in the library and bedchamber slammed against every cell of his body, like a storm striking the rocky Perthshire coast.
Melanie bent down, smoothed the quilt, brushed her lips across Jessica’s brow, touched her fingers to Berowne’s head. Charles did the same, committing the moment to memory. Jessica’s brow furrowed, then relaxed. Berowne purred softly. After a long moment, without looking at each other, he and Melanie left the room.
“Charles.” Melanie stopped midway down the empty, candlelit corridor. Her gaze was fixed on a watercolor on the wall opposite. “If you want a divorce, I’ll give you grounds as long as you don’t keep the children from me. Or the cat.”
The words were like a fistful of snow down his back. “When did I say I wanted a divorce?”
“You said you never wanted to see me again.” She turned her head. The light from the candle sconces fell at a sharp angle across her drawn face. “The least I owe you is the right to start over again.”
“Christ, Mel. After all you’ve been through, haven’t you learned that we can’t any of us start again? I may have been a fool to marry you, but I can’t erase the past seven years.” He looked at the watercolor, a painting Melanie had done of the stream on their Perthshire estate. The cool grays and mossy greens always brought an ache of longing to his throat. “What were you proposing to do? Hire some half-pay officer to get caught in bed with you?”
She regarded him with that unblinking courage he knew so well. “If that’s what it takes.”
His hand clenched with the impulse to wipe that look from her face. “You may be willing to put the children through that. I’m not.”
She swallowed. She was either too brave or not brave enough to leave it there. “Then—”
The image of the watercolor wavered before his eyes. He had a vivid memory of Melanie picking her way over the mossy stones of the stream bank with Colin while he followed with Jessica on his shoulders. He looked into her eyes and said what he hadn’t yet articulated even to himself. “I don’t know if I can go on living with you, Mel. A marriage based on preserving appearances would drive us both mad. But if you think I’d keep you from the children, you know me even less than I knew you. Shall we go? The carriage awaits.”
No one had ever hurt him before. Not on purpose. Well, Billy Lydgate had punched him in the arm once, but he’d been mad because Colin had eaten the last custard tart, so Colin could sort of understand it. Meg and Jack hadn’t been mad. They’d stood there so calmly. Colin had been scared when Jack pulled out the knife, but even then he hadn’t understood. When Meg held his hand down and Jack slashed the knife across his skin, he’d been so shocked he hadn’t felt the pain. Not at first. Then it had hurt awfully.
He’d screamed and fought and kicked. Jack had held him down while Meg bandaged his hand. She’d kept saying she was sorry, that they’d had to do it. When someone said they were sorry, you were supposed to forgive them, but there must be a limit, mustn’t there? Colin wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to forgive Meg and Jack.
“Christ.” Jack’s voice came from the other room. It made Colin jump. “I’m going to the tavern.”
“You bloody idiot,” Meg said. “You’ll get us caught.”
“Better than watching you mope. You’d think you’d never seen a knife turned on anyone.”
“Not on a kid, I haven’t.”
“Jesus.” The wall shook as though Jack had struck it with his fist. Colin’s heart leapt into his throat. “You think I liked hacking up the brat? Damned ugly work. But we knew it might come to worse than that when we started. Still could.”
“It’s different—”
“When the smell of blood gets up your nose?”
“When the kid’s right there in front of you.” The boards creaked as though Meg was pacing. “I always wondered how far I could go. Now I’m not bloody sure I want to find out.”
“Look, Meggie—”
“Get out of here, before I hit you myself.”
“Like to see you try.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
The door slammed shut.
Colin retched again, but there was nothing left in his stomach to come out. The remnants of the brandy scratched his throat. His face screwed up as though he was crying, but no tears came. They seemed to be bottled up somewhere inside him. He was shaking so badly he thought he’d fall into pieces. He curled into a ball and hugged his hand against his chest. A single word came from his throat, muffled by the pillow.
“Mummy.”
The familiar low moan of distress jerked Charles from slumber. He sat up, reached for Melanie, and tumbled onto a hard, swaying floor. He caught himself on one elbow. Pain shot through his leg. The vibration of wheels rumbled through the floorboards. The traveling chaise. Colin. Helen Trevennen. Brighton. He’d been sprawled on the backward-facing seat beside Edgar.
Melanie moaned again, a quiet sound but one to which his senses had long been tuned. Moonlight slanted through the carriage windows. He could see the outline of her body twisting beneath the carriage rug on the seat opposite. In another minute, she’d awaken with a scream. He crawled across the floor, bumping his knee against the charcoal brazier. “Mel.” He reached up and gripped her shoulder. “Sweetheart, you’re dreaming.”
She started and sat up, though he knew from experience that she wasn’t awake yet. He pulled himself onto the seat and put his arm round her to keep her from falling. Her shoulders shook and her chest heaved. “Wake up, Mel.” He put his mouth against her temple. Her forehead was damp with sweat. “I’m here. You’re safe.”
Her stillness told him that she had woken. He could almost hear the stifled scream that caught in her throat.
He slid his hand to the familiar place at the nape of her neck. The carriage jolted over the rutted road. Charcoal smoke from the brazier drifted through the damp air. Edgar snored softly on the seat opposite, but then his brother had always been able to sleep through anything. In boyhood Charles had had to resort to pitchers of cold water to wake him.
Melanie sucked in deep drafts of air. “I’m sorry. I’m all right now.” She started to pull away.
He wrapped his arms round her and sank back into the corner of the carriage. “It’s bad.” He peeled strands of sweat-soaked hair from her neck. “But not as bad as whatever you were dreaming.”
She lifted her head. “Charles—”
“There’s nothing we can do until we get there.” He let his fingers drift through her hair, heedless of the pins. “Sleep if you can.”
Her head fell into the hollow of his shoulder. He pulled the folds of his greatcoat round her and shifted his arm, settling her against him. It was a scene they had played out dozens of times, in their bed at home, in inns and lodgings and camps, even once or twice in carriages. He remembered the first time, in the Cantabrian Mountains, the night after the ambush. He hadn’t known the warning signs then. He’d been wakened by a full-throated scream. He’d crawled across the rocky ground and gathered her terror-wracked body into his arms, feeling stiff and unsuited to such an action. He could still recall the desperation in the way her fingers had clenched his shirt.
He’d never asked her to describe the nightmares and she’d never talked about them. He’d thought he knew their substance well enough. Anyone who’d been through what Melanie had been through had more than enough demons to face in the night.
Only she hadn’t been through it, at least not what he’d thought she’d been through. The French soldiers who killed her parents and the bandits who attacked her and Blanca in the mountains had been merely part of her cover story, designed to rouse his chivalrous instincts. And yet he’d stake his life that the nightmares were real, all of them. In that small corner of their marriage, at least, she had not been pretending.
He kept sifting through what he had learned about her, as though if he could just put the pieces in the right
