As Luck Would Have It (31 page)

Over the last few hours she had attempted to broach the subject of her continuing work for the Prince Regent several times.
Her
arguments had been all that was rational and sensible. Alex had responded with a spiteful obstinacy that made her want to scream. She was not to risk herself any further, and that, it would seem, was that.

She didn’t actually need his permission. In fact, at the moment, she didn’t much care about his opinion on the issue one way or the other. It was his high-handedness that infuriated her. No one cared to be ordered about, particularly herself. Particularly by
him
.

Fuming, she watched as Alex tested the door to the cabin. It swung open on squeaking hinges.

“You see,” he said in a jovial voice that made her want to slam the door shut on his fingers. “Your skills are not required.”

She glared at his back. She’d been forced to do that all day, as the path through the woods had become too narrow for them to walk side by side, and it wasn’t at all satisfying.

“The Prince Regent disagrees,” she retorted, moving past him to go inside.

“I suggest we let the matter drop.”

“You began it.” She headed straight for the meager kitchen and began searching for candles, too tired and too worried to care they were bickering like children.

“Well, now I’m finishing it.”

“Fine,” she snapped.

“Excellent.”

A few minutes passed while he watched her moving restlessly about the kitchen. “What are you looking for?”

“Candles, I can’t find them,” she answered distractedly.

“Probably there aren’t any.”

She didn’t bother looking at him, but continued her search with a kind of manic desperation. “Of course there are. Why wouldn’t there be candles? Everyone has candles.”

“Apparently not the everyone who owns this cottage.”

“Don’t be obtuse. There have to be candles, have to be….”

“For God’s sake, Sophie, you’ve searched every drawer and cupboard in this place. Surely it hasn’t escaped your notice that our little abode is in serious disrepair. There’s no food, no bed, a broken fireplace, and what is here is covered in dust. I doubt anyone else has been inside this place in years.”

“Well, we’ll just have to use the fireplace, surely—”

“It’s in shambles. We’d be smoked out. Will you sit down?”

“No! I want—”

“Candles. Yes, I know.” He gave up and watched her open a cupboard she had searched twice already. She reached up and patted the recesses of the shelves, groping blindly with her hand. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes held a wild glint to them. She looked positively furious. Positively beautiful, actually, but he wasn’t in the mood to pay compliments.

“Of the multitude of disasters we are currently facing, you’re in a tizzy over some missing tapers? Good Lord, you have a skewed sense of priorities. Why do you need them so badly?”

She had difficulty answering. The panic that had been nibbling away at her nerves as evening progressed was beginning
to take increasingly large bites. The sun was almost down, and in a few moments it would be dark, completely black. And Alex was right, there were no candles, no fireplace. Nothing to hold the night at bay.

There would be no light.

The certain knowledge of that sent an icy coldness prickling along her skin and sinking into her muscles. It squeezed her chest until her heart pumped too hard and her lungs seemed barely to work at all. It crept into her mind, gleefully pushing aside reason and courage.

In a daze, she looked past Alex to the window.

“There’s no moon,” she whispered. “It’s cloudy and there’s no moon out.”

His brow knit in confusion and concern. “Why does that matter?”

“I…”

He walked around a counter to cup her face in his hands. He’d been wrong, he realized. It wasn’t anger that lit her face. It was something else entirely. “Sophie?”

“It’ll be dark. Completely dark.”

“Yes,” he said slowly, carefully. “It’s better that way. We’ll be harder to…” His voice trailed off as she shook her head vehemently.

His thumb traced a gentle path along her jaw. “What is it? What are you afraid of, sweetheart? Is it the dark?”

“I…” For a brief moment, shame was nearly as powerful as the fear. She wished it would overwhelm her entirely. Humiliation would be worlds better than this slowly creeping madness. But with each passing second, the light in the room grew dimmer. And simple fear quickly stepped aside for terror.

“Sophie?”

“Yes,” she admitted in a mortified whisper. “Yes, the dark. I can’t…I can’t…things happen.”

“What? What happens, Sophie?”

“Things…”

Death. Death happened in the dark.

When her eyes filled with tears, Alex scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the window. Questions would do her no good now. Later he would ask them. Later he would find the source of her pain.

And do everything he could to kill it.

“Here now, love. Look at the sunset. It’s dipped below the clouds now. See the way the light passes through the trees? When I was a very little boy, my mother would take me for walks in the evening. When we passed through light like that, she would tell me we were touching the fingers of God. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper, but it was enough.

“Take a good look, Sophie. Hold the picture in your mind. Can you do that?”

Her nod was jerky against his shoulder.

“Good, now close your eyes and—”

“No! I can’t! I have to watch. I have to see.”

“Watch for what, sweet?”

She shook her head, but he had a terrible suspicion he already knew the answer. “All right, I’ll watch. How’s that? I’ll watch over us to night, I promise. Now close your eyes. There’s a girl.”

He sat down against the far wall, settling her in his lap.

“You won’t fall asleep?” Her voice was mumbled against his chest but he heard the fear, and the hope. And it broke his heart.

“No, love, I promise. I won’t fall asleep.”

Good to his word, Alex kept guard throughout the night.

He held her while she trembled, stroked her hair and rubbed gentle circles along her back. He spoke to her of the sun that would fill the forest just outside the door, of long golden summer days and the soft blue light of winter evenings. Anything and everything he could think of to ease a terror he didn’t understand.

When the first rays of light broke across the horizon he
whispered for her to open her eyes. Sophie took one look, sighed raggedly and closed her eyes again. Alex laid them both down and let himself follow her into sleep.

The sun was high into the sky when Sophie woke. She felt stiff, groggy, and miserably ashamed.

“How are you feeling?”

One look at Alex standing over her added a generous heaping of guilt. His clothes were rumpled, his hair a mess, and there were circles under his beautiful green eyes. Because of her.

“I’m fine,” she mumbled. “Did you sleep at all?”

“I did, yes.” He sat down beside her and pulled a hanker-chief out of his pocket. “Blackberries,” he supplied. “I found a patch almost outside our front door.”

Though her system was still reeling from the nightmare of last night, Sophie accepted a few of the juicy black berries. She hadn’t had a meal in over a day.

“Won’t you have some?” she asked when he made no move to eat.

“I had my fill while I picked,” he explained. “Go ahead.”

Feeling uncomfortable under his watchful eye, she nonetheless ate every last berry and licked her fingers clean.

“There’s a bucket of rainwater outside if you like.”

She nodded and rose, avoiding looking him in the eye.

She took her time cleaning up, letting the sun warm her face, and settle her mind and body. She’d spent the night in a man’s arms. Alex’s arms. She wasn’t at all certain how she felt about that—touched that he’d taken such care of her, amazed that his presence, his voice, his smell, the feel of his strength, had kept the worst of the fear at bay.

And she felt embarrassed. Mortified, really. She’d spent the whole of the night crying and shivering like a frightened child. What must he think of her?

He’d want an explanation, of course. He deserved one.

She tilted her head back and let the sun shine on her a moment longer then went back inside.

Alex watched her cross the small room to stand in front of him. He remained quiet as she took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

“It was dark when my mother and sister died,” she whispered.

He brought a hand up to rub the path of freckles arcoss her nose. She was still so pale, he thought. He’d seen the echoes of last night’s fear in her clear blue eyes before she’d closed them.

“You don’t have to explain. Not until you’re ready. I can wait.”

She let out an enormous sigh of relief and her lids fluttered open. “You don’t think me a coward?”

The hope in her voice broke his heart. “Sophie, of course not. How could you think that? How could anyone think that?”

“
I
think that. You saw me last night.” She laughed without humor. “I was fully mad, wasn’t I?”

“
No.
You were terrified. I’ve seen men in the grip of madness and men in the grip of panic. They may look similar, but I assure you, they are two very separate states.”

Sophie was momentarily taken aback by his reasoning. She had never thought of it that way. She had always viewed her terror as a kind of transient insanity, a weakness she couldn’t fight.

She looked up at him with gratitude, with longing.

If only he would agree to go with her to China. If only, for once in her life, she could just be lucky without having to pay for it later. If only Alex loved her and nothing else in the world mattered.

And when “if onlys” were pound notes she’d hire a team of lawyers and send her cousin to debtors’ prison on his way to hell.

At least the sun was shining, Sophie mused as she climbed over yet another fallen tree. They’d hiked across the countryside all
morning and well into midday. It was hard going, but she could only imagine how much worse the trek would be if they had foul weather rather than a clear fall day.

Alex seemed to have some idea of where they were headed, insisting that they were following some sort of trail after she pointed out that they were no longer traveling east. She tried in vain to detect any sign of an intentional path through the roots and brambles, but eventually abandoned the effort in favor of simply putting one foot in front of the other. He’d never given her any reason to doubt his navigational skills, and England was a fairly well-populated island. How long could they possibly travel before finding civilization?

Three hours later, Sophie was beginning to consider the possibility that they had left England behind—and were now well into Scotland—when they stumbled out of the thick woods and onto a road.

“Thank God,” she panted, letting her legs collapse ungracefully beneath her until her rump was settled comfortably— relatively speaking, of course—in the dirt. She very nearly leaned down and kissed the gravelly earth, she was so delighted to see it.

“You sound awfully pleased for someone sitting in the middle of a rural road with no help in sight,” Alex commented suspiciously.

“Just thrilled to be out of the woods,” she replied. And so very,
very
relieved that he had actually found a road. Even if it was in Scotland.

Alex didn’t look convinced, just gave a “hmm” and turned to take in their surroundings.

“Should we just wait here for someone to come by then?” she asked hopefully and was more disappointed than surprised when he shook his head. The road was in terrible shape, with large ruts and grass growing down the middle. Clearly, it wasn’t a major thoroughfare.

“We could be here for weeks,” Alex answered. “Which direction would you like to go?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Alex pointed down one end of the road and then the other. “North or south? Your choice.”

“My…? Don’t you know which way to go?”

“How on earth would I know that?”

Confused, she stared at him a moment before speaking.

“Well…you knew which way the road was.”

“I can follow a trail, not see across miles.”

“Oh.” She probably would have thought of that if she hadn’t been so tired. She looked down both directions and frowned thoughtfully. “It’s silly, of course, but this road looks familiar to me somehow. It can’t be the one to Haldon, I know, but….”

“You’re tired,” Alex said sympathetically taking a seat next to her. “It’s perfectly understandable—”

“Please don’t patronize me, Alex,” she said without any real anger. She simply hadn’t the energy for anything more than a token annoyance at his tone.

“My apologies. I’m tired as well.”

She sighed. “I’m sorry, too. We’ve been at each other’s throats for almost a full two days now, haven’t we?”

He gave her a small smile. “We haven’t argued the whole time,” he pointed out.

“Yes, and thank you for last night Alex, and this morning,” she said sincerely. “I should have thanked you earlier. I…what you did for me…”

“It was nothing.”

“It was something to me.”

He crouched down and squeezed one of her hands. “Then it was my pleasure. Now, pick a direction while we’re still in each other’s good graces. With any luck, we’ll find assistance before I learn firsthand if you know how to use that knife.”

“Oh, I’m a master,” she said baldly, knowing he wouldn’t believe it and finding a kind of perverse amusement in that. “Best you keep it with you, lest I feel compelled to prove my skill.”

“An excellent suggestion.” He held his hand out and helped her to her feet. “Shall we try the north route?”

“Oh, no, south. Definitely south.”

To England.

Twenty-five

S
ophie couldn’t shake the feeling that she had been on the road before. There were no definitive markers to either support or dispel the suspicion, but every now and then they would pass a meadow that looked familiar, or come upon a bend and she knew, just
knew
, there would be a steep incline on the other side.