Again, My Lord: A Twist Series Novel (7 page)

“Whose is this?”

“I don’t know. I did not see yours so I borrowed it from the peg in the foyer. I understand there is a party of means hiring the private parlor today. I suspect it belongs to one of them. But I don’t suppose she is adventuresome enough to strike out in the drenching rain at present.” A slight smile played about his lips.

She fastened the clasp. “Is that why you have taken dinner and breakfast in the taproom? Because the private parlor was already occupied?”

“No. I take my meals in the taproom because I enjoy it.”

The stiff-as-a-poker
I am Dare
marquess?

“You
enjoy
breakfasting with laborers and tradesmen?”

The pleasure slipped away from his handsome face. “Indeed I do. Come now. Professional counsel awaits you.”

She went before him out of the inn and they walked side by side along the village’s narrow main street.

“You think that my mind is unsettled, don’t you?” she said across the rain. “That I am mad. Or playing a jest upon you.”

“I think either is likely, yes,” he replied grimly.

“Then why are you helping me?”

“Because you asked.”

“You needn’t help. I will escape this village—
this day
—on my own.” She halted and he came to a standstill too. “If you will give me the direction of the doctor, I will call on him alone.”

“I don’t think that is wise.”

“I didn’t ask what you thought, did I?”

His eyes were quite dark behind the curtain of rain. “No, you didn’t.” His scarred jaw looked taut and handsome and wonderful. “His name is Appleby. His house is the last on the left, just before the blacksmith’s shop.” He bowed. “The best of luck to you, madam.”

Watching his back as he strode away, she gulped a full breath then continued down the street in the opposite direction from her only connection to reality.

Dr. Appleby’s house
was filled with vials of murky liquids and mysteriously labeled tins. The doctor himself was a thin man of seventy or eighty, with stark white hair and wise eyes. He examined her from head to toe.

“You say you are reliving the same day?” he said as he peered into her ears with a pointed tool. “Every day?”

“Yes.” She swiveled to face him. “Have you ever heard of such a thing before?”

“I have not, unfortunately. But your cranial structure is sound and everything else fit. You appear to be in good physical condition, Lady Holland, except perhaps suffering from moderate exhaustion.”

“Then, if I am simply going mad, have you any medicines to help me?” At least until she ensured that her son would remain safe with her family. Never with Richard.

The doctor regarded her thoughtfully. “I once cured a man who believed he was a seagull. He continually dug into the garbage. It was most inconvenient for his family and neighbors, as you can imagine.” He smiled.

“Doctor, please.”

“I apologize, Lady Holland,” he said gently. “I hoped to dispel your distress with a chuckle. I don’t believe anything is physically wrong with you, though I cannot entirely rule out a tumor within the brain, of course.”

“A tumor?” Her wretched voice quavered.

“Such a lesion might press upon the brain and cause hallucinations. But you say you have had no headaches or difficulties with your vision?”

“A small headache two days ago, but that was only because I was overly hungry. I have never had trouble with my vision.” Hallucinations, however, were another story, like seeing a stone statue glow. “Can hunger cause a person to see things that are not there?”

“It can indeed. Has that happened to you lately?”

“Yesterday, when I was famished.”

“Only yesterday? One hallucination?”

She nodded.

“Then the cause of it was most likely your hunger rather than a tumor, which would produce such visions regularly. As to your mental state, on such short acquaintance I cannot make a diagnosis beyond the unfortunate effects of exhaustion.” He stood up, went to a cabinet, and drew forth a bottle. “This could be of use to you now.” He dispensed some powder from the bottle into a small packet. “It should calm your humors sufficiently so that they can regain balance. Above all, however, I prescribe sleep.”

The doctor accepted her promise to send payment after her return home, and Calista departed his house and slogged down the muddy high street in the drizzle, her head a tangle of confusion and stomach a mess of panic. She
could not
go mad or die of a tumor. Not yet. Not until Harry was safe from his father.

At the far end of the village, no longer obscured by dark deluge, the church arose in a resolutely square mass above all the other buildings. Its tower was twice its height, the bell visible through the belfry apertures.

A man stood on the threshold of the neat little cottage flanking the church. He wore all black and watched her approach. As she neared, he opened an umbrella and came forward.

“Lady Holland, I presume?” he said.

“Yes?”

“How do you do? I am Reverend Abbot. Lord Dare suggested that you might pay me a call.”

“Did he?”

“Would you care to come inside?”

“I am all mud and rain, Reverend.” She gestured to her hem and shoes. “I don’t think—”

“The Lord cares nothing about mud,” he said with a smile. “Do come in and have a chat.”

She followed him into the church. Inside it was all mellow golden stone carved in the medieval style into florets and palm fronds and the occasional saintly visage where later reformers had not taken cudgels to them. The pews were of natural wood, gleaming in the light filtering through simple glass windows, and the choir benches in the chancel of a darker hue, but likewise plain.

She sat beside the vicar. He was roughly the age of her father when he had died. But where the old Earl of Chance had cold eyes and cheeks blotched from too much drink, the vicar’s face was lined only with years and his eyes were gentle, his face warm.

“I understand that you are having something of an adventure today,” he said.

She gripped the package of medicine between her cold fingers.

“I don’t know why Lord Dare thought he had the right to tell you,” she said tightly. “I am barely acquainted with him.”

“I always find that emergencies make fast friends, Lady Holland. And I believe he is only concerned about you. Would you like to tell me about it?”

“No. I would like it to be
over
. Finished. In the past. I cannot wait until dark so that I can sleep and wake up tomorrow.”

“Hm.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Sometimes it does seem that we are not moving forward, doesn’t it? That we are trapped in one place day after day.”

“With all due respect, Reverend, this is not a biblical allegory. I am actually reliving the exact same day again and again.” Except today she had not kissed Tacitus Everard. Today he did not even remember that she had. Today he had followed her to the ford in the rain and provided her with breakfast and sought out help for her.

The vicar nodded thoughtfully. “I wonder, my lady, if you have examined your conscience lately. Unburdening oneself of guilt can be liberating to the spirit.”

She stood up. “I don’t want to examine my conscience. I don’t feel guilt over anything.” Except kissing a man who was not her husband and
liking it
. “And frankly I don’t think I believe in God anymore. No loving, merciful God would trap a person as He has trapped me.” And her son.

“God does nothing contrary to our best interests. Are you quite certain that you haven’t, in fact, trapped yourself?”

“Yes.” Her father had, damn his soul.

“Perhaps I should rephrase that question,” Reverend Abbot said. “Is there anything you could change in your life? Anything that you would change if you had the opportunity to do it over again?”

What would she have changed?

She would have insisted he take her to London that morning, despite his disapproval. She would have insisted that he help her to escape.
That morning
. The morning after her father told her he was selling her to the Honorable Richard Holland for fifteen thousand pounds.

“If I give you to Holland,” her father had slurred over his claret that evening, “he’ll clear my debt to him and give me five thousand extra in the bargain. So his wife you will be, missy.”

“But Father, allow me another sennight. Even a few more days, perhaps. Lord Dare is—”

“Dare expects a dowry, you little fool. What’s more, if you married
him
you would need a trousseau to rival the Duchess of Devonshire’s. Holland is paying me to take you off my hands. Didn’t that school teach you simple arithmetic?”

“Father, I cannot like Mr. Holland.” She had met Richard Holland thrice: the first time when she was thirteen, the second when she was fifteen, and mere weeks ago in London. On all three occasions he had maneuvered her into shadowed corners to fondle her breasts, calling her “a tempting little puss” and touching the fall of his breeches until it bulged. The first time she had cried, the second time she spit at him, and in London she slapped his face. That he wanted her nonetheless frightened her.

“A man doesn’t require his wife to like him, only to obey him,” he said, with a narrow, bloodshot glance at her mother standing silently across the room.

“Father, I beg of you—”

“I’ll not hear another word about it,” he had bellowed, sloshing wine across his trousers. “Holland is coming here tomorrow to sign the contract. You’ll be dressed as pretty as you can and prepared to flirt or whatever it is silly females do.”

In desperation she had looked to her mother, but found only sorrow in her eyes. No hope. No help.

At the time Calista had not understood that her father had beaten his wife’s spirit down so thoroughly she was barely able to speak, let alone defend her daughter. A woman of quiet, intellectual pursuits by nature, her life had depended on her loutish, drunken, gaming husband for nearly three decades. With no income of her own and no friends to appeal to without exposing the family’s shame to the entire world and the earldom to derision, Lady Chance had lowered her tear-filled eyes and said nothing.

Late that night Calista packed a small traveling case and hid it under a shrubbery by the gatehouse at the end of the drive, then she stole back into bed without Evelina realizing she’d been gone. All the while she silently cursed her mother, vowing that she would never be weak and docile like her. And she would never, ever cry in response to a man’s cruelty. She would be the agent of her own fate.

After six years of marriage to Richard Holland, she understood matters better now. She had forgiven her mother. But only her mother.

“I would have escaped,” she uttered to the vicar of Swinly, the hard pit of anger lodged in her belly and weighting her chest. “And if God were truly benevolent, he would have given me my darling Harry anyway, somehow, even without Richard.”

“Escape. Hm,” the vicar said thoughtfully. “Think about that desire for escape, Lady Holland. Running away never truly solves a problem, does it?”

“It jolly well solves the problem of having to hide one’s bruises so that one can go to the shop without attracting the gossip of everybody in town. Not to mention hiding them from one’s own son and servants. Oh, good Lord,” she exclaimed. “Why am I here? In church, of all places? Why am I talking to you? How could you possibly understand the—” Her throat seized up. “Good day, Reverend.” Sweeping her borrowed cloak about her, she rushed from the building.

The rain had ceased while she was indoors and the clouds were making a valiant effort to part and allow the sun’s pale rays to sneak through to the sodden earth.

Rainbows. He had asked her to go searching for
rainbows
the first day.

Foolish man.

Foolish
men
.

She spun around on the street, clutching the bag of medicines to her. Where could she go? Not back to the inn, to
him,
the catalyst that had dredged up those horrible days, days of hope and then hopelessness, fear and heartbreak. Followed by six years of the same, only minus the hope. Except for Harry, her little boy whom she already missed as if someone had drilled a big hole right through her middle. At least he was safe now. At Dashbourne. With her sister who barely knew him, but adored him. And her mother who, without the earl’s daily insults, was now flourishing, happy, alive again as a woman should be.

Harry was safe with them.

And she was trapped in madness.

She started walking and did not stop until she reached the swollen ford. Sitting down on the bank in the mud, she pulled out the packet of white powder. Emptying the mysterious contents into her palm, she scooped the powder into her mouth and licked the remaining bits from her skin. It was bitter, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything anymore except ending this wretched day.

She had entered this village via this ford, and she would leave it via this ford. She would wait here and watch the water recede until midnight, when the bell in the church tower tolled twelve times. Then it would surely become tomorrow.
Surely
. If God did exist, He could not be so cruel to make this day last one second past midnight.

Pulling her cloak tightly about her, she settled into the chilly winter day to wait.

Calista started out of sleep upon the church bell tolling. Slumped against the rock wall that abutted the ford on the village side, face tucked against her shoulder, she brought her eyes up and then her chin. The sky above was cluttered with stars, not a single cloud marring the glittering black. Cold had crept beneath her clothes and into every one of her bones.

She counted the rings of the bell to eleven. And waited for a twelfth. And waited. And waited.

And sensed she was being watched.

She craned her stiff neck around and met the impassive gaze of the Marquess of Dare. Carrying a lantern, he walked toward her.

“Good evening, Lady Holland.”

“Do go away, my lord,” she mumbled. “As you can see, I’m terribly busy at present.”

He halted before her. “I ought to have known you would be here. You are desperate to leave this village, aren’t you?”

“More desperate than you can imagine.” The water rippled over the ford in a sleek black river that glimmered gold now from the lantern’s light.

“It seems as though it is receding. In the morning, you should be granted your wish. Have you been here all evening?”

“I have. And what have you been doing this evening? Fleecing the local farmers of the last pennies of their harvest income?”

“Looking for you.”

She snapped her head around.

“When you did not appear for dinner,” he said, “I imagined the vicar had invited you to dine with him. When you did not return after dinner, I went to the vicarage. Then to the doctor’s house. Then to the pub and the dress shop and the bakery. Then to Mrs. Tinkerson’s, who, by the way, is deeply disappointed that you did not join her for tea this afternoon.”

“One tepid cup and two measly biscuits is not tea.”

He chuckled. “How do you know she didn’t have a banquet set for your ladyship?”

“Because I took tea at her shop yesterday and the day before that.” She turned her face to the ford.

“You missed a lot of excitement over sheep,” he said conversationally, as if he meant to ignore her nonsensical statements.

“That’s fine. I saw them yesterday.”

“Did you?” he said quietly.

She pressed her palm into the ground and unbent her limbs that were wretchedly sore from sitting for so many hours on the cold, damp ground.

“Yes,” she said. “I did. The herd is comprised of roughly three dozen animals. Until five o’clock they were all wandering around the other end of the high street without direction, apparently having escaped through an unlocked gate. And yet, as the shepherd seemed to have gone missing, no one was able to drive them anywhere until he was found dozing under a tree on the other end of the village. But in the meantime they had eaten Mrs. Elliott’s entire garden of winter greens. I actually witnessed them doing so on my walk back to the inn from tea at the millinery the day before yesterday. Have I got all the details correct, Lord Dare?”