversing Brand’s ill-gotten fortune. If Joss had found such unbounded happiness with Reynolds, their love could bloody well survive the absence of wealth. Hugh would find that map, get it to the Lord Keeper and ensure Brand Industries was wiped from the face of history forever.

  He marched down the rise and past a startled Joss. “Get in the carriage,” he said. “We’ve dallied here enough.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  She felt his silence like a blow and wondered what she had done to offend him. The carriage hurtled along the road at an alarming rate—Hugh had ordered the driver to make up the lost time—and she clung to her seat for support.

  “Where are the maps?” he demanded. “Take them out.”

  She bristled at the tone. “I don’t think we’ll be able to do much with them here.” She could barely hold herself upright.

  “Nonetheless.” He flicked his wrist as if he were Emperor Commodus in Gladiator.

  “You do realize I’m not a servant. I have been helping you mostly of my own accord.”

  He held out his hand. “The maps. Please.”

  The “Please” fell considerably short of polite. “Perhaps it would be easier just to manhandle them out of my possession, like you did with the key to the map room?”

  His hand remained in place, though the look in his eyes suggested they could easily reach that eventuality. With a sigh, she collected the tube from the floor. She removed the London map, Fiona’s Edinburgh map and, with a begrudging jerk, the color photocopy of the Manchester map. She capped the tube, careful not to reveal the archival copy of the East Fenwick map, reminding herself she owed Hugh nothing.

  His eyes widened when he saw the Manchester one. “But how . . .?”

  “There are things called computers. They can store copies. It turns out someone—not me—made one a long time ago. I printed them when I was in the office yesterday, before I ran into you on the street.”

  He looked at the case, then at her. “You didn’t tell me.”

  The accusation was clear. She had known for at least a day and had not shared it with him.

  She could hear the blood rushing in her ears. She’d expected him to be grateful, but he was playing the betrayal card again.

  “No,” she admitted. “I didn’t.”

  She expected a harangue but didn’t get it. She would have preferred a harangue, she thought, to the look of hurt surprise he wore. He took the maps from her hand and spread them on his lap, burying his gaze in the paper. “There’s no excerpt from the Aeneid.”

  “No. The excerpt must have been added after this copy was made. I don’t know why.”

  “But the cartouche is the same?”

  “Yes, almost exactly, which was very unlike my mother. But you can see it’s all there, just like in the other two: the sheep, the tower, the wild boar that’s the symbol of the O’Malley family, the hunting dog with bared teeth, the hawk—” She gasped. “The hawk. Hugh Hawksmoor. That’s you.” The boar gazed happily into the sky at the circling hawk. Joss felt her world shift. It was as if everything she had ever known about her mother had been turned on its head. “Was my mother in love with you?”

  “Not me. At least not the way you think.” His finger traced the wheeling hawk. “If the boar is your mother, then the hawk is my brother.”

  “Your brother . . . who was murdered?”

  “Aye.” He did not raise his eyes from the map.

  “But how . . .? How did they . . .?”

  “They met on my brother’s ship. He, too, was a navy captain—a far better one than me. He was thirty then and your mother about two and twenty. Your father was brutal to her. I told you that. My brother was not.”

  “You were there.” The realization shocked Joss, but it shouldn’t have. Hugh had hinted that he’d known her parents.

  He nodded. “And so were you.”

  Joss felt a dizzying wave pass over her. “I was there?”

  “Your father was in the past for several years. He met your mother there. I don’t know how, but her mapmaking had something to do with it. He wooed her, won her and married her. And given the fact you were a tiny child of one or two as we sailed for the islet—”

  “I was with you? With my father? With the East Fenwick map?”

  “Aye, Joss. And your mother and my brother. You were born there, I think.”

  She was astounded. She wasn’t just an accessory after the fact to this time travel. She had been there, witnessing the whole thing. And Hugh as well!

  “How old were you?”

  “I am
thirty now.”

  And she was twenty-two, which meant . . .

  “You were ten!” she cried. “It was right before your poor brother was murdered.”

  Hugh felt the conflagration rage within him—the fiery anger over his brother, the suffocating guilt of not being able to avenge him and the cooler, steadier flame that burned in his heart for Joss. But at the moment it was the steadier flame that gave him pain. However he might have acted, he had come to believe that Joss was incapable of deceit. She had fought him every step of the way—which was only honorable and right—but she had fought him openly. That she had hidden the map pained him more than he could say.

  “I . . . Aye, it was near that very time.” He stared at the map, unseeing.

  He also grieved for Joss; to hear such a story about her parents and to discover so much had been hidden from her for so long would be painful. Indeed, he could feel her shock even if he did not wish to meet her eyes. But she had chided him for hiding information about her mother, and he was determined to respect her wishes.

  “You will pardon my distraction,” he said. “My brother is very much in my mind at present.”

  She stared at Hugh’s profile, confused. His brother had loved her mother. Had they made love? Had her mother been an adulterer? Had her father known or suspected? And had Hugh thought the relationship between his brother and her mother a good thing or bad? She knew Bart had been Hugh’s guardian and that after Bart was dead, Hugh’s life took a turn for the worse—how could it not for a parentless young boy? And unlike her mother, Bart hadn’t just died, he’d been murdered.

  A terrible fear uncoiled in her.

  “Did my mother leave my father for your brother?”

  Hugh stole a glance at her and returned to the map with a long, quiet sigh. “Aye.”