In Total Surrender (18 page)

He closed his eyes. He’d make the driver rich once they got back to London.

A questioning stomp came from above.

He set his pistol down and pulled Phoebe from behind him. He looked her over, quickly running hands over her limbs. She stared back, blankly, in obvious stupefaction. Assuredly she would have bruises, but she wasn’t in physical peril.

Andreas gave two thumps to the roof, and the vehicle continued its breakneck pace, the scenery whirling by the open door, the sounds unmuffled.

“Are you hurt anywhere?”

She blinked a few times, then awareness started to return. She sat up and ran a shaky hand through her hair, looking through the open cavity of the doorway. “No. I don’t think so.”

He nodded tightly. He couldn’t think of anything outside of the present. Other things, like the bloodcurdling revenge he would wreak after this, were unimportant right now. “The driver will take us somewhere safe.” Or the horses would give out, but he kept that information to himself.

Suddenly her hands were upon his cheeks. “Are you hurt?” She pulled the edge of a blanket across his forehead. He realized he had broken into a sweat.

He swatted the blanket away. “I’m fine. Give me space for a moment.”

Why he felt the need to tack on the last words, which were almost courteous, was immediately rejected from his mind. She moved back.

He gritted his teeth and thrust his palm against his right leg, snapping the bone and its shell back into place. Fire licked straight up his throat. She stared at him, mouth hanging open.

“Oh my God.” She moved toward him. “You need—”

“I need nothing,” he said hoarsely. He looked away from her eyes. They were far too concerned for him to hold. He extended his leg, then pressed it against the floor. It hurt like hell. Mathias would tsk for sure. Damn tinkers.

“Here, put it here.” She switched back to sitting next to him and motioned to the bench across from them. Feelings warred within him—he wasn’t sure which he preferred, her sitting far away or close enough to reassuringly touch.

“No. Leave it alone.” He let comforting pain block out the insanity of such thoughts.

The horses slowed, their huffing audible through the open door. Andreas hoped it was because the danger was well behind them and not that the animals were foaming and ready to keel over. They continued along at a slow pace. He’d make sure the horses and their owner received their due as well. A debt to be repaid.

Phoebe didn’t say anything, but her shoulder pressed to his, and she didn’t return to her seat.

The carriage pulled to a stop, and the driver hopped down, the movement shaking the vehicle. Since there was no longer a door, he appeared directly in view, looking much worse than he had previously—but all body parts seemed to be in place.

“Sir. There is a small farm ahead.”

He gave a sharp nod to the man and helped Phoebe dismount. His leg ached. He ignored it as best as he could.

Dogs were barking loudly, and a man hurried out of the house, a rifle across his arms, as they climbed the path.

It didn’t take more than one look at Phoebe Pace though for them to be admitted and fussed over. The man’s wife was a mothering type, who hurried Phoebe upstairs. The driver was tending the horses and carriage, leaving Andreas with the farmer and the story they had concocted.

“We were set upon by highwaymen. My wife and I will leave in the morning, after the horses rest and we make repairs. You will be well compensated,” he said stiffly.

The man whacked him on the shoulder. “No worries, my good man. No need to worry about a sneak attack. The dogs will alert us if anyone sets foot on the property. Gets lonely out here. The wife delights in a bit of company, and it sounds as if you have an interesting tale to tell.”

Indeed, Phoebe seemed well able to entertain everyone with stories that evening, holding the man, his wife, and the driver in rapt attention. Andreas watched her work whatever magic she effortlessly possessed. It was a good thing too, as she would touch him every so often during the conversation, as if they were a real pair. He had difficulty keeping track of anything but the warmth of her hands.

Sooner than later, though, they found themselves in a bedroom, alone. Their driver, Charlie, as Phoebe had called him during dinner, was bunking down with the horses, determined to baby the “fine beasts” until the next switch. It had started raining at some point during dinner, but the man had firmly maintained his desire to stay the night outside, saying the barn was dry and well made.

“Perhaps we might purchase those horses for Charlie,” Phoebe Pace said casually, as she reached into her case—both articles had somehow remained undamaged and had held their strapping during the fray. “I think he would like that.”

Andreas pushed back the drape, watching the drops splat upon the glass, some splotches hanging, dripping slowly bit by bit, while others joined together to streak down.

He hated the rain. Even now.

“It will be done,” he said. It was a good suggestion.

“Thank you.” Her voice was warm.

He didn’t know why he felt so . . . strange. Raw.

He watched the slippery drops. As a young child, rain had been a cleansing beast. Sneaking out into the night, feeling the drops on his face. Washing away blood and tears. Burrowing under his covers afterward, dry and cleansed. But as a growing boy, rain had come to signify something far more fearsome. Such weather never meant well when you lived on the streets. Rain meant shivering through the night in wet clothing. Rain meant sickness and death. He’d seen people drown in the gutters. Lying down to sleep, never to wake.

Rain signified something he had lost. That cleansing innocence. No, not lost. He had never really had it.

A hand touched his shoulder. “Are you well?”

He let the drape drop. “I am.”

“I think you would say that even if you were laid upon Death’s arms,” she said, lightly touching his elbow as her hand descended.

He turned, and her hand drew along his forearm. “I am fine.” He twisted his arm under so that he had hers clasped in his hand instead. “Death would welcome me.”

“And you? Would you welcome her embrace?”

It would be so easy to pull her to him, leaning as she was. Tug her, taste her, tumble her to the bed.

“Perhaps.”

He stepped forward, into her, but as always she didn’t cede ground, and his leg pressed between hers.

She winced, and that dark thread, ever present, slivered through. Narrowing his eyes, he grabbed both of her forearms and pressed her to the bed. The edges of her half-loosened hair spread out on the counterpane, the majority still bound beneath her trapped figure. Her eyes went wide, and she immediately scrambled so that her hands propped behind her to keep her half-upright on the creaking surface. He knelt swiftly between her legs. It was hard with his leg still dully throbbing, but he didn’t waste time concentrating on his own pain. He lifted the hem of her dress, then pushed the layers up.

She gave a little gasp as if disbelieving what he was doing.

He pulled the lamp nearer and found what he sought. He narrowed his eyes at her.

“It is nothing,” she said, trying to push her skirts back down. “Honestly, Mr. Merrick. You thrust your leg back together as if you did so every day. A few scrapes are nothing.”

He didn’t respond. He touched the edges of her stockings where long, angry gashes cut straight through. Slashed on something in the carriage fray obviously. “Foolish woman.”

Cornelius had just gained himself three additional broken bones. Andreas added it to the tally he would inflict before he killed the man. It was one thing to try to kill Andreas—that was the way of their world—and he usually treated such attempts with apathy. It was another thing entirely to try and kill
her,
someone under his direct protection.

He reached for his bag and pulled it toward him. Finding the scissors and salve.

“They are simple scrapes,” she said, trying to cover herself back up. “I had worse as a child.”

He pushed her hands away and used the scissors to cut a large square in the already slashed netting. “They can become infected.”

“Well, yes. But it is not a true worry.”

He looked up at her face finally. At cheeks lit a brilliant, bright red. The urge to shout in triumph at her embarrassment was oddly muted. He might have been more inclined if he wasn’t feeling so out of sorts himself. Under her skirts and touching her limbs. Feeling the echoes of her hands trying to comfort him.

“Infection is a powerful worry.” He put the scissors away and wiped his hands on a cloth, then uncapped the small pot and dipped a finger into the green salve.

She leaned forward, half-unbound hair brushing his shoulder, skirts spilling around his arms. All of it encasing him in . . . her. “What is that? I’ve never seen an ointment that looks or smells like that.” Her curiosity was a vibrant thing, always overcoming any weaker emotions.

He didn’t answer—wasn’t sure he was capable of it. He touched his finger to her leg and heard her intake of air.

“Does it hurt?” he asked without looking up. He didn’t think he could risk it.

“No-o,” she stuttered. “But you are under my skirts and touching my bare skin at the moment, Mr. Merrick. Perhaps a bit of quickened breath is called for?”

He paused the movements of his hand and narrowed his focus to the wounds on her leg instead of giving in to the urge to touch anything else.

“If you prefer, I can have the farmer’s wife finish this.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment, and he refused to look up. “No. I don’t want anyone else to do it.”

He finished dressing the wounds without saying anything else. He had half a mind to investigate other shadowed areas under her stockings, but that desire did not spring from making sure she was unhurt.

He finished and pulled her skirts back down, his head bent to the task. A small hand rested on his hair for a moment, then pulled around to his cheek. He froze in place.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He didn’t move for long moments, eyes on the exposed wrist connected to the hand on his cheek. The harsh pitter-patter of the rain the only sound in the otherwise still tableau.

It was awkward and terribly intimate. There was something rather soothing about being inside a room with her when the rain was pounding outside.

“May I tend to your wounds as well?”

And look at his leg?

He pulled away from her violently and threw the items back into his bag. “There is no need.”

He would not—could not—indulge in such foolish thoughts. Such ridiculous desires.

He darted a quick look to see her reaction anyway. Her lower lip was pulled between her teeth as she reached for her bag, ostensibly to change. But there was no privacy to be had in the confines of the single room. And there was no explanation for separation that would satisfy the farming couple—not without pretending to be far starchier than Phoebe Pace had been at supper. She had touched him far too frequently while speaking to the others, as if such touches were normal.

“Don’t change your clothing,” he said. “As a precaution.”

In case they needed to make a quick escape.

She nodded and looked the faintest bit relieved. He had to fight a sudden smile. He kept his lips flat—it would likely make her expire to see one on his face, and he could not delude himself into thinking he wanted her anything but alive.

She unbound her hair from the simple twist that she had created that morning and brushed it out with long strokes of her brush. Having nowhere else to go, and not feeling the urge to stare broodingly through the windowpane, he simply watched her. The whole mess of it fell halfway down her back. How had she gotten all of that into all those ringlets and curls weeks, months, ago? He supposed her maid had done it.

He far preferred the simpler styles she had worn since moving into the hell. The other more popular styles she had worn before, with all of the whirligigs and height-defying coils, just didn’t look right on her.

She separated her hair into three sections, overlapping them repeatedly until they formed one long, braided rope.

Her fingers lingered on the end of it, playing, unwilling to let the actions be at an end. They sat staring at each other for long moments.

“We can share,” she blurted out. “The bed. There is plenty of room.”

There was barely enough room for two bodies if they were pressed up next to each other.

“No. I will sleep on the floor.”

She stepped toward him. “But you are hurt. And I am tended. I should sleep on the floor.”

He gave her a look and tossed a blanket and pillow on the floor.

She bit her lip. She always left little indentations behind when she did that. “Really, we can share.”

He lowered himself to the floor stiffly. He could use his leg as a real excuse for the stiffness of his movements for once. “Good night, Miss Pace.” He turned over as she climbed into the bed.

Not two minutes later he saw her lean over the edge.