Chapter 20
December 28, 1882
Yow, but his neck hurt. Jack opened one eye. It was gray and cold in the room, with near-dead embers in the fireplace. He had fallen asleep in his chair and had spent the whole night upright!
He had slept. A solid dreamless handful of hours. It was almost worth being stiff, his every muscle tight. He stretched, then rubbed the kink at his shoulder, twisting and turning to loosen things up.
Both eyes open now, he discovered Nicola curled up as innocently as a child on the sofa. Her hand was tucked under her chin, and her golden hair had come loose across her shoulder. Her breathing was regular, untroubled, and he hated to wake her. She resembled some sort of fairy princess, too much above his touch.
He stood up, somewhat unsteady. A tray lay upon the table, a linen napkin covering last night’s post-midnight repast that he’d missed. Jack flipped up a corner. It was too dim to see well, but his nose told him brandy and cherries were on offer. He snaffled up the tart in one bite, then savored the fruitcake, licking his fingers of crumbs.
It was too much to hope for that the tea was still warm—it had been hours since Nicola left him relaxing by her fire. And relax he had. Jack was a little embarrassed that he’d gone to sleep. What a dull dog he was. And after all his hard work. He’d figured out a way to tell her something with his hands and wanted to demonstrate.
I like you.
It wasn’t the most romantic of declarations. He wasn’t ready to use the other L-word, although he believed it was becoming true. All he knew was that he was at peace when he was with her.
Would that change if she could speak? He remembered a pub he’d seen somewhere in Leicestershire. The Silent Woman. The swinging sign showed a headless female form, not the most sensitive of images with a queen on the throne for forty-five years.
Women were more than entitled to reveal what was on their minds. Of course, one did not always like to hear what that might be.
Time to leave before the world woke up. Jack pulled his watch out of his pocket. Good God! It was past seven in the morning! The world had been awake for hours. How was he to get out of Nicola’s cottage without anyone noticing?
He was supposed to be at Primrose Cottage painting kitchen cupboards in fifteen minutes. He couldn’t very well turn up in his best tweeds.
Frozen with indecision, the rattle of the kitchen door made his mind up for him. He dived behind the couch, praying that keen-eyed Mrs. Grace would not notice him.
But she would notice that second teacup and plate. He popped up again just long enough to snatch them from the tray and shoved them under the sofa fringe. He wished he could crawl right under with them, but his size was a distinct disadvantage. It was cramped enough against the wall.
“Nicola,” he whispered, “wake up!” It was all the warning he dared.
He heard the springs in the sofa give, but no footfalls on the carpet. She had merely rolled around a bit, oblivious to their danger.
Sleeping Beauty.
A humming—a hymn, if Jack was not mistaken—and quiet clattering came from the kitchen as Mrs. Grace began to prepare Nicola’s breakfast. Jack’s stomach rumbled at the smell of eggs and bacon and toast, and wished he’d had time to eat the second slice of the fruitcake before hiding.
“Huh! Now where is that tray?” Mrs. Grace asked the empty kitchen. Jack heard doors opening and closing, and a fair amount of confused tsking and muttering.
Lucky Nicola probably got breakfast in bed, whereas Jack had to be fully dressed, hair and beard combed, teeth cleaned. If he ever got out of Puddling, he’d have breakfast in bed for a week. Maybe a month.
“This is very irregular. Oh, well. I’ll just go upstairs and ask her to come down.”
Jack talked to himself all the time too, so he found no fault with Mrs. Grace’s musings. He strained to see around the corner of the couch. The housekeeper walked right by the parlor door and clumped up the stairs. When she got directly overhead, she gave an alarmed shriek that should have woken the dead. Still, Nicola didn’t move.
“Miss Nicola! Miss Nicola’s been kidnapped!”
Not the first thing Jack might have thought when he saw an undisturbed bed. He bolted from behind the couch and rushed into the kitchen, grabbing a piece of dry toast from the rack. One could wish for butter or jam, but he didn’t have time.
A quick look out the kitchen window showed him it was snowing again, and his footprints would be obvious in the drift. He’d have to run around to the front of the house, go down the path to the street. Any number of people would see him.
Where could he hide? He’d missed his chance to the front door, but had been afraid Mrs. Grace would look straight down the stairs in her panic and catch him fleeing.
Trap door. Cellar. Maybe this cottage had one like his. He gave silent thanks for Mrs. Feather’s industrious inspiration, and for the several hours he’d spent underground at Primrose Cottage making crooked shelves. To his delight, he saw an iron ring in the far corner, threw it open and didn’t bother with trying to climb down the ladder. Pulling the door down behind him as quietly as he could, he jumped to the floor, jolting his left knee a little.
Despite all his recent walking, perhaps he was not as flexible as he thought.
A narrow window let in a shaft of frosty gray light, so Jack did not feel like Jonah inside the whale. Shelves very like the ones he’d just built, only straighter, lined one wall, but he was crushed to discover no gleaming jars of fruit or crocks of pickles for his breakfast, not that he wanted to eat marinated cucumbers at this hour. All that bounty was upstairs in the pantry.
It may as well have been up on the moon. This cellar was even cleaner and emptier than his own. How long could he lie low down here? And lying low was no exaggeration—he could barely stand upright.
If he didn’t turn up at work soon, he’d be breaking the bonds of his Service. Would they think he’d run away? Did people ever fight their incarceration in Puddling? Jack had volunteered to give up his freedom—unwisely, said his stomach—but others were placed here under duress. Families had stashed their difficult relatives here since the beginning of the century.
The main road was closed off by a tall wooden gate, and if one did not know what to look for, would never suspect the wider world was just outside. On the other end of the village, Honeywell Lane petered out at the stream, which, because of its icy condition, would be crossable for the first time in years. The hills beckoned beyond, but when one was kept short of money and rations, how far could one get?
Mrs. Feather was probably looking under the bed for him right now, a pot of gruel on the range.
She wouldn’t be surprised to find an unmussed bed in the morning—Jack frequently sat up in his plain little parlor, falling asleep in his armchair in the wee hours if he was lucky. He’d watched the fire ebb more nights than not since he’d arrived in Puddling, sometimes seeing the sun rise in the winter sky over the Cotswold Hills. Listening for the mourning doves, the farm carts rolling on Honeywell Lane, the flap of laundry on his neighbor’s line.
He listened now, failing to detect any movement above his head. No floorboards squeaking, no thrills of joy that the mistress was simply sleeping on the sofa. In a minute or two, Mrs. Grace would discover Nicola in the parlor, and he would be stuck here for the rest of the day, waiting to hear good-byes and the kitchen door latch at the end of Mrs. Grace’s shift unless he could miraculously transport himself out of the cottage.
He was in trouble for sure.
No food. No warmth. No logical plan of escape. He was much too large to boost himself up and squeeze out the single window. It was clear he had not been thinking strategically when he plunged into the cellar. The panic of discovery had overwhelmed him. Not that he cared what happened to him. No, it was Nicola’s reputation that would suffer if a man was found in her house before breakfast. She might get thrown out of Puddling too, and Jack was relatively certain she didn’t wish to leave yet.
Unless she had a better offer. Was he ready to ask her to marry him?
He sat on a ladder tread, trying to contemplate his fate. After a few minutes of his mind being as untouched as the snow on the path outside, there was activity in the kitchen above. He heard snatches of conversation, all one-sided, of course. Jack hoped Mrs. Grace in her confusion wouldn’t notice the missing piece of toast.