by Karen Ranney
James swallowed heavily, thinking that the lack of sleep had made him even more susceptible to memory lately. It had been a year since she’d been gone—a year filled with the most anxious of times and the most horrible of thoughts.
He’d not wanted her to marry Archer St. John. There were too many stories about the man; he was rumored to be dissolute even in his youth and reclusive in his adulthood. James had even thought, once, that Alice would refuse his suit, but she had only smiled at him and called him silly and become a bride in the spring.
He’d lost his best friend on that day, and nothing else had ever been the same since.
He often found himself recalling the day she returned from her wedding trip, as if it were a blister he must lance before the healing began. They’d been gone six full months—a tour of the continent being the groom’s gift to his bride.
James remembered the day as if it were this morning, the look of Alice all dressed out in her blue-green dress, with the tiny little muff to keep her delicate hands warm, her scent of lavender adding to the spice of early fall.
But she had been changed, had seemed sadder somehow, less vibrant and joyous. Only two months later, his suspicions had become truth, as she cried on his shoulder and revealed the misery of her marriage. He’d held her then, grateful for any excuse to hold Alice in his arms.
James closed his eyes against the memory of it.
Archer St. John stood beside the carriage, attired in a many-tiered greatcoat and a tall beaver hat, traveler’s gear, watching impatiently as Jeremy checked the bridles again, the leads between the horses, the leather fastenings, the silver couplings, the bits, the leather harness. Such concern was one of the reasons he was such a valued employee, an excellent master of horseflesh. Yet it seemed to Archer that he was doing his job with an added bit of obsession.
“If you check the harness once more, Jeremy, I swear that I’ll retire you upon our return to Sanderhurst. I’ve not seen so much moddlecoddling in the last week since my mother left for India.”
Both weathered hands stilled on the halter. Archer thought the man winced, but couldn’t be sure. “I would not have thought you that flummoxed by an accident, Jeremy. I do not hold you responsible, you know. I was the one who insisted upon such speed.”
Jeremy looked up at the sky, down at the ground, then at the sight of his employer standing in front of him. “She made me promise, sir. Swear upon my father’s life, she did. That I’d check everything twice to ensure there was no danger.”
“And who is so solicitous of my well-being that she would elicit such a promise from you, Jeremy?”
“Mrs. Bennett, sir. Told me at the inn, she did, that she feared for your safety. Had a warning of it and wanted you safe.”
“Do you always listen to females so avidly, Jeremy?” Archer had never seen his coachman hesitant before, never seen him almost maidenly in his reticence. Yet the moment should have warned him, being filled as it was with the strange reluctance of speech.
“I did, sir, to this one. She said you were to be protected, sir. That the countess told her so. Alice wanted you safe, she said.”
Chapter 7
It took Mary Kate nearly a week to reach the village of Denmouth. Her travels were made slower by the fact that she was still visited by the strange and unwelcome headaches. When they came, she simply sat down on the side of the road and waited them out, experiencing the dreams that came with them with a curious acceptance.
The dreams were almost as odd as the feeling she had that she had forgotten something. Had she left the iron upon the coals? Was the stew pot still hanging where it could boil over? Had the candle wick been trimmed? All these things were nonsensical, since she’d nothing to worry about, nothing to concern her except for the welcome at the end of her journey.
Or lack of it.
Help him…Help him….
This time she barely flinched from the sound, knew better than to turn. There would be no one there. Yet the voice was not imaginary; she knew she heard it with an inner ear. The voice was there in her mind, an eternal, vigilant, stubborn entreaty.
She should pretend none of this had happened. Would it not be wiser to deny these odd, unsettling dreams? She was, after all, recuperating from an injury to her head. Except that they weren’t her dreams, her emotions, her experiences. Was it simply possible to be two people at once? To feel Alice St. John’s emotions, knowing herself to be Mary Kate Bennett?
If that were true, then why was she not more frightened? Oddly enough, the reason embarrassed, perhaps shamed her. It made of her some pitiable creature, a woman so alone in her life she welcomed the presence of a ghost, solely for the company of the haunting. Yet this voice was not spectral or frightening, but soft and gentle. There was no sadness in the words, just determination. No grief, just resolve.
And the images that came to her were not of sorrow, but of joy, a life enriched by a love so strong that Mary Kate could feel the resonance of it even now.
She hadn’t the Sight, she’d no patience for tales of folklore and magic. All right, perhaps she was a bit superstitious, but she didn’t challenge fate, didn’t stick her tongue out at things she didn’t understand. She wanted nothing to do with things not of this world, things she could not explain, headaches and visions and whispers in the wind.
She should simply forget this interlude, these days of odd, unsettling dreams, Archer St. John’s effect on her. Be about her own business, forget this idiocy of lost wives and foreign places and conversations between Alice St. John and her husband.
Polly had supplied many details of the Earl of Sanderhurst, including his title, his enormous wealth. It had been from Polly she’d learned that Alice St. John had gone missing a year ago. Rumor had her hiding from her husband, or escaping to the continent with another man, or seeking asylum from the church or from her family. It seemed unlikely that any of these stories would be true. Wealthy, titled women did not simply walk away from the benefits of wealth and titles. If they were so idiotic as to do so, Mary Kate reasoned, then they were deserving of their fate.
It was too tempting, this world she’d dreamed. It beckoned like a window slowly opening. Come and look inside. See what you’re missing. Archer St. John fascinated her, this man who occupied her dreams. So much so, perhaps, that he also occupied a fair amount of her waking moments. A man to admire, even from a distance.
An earl, Mary Kate. A member of the nobility. A peer of the realm. A man of prosperity and consequence. Not fodder for her dreams. Her marriage might have elevated her in status, but she was still, at heart, a half-Irish dairymaid. It would be foolish to pretend anything else.
Yet she could not help but recall him. He did not possess the aquiline good looks so prized by the upper classes, the sharply etched features and deep-set eyes. His face was too broad for the aesthetically minded, his nose had a bump on the bridge of it, his chin was absurdly squared, and his cheekbones too prominent to satisfy the more romantic ladies. Nor was his physique what women sighed over—he displayed not a good leg in his pantaloons as much as a muscular one. His chest and shoulders were much too large to be considered quite proper. His height alone topped all the men she’d seen squiring the ladies down Bond Street. Nor was his hair the glittery blond so prized, but was black and thick, worn not in the curls that were the rage, but longer and straight. Nor did he sport a chin beard and was otherwise clean-shaven, an oddity when most men waxed eloquent about their facial hair.
Yet it was his eyes she would forever remember about Archer St. John. They were black, the color of eternity unlit by hope, the deepest ebony, night without a starlit sky. Mary Kate had been transfixed by the sight of those eyes in her dreams, before she’d witnessed the intelligence behind them, the lurking humor, the hint of something else darker, less pronounced.
The last time she had seen him, from the window of the inn, he had looked so utterly alone standing beside his carriage. He should have looked just as he was, a gentleman of noble b
irth and excellent lineage and possessed of great wealth, about to embark upon a journey. He should not have looked like a child bulked up for winter weather and desirous of a playmate with whom to share the snow.
He should not have touched her heart so.
Oh, Mary Kate, you’ve never wished for the moon, don’t go baying at it now. You’ll never see him again, and that’s all to the good. You’ve no business wanting something you cannot have. But he’d touched her somehow, in a way that was oddly endearing, almost painful.
Was that why she had wanted to give him something greater than her simple gratitude, something that would, in some insignificant way, express to him all the feelings she had—appreciation, respect, admiration, and even a touch of longing? Even if she never saw him again, Mary Kate knew she would always think of him; perhaps he would forever inhabit her dreams.
She had nothing of worth to give him, nothing handed down or kept safe, nothing she’d made with her own talent or spun from her hair. Nothing, after all, but the knowledge that had swelled up in her heart and made its presence known an insistent inch at a time.
With any luck, Jeremy would heed her warning. It was the only gift she had for Archer St. John. His wife’s voice, speaking of danger. A warning.
Such a thing was not supposed to happen, was it? Yet the world was filled with incidents that were not supposed to happen. She could attest to that—it was the very reason she was in this place.
The village itself had the deadened look of desertion about it. A few scraggly cottages sat adjacent to the main road; a few more sat huddled around a field located not far away. Mary Kate would have missed the dwellings completely without the aid of an old man who stood hunched against a fence, leaning upon his hoe. At her question, he pointed to the north, grudging aid given without voice.
She knocked on the first of the doors. It was opened by a woman not much older than herself, weighted down by a child perched upon one hip, another clutching her skirts. They were all similarly attired; baby, child, and mother all wore stained butternut-colored smocks; the woman’s clothing topped with a brown apron. The three of them, despite their differences in age, all wore the same look—watchful caution. There was poverty in this place, and barely masked despair, for all they looked healthy and pink-cheeked. Mary Kate wanted to tell them there were worse places to be poor than this quiet village. London, for example, where the destitute lived in squalor and filth. But she said nothing, did not even smile, simply inquired of the woman if she knew the address of Eleanor O’Brien. She was given a sharp look and another pointing direction.
A few moments later, Mary Kate found her mother.
Mary Kate stood looking down at the grave marker, a small stone cross with initials carved laboriously into it, no dates to mark her passage. Eleanor O’Brien. This, then, was the answer to her quest, the solution to the mystery? No answer at all, the mystery still obscured in fog.
How long did she stand there? She didn’t know. When her legs began to ache, Mary Kate sat at the foot of the grave, her eyes focused upon the cross of stone, lichen covering its surface. It must have taken years for the moss to grow upon unforgiving rock. And all this time, she’d not known.
“So you’re Mary Kate, then?”
She turned at the masculine voice, found herself looking up at the tall figure of a man who must be one of her brothers. The likeness to her father was there in the breadth of his shoulders, in the shape of his face. There, however, the resemblance ended. The eyes were unfriendly, the mouth held no smile.
“And you’re Daniel.” The second oldest of her brothers, he had been nearly a man on that night so long ago. And the least favorite of her brothers. But was a sister supposed to feel such a thing? Or experience the spike of fear she felt now?
“Why have you come, Mary Kate? I’ve not the funds to support an able-bodied girl.”
His belligerence shone in his stance, in the bulldog jaw squared against the world. There was no warmth in his expression, no brotherly affection, nothing that indicated they shared anything but the air they breathed. Their relationship could be no more than accidental, their blood tie no more important to him than if she were a stranger. He stared unblinking at her, a mastiff given legs, his blond hair lit by a watery sun.
She stood and brushed down her skirts. “I’ve come to find my family. Is that not enough of a reason?”
“You’d be better served by forgetting you were ever an O’Brien, Mary Kate.”
“She made that clear enough, Daniel.” Mary Kate turned and looked down at the grave again. “Did she hate me so much?”
His laughter shocked her, not that it should come in such a place, but that it should be so mirthless. “Ask why the sky is blue and the grass green, Mary Kate. What does it matter, after all?”
At her look, he laughed again, the expression in his eyes as cold as the sound of it. “You’ve imagined, then, a tearful reunion with the old harridan? One where she hugs you and says she grieved that you were lost all these years? Count yourself lucky, then, Mary Kate, that you were free of her.”
“I was ten, Daniel. Too young to be abandoned, too young to have to learn of the world.”
“You survived, didn’t you?” His glance encompassed her soft blue cloak and the black silk dress she wore. “Tommy didn’t. She near beat him to death. He died of a lung infection, but we all know it was from the beating. She indentured Robert and Alan when they were eight, didn’t say a word when her father chained the four youngest to the plow and made them draft horses. She barely knew you were gone, or did you think she longed for you, and cried for her only girl child?”
His smile was sharp, almost cruelly so.
“And the others?” Were all her brothers like this one, then? Hard and as cold as their mother?
“Scattered to the four winds, Mary Kate, as far from this place as they could go.”
“And Uncle Michael?”
Michael was her father’s youngest brother, the only one who’d come from Ireland with Da. He’d joined the navy, he said, because he couldn’t bear to be away from the sea. Her da used to joke that Michael was safer on the ocean—he was the clumsiest person he’d ever seen on land. Uncle Michael didn’t visit often, but it was a celebration when he did.
“Our mother discouraged his visits, Mary Kate. Told him seven years ago never to come back. He didn’t. I don’t know any more.”
Either that, or he would not tell her.
He stepped closer to her. “Go back to the world you’ve come from, Mary Kate. Dream, if you will, of the mother you should have had, but don’t pretend the one you did have was a saint. She was filled with hatred and bitterness and a cruelty you should thank God you escaped.”
“She made sure of that.”
“No, Mary Kate, she didn’t.” His look was speculative, his smile a little warmer than it had been, but were there degrees of coldness to ice?
“We all decided she would punish you the most, what with you being so much like Da and being his favorite. You were lost in your dreams, too filled with grief for Da to notice the things you should have. If you would blame anyone, blame us for what happened to you. She thought you’d run away, and that was the only safety we could give you.”
Her look must have summoned some deeply hidden brotherly emotion, because he reached out and stroked her cheek with one finger. “So you were forced to grow up a little sooner, Mary Kate. At least you did. You’ve pinned your hopes on findin’ a family to love you. We were never a family after Da died, Mary Kate, so there’s no sense looking for one. Make your own life, your own family. There is no place for you here.”
And with that, he turned and left the small graveyard.
There is no place for you here.
All this time she’d believed there were people in the world who would want to know where she was, that she still lived, that she had tried to find them.
But they were not here. Not at Denmouth Village.
She sat with her arms aroun
d her knees, her shabby portmanteau at her feet. At least you survived. But at what cost, Daniel? To have no one, nothing, only a voice in her mind. Something in her chest—was it her heart?—seemed to swell with pain.
The rustle of leaves upon the ground alerted her. Daniel returning, then, to ensure himself that she had gone? “May I stay the night, at least? It’s grown too cold to sleep in the open again tonight, and the only inn I saw was a good four hours away.”
A voice she never expected to hear again answered. “Such pathos, madam. Such inventive dialogue. However, your plight does not soften one jot of my irritation at this particular moment.”
She turned and Archer St. John stood there, an avenging angel dressed in a black greatcoat, his smile as frosty as her brother’s had been, tinged not with disinterest but with rage.
How odd that his appearance seemed almost destined for this moment, his anger no more important than the leaves lying upon the ground. She sighed, as if breathing deeply for the first time in nearly a week, feeling released from some bond of anticipation. Was this, then, what she had been waiting for? His arrival? An end to the feeling that something had been left undone?
“It was absurdly easy to find you, madam. Your ploy would have been more convincing if you had made an effort to hide your destination from others. The little maid at the inn was quite voluble with her information.”
“I never expected to see you again.”
“Of course you did, madam. It was part of the game. That, I recognize well enough. Lure him closer with little tidbits of information like bread crumbs in a forest. He’ll follow the trail, the damn fool, because he’s so desperate for information. Well, I’ve taken the bait. Now, what is my prize?”
Her brows crinkled together in confusion. His frown deepened.
“Was that your lover or simply an accomplice?” he asked, glancing in the direction Daniel had walked. “From the look upon your face, it was not a meeting filled with tenderness. Did you have a lover’s quarrel?”
