Thirteen

The following morning, Kate crossed a sea.

Their journey had begun early, following an old stone bridge from Anglesey to the smaller Holy Island, where the packet awaited. There she and Evan and Susan bade farewell to John Coachman and to Jerome and Hattie. Hattie stamped her hooves, which were still perfectly shod. Jerome looked at Kate with soft, reproachful eyes that made her heart twist. When the chestnuts turned about, Kate felt as though she were saying good-bye to her family all over again.

But there was so much to see that she set aside the hollowness of parting. The packet in Holyhead Port was swift and solid, a good-sized barque laden with freight and mail as well as passengers. When Kate flapped a glove at Lady Alix, the saucy little mare followed her aboard readily enough.

“You’re meant to be my horse,” Evan grumbled as he led Her Ladyship to a stall belowdecks. Susan, too, went to the quarters below.

Kate found a spot at the bow and looked and looked. The sea was different every time she crossed it, and never had she departed from Wales. The coast was crumbled into rough islands of varying sizes. Anglesey led to the smaller Holyhead, and South Stack, home of a lighthouse that beckoned ships toward safe crossing. The rugged low bump of North Stack, the scatter of the Skerries—low islets that caught so many ships unawares, a lighthouse was placed there too. Seabirds filled the air with their buzzing calls, flying up and landing in great waves of pale wings like air-flung rippling cloth.

When someone took up a place at the bow beside her, she knew who it was without looking. She knew the size and shape of Evan, the feel of having him stand next to her.

“How can you leave it?” she asked. “How can you go to Greece?”

How can you leave me, just when we found each other again?

Friends didn’t ask that sort of question. Friends weren’t that selfish. So she pretended she wondered only about the sea.

“I’m going where I’m needed,” he said. “I want to be needed.”

“What a blessing for you. I want to be needed less.” What was a life like with no burdens? With mischievous horses, and children who always had clothing the right size, and land that either was yours or wasn’t, and none of this in-between fear?

She swallowed hard and tipped her face to the breeze. At sea, there was no need for such thoughts. The sea was neither here nor there, and so it was home to no worries.

“Perhaps we ought both to be careful what we wish for,” he said drily.

“Perhaps we ought.” The dark blue sea grappled with the boat, the waves hungry tongues. “I would never tell you to count your blessings—”

“God forbid.”

“—but I ought to count mine. I’ll get to see my children again soon.” She looked up at him, squinting into the blue wash of the sky. “And you will too.”

She had left alone, but she would not return so. Evan stood beside her, a figurehead at the bow, watching the water ruffle past.

* * *

The ferry ride took only a few hours, but Kate wished it had been far longer. As soon as Evan could rent a carriage and team in Dublin, he saddled Lady Alix and rode postilion beside the women. Another ninety miles lay between them and their destination, and it would take five days, at least, to cover.

Susan had become nauseated during the ferry crossing, and a jouncing carriage ride over rough roads turned her positively green. When they stopped at an inn that night, Kate saw Susan to their chamber with warm broth and a compress for her head.

“You shouldn’t, my lady,” the maid said in feeble protest.

“You can pay me wages for this hour,” said Kate. “If that makes you feel better. Now, drink the broth.”

Susan had grown up as part of the Whelan House staff. Kate was ten years her senior and remembered her as a child of no more than seven, kicking her legs on a tall kitchen chair as she peeled fruits. Later she’d been a housemaid. For the past five years, she’d been Kate’s lady’s maid. Sometimes Kate’s only companion—not that Kate confided in her.

She didn’t confide in anyone. Except Evan.

Maybe.

She pulled back the coverlet for Susan, unpinned the young woman’s fine hair, and bathed her face with a cool cloth. It was like taking care of Nora, should Nora, at the great age of twelve, let Kate tend to her.

Of a sudden, she missed her children so much that she had to sit, heavily, and let the bed creak beneath the weight of her wish to be with them.

“Sometimes it’s nice,” Kate realized, “to have someone need me.” But Susan was asleep before she spoke the words.

Now Kate was awake alone, with no one to help her undress and nowhere to sleep unless she could shove Susan over. She ought to have thought of this first, rather than getting caught up being the rogue housekeeper.

Maybe she could ask Evan to…

Evan could… No. She arrested the thought as soon as it came into her mind. It would be unkind to ask him for such help.

Even though he had already seen her bare. Even though she thought he would like to see her so again. Even though part of her craved that closeness, that intimate, trusting touch again.

A larger part was terrified of further change. Now that she had got her friend back, how could she lose him again? She couldn’t ask him to be a lover, then a friend, then a maid, and not send him—and herself—screaming across Ireland.

No. She would find the innkeeper’s wife and get help from that quarter.

And so she did, creeping from her chamber quietly so as not to wake Susan. When she found the innkeeper’s wife, a stout and sonsy woman with wide hips, bosom, and smile, Kate inquired as to the possibility of getting a different room for herself.

“I can’t,” said that lady with apology. “My man’s just after giving the last chamber to another couple. If you’d need some extra blankets, that I can give you. You’d make a lovely pallet on the floor.”

Kate agreed to this, then submitted to being unlaced by the innkeeper’s wife in the inn’s private parlor. Best to stay out of her chamber; Susan needed to sleep off her illness. Kate depended on her help when they traveled—and maybe, a bit on her chaperonage.

Thanking her hostess with a silver coin, Kate wrapped one of the blankets about her shoulders to cover the sagging back of her gown. Then she gathered the rest of the blankets and made for the back stairs so she could creep back to her chamber unseen by other guests.

The stairs used by servants and family, narrow and steep, were of rude boards and whitewashed walls. Kate slid along the wall, feeling her way up in the near dark. A window cut high into the stairwell provided a touch of moonlight, enough to limn the edges of the stairs.

A spark was struck a few steps above, and a glow came into being. It moved in a sinuous line, and Kate realized someone in the stairwell had lit a smoke.

“I beg your pardon,” she said. “I must get by.”

The glow paused in midair. “Kate?”

She tilted her head. “Evan?”

“Yes.” By the light of the moon and the tiny ember, she saw him shift to one side. Making room for her to pass? Or maybe to sit beside him. “Nice outfit you’ve adopted. I’m not saying the cut of it will set a wild new fashion, but it does look comfortable.”

“It serves the purpose.” She hitched her extra blankets to one hip. “Why are you smoking in here, not outside or in the taproom? You are behaving like a naughty stableboy.”

“Not a bad description, though I’m a few decades too old to be called a stableboy without my dignity being wounded. I didn’t feel like having company. And it was raining like the devil outside.”

She could hear drops still pattering the window above them. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

“No, no. Stay with me. You’re a sight different than the company of strangers.” He waved the cheroot at her. “Want to share my smoke?”

She hesitated, aware of her gown and stays gaping open, shielded only by a rough blanket. Oughtn’t she return to her chamber at once?

No, this was a chance to bridge the persistent distance between them. To return to the way things had been, when they drank whisky and shot targets and smoked and talked until all hours of the night.

She mounted the steps to sit at his side, settling the extra blankets on the stair above them. “I can’t recall the last time I smoked.”

There was hardly room for them to sit side by side on the stair. Her hip bumped his, cushioned by the bunched skirts and blankets wrapped about her. Still, she felt the closeness as a bolt that prickled—electric, from scalp to toes. It left her warm and tingling, her hands uncertain but eager.

She took the cheroot from him. It was thin, long as her hand from middle finger to wrist, and sharply scented of clove and ash. She held it between trembling fingers.

Evan bumped her shoulder with his own. “How do you manage to look like a lady while wrapped in a blanket, smoking a cheroot, sitting on servants’ stairs? Such a talent ought to be taught in every finishing school.”

“How do you know that’s not where I practiced it? Along with all my other charming, delicate qualities.” She snorted, then brought the cheroot to her lips. Inhaling lightly, no more than a sip, she took in the hot, fragrant smoke. It seemed to scour her lungs, a feeling both bracing and disagreeable. “I’ve no idea. What do you mean by lady?”

“Am I going to get in trouble?”

“Not if you give a good answer.”

“No pressure, eh? A lady, then, is someone worthy of respect.”

This, she had to think about. “I’d hope you knew, Mr. Antiquarian, that appearance has nothing to do with worth.”

“Indeed I do know it.”

She tried to blow a smoke ring, but only breathed a cloud of fog. “Look, I’m a dragon.” She handed him back the cheroot.

“You make a fine gray smoke,” he said. “May I ask why you’re wearing a blanket?”

“You may. Though you ought to know I’m wearing a lot of other things too.” She explained about Susan’s illness and exhausted slumber, and the assistance of the innkeeper’s wife.

“I find myself enlightened,” he said. “Nothing could make more sense than you sneaking about dressed in blankets.”

“I thought you’d come to see it my way.”

“Without doubt. I would say I could have helped you, but I think that would be a bad idea.”

“It is the sort of thing friends might do.” She hesitated. “But not when they are male and female.”

“And that matters, does it?” He passed her the cheroot.

“Yes. I think it does.” She drew on the thin cigar again, aware that her lips were where his had been. The smoke was hot in her lungs, not pleasant. But she wanted it all the more for it being unpleasant. “Do you remember the first time you smoked?”

“Oh, yes.” Her eyes were dazzled by the glow at the end of the cheroot, and she could hardly make out his form. But somehow she could tell he was smiling as he explained, “I was about eight years old. I took a cigar from one of the grooms. Coughed till I thought I’d never get my breath again.”

“And then?”

“I did get my breath back, and I took another smoke. I couldn’t have a groom laughing at me, could I?”

When she returned the cheroot, he held it at arm’s length. “Nasty habit. I never got accustomed to it. But it’s a way to end the day, like having a drink.”

“Or talking to a friend.”

“That too. When did you first smoke? Were you a stubborn child like I was?”

“I was, yes. I think grooms must be the tempter for us all. Jonah and I told our father’s head groom, Lombard, we wanted to try it. Actually, we wanted a plug of tobacco to chew, because that’s what Lombard did. Still does. He is always chewing at something and spitting.

“He had some sort of cigar he said he wasn’t going to smoke, so he gave it to us. Told us to take a great big breath.” Not the most delightful of her childhood memories. “I coughed. Jonah vomited. I was proud of holding my own better than him.”

“Both of us sickened by it, yet here we sit with a cheroot.” He blew a smoke ring, then another.

“Here we do,” she said. “It’s a kind of mastery, isn’t it? I won’t let a scrap of dried-up leaf tell me it’s stronger than I am.”

Again, he handed it to her. She burned her fingers taking it, and she hissed. He licked his fingers and pinched it out.

They went into moonlit darkness again. “So many firsts,” she said. “I don’t often think of them. But as there was a first cheroot, there was a first time you and I met. A first time I saw you. A first time I beat you at target shooting.”

“That last one never happened,” he said. “I don’t remember it.”

“Oh, please. I beat everyone at target shooting.”

Did she remember the first time she’d met Evan? It might have been as soon as she reached the Whelan lands as Con’s bride. “Were you staying at Whelan House when Con came back with me? Is that when we met?”

“It was. He’d gone to England to buy horses, and back he came not only with three mares, but also with a bride.”

“The human sort of broodmare,” she mused. “What did you think of me?”

He hesitated. “I don’t remember.”

“Yes, you do. Why won’t you say? Is it horrid?” The notion was lowering. She could remember only dimly a time she had not known Evan, and the whole time of knowing him was wrapped in thinking him one of the people nearest her heart.

“Does it matter at this distance in time?” His voice was quiet.

“In a way, no, because it was so long ago. But I’m curious. Our first meeting was the foundation for what we’ve become since.” Whatever that was. Had been. Would be.

“Well, then.” He shifted on the step, the wood creaking beneath him. “I thought you were far too young to be anyone’s wife. You were pretty and bright and your hair was all of a curl, as though you’d just been tumbled.”

“I probably had been,” she murmured. Con had had his own idea of how best to pass a lengthy journey. It was a notion with which she had enthusiastically agreed, and which had resulted in Nora being born scarcely ten months after their wedding day.

“I assumed at first that you were some decorative little English miss. My mistake. For then you marched forward with strides like a racehorse—”

“That is hardly flattering.”

“—and shook my hand, hard, as though we were already friends of long standing. You told me you were glad to meet me, and I felt you meant it. After that, I knew you were capable of infinite surprises, and I wanted nothing more than to be your friend in return.”

As though his words had unlocked a hidden part of her mind, the memory spilled forth. It had been a day of mixed rain and sun, a day of pleasures on the road and worry about the destination.

“I remember that day,” she said. “I was so afraid of you. I knew you were a part of Con’s family, and if you did not like me, he would be sorry he had wed me.”

Thump. Evan had leaned his head against the wall of the stairwell. “He was never sorry he had wed you.”

“I did my best to be a good wife.” A thankless task at times, a delightful one at others. “I think I was.”

“And a good friend?”

“That was often easier.” She clutched at the edges of the blanket. The wool was coarse, itching at the back of her neck where it wrapped about her. “I’m glad I didn’t come between you and Con. I’d never have wanted that.”

He was silent for several breaths before speaking. “I know you wouldn’t have. You always meant well. You still do.”

The words were so matter-of-fact that they seemed to well from some heartfelt belief in their truth. She blinked hard, but her eyes filled against sweet pain. “Evan, damn you. Why are you always so kind?”

“I’m not kind, really. But I mean well too, blanket queen.” He took her arm and helped her to her feet. “Are you set for the night now?”

She gathered the spare blankets. “Yes, I’ve everything I need to make a—oh.”

“What is it?” As they mounted the stairs, he leaned to open the narrow window and tossed the cheroot end out.

“It’s my hair. I need someone to comb it.”

“Can’t you do it yourself?”

“I can, but it’s so long, and it gets tangled after a day in pins. I’ll probably shriek when I reach a tangle, and then I’ll wake Susan. She’s only just got to sleep after a day of vomiting.”

“Ah, a day of vomiting. You make the ferry sound like a pleasure cruise. Let’s go back across the Irish Sea tomorrow.”

“Poor Susan. She’d leave my service.”

He opened the door at the top of the back stairs, letting her pass through before him. “All right, countess. I’ll comb out your hair. We can’t have anyone shrieking or vomiting or waking.”

Kate gave an affronted laugh. “You make me sound like an infant.”

He smiled, booting the door shut. “My chamber’s here. Come inside. Only as a friend, now,” he warned. “Don’t get any notion that I’m going to follow you to your bedchamber and try to seduce you before a sick maid.”

“You’re not even going to try? You’re giving up too easily.”

This was the wrong thing to say. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he said, shutting his chamber door behind them and taking up a horn-handled comb from the washstand. “I shouldn’t have said what I did either. Stand here, and keep the blanket around you.”

The line between teasing and truth was fine, yet the gulf between what they’d been and what they’d become was wide. Was one side, one way, better than the other? She did not know. She only knew she’d rather have him around than not.

And not because he did a damned fine job combing out her hair.

His chamber was a twin to hers: clean and spare, with a fireplace at one side. Furnished simply with a bed, a privacy screen, a table, and a washstand. Evan had seated himself on the end of the bed, which was high enough for her to stand before him, back to him, and let him pluck the pins from her hair. It fell in a heavy spill, tugging at her scalp.

“I’ve been told,” she said for the sake of saying something, “that my hair is like a tangle of wire.”

“Your hair is what it is, the way it grows from your head, and that makes it perfectly fine.” He drew the comb through from the end, separating tangles into curls, before starting up higher. “As a matter of fact, I have seen tangled wire. It did not in the slightest remind me of your hair.”

His touch was gentle and sure. For long moments he worked at her hair, using the fine teeth of the comb and sometimes his fingers when a knot proved recalcitrant.

Never had her hair seemed so weighty. Never had a simple everyday act seemed so intimate. It was completely innocent, one friend helping another through an awkward moment. Yet her slipping bodice and stays abraded her nipples, reminding her of his touch, of how easy it would be for him to touch her again. The comb on her scalp was a wake of sensation, a spot seldom touched that would now belong in memory to him.

By the time he finished, her lips were dry, and all she could think of was turning toward him and into his arms.

“There. It’s done without a single shriek.” Before she could turn, he was up and off the bed. First stowing the comb within a shaving kit, then returning to her with a fistful of her discarded hairpins.

She swallowed, striving for a normal tone. “How do you know how to comb out curly hair?”

“I suppose…I thought about it a great deal, and did what seemed right.”

He wasn’t looking at her, and she took the chance to trace him with eager eyes. His dark wavy hair, his expressive brows. The mouth that had kissed her, had spoken such lovely words of comfort. Had joked and laughed over the years, had sworn he forgave her for the wrongs she had done him.

“You are a fine man,” she said.

“Glad I’ve fooled you.” He shifted a few items on the small table. “Off with you now, before you ruin my reputation. We’ll be on the road early tomorrow. Got your pins? Here, and don’t forget your blankets.”

For a moment, she thought of asking if she could stay in his room. Just to stay. Just for company and comfort.

But she wanted more than that, and the realization was a precipice over which she did not dare to peer.

She gathered the blankets. “Thank you.”

He bade her good night and saw her into the corridor. Then he closed the door without making sure she reached her room.

The corridor was cold, even with a blanket of thick wool about her shoulders, and she ran back to her chamber quickly, knowing she would not sleep for all the questions in her mind.