Through the Smoke (7 page)

Lord Druridge slid off the horse and helped her down, at which point she forced her frozen feet to lead them through the small, fenced garden she tended for her family.

At the door, she stood aside and waved them in. Her unsteady legs wouldn’t carry her beyond the threshold for fear of what she might find.

Not quite yet…

The horses snorted and swished their tails, their breath misting in the morning air. That ugly storm had preceded one of the most beautiful dawns Rachel had ever seen. She watched the long yellow fingers of the sun crawl over the rooftops to the east, and murmured a silent prayer for her mother.

The village awakened as Rachel watched. She could smell bread baking not far away, hear the creak of wagon wheels, see vendors pushing their carts down the wet street.

Strange how life goes on even when the world is falling apart.…

She was about to turn and head inside when the door opened and the earl stepped out. He watched her for a few moments without speaking before glancing into the distance as if searching for what she saw.

Rachel didn’t break the silence until he met her eyes. Then she squared her shoulders. She sensed he had something to say. “Is she dead?”

He looked behind them as though wishing someone else would come through the door. When no one emerged, he said, “I’m sorry, Miss McTavish. She died moments before we arrived. There was nothing Jacobsen could do.”

Pain stabbed Rachel in the chest, feeling like a shard of broken glass. Unwilling to let the man she blamed for all three deaths in her family witness her grief or delight in her suffering, she sucked in a gulp of air to help her bear it. If only he had sent the doctor earlier, instead of forcing her to bargain for her mother’s life, perhaps her mum would have been spared.

If only she had capitulated earlier…

Damming such thoughts, Rachel forced back the questions and accusations that whirled in her brain like the eddies of a deep pool. She wouldn’t think of “what if” now. There would be time enough for regret in all the long years she would live without her mother’s comforting presence.

She felt the earl’s hand on her arm and jerked away. “You can take your doctor home, my lord,” she said, amazed by the formal, steely quality of her own voice. “I will not trouble you further.”

Numbly, she removed his cloak and held it out. When he hesitated, she dropped it in the snow and turned, walking past him to meet her eight-year-old brother at the door.

“Rachel, she’s gone,” Geordie cried, his young shoulders shaking under the weight of his grief.

Rachel stooped and took him into her arms. “I know, love, but there’s always me. I’m not going anywhere, now am I? I will take good care of you; see if I don’t.”

Mrs. Tate came to the door, her face a vision of weary sadness. “Rachel, child! It’s sorry I am. But she’s better off now. She’s finally at peace.”

Faced with Mrs. Tate’s sympathy, Rachel feared she would succumb to the tears that burned behind her eyes. She longed to release them, to let her grief escape before she simply blew apart. But she felt the earl watching and could still picture the inscrutable expression he wore.

“Thank you for tending her,” she heard herself say. “I will dress her for burial.” Keeping one arm around Geordie, she straightened and led him into the house, past Mrs. Tate to where their mother lay, white as the chalky cliffs of Dover.

Dr. Jacobsen was washing his hands at the basin. “You have my condolences, Miss McTavish. And, if it makes you feel any better, I doubt I could have saved her even if I had nursed her from the beginning.” He gave her a kind smile. “I’m afraid little can be done for cholera victims. You must burn her clothes and her bedding to minimize the risk to you and the young lad here. And I suggest you have the burial as soon as possible, today if you can and no later than tomorrow.”

Cholera. So it was as Rachel had feared.

“Thank you for coming,” she murmured mechanically. “I will take care of her. I will take care of everything.”

Dr. Jacobsen shot Rachel a curious look. “Where is your father?”

“Dead.”

“Have you no other family?”

Rachel ruffled little Geordie’s hair. “We have only each other now. But that is all we need. I will see to it.”

The scrape of Lord Druridge’s boots sounded on the floor behind her. She didn’t turn. She continued to study Jillian’s serene face, to gaze upon the loveliness of her good mother for the last time.

The earl spoke quietly to Mrs. Tate, who said something amid her tears that Rachel couldn’t make out. Then he left, and Rachel didn’t know how much longer it was before Dr. Jacobsen followed. She knew only the quiet sobs of her brother, and the silent screams that were entirely her own.

Chapter 4

The next day was one of the longest and most painful of Rachel’s life. Having buried two members of her family in the previous three years, she stumbled through the motions all over again, feeling as empty as a hollow log and just as separated from her life’s sustenance. This time, the person she laid to rest was her mother—her strength, her wisdom, her support.

Standing in the church graveyard less than a mile from her home, she stared down at the top of Geordie’s head while the village blacksmith and Mrs. Tate’s son shoveled frozen clods of dirt over her mother’s coffin. Besides the twenty or so mourners, friends and neighbors and fellow church members, headstones surrounded them like a second audience, a congregation of the deceased gathered to welcome a new soul into their ranks.

As the metal of each shovel struck and scraped the ground, Rachel wondered how she and her brother would survive. Her mother had tried to persuade her to marry. Now she almost wished she’d taken Jillian’s advice and accepted the blacksmith’s apprentice. A clean-cut, sturdy young man only a few years older than herself, he had a vocation, one far less humble than her own father’s, and would certainly have helped her finish raising Geordie.

But she couldn’t stomach the thought of marrying someone she didn’t love, any more than she could fathom sharing his bed. Somehow she and Geordie would get through the ensuing years, and they would do it without trading her freedom for bread on their table. The bookshop earned a modest living when her mother stood at the helm. Rachel had much to learn about making it a success, but she was more prepared after helping out as much as
she had. She would not fail her brother, or her mother’s memory, by letting go of the shop and their dream of educating the miners.

The blacksmith’s apprentice was one of the first to clasp her hand after the funeral. Shy and rather awkward, he mumbled some words of consolation.

Rachel nodded, but she couldn’t help noticing that his touch struck no chord in her. He was a fine, upstanding member of the community—honest, hardworking and not unhandsome. And he had professed his love for her on more than one occasion. Her mother had called him besotted. Yet it was Lord Druridge’s touch, the touch of her
enemy
, that had warmed Rachel’s blood and caused an odd awakening.

Rachel sighed. Surely she was the most perverse girl ever to walk the streets of Creswell. But that realization came as no surprise. She had always been different. While the other miners’ daughters had cooked and cleaned or worked in the mine, she’d had her nose in a book. Instead of plying her needle, she was teaching herself French or penmanship. Instead of gossiping with the village girls, she was gossiped about. Too educated for a poor miner’s daughter and too poor to be anything else, she had never felt more like a misfit than now, when the one person who had understood her best and loved her most was gone.

While the other mourners gathered in small, murmuring clumps, Mrs. Tate put her arm around Rachel. There was so much difference in their respective heights that her arm curled around Rachel’s waist instead of her shoulders, but Rachel was grateful for the comfort all the same.

The ground had been too hard to dig very deep. As a result, filling her mother’s grave had taken little time. But what Rachel noticed, more than anything else, was the lack of color. Black on white predominated: the clothing of the mourners against the snow that covered everything else, except the gray, marble headstones that peeked through the crusty mantle.

Her mother deserved flowers—a bouquet of the red roses that were her favorite, Rachel thought. Instead, a wreath of evergreen boughs adorned Jillian’s grave, along with a few dried flowers from Mrs. Tate’s cellar.

The last of those who lingered filed past, squeezing Rachel’s hand as she stood in the clean, wintry air, smiling and nodding and fighting to keep her composure. Life would go on. For Geordie’s sake she had to be strong.

The sun slipped behind the roof of the church, throwing her in the shadow of the building’s ancient stone walls and causing her to shiver against the sudden chill. Geordie cried softly at her side, but now that she felt free to express her own grief, she couldn’t shed a tear. She just wanted to go home. Her mother wasn’t the cold, lifeless corpse they had just buried. Jillian was gone. No more would—

The sight of two riders on horseback caught Rachel’s eye, jerking her from her thoughts. They were well beyond the church, among the elm trees that lined the property, but they seemed to be watching her. Both figures were tall and broad-shouldered and rode fine, mahogany-colored horses. The proud bearing of one gave his identity away even though, at such a distance, Rachel couldn’t make out his features.

It was the Earl of Druridge. Why had he come? And where was his fancy carriage?

The villagers hadn’t noticed him, or Rachel would have heard their rumblings. Had he, and whoever was with him, just arrived?

She glanced at the retreating backs of the last of her friends and acquaintances as they wandered off toward their homes or businesses, some on foot, others on horseback. Mrs. Tate patted her waist, making cooing noises, and Geordie clung to her. The moment seemed frozen in time as she stared across the distance toward the man who appeared to regard her as openly as she did him.

“Shall I stay with ye tonight, luv?”

Mrs. Tate’s question hung in the air with the mist from her breath. She gave Rachel’s arm a shake, but even then Rachel was too preoccupied to answer.

“Who are they?” Mrs. Tate asked, following her gaze. “Do we know them?”

Rachel forced herself to look away from the earl and his companion and down at Geordie. “Let’s go home.”

“No!” Geordie’s bottom lip trembled anew. “I won’t go. I won’t leave Mum.
I won’t!
”

Kneeling, Rachel groomed her voice into a caress. “Mum’s not here, Geordie. She will live forever in our hearts, but she’s not here.”

A quick glance told Rachel the earl hadn’t moved. Mrs. Tate was eyeing him curiously. “It’s cold, and time to go,” she insisted.

“I don’t care. I want Mum, Rachel. I don’t want you!”

For the first time since the service ended, Rachel thought she might cry. “I know I am a poor substitute, little Geordie. But it will be all right. I promise you that. You will be safe with me. Now, be a good lad.”

She began to drag her brother away, but he resisted every step, digging his heels into the snow and refusing to make the journey easy. Mrs. Tate tried to entice him with the promise of a slice of hot custard once they reached home, but eventually she buried her face in her hands and cried with him. Only Rachel remained steadfast in her purpose. She couldn’t bear to think of her mother beneath the cold dirt and didn’t want to see the grave any longer. Not only that but she longed to get as far away as possible from the earl and his uncanny, all-seeing eyes. He had no right to witness her pain or to make a mockery of her mother’s funeral.

With gritted teeth, she fought her own emotions as much as Geordie’s obstinacy. “We
are
going home, and we are doing it
right now
!”

Mrs. Tate blinked in surprise, took Geordie’s other hand, and began to pull him along. “Come on, lad,” she sniffed. “A nice ’ot meal an’ we will all feel better, that I warrant ye. There is nothin’ more to be done ’ere, nothin’ at all.”

Feeling the earl’s eyes on her back like two hot coals, Rachel dared not look his way again as they moved through the cemetery and cleared the tall gates that faced the street. She’d told Lord Druridge all she knew about her father’s involvement in the fire. He had no more claim on her, and she wanted nothing more to do with him. Her family, or the remnants of it, no longer depended on the mine for their weekly pay. Like everyone else, she owed her rents to the earl’s solicitor, but other than that she was one of the rare, blessed individuals in Creswell who could pass each day without thought of him—and she planned to do exactly that. Geordie would never work in Lord Druridge’s hideous colliery. She would see the bookshop make sufficient profit that he would never need to resort to such work. “Just see if I don’t,” she muttered.

“What?” A winded Mrs. Tate paused to look up at her.

“Nothing.” Unable to stop herself, Rachel checked over her shoulder. She half-expected the earl to be gone, but he wasn’t. He’d moved forward,
alone, and dismounted at her mother’s grave. While she watched, he took a single yellow rose from inside his coat and laid it on the small mound.