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Twenty-Three

KILMARNOCK ABBEY, EDINBURGH - JULY 15, 1816

Xander,

I am enjoying the season. Your concern for my well-being is truly touching.

You should have specified the color of the boots if you had a preference. I cannot read minds, you know. If you’d like black, you’ll need to return and purchase them yourself.

Mother has now been convinced that you’ve taken up with a boggle and are set to wed them. Once I explained that no self-respecting boggle would have you, she calmed.

Best wishes,

Davina

P.S. Whatever Mr. Summers has told you is a gross exaggeration.

XANDER

I managed to coax Godfrey into continuing his employment at double his current pay. To be quite honest, I rather suspected it was a bargain given what I was putting him through. Especially when I learned that he’d also been to the market that morning while he was out.

The three of us had managed to shoo a displeased Fenella from the house while the men set up the beds in the drawing room—no one thought the stairs were sturdy enough to support several burly men in addition to the beds.

Miss McAllen and Godfrey worked to rig a door from one of the large cloths covering the furniture—one Fenella hadn’t pissed on.

Meanwhile, I located a dilapidated garden shed. It took a bit of maneuvering to open the rusted door and once I did, I immediately regretted it. The distinctive sound of something skittering into the shadows sent a shiver down my spine—I was only grateful no one was nearby to hear my pathetic whimper. The sunlight caught an infinite collection of spider webs, some with beasts still inside them, lining every available surface.

When I could finally bring myself to look again, I found a shovel hung against the wall—whether that was by a hook or webbing was anyone’s guess.

The time it took to weigh my desire to sleep in a home without piles of sheep shit against my desire to never set foot in the infested hell before me was shamefully long. With a fortifying breath, I toed a boot into the shed. The wooden floor creaked in irritation but held. I shuffled another inch forward, then another. One foot remained firmly on the safe grass outside—as though that would save me.

At last, my fingertips brushed the handle—the least cobwebby part—and I nudged it toward me. It swayed, banging against other tools I didn’t know the names of. I shuffled a tiny bit deeper inside and managed to catch the thing, knocking it off the wall and onto the floor with a clang.

More skitters echoed in response.

I leaned down to grab it, a wretched mistake, because when I rose again, prize in hand, I backed into a spider web. Instinctively I turned and was then smacked in the face with another.

In my haste to remove it, I dropped the shovel directly on my foot.

Fenella once again bleated out my “Fuck!” as I hopped about, trying to dislodge the webbing while not putting weight on my surely maimed foot. Her mehhehhehe still echoed very much like laughter.

I rounded on her, still teetering on one foot. “Fuck you too!”

“What are ye doing?” came a feminine lilt from the house.

“Praying for death to take me.”

Miss McAllen padded up next to me, head tilted in curiosity. “Does that have anything to do with the spider on yer forehead?”

My squeal was anything but masculine as I brushed furiously at my head, desperate to dislodge wayward arachnids, and jumped in pain every time I accidentally set my injured foot on the ground even as I danced about.

Her peals of laughter bled into Fenella’s, an indistinguishable cacophony of self-satisfied mockery.

“It’s just a wee thing. Ye dinnae need to panic.”

My desperate, fortifying breath wasn’t enough to ease the terror entirely. “Is it gone?” I ground out, moving my lips as little as possible to prevent the beast from climbing in.

“Yes. It was a harmless wee jumpy one, probably dead under yer boot now. Honestly, ye’d think it was a man eater the way ye were flailing aboot.”

Summoning the dignity I’d lost somewhere between stepping in Fenella’s shit the first time and shuffling into the shed, I limped to the house without a word. Miss McAllen trailed after me and, while she didn’t say anything, I could sense the mirth emanating from her very being.

“What happened to ye, lad?” Lock asked when he caught sight of me.

“Spider,” Miss McAllen filled in.

Ignoring them both, I flung the curtain to my home open, and stomped inside to remove Fenella’s gifts, leaving them free to snicker behind me.

I’d never actually used a shovel before, but fortunately the motion seemed instinctive. What I did lack was a pail of some sort to put the excrement in. Instead, I was forced to carry it throughout the house at the end of the shovel and wait for Lock to lift the curtain so I could fling it outside. The process was repeated no less than three times because Fenella was nothing if not prolific.

Eventually, the pain of my humiliation overtook the pain in my foot and my task was finished. I flopped on the front step, finally pulling my—horribly scuffed—boot off. Godfrey was going to have a fit at the sight.

I wasn’t able to pull off my stocking without taking off my breeches, but beneath the white silk, a purplish bruise was forming. The swelling, however, seemed minimal and after poking it a few times, I was fairly certain the damage was superficial.

“Ye all right, lad?” Lock asked

“No, but unfortunately, the injury seems unlikely to kill me.”

“Cheer up.”

“Oh, of course, how could I forget to be cheerful? Fenella left me such lovely welcome gifts.”

“Ye got a letter from home at least. I set it on the table—the one Fenella left untouched. Why dinnae ye see aboot supper after ye finish yer letter and the lass and I will see aboot a tether for Miss Fenella.”

“Ye want me to what?” Miss McAllen asked, her tone full of incredulity.

“Help me with a tether for the sheep,” he repeated, slowly.

“That is a wild animal. And I’m with child—I couldnae possibly risk it.”

“Yer with child? My felicitations!”

“What did ye ken?”

“I didnae ken, too many cakes?”

A hint of laughter bubbled up in my chest.

“Ugh!” Her grumble was accompanied by a petulant stomp of her foot—so perfectly Davina that the laughter did break free, delirious and giddy. I slumped against the doorframe, tears streaming down my face in between giggles.

“I think he’s off his head…” Lock mumbled, grabbing Miss McAllen by the arm and dragging her away. I couldn’t exactly disagree with him.

Gently, I pulled my boot back on, wincing as I did so. Bracing against the doorframe, I pushed myself up and limped down the hall toward the kitchen. It was a slow, painful trek, but blessedly free of feces.

In the kitchen, I found Godfrey, sat cross-legged in front of one of the box stoves whispering words of desperate encouragement to the pathetic flickering flame inside.

“Godfrey?”

“Your Grace, forgive me. I’m not overly familiar with this sort of thing.”

“You wouldn’t be, besides you’re doing a damn sight better than I would.”

“I think the wood is damp,” he explained, tipping his head toward the pile in the near corner. The kitchen itself was spacious, with a scullery just off one side, and a separate larder off the north wall. The walls might have once been a pleasant goldenrod, but between fading, grease, and peeling paint, it was only a guess.

“What can I help with?” I added.

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly?—”

“I’ve damaged my boots again. Consider my assistance payment for the inevitable fretting.”

He turned to shoot me a glare. “Again, Your Grace?”

“Yes, but if it will make you feel better, I’ve already decided to replace them entirely. So you need not fuss at all.”

“I suppose that is some small measure of comfort.”

The small fire in the stove wavered ominously, drawing his gaze back as he fed it more twigs. “You can chop the vegetables, they’re on the table.”

I turned to see carrots, onions, celery, and potatoes piled high on the scarred oak table in the center of the room. “Right, yes—chopping.” What I did not see was a knife, which I suspected was an essential tool for chopping. “Er… have you seen a knife anywhere in your preparations?”

Godfrey merely pointed with the twig in his hand toward the far counter. Since there was nothing visible on top, I was left to open drawers until I located a knife.

After returning once again to the vegetables, I considered them with a wary eye. How was one meant to chop round vegetables without them rolling off the table? How big should they be?

The celery seemed the most likely to stay put. I ripped off a stalk and lined it up in front of me before wrapping both hands around the knife handle and slamming it down. The celery rolled out from under the knife and shot across the kitchen.

“What the bleeding hell?” Godfrey exclaimed, clutching the back of his head where the vegetable had smacked into it.

“I am so sorry. It got away from me.”

The man humphed, eyeing me with trepidation before turning back to his task.

Having learned from my first mistake, I snatched another stalk and put it in my left hand, keeping the knife in my right. I was about to bring the knife down?—

“Stop right there!” Miss McAllen shouted from the doorway. “Put the knife down before ye lose a finger.”

“What?”

“Shoo—Stepping in the dung was amusing. Losing a finger is not.” She pried the knife from my hand by the handle before pointing at a nearby chair. “Sit there and dinnae touch anything.”

Cautiously, I followed her instructions as Lock strode in with fresh firewood, moving to assist Godfrey.

“Do not, under any circumstances, raise a knife like that with yer hand down below again. Do ye understand me?”

“I tried to keep both hands on the knife, but the celery went flying.”

“Oh, is that why it’s on the floor?” Lock asked.

Miss McAllen sighed. “Can ye bring me a chopping board?” she asked Lock before turning to me while he did as bid. “Come here, stand behind me.”

“I just sat?—”

“Just do as I say.” When I stood to peer over her shoulder, she grasped the celery in her left hand, just as I had.

“That’s what I did?—”

“No. Stop talking. Listen and watch. Don’t splay yer fingers aboot so they’re easy to chop off. Tuck them under so they’re harder to cut. Then, hold the knife like this and rest the tip against the board.” She was keeping it much closer to the chopping board. “Rocking motion, not hacking motion or whatever the bleeding hell it was ye were doing.”

Carefully she rocked her hand down, slicing through the celery into even chunks. “See how I’m not cutting a finger off? Maybe consider that way.”

She turned, offering me the knife, handle first. “Ye try.”

Dutifully, I took it and tried to mimic her efforts. I was met with substantially more success than my first attempt, and Godfrey’s head remained unscathed. While my pieces were not nearly as fine or even, they stayed where I put them.

“Good. Where are the knives?” I nodded toward the open drawer. She returned to my side with a knife and board of her own, and reached for a potato.

“When they’re round—how do you…”

“Keep them from rolling off the table?”

“Yes.”

“Cut them in half first. Finish the celery and I’ll show ye the magic of the onion—it’ll be a revelation.”

“Thank you,” I murmured.

Lock announced he was going to go do something with the chicken that I didn’t understand and didn’t wish to contemplate while Miss McAllen did indeed demonstrate the mystical chopping of the onion.

“Yer a wee bit helpless aren’t ye?” she asked, peeling the carrot while I carefully sliced through my half of the onion.

“A bit, I suppose. I’m certainly not equipped for this sort of thing.”

She considered me thoughtfully, head tilted to the side. “Ye remind me of someone but I dinnae know who.”

I rather suspected the person I reminded her of was herself. But that wasn’t a conversation I was willing to have yet. “Is that a good thing?”

Her brow furrowed thoughtfully. “Not sure.”

“You’ll let me know? When you decide?”

“Aye.”

Even a simple supper of stew was far more involved than I had ever imagined, but it was astonishingly good, especially given my empty stomach. After eating, Godfrey, Miss McAllen, and I settled into the drawing room and Lock went to wherever Lock went when he was not here, with a promise to return in the morning.

To be quite honest, I was fairly certain the only reason the driver was still wandering around was because he found my situation unbearably amusing. Regardless of the reason, he was helpful and I wouldn’t be the one to send him away.

The beds were less beds and more pallets on the floor, but they were better than whatever we would find when we eventually risked the second floor. I knew that much. Someone had outfitted them with clean bed linens and lit a fire in the hearth. All things considered, it was not the most uncomfortable I’d ever been.

No sooner had I sat on the edge of my pallet bed than Miss McAllen added, “Oh, Yer Grace, a letter came for ye while ye were fussing with shovel. It was an express.”

I limped over to the table she indicated and brought it to my bed by the fire to read as the other two tucked under the covers, turning to sleep.

Far from the expected elegant swirls of Celine, the overdone flourishes of mother, or the distracted scribbles of Davina, the handwriting was an unfamiliar, sloppy, unembellished script.

I worked the paste open, carefully unfurling it.

My heart knew the writer long before my eyes dragged down the page to find Tom’s name at the bottom. There was no one else it could have been.

The handwriting was clumsy and inconsistent, and I rather suspected the product of several drinks too many.

Xander,

I hope Scotland is everything you hoped it would be and more. And another, more wretched part of me hopes that you’re miserable—both because I wish you would return and because you left me. It was so incredibly easy for you to leave me.

For a few, too brief, kisses, you gave me everything I ever wanted. Then you took it away with you. I’m left here to long for feelings I’ll never know again. It is a kind of cruelty that defies sense, strains logic.

When I’m near you, the world makes sense. But when you’re away, the world is a dull, unfeeling thing. Was it a figment of my imagination? Were you there with me, filling me with hope and lust and, dare I say it, love?

I could have loved you. Sometimes I think I always have. Late at night, I worry that I was made for you—that God took a piece of my heart and gave it to you for safekeeping. But he forgot to give me one of yours. It is the only explanation—the only thing I can think—it is why I can barely breathe in your presence. And it is the reason you are so entirely unaffected by me.

The moment we met—the moment I saw you—changed my life. And that moment was so inconsequential to you that it didn’t even spark a memory. And in the cruelest of ironies, I was blessed to know you, touch you, kiss you for a few years, weeks, minutes. Those seconds, hours, eons, will live in the scar where a piece of my heart once resided—a beautiful agony I can never—do not wish to—rid myself of. But you, your heart is intact and overfilling with mine as well—those memories will have no place inside you, no room.

You upended my life and you set it alight and all I wish to do is beg you for more. If you were here I would, on bended knee, but you are gone—away from me with no word, no hint, no hope of contacting you.

That I made an opportunity of my own does not negate your neglect. If you had but asked, I would have come with you—begged to do so. Instead, I’m left to nurse the wound in my heart, the one that will never, cannot ever close.

Though I will never send this, I suppose I must wish you well, for it is the only way for the piece of my heart to experience joy.

Your drunken lovesick fool,

Tom

For a moment, I thought the ceiling was dripping—it wouldn’t be out of character for the house—but the drops were falling from my eyes.

I thought I had done well, made the right choice. A clean break would be easier for him—for us. Three conversations and I’d set fire to the whole of his life. Leaving, hastily and unceremoniously, was best for him and his reputation.

He didn’t know—hadn’t the slightest idea—what it was when the rumors began to swirl. When the cruel looks became cruel whispers that became cruel words. It wasn't long then before those wretched words could turn to hate-filled actions. I had the shield of title and wealth. Tom had neither. His only protection was the cloak of secrecy. And rumors stalked me like a wildcat. Leaving him was the only gift I could offer him.

But he had seen my gift as a lack of caring, of compassion. That fact, more than anything, was devastating.

My throat ached with the effort of holding back the deluge of tears. I wasn’t in love with him—certainly not yet—but I could have been. If the world were a different, better, place, if it hadn't beaten me back at every turn, I could have been the kind of man who could have loved Tom Grayson as he deserved to be loved.

But I had to live in this world. This world with its invisible rules and lines, the ones that others saw innately but I tripped over until I was smacked back often and hard enough to learn where the lines were and how to toe them. Love was not a luxury afforded to us all.

Tom’s heart was sweet, gentle, and precious—and full of teasing mirth. And I had done the right thing in protecting it.

One day he would see it too; one day he would thank me. That understanding would need to keep me warm tonight. The fire, seemingly growing dimmer by the moment, certainly wouldn't.

I rolled to my back, watching the dying light dance along the ceiling in ever smaller circles as I desperately struggled to ignore the ache in my chest. My body was exhausted, bruised and beaten, but my head refused to yield to the promise of rest. Once beautiful memories of Tom Grayson’s lips swirled in tainted understanding—a new layer of self-loathing.

Why did he have to be so damned beautiful, his sharp, enticing angles softened by kind eyes? I didn’t deserve kind eyes, especially when I knew now that I’d made them sad. It was an unfamiliar expression on him, and I couldn’t quite picture it. Affable, teasing Tom should never have sad eyes—but I’d done it.

I shut my eyes in what would surely be a futile attempt to find rest and curled on my side. Sleep was often a reluctant friend—that was a natural result of a mother and sister determined to ruin themselves at every available opportunity. Often, counting breaths would work, the dullness of the activity sufficient to distract from valid worries. Tonight, sleep resisted, and only after I’d reached more than a thousand did I begin to drift away.