Page 15 of Mercy Fletcher Meets Her Match

It wasn’t a plan of any particular elegance, Mercy supposed. But then, elegance was not strictly necessary when simplicity would serve just as well. She had been spinning it in her head all last evening, her busy brain working at double speed well past the time she ought to have been asleep. This engagement would not slip her mind.

It would not be the first time she had sneaked out of the house. It wouldn’t even be the hundredth. True, most of those had been in the countryside, where there was little risk of being observed—but she had already learned that the trellis could support her weight without too much creaking if she moved slowly and carefully. She had learned that neither of the neighbors had windows well-positioned enough to see into the garden. And she had learned that the darkness was as good as a thick cloak.

She knew Thomas would be headed to Cheapside, and that he would have to wait for the carriage to return for him once the baroness and his sisters had been delivered to their evening engagement. There would be a small window—a few, crucial minutes—where the carriage would be unattended whilst the driver fetched him from the house. If she timed her climb correctly, she could descend from the window, slip unnoticed into the carriage, tuck herself away within the blanket box hidden beneath the seat, and be delivered straight to Cheapside alongside him with Thomas none the wiser.

None the wiser, at least, until they’d arrived.

Probably he’d have words for her. Harsh ones, no doubt. A lecture unlike any she had ever received from him before, and she promised herself she would make an effort to pay attention to it. She could bear a lecture, provided it was too late to send her home again. And even if it was not her intention to heed it, she could do him the courtesy of listening—provided he did not then send her home straightaway.

The first sprinklings of the very seeds of an idea were planted first in the morning, as Mercy waited out the minutes until ten o’clock had come and gone. Though she had risen some hours earlier, she had constrained herself to her bed chamber, entertaining herself with blocking out several new patterns within the pages of her sketchbook until at last she heard footsteps in the hall.

The maid who delivered her breakfast tray seemed startled to find her still abed, still in her nightclothes. “Is everything all right, miss?”

she inquired as she set the tray upon the nightstand.

Mercy affected a weak cough. “Yes,”

she said. “Of course. Although…”

She gave a tiny, sheepish shrug. “Might I trouble you for some honey? I’ve a bit of a tickle in my throat.”

“A tickle?”

“Nothing to worry over,”

Mercy declared. “I’ll be right as rain by noon.”

Though, of course, she hadn’t. Or she had, for she had never been unwell. But word had spread throughout the household, and by luncheon she had received visits from the baroness, and from Marina and Juliet, who had clucked over her and instructed her to rest and recover from her unfortunate—imaginary—affliction.

Thomas, she was certain, would know nothing of it. He’d left the house even before breakfast had concluded, and rarely made it back in time for dinner. So long as she feigned sleep and skipped dinner herself, there was no risk of him crossing paths with a servant carrying a tray that might give rise to any suspicion.

The guttural protests of her stomach were a small cross to bear, really, as she curled beneath the covers and listened to the distant sounds of harried preparations for the evening’s entertainment. There was the stamp of feet upon the stairs and the gay chatter as the girls made themselves ready. It had become a comfortable sort of pandemonium, she thought. Even if she would not miss the Season itself, she would miss this when it ended—the flurry of activity, the friendly fussing, the laughter and the shrieking and all that went with such a full household.

At long last there was a lull, then the soft pad of footsteps down the hall toward her room.

The whisk of the door opening. A soft whisper: “Mercy?”

Juliet, she thought.

“She’s resting, dearest, don’t disturb her,”

the baroness chided softly, even as she disobeyed her own order and crossed the floor to perch at the very edge of Mercy’s bed. Gentle fingers fished beneath the tangle of covers which Mercy had thrown over her head to stroke her hair. “Sleep well, my dear,”

she said in a soft, maternal voice as she smoothed her fingertips along Mercy’s forehead as if searching for hints of fever.

“How is she, Mama?”

Marina asked.

The baroness rose from the bed with a final fond stroke of her fingers through Mercy’s hair. “No fever,”

she said in a whisper. “Likely only a minor cold. We’ll look in once more when we’ve returned and summon a doctor tomorrow if she has not improved. Out with you now, girls, or we’ll be terribly late.”

Mercy held her breath as they swept out of the room once again, and released it as the door closed behind them and the sounds of footsteps receded into the distant thump upon stairs as they descended to the lower levels.

She waited, in the dark, in the increasing silence. Finally the last vestiges of the noise faded, until the household settled once more, deprived of its usual occupants. And then, long minutes later, she cast back the covers, threw off her nightgown, fished an old, nondescript dress from the depths of her wardrobe, and began to dress for a night on the town.

∞∞∞

Thomas had missed dinner again. He ought to have grown accustomed to it by now, but a body did weary of wedges of cheese and hunks of bread leftover from the morning meal. Not that he had time for much more than that, given that he expected the carriage to return for him shortly for another long evening spent waiting at the same damned tavern in the faint hope that Fordham would show himself.

Exhaustion hung heavily upon his shoulders as he traded his embroidered waistcoat for something plainer, his dark blue superfine coat for common wool. He’d still look a bit too fine for a bloke that might frequent a tavern as many evenings as he had already, but certainly he’d catch less attention than he would otherwise.

His formal attire had already been laid out for him, awaiting his return later in the evening. The one bright spot within it all, he thought, as he shrugged into the unremarkable coat he’d selected for this evening’s vigil. When he returned, despite the fact that he’d have to endure another change of clothing, he’d see Mercy once more.

Tell her what, if anything, he’d learned from this evening’s watch. Share with her those record she had suggested he request, and see if she could make more sense of them than he had been able to do thus far.

Dance with her. Play billiards. Enjoy the comfort of her company, the cut of her wit, the brilliant flash of those smiles which she had lately begun to bestow upon him. How swiftly those things had become the brightest part of his days, the most treasured respite from the worry and anxiety which had lately consumed him.

How swiftly she had become the brightest part of his days.

His fingers paused over the buttons of his coat as a sound—a small, but distinct thump—echoed down the hallway and through his open door. Odd. The household had largely settled for the night, or so he had thought, as he left his room and headed for the stairs. But the sound continued to plague him on his journey down the flights, nagging at his memory. Reminiscent of—of something he could not quite call to mind.

The coachman was waiting in the foyer when he made it down, and with a tip of his cap he inquired, “Cheapside again this evening, my lord?”

“Yes,”

Thomas said as he retrieved his hat from the rack near the door and settled it upon his head. “No need to wait on me,”

he said, though the coachman had no doubt learned the routine by now. “I’ll return by hack and make my way to this evening’s engagement myself. Miss Fletcher will no doubt wish to leave early, so if you might—”

“Oh, not this evening, my lord,”

the coachman interjected. “She’s been under the weather today, poor thing. Holed up in her room, she is.”

Thomas paused in the process of pulling on his gloves. “Under the weather?”

he repeated. “Mercy?”

“So the baroness said,”

the coachman said. “Bit of a cough, as I understand it. Slept most of the day away.”

“So she isn’t at the ball,”

Thomas said, absently, and it felt as if some sticky wheel within his mind began to turn once more. “She’s—”

Upstairs. Just upstairs.

The window. That sound, that distinctive thump he’d heard. It had been the bloody window.

“In her room, my lord,”

the coachman replied, a tiny wrinkle of befuddlement marring the otherwise smooth surface of his face, as if he could not quite understand why Thomas had felt the need to continue the conversation. “The baroness is not particularly concerned,”

he added. “Said she didn’t seem to be feverish.”

“I’ll just bet she wasn’t,”

Thomas gritted out between clenched teeth. He yanked his hat off his head and slapped it into the coachman’s hands. “Wait with the carriage,”

he said. “I’ll be out shortly.”

He didn’t start out running, but he’d made it up to one by the time he’d got to the rear of the house and out into the garden. His breath had all but deserted him as he caught sight of her there, halfway down the trellis, the bland brown of her skirts fluttering in the breeze as she picked a slow and delicate path down the latticework framing the house which seemed ill-equipped to support her.

“What the hell do you think you are doing?”

The words burst from his lungs, and while he hadn’t precisely shouted them, still they had been enough to produce a high-pitched squeak of shock from her, to jar her concentration from her task, to make her jump—in so far and in as much as her position upon the trellis would allow.

But it had been enough. Enough for an ominous creak to rumble through the night, enough for her to scrabble for a handhold that failed her with a snap within moments.

And she fell.

She fell, and for one terrifying instant, Thomas saw the end of everything. Like a grim future that had already happened, he saw his world go dark and silent and grey, devoid of even the tiniest hint of life, of joy. Of happiness.

He moved faster than he ever had in the whole of his life, his muscles burning, straining to reach her, to avert that wretched possibility before it could unfold. He dived for her, with the lingering traces of a fervent prayer still upon his lips, and for the second time in little more than a month, Mercy Fletcher fell straight from the sky and landed atop him.

They collapsed together upon the grassy earth, in a now-familiar tangle of limbs. Thomas’ lungs strained for air through the press of her bony elbow into his stomach, and his head spun as she knocked him senseless once again.

Or perhaps she’d knocked sense into him for once.

Thank God, he thought, with dizzying gratitude, and a wheeze of a laugh rattled in his throat as he sucked in a lungful of air. And another, more raucous now, as his lungs inflated once more. And then he was laughing in earnest, well past feeling the distant ache of his once-starved lungs or the bruises his backside would no doubt sport soon enough.

At least she had not damaged his spectacles this time around, other than to have knocked them askew.

Mercy levered herself up on her elbow without so much as the tiniest hint of pain, and peered down into his face, baffled. “Thomas,”

she said, “are you quite all right?”

“No,”

he said, succinctly, cheerfully, even if the word had been delivered a bit on the hoarser side. “No, I am not. I am never going to be all right again. And do you know? That’s all right.”

“Oh, God,”

she groaned. “I’ve concussed you.”

With the fingers of one hand she groped through his hair as if searching for a lump somewhere beneath the strands. “You must have struck your head. Hold still.”

God, her fingers felt wonderful, the gentle rasp of them across his scalp a balm to his weary soul. “I haven’t struck my head,”

he said, and he was grinning. He knew he was. “I’m not concussed. I have simply given up.”

“Given…up?”

she echoed, and those dark eyes studied his face as if she knew not what to make of him.

“I. Give. Up,”

he repeated slowly, deliberately. “You are utterly ungovernable. I give it all up.”

A concession to the universe, he thought. To whichever capricious god had taken such a peculiar interest in him. To Mercy herself. What did it matter, what was and was not done? Mercy was going to do it all anyway. And now, in this one perfect moment when blessed clarity had struck him like a bolt of lighting, so would he. He lifted his hands, slid them through the delightful tangle the breeze had wrought of her hair, and pulled her lips down to his. That kiss that he’d wanted for days—months—years—eons, on his tongue at last.

She froze, for a space of seconds going still as a statue. And then, with the smallest, sweetest sigh, she melted. Her nails raked through his hair, and he groaned into the seam of her lips. His spectacles were misaligned upon his face, and he didn’t care, because Mercy was in his arms, precisely where she was meant to be.

She was precisely as she was meant to be. Chaotic, impulsive, uncontrollable as the wind. Lovely and stubborn and clever. How had he ever thought otherwise? He could not ask her to be any less than what she was. But he could damn well protect her from the consequences.

Only weeks ago he’d silently extended his sympathies to the nameless, faceless damned fool who would eventually marry her, and now—now he knew that fool was going to be him. He’d marry her to keep her out of trouble. He’d marry her to keep her. To keep the joy and the chaos and laughter of her. To keep the warmth he’d never known he was missing, to keep the comfortable camaraderie they shared.

He’d marry her because she had knocked him straight off his feet and head over heels into love. He’d marry her because he adored every little habit, every idiosyncrasy, every imperfect, untamable inch of her. Mercy was always going to be Mercy—and that was how he loved her best.

He’d marry her despite her father’s certainty that she could do better than a measly baron—if he could only get her to agree to it. If he could convince her that he was, and would endeavor to be, deserving of her. If he could entice her to love him in return. Which might not be too very difficult. No woman could kiss like she did without at least the slightest engagement of her heart.

Too much time had passed. Sooner or later, the coachman was bound to come in search of him. It took an incredible effort to tear his mouth from hers, and he cupped her cheek in his hand. “Mercy,”

he whispered. It was not only her name; it was a damned plea.

Her stomach gave a demanding rumble, shearing through the silence of the night. “I’m sorry,”

she said in muted tones of embarrassment. “I skipped dinner.”

Thomas swallowed back another laugh, rubbed his thumb over the curve of her cheek. “I’ll just bet you did,”

he said with a sigh, and pressed his forehead to hers.

“I am going to get another lecture, aren’t I?”

“Such a lecture,”

he assured her. “You might have broken your damned neck. What was your plan?”

“I was going to hide in the blanket box,”

she admitted sheepishly. “I thought we’d be well on our way before you had noticed.”

And she had been determined enough to feign illness, confining herself to her room for the better part of the day in the service of her little ruse. “I’d never have thought to check the blanket box,”

he said, though now he would certainly never forget to do so. “Clever of you.”

Moot, now, but clever nonetheless.

“I just wanted to help,”

she said. “I was careful to dress appropriately. No one will take note of me. I’ve brought a notebook and a pencil and—oh, please, Thomas, don’t make me go back inside.”

“I have decided,”

he said, attempting to inflect his voice with as much severity as he could muster, given that she was still mostly draped over him and her lips were still entirely too close to his own, “to allow you to accompany me.”

With a tiny shriek of glee, she cast her arms about his neck in an exuberant embrace. “Oh, thank you, thank—”

“You’d only sneak out again otherwise,”

he sighed, and his hand curved over the back of her head to hold her closer. “At least this way, if you’re bound and determined to do something reckless…I’ll be there to protect you.”

Keep her close. Keep her safe, even from herself if the need arose.

Her warm breath coasted against the skin just beneath his ear, and her fingers curled into the hair at the nape of his neck. “I promise not to cause trouble,”

she said with all the solemnity of a vow.

Thomas closed his eyes and swallowed back a helpless laugh. Good God. He was certain she even believed it.