An Untitled Lady (39 page)

Maddie’s skin seemed to stretch toward him, trying to taste his smell through the thick summer air. Then shame overcame her, the heat of it burning away any faint scent. She’d rejected him, and here he was, the generous prince.

“My condolences. Wasn’t sure of my welcome.”

Bamford’s grip on Maddie tightened. “You aren’t welcome. No magistrate would be.”

“Not a committee man anymore. They booted me out before the meeting.” He looked steadily at Bamford, only rarely flicking a glance at her. She didn’t dare look at him, or she’d dissolve into tears right here on the street. She was the biggest idiot in Manchester. In Christendom.

They stood awkward a long minute, Maddie alternately frozen in shame and melting in regret, Bamford the protective bantam rooster puffed up and breathing through his nose, Nash stiff in Navy stance as if awaiting orders. Then he snapped his hand to his vest pocket.

“I forgot. Here.” He held out a letter, folded and franked.

“What is it?” Bamford reached for it, but Maddie was quicker. She snatched at it, but Nash held on, held her, a second before letting go. After releasing his grip, he seemed to have trouble controlling his stance, as if the ground were swelling like the sea. His hands chopped up and down, punctuating his words.

“For you. Mailed Sunday, to Deacon’s, but it missed you. Honored it you’d read it, at your leisure, of course.”

Were Bamford not tugging at her, she’d drop to the ground and rip it open right now. Instead, she pressed her lips together and nodded once, just as she’d learned in school. She allowed Bamford to lead her away from the man who still held her battered heart. She didn’t deserve a second chance.

She shouldn’t even hope for it.

* * * *

Frustration boxing his ears, Nash stepped into the street to let Maddie and Bamford pass. A man didn’t push, especially not at a wounded lady. She had his letter now, with everything he wanted to say in order, not tumbled and scattered like his thoughts and words were now.

What an idiot he’d sounded, honking his condolences at her, accosting her with his missive. Still, all he wanted to do was grab her, toss her in the coach and drive away for good.

He could so easily reach past the bantam man, wrap his hand around her elbow, and pull her to him. Then he could inhale her warm scent, now hidden behind the tracings of soot in the summer-heavy air. Then he could feel the throb of her pulse under the thin fabric of that familiar blue dress. Then he might taste the ruddy plumpness of her lower lip, which she worried at when she was upset. Who had made her so? He had.

Half an hour ago, he’d sat in the dark of the coach watching her pass into the cemetery, her back straight as royalty, and called himself content to see her hale and safe. More fool him.

He fisted his hands and thrust them into the pockets of his wedding jacket. Had she noticed? She glanced at him as she passed. Beneath the white on the pinches of her nose, and the gray-blue of the circles under her eyes, she seemed calm, like a mild sea under strong winds.

Something about her was magnetic. Even her shuttered gaze pulled him in. Even her backside, walking away from him. If she turned around, if she looked back, just a glance, he would breathe again. With every step, she tore at the line holding his heart to his body, taking it with her.

Fanciful rubbish, he chided himself, pressing a fist against his chest. Half a block, a block, another. She didn’t turn around. And he just stood there.

He should return the coach to Deacon at the Inn. She might turn around. He should follow her, slowly, in the coach. The blood fled his clenched hands, whitening his knuckles. He needed to punch something. In a pocket of quiet on the street, he heard the crunch and tumble of the gravedigger hard at work.

Nash turned and entered the cemetery. Angled across its square of land, the solid gray of the church spoke of generations unbroken. The soot draped like icing down the stones changed it to a gingerbread chapel, for a patchwork marriage, basted together and easily rent.

Staring into the grave as the digger rhythmically filled it in, Maddie’s father stood alone. Moore hadn’t aged well. Bamford said he’d been a handsome lad, and the wife as beautiful as her daughters. Moore’s hair had fled, his stubbled cheeks sagged unevenly, even his tall frame canted at the wrong angle. What could be called feisty in Kitty, in Moore was simple boorishness.

How could Maddie have chosen him? Nash ached to drop the man to the ground, kick him into the new-turned dirt. How dare the man steal his wife from him? He stepped closer, crooked his arm, and took a deep breath.

The tang of the clay earth stung his throat, and brought him back to his senses. The man was burying his child. Moore’s shoulders bowed with the weight of it. His arms wrapped around his middle. His face, usually as guarded as Maddie’s, today could not contain all his pain, flashing pale to red to patchy pale again.

His poor Maddie. She had known so much death, but at a distance. Did she feel Kitty’s wounds as her own? What if this were Deacon’s grave? Nash choked on his breath, and coughed.

Moore looked at him, and then at the gravestone. “Come to see the fruits of thy labor?”

“I told them not to do it.”

“Have to carve a new one, they say. Kitty so different than Richard.”

Nash stepped away from the man. He slid his palms over the edge of the stone as he walked to its smooth backside. “Tell them to use the other side.”

Moore’s mouth turned down like a cupped hand. “Might be.”

“I’m sorry.” Nash slapped his fist against the top of the cool stone.

“If not this, summat else. She shone too bright. They had to snuff her out afore long.”

“It’s consolation, though, having her sister still?”

“Sister?” Moore frowned, his round, blue-green gaze clouded, and then cleared. “That’s a rum ’un. Kitty like as wanted a sister, and happen I played along. It did make my girl happy.” He shrugged, oversized shoulders in an undersized linen shirt.

The man was stone blind. Nash’s hands tightened, vises gripping the top of the granite. “How can you say that? They’re a matched set.”

“Not a bit of it.” Nash could read in the ease of the man’s jaw, the still stare in his eyes. Moore believed it. No man so blind as one who will not see.

The stone’s edge cut into Nash’s palms. She’d given her heart to that? “I gave her up. For you.”

“Never asked ye.”

How could he not see her value? Persistence and spirit, and generosity—Lord knew—thrift, kindness. Radiant from her soul. Not lost, never wandering.

The screaming ache in his fingers startled some sense into Nash. He was tugging at the stone, did he think to lift it out of the clay and knock the blasted man’s head straight? Besting her idiot father wouldn’t ease Maddie’s troubles; precious little had been solved at St. Peter’s field on Monday. How manly would it be to knock a grieving man to the ground, no matter how much he might need it? Nash loosened his grip, shoving his hands into his pockets without inspecting for damage.

The digger tamped the top of the new mound with his shovel again, waiting for a coin. Nash tossed him a bit of silver. He caught it and smiled. His teeth were silver.

Moore stretched his shoulders, but they dropped to the same hunch. “Good work, grave digging. Might try it.”

The man was a fool. He was no competition.

Nash blinked, slow, as if the air had turned to water. Maddie was free. Hope gut-punched him. He might yet reel her back in.

He’d already set the lure, the letter, but he’d thought that was just to get them back on speaking terms. He should have aimed higher. Since when did he haggle for the small prize? Certainly not in the Navy, and not in trade.

He might have it all, have her back, make a family. Gain his heart back.

Would she ever allow him back into hers? After everything he’d said, and everything he’d not said. His bull-headedness about family, when really that was all he wanted, too.

Everyone—especially him—had tried to fit her into a cage of their own design. And in her goodness she tried to fit, every time. She wasn’t a countess, nor a radical, nor a viscount’s whore. She was Maddie, and wasn’t that enough? Plenty enough for him. But how could he convince her? More than words, he needed to act. Now.

He walked beside Moore on the path toward the street, and the rest of their lives. “Headed home alone?”

“How I like it.”

“Where did the woman go?”

“Sam took her. North?”

There was nothing for her in the North. Nash was sure he had taken her west, to Shaftsbury Castle.

Perfect.

{ 44 }

Late-afternoon light shimmered amber against the walls of the last coaching inn before Middleton. In the quiet shade of the lawn outside, Maddie tried to smile as Mr. Bamford trod carefully toward her carrying two mugs of brew.

“Warm ale and ginger. Best thing in the world after a wet day.”

Sharp and sweet, it tickled her nose and eased a fraction of the tightness in her chest. “I’m sorry. I’ve cried nearly the whole way.”

“Least you’re a leaker and not a wailer. We’d have needed more beer to keep you in voice.” He tapped her mug with his, and then downed half his stout. “Still mean to go straight on to the castle? Won’t get there afore dark.”

She nodded, swishing another mouthful of the brew in her mouth before swallowing, like a child. If it grew too late she might take the forest path and sleep in the stable, truly reverting to her childhood. “You’re too kind to stop and drink with me when your home is just over the hill.”

“Nay, I’m already home. Hear the shuttles singing in the looms in the cottages there? Settles my heart, as the drink settles my belly.”

Maddie felt far from settled. Her feet throbbed, her face stung, her insides ached. A good night’s rest would set her body right, but it would also revive the snarling harpies of her fears. She found she preferred this weary numbness.

“I’ve ruined everything.” She sighed. “My father—”

He slapped the bench. “Your Da’s got nothing for you, lass. It breaks his heart just to look at you. Get ye gone, and live a right life. What says your man?”

“He won’t have me back, either.” Nash had given her the power to choose, and she had chosen against him. How could she have been so blind?

“Your man? The moon-eyed one at the churchyard?”

She frowned into her beer. He couldn’t have the right of it. Nash had almond-shaped eyes.

Bamford leaned back, watching her over his tankard. “Would you take him back, after all this?”

“He told me to wait, just until after the meeting. Why didn’t I?”

“Is that it?” He set the tankard on the bench beside him and patted her knee. “Here, let me tell you my little Minna’s trial on Monday.”

“Was she hurt?” At the thought that she was keeping him from tending to his injured wife, Maddie’s tears dried instantly.

“Nay, be easy. But we were separated in the fracas, as you might imagine. She ran to a house nearby, where they took her in until the worst was past. Then she made her way up to Shude Hill and home.”

He tapped on the edge of the tankard. “But that’s not the story. The first Middleton man she met, she asked after me. Can you believe, he said I was dead! Well, you can imagine her state. She’s a sentimental thing.”

“She loves you.”

“So she does. Here, then, she’s wandering out the town, a river of tears much as you, and she meets another Middleton bloke, and he says no, I’m not dead, but in the infirmary. Just as she’s deciding to return and look for my broken body, she hears I’m in prison. Then that I’m already on the road home.”

“What did she do?”

“She decided she couldn’t help me that day were I dead, or in jail, or even in hospital. She’s not much of a nurse. She could give comfort to our little girl. So she turned her feet for home. When she saw me on the road at Harperhey, not fifteen minutes later, she cried again, but this time with joy.”

“You’re so lucky.”

He tipped his head back to drain his mug, and stood. “I hear your man took a like journey that day. A rough swell. Could have jostled his thinking a bit, you never know.”

Something clicked in Maddie’s mind, puzzle pieces locking into place. That coat, the one that she’d pretended smelled of Nash, with buttons like his. It was his coat. Nash had seen Kitty die.

What if he’d thought it was her? Had he come to rescue her, or to cut her down? No, he’d been booted out before then, he’d said. Why?

Had he truly chosen her over his own good standing? She wanted to believe it. But hadn’t wanting to believe the best of others gotten her into such trouble in the first place? She frowned into the tankard, resting between her hands on her lap. What could she trust, a man’s words, his actions—or her own heart?

A touch on her shoulder knocked her out of spiraling reverie. “I bid you good day, ma’am, and godspeed.” Bamford winked. “Something in your pocket?”

Maddie’s hand went to the spot. Nash’s letter. Hope fluttered, and then went still. What good could a letter do? Hadn’t muddled correspondence gotten them all into this fix? She put no stock in letters anymore.

She pushed the vellum deeper into her pocket. It tilted, the corner pricking her palm, as the contents shifted under it. His buttons. She’d cut them off the ruined coat, thinking to give them to Moore to sell, and forgotten them. They belonged to Nash; mislaid, like the letter.

She pulled it out. Marred by creases, dirt, and pocket lint, the seal on the back broke only when she cracked it. Half a page of Nash’s vertical hand. She’d once thought of it as skeletons dancing.

I did not tell you directly about the money. I did not stop Shaftsbury from burning the letters. I did not tell you that you are my other and better self. For all this, I am well and truly sorry.

You think it best to leave me, and I will let you go, but know this: You are my world. How could I ever stop thinking of you, worrying about you, loving you?

Now that I see how important family is to you, I find I must try to reconcile with my own. My father wasn’t the monster I painted him as a child, but it’s too late to mend that rent now. I have much to regret, but some things I might set right. I have earned back Shaftsbury’s dowry, and I will settle the full amount on you. You shall always have the means to live a simple life, come what may.

She had to stop reading to take this in. She was secure? Even as a merchant’s wife she hadn’t been completely free of that knot of fear that it all might fall to ruin. As the idea settled in, the knot unraveled, kink by kink. In its place she sensed a sort of peace.

With such funds, she might even start a school for girls without families. Plans started spinning about her mind. Perhaps she could work with one of the churches, and use a room. The need was so great right here. Why not stay?

It was just like Nash, to focus on the financials of the arrangement. Romantic, even, for him. She turned back to the letter.

Whatever you wish, I’ll agree to. All I wish is your happiness. And if it made you happy to reconsider your decision to leave, I would welcome it. For you, Madeline, my door is open, and always will be. I hope to see you pass through it one day.

I dream of it.

She had no room to breathe. The love she held in her heart for him spilled out, filling her limbs, filling her mind with a ginger-scented joy. She wanted to run all the way back to his house, to their house, and tell him. Touch him and taste him and lay with him.

Then the knot drew tight again. She’d lost that privilege on Monday afternoon. Hadn’t this letter been written before the reformers’ meeting? She had marched; everyone would know it. She must be as poison to the minds of Nash’s customers and friends. What must the Heywoods think?

Still, he had loved her once—really loved her—and only days ago. Was his love a tender bud, crushed under the clogs of militancy, or a sturdy shoot, bent but springing back whole? He’d run through a melee to find her in St. Peter’s fields. There must be a chance.

The sultry air and quiet space seemed to show everything so clearly. She could not make her father love her. She could not recover the love lost with the deaths of her mother and the Wetherbys, and now Kitty. Nash could not replace that. Might she could accept what he could give her, a love that might grow, that might multiply?

She’d thought him bull-headed and rigid, but she’d put just as many conditions on her affections, hadn’t she?

He said he dreamed of her.

She tapped the vellum against her lip. Might a letter do some good? She would write him a mirror of his words. Make him feel as beautiful—as beloved—as his vision of her did her. Tell him she dreamed of him, too. Every night.

She had to get to Deacon’s. He would frank another letter, even for hand delivery tonight, if she could get it done by quarter of eight. Maddie drained the last of the ale, catching a piece of ginger between her teeth. Handing the mug back to the serving girl, she set off as fast as her worn feet and sorely tried heart would take her.