Lily (10 page)

“Not if we take her back tonight! I’ve got three men already; I can get more, but not in time. If you’ll help us, Dev, we could get her back right out from under their noses. I can sail her to France tonight, they’d never even—”

“Let them have the bleeding sloop! For God’s sake, it’s time you quit this foolishness.”

Clay’s jaw jutted stubbornly. “No. I won’t let her die this way, floated docilely off to London by a bunch of incompetent government bastards. Christ, they’ll probably keep her and turn her into one of their own cutters! I’ll sink her myself before I’ll let them do it!”

“Oh, for—”

“God damn it, if you won’t help me, I’ll go by myself.”

Devon never doubted that he meant it. But suddenly he had an idea. “All right, I’ll come.” He shrugged off the hand Clay slapped jubilantly against his shoulder. “But on one condition. If we get the damned ship back, you must promise you’ll sell her or sink her or whatever the bloody hell you like, but one way or another you’ll give her up for good this time. Is it a bargain?”

Clay looked floored; for a moment he couldn’t speak. When he could, it was only to curse.

“Do you agree or not?” Devon interrupted, his face and voice ice cold with resolve.

“Damn you,” Clay said for the third or fourth time. “All right,” he finally sputtered, and allowed himself to be turned around and urged back down the path.

“Good!” Devon pounded him on the back and hustled him along, grinning with anticipation.

Open-mouthed, Lily watched them go. Not once did the master look back. Clearly he had forgotten her existence. She felt cold again, and furious and humiliated. She was tired of feeling humiliated. Following behind slowly, she tried to see the humorous side of the situation, but from her current perspective there wasn’t one. Especially when, later that evening, Mrs. Howe made her go without supper for leaving her work.

P
RAYERS WERE OVER; IT
was time to go to bed. But Lily hung back when Lowdy paused to wait for her in the hall. “You go up,” she told her, “I want to finish this mending. I’ll be along in a minute.” But when Mrs. Howe ordered her to bed half an hour later, she still couldn’t face the thought of lying down on that hot, lumpy mattress and listening to Lowdy’s lusty snores for an hour or more. She was tired, but a storm was coming and she felt restless and keyed up.

She bade the housekeeper a brusque good night, but instead of continuing upstairs when she reached the first-floor landing, she moved silently down the pitch-dark hall to the master’s library. The French doors were locked. She unlocked them and slipped outside.

The wind was fierce; she caught her cap just before it blew off and stuffed it into the pocket of her gown. Clouds flew past the moon in ragged tatters, fitfully darkening the way and causing her to stumble twice on the path that circled the house to the front drive. She would walk to the main gate and back, she decided; after that, maybe she could sleep.

Halfway to the highroad, though, she began to have second thoughts. Thunder rumbled everywhere, and now the wind was blowing with a rough, indifferent violence that she’d never experienced before. Needle-sharp raindrops stung her face intermittently, warning that the storm that had threatened all evening was finally imminent. But it was the very wildness that drew her on, frightened and thrilled at the same time, farther into the groaning black roar of the night. She pulled her hair out of her face and held it down in one fist; but it scarcely mattered because now the darkness was all but absolute, and seeing the way had become an exercise in futility. The storm’s awesome power brought a realization of her personal insignificance, and of the cosmic unimportance of all the things she filled her life with—not a brand new insight, and not altogether unpleasant, for under it lay the safe, prosaic certainty that in half an hour she would be snug in her bed.

The first flare of lightning startled her; in its blue-white blaze she saw the gates ahead, closer than she’d expected. A practical, apprehensive part of her said to turn back now and go home; the stubborn part said the gates were the goal and she would turn back when she reached them. The rain had stopped, for now, but the savage wind still blew her skirts around her legs like sails on a storm-trapped schooner.

She arrived at the gates. As always, they were open, their delicate iron grilles more for ornament than protection nowadays. She reached out to touch one of the crumbling brick-and-mortar posts, both as a personal acknowledgment that she’d reached her goal and for something solid to hold on to. There was no warning; the sound of hoofbeats was muffled completely by the wailing wind. A horse screamed; hooves scrabbled in the air scant inches from her face; a rider fell. She shrank back against the cold stone in utter darkness, petrified, expecting to be mauled or trampled in the next moment. But the wind dropped, and in the relative quiet the clatter of hooves sounded behind her, diminishing. In the next second a flash of lightning illuminated the writhing form of a man on the ground, not six feet from where she stood. She shuffled toward him in the sudden dark, hands outstretched. Her ankles touched him at the moment lightning flared again. It was the master.

“Get the horse! The horse, damn it! Stop him!” He thought he saw the white flash of petticoats move away from him in the blackness. He pressed his soaked handkerchief to the gash in his shoulder again and growled into the wind, teeth gritted, praying he wouldn’t pass out. The pain lessened as he lay there; he became conscious that the fall hadn’t broken any bones, that he was in no worse shape than he’d been half a minute ago. Which wasn’t saying a great deal. The gate post was behind him—he saw it in a fleeting interval of light—and he shoved himself backward until he was leaning against it. Somewhere to his right he heard his horse nicker. Had the girl found him or had he come back on his own?

Lily had no experience with frightened, lathered stallions. She found Devon’s by serendipity: she walked into him. It startled them both, and the first thing her astonished hand reached out for in reflex was his bridle. He backed up angrily, but somehow she held on, and after a moment he quieted enough to let her lead him in what she hoped was the direction of his owner.

She found him eventually. He was still on the ground, and she was afraid he’d injured himself in the fall. “Are you hurt?”

“No. Go away.”

She stood over him, holding his horse’s reins. “But if you’re hurt—”

“I’m all right.”

“Let me—”

“Go!”

Instead she dropped to her knees in front of him. “You need help, you’re—” She broke off when she saw, in an instant’s burst of lightning, the dark stain of blood that had soaked through the entire front of his jacket. She made an anguished sound, more moan than scream, and Devon dropped his head back against the gate post and closed his eyes. So much for getting home unnoticed.

“Help me up.”

“I’ll get someone to—”

“Damn it! Don’t tell me again what you’ll do. Help me to stand up—that’s the order. Have you got it?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

“Good.”

Crouching, she half clasped him around the middle and tried to lift him. A low noise in his throat told her she was hurting him. It worked better when he put one arm around her shoulders. They struggled to their feet together, and then she had to lean all her weight against him to keep him upright; otherwise he would have toppled over on her like a ladder. They stood that way for a minute or two, his back to the gate post, her body pressed against him. The wet-leather smell of his buckskin jacket was pungent in her nostrils.

“The horse is gone.”

Lily looked behind her. “He must’ve gone to the sta—” A string of curses cut her off; their vileness stunned her. He was furious.

Then the rain came.

In seconds they were drenched to the skin. Huge, pelting drops struck them with the force of hurled stones, plastering clothes to skin, hair to faces. The wind ripped and tore and howled, battering at them with a ferocity that drove them to cling together, protecting their faces against each other’s bodies. Thunder cracked and roared; lightning flared incessantly. Lily felt Devon’s hand at the back of her neck, warm on her wet skin, holding her steady. After a wild, endless time, when speaking above the wind and water was impossible, the rain stopped—as abruptly as it had started. But they both knew it would begin again, probably soon.

She pulled away, out of his arms. He was only a black blur against the lighter blackness behind him. “Please, won’t you let me go for help?” she asked as calmly as possible, pushing her dripping hair out of her eyes. He just shook his head, and she smothered a few curses of her own. “Can you walk?”

“Of course I can walk.”

“Then we should go now, before it starts again. Put your arm around me. Am I allowed to ask where you’re hurt?”

He only grunted at first, annoyed by her sarcastic tone, but finally bit out a curt, “Shoulder.” She moved to his right, and he got his good arm around her. At least the girl was tall, he thought as they set off at a snail’s pace down the lane toward the house, about half a mile away.

Minutes later they had to stop, and again a dozen times after that when the storm recommenced or when his weakness forced him to rest, beside whatever inadequate shelter they happened to be near. His helplessness appalled him; his way of confronting it was to ignore it, and it was Lily who had to call for their frequent pauses. He wouldn’t sit down, for fear of not being able to get up again, so she had to prop him against the trunk of the nearest sturdy tree, holding him upright with her full weight against him, while he recovered enough strength to walk on. In a second-long burst of lightning she saw that the wet front of her dress was stained pink now from the contact; she wondered how much blood he had lost, if he would faint soon in the middle of the road, and what she would do if he did.

If she hadn’t understood by now that he wanted secrecy, she would have when they drew close to the path that led to his steward’s cottage. “Let me fetch Mr. Cobb,” she pleaded. “He can help you better than I can.”

“No.” Uttering the word required all his strength. He stopped walking and clung to her with both arms, battling a new dizziness that frightened him. It passed, slowly, and when it was gone he felt her slender, small-boned body shaking. “Are you all right?” he murmured, his face buried in her wet hair.

“Yes, of course.” She straightened her spine and got a better grip around his waist, willing strength into her weak legs.

If she could have seen his face in the darkness then, she’d have been surprised to note a flicker of a smile. Her tone reminded him of his; it held a mirror up to his own bravado. What a pair they made. “I’m relieved to hear it. Let’s not have a race, though; I don’t quite feel up to it.”

She couldn’t help smiling herself at that. “Another time, perhaps,” she said, echoing his dryness.

Eventually they reached the house. They got in through the same door by which Lily had left it earlier. The first two floors of the house were unoccupied, so there was no need for silence. But the sudden stillness after the deafening fury of the storm was uncanny; every footfall, each creaky floorboard, sounded like an explosion, and they climbed the long staircase to the second floor as quietly as possible.

In his room, Devon collapsed at the foot of the bed and leaned against the post. In a fog of pain and fatigue, he listened to the scratch of flint and steel and watched as Lily lit two candles at his bedside. In the sudden soft light, he thought she looked like a half-drowned cat. But he must look even worse, because when she turned, holding one candle aloft, her flushed face paled and her eyes widened with alarm.

“God save us,” she breathed. He looked like a corpse. His eyes, the only color in his face, were haggard and lifeless, maybe already feverish. The bloodless lips were set against his pain in a tight grimace, and his huddled body, so dogged and stubborn before, looked blunted now, almost insensate. The buckskin jacket was black from his blood, the shirt under it bright red. “Please,” she begged, “for God’s sake, you must let me fetch a doctor.”

She thought he wouldn’t respond, that his numbed gaze would be her answer. But finally he roused himself to speak—slowly, conserving his strength. “I think it looks worse than it is. It wouldn’t have been my choice, but I’m afraid you’re the only one who can help me. I’m sorry.”

She stared at him for a few more silent seconds. “Right, then,” she said with a briskness she was far from feeling, and set the candle down. Her hands fumbling at his coat were as gentle as she could make them, but his closed eyes and drawn breath made it plain that everything she did hurt him. She got his soaked shirt unbuttoned and started to ease it over his shoulders. He didn’t move and made no sound. The sight of his face made her stop, frightened, and turn nearly as white as he. “Are there any scissors in this room?”

“Desk. Drawer.”

She got them. Sitting beside him, she cut away the bloody cloth in a long line from his cuff to his collar, and the shirt fell off him. Painlessly. They both sagged a little from relief.

Lily put a hand out to brush the damp hair back from his forehead. “All right?” she murmured. He nodded slowly.

His wound was a gash—from a knife? a cutlass?—in the fleshy part of his shoulder, above the collarbone. It went deep, but, from what she could see, only flesh and muscle had been injured. If the weapon had struck a few inches to the right, it would have severed his jugular vein.

She found the pitcher and basin on his washstand and carried them back to the bed with an armful of towels. While his fingers clenched again around the wooden post, she soaked away the blood and cleaned the wound as best she could. All that kept her from swooning was willpower, and the knowledge that there really was no one else to help him. He would despise her—she would despise herself—if she passed out at his feet because his wound was ugly and his blood sickened her. And when she came to, she would only have to begin again. So she gritted her teeth and clamped down on the panic and nausea churning in her stomach, and did her work as cleanly and efficiently as she could.