She felt dizzy, like when she’d awakened in Pontefract. But she hadn’t been hit on the head this time.
“Wake up,” she repeated, her voice muffled against his chest.
Muttering an unintelligible response, he tightened his arms around her. Her heart lurched madly. “You feel good,” he whispered, burying his nose in her hair. “And smell good.”
His mouth trailed from her hair across her cheek, settling soft and warm on her lips. The sensation was like nothing she’d ever felt before. She gasped.
He bolted upright, and she flailed back, landing on the floor in a twist of night rail and limbs.
Above her, he blinked himself awake and stared at her on the floor, his eyes glazed with confusion. “I’m sorry.” He ran a hand through his hair, staring at his fingers when it apparently ended way before he thought it should. “Good heavens, I…did I wake you? I’m sorry. I…what did I say? Did I knock you over?”
She struggled to her feet. “Never mind.”
“I was dreaming.”
“I certainly hope so,” she said with a huff, sitting primly on the edge of the bed. Though she was feeling anything but prim right now. It took everything she had to stiffen her spine. She felt boneless. “What were you dreaming about?”
His heavy sigh pierced the darkness. He remained silent a moment before words tumbled out, soft and rushed.
“It’s always the same. I see Mary, little Mary, dying, lying still as stone. And then the scene changes, and I’m fighting. A duel, to the death. I run a man through with my sword. Not my enemy, but an innocent man. Accidentally. He dies.” His voice hitched and dropped to a whisper. “I don’t know who he is.”
She wanted to touch him, but instead clasped her hands together in a death grip. “How perfectly dreadful,” she whispered back, struck by the pain that radiated from him.
“All the more dreadful because it’s true.” He reached a hand to pry hers apart and laced their fingers together on the coverlet. “In pursuing Geoffrey Gothard, I did kill an innocent man. Gothard is to blame, and the reason I cannot rest until he’s brought to justice.” His eyes searched hers in the dim reddish light given off by the dying fire. “Would a girl like you fault me, Emerald MacCallum?”
Her heart squeezed in sympathy. He was needing forgiveness—from himself, not her—but she couldn’t resist the pleading in those sleep-heavy eyes.
“Nay, a girl like Emerald wouldn’t fault you,” she whispered. “And neither would a girl like Cait.”
His fingers gave hers a wee squeeze. Some of the tension drained from his body, and he lay back down, his eyes sliding shut. “We ought to sleep,” he murmured. “The sun will be waking us soon. Between the rain and your nap, we lost time yesterday—we must make it up in the morning.”
When his hand slid from hers, she felt a little pang of loss. He could be disagreeable and overbearing, but his was a troubled soul, and he could be kind, too. He’d been a rock of security down in the tunnel.
Perhaps she should give him the benefit of the doubt. They could start over in the morning. She’d even let him call her whatever he wanted. After all, she was stuck with him, having no other way to get to London; she might as well make the best of it.
She took herself back to bed with a happy sigh, feeling rather virtuous in her resolution to make friends with the Englishman. Reflecting on the satisfaction of acting in a spirit of pure, unselfish compassion, she drifted off to sleep.
If one fingertip rested on her lips, it was only because they were still tingling.
TWENTY-EIGHT
DOWNSTAIRS THE next morning, Jason looked up from the news sheet he’d spread on the polished wooden table. “Coffee,” he told Mrs. Twentyman. “And…”
He hesitated.
Emerald was still upstairs getting dressed. Though his sister drank chocolate with breakfast, a girl like Emerald might prefer coffee instead. But maybe…
“Chocolate for the lady,” he decided. As Mrs. Twentyman nodded and hurried off, he looked back down to the news sheet and began to scan the articles.
England was receiving New Netherlands in North America in return for sugar-rich Surinam in South America, under terms reached at Breda. Remembering his brother Colin’s secret participation in that treaty with the Dutch, Jason smiled to himself.
A man named Jean Baptiste Denis had succeeded in transferring blood from a lamb into the vein of a boy. Amazing.
And Christopher Wren had—
He looked up when two men sat down at the adjacent table, already deep in conversation.
The ruddy fellow leaned across the table conspiratorially. “Me cousin wrote from Cumberland to say that none other than the famous Emerald MacCallum is in the vicinity.”
She’s not in Cumberland anymore, Jason thought with a smug smile.
“And how does your cousin know that?” The man’s companion, a thin, pale fellow, shook his head. “This Emerald MacCallum is naught but a fetching rumor, to my mind.”
Just what Jason had once thought. He opened his mouth to clear up the confusion, but then thought better of it. No sense making it known he had Emerald in tow, he decided as a serving maid arrived with two steaming tankards.
An unusual maiden like Emerald might be liable to attract an unwanted entourage.
The first man hitched forward. “Me cousin talked to her.”
“Surely you jest.”
“He did. He asked her why she does what she does.” He ran a hand back through reddish-blond hair. “Woman’s got two little children to feed, a boy and a girl, and her husband died, leaving her with a mountain of debt.”
“Emerald MacCallum is a mother?” the thin man mused.
Emerald MacCallum is a mother? Jason mentally repeated, stunned.
Could that be true? It might explain why she seemed sweeter and more nurturing than he’d expected of a girl who made her living tracking.
But a mother?
