Chapter 14

 

I woke up much later at the White Horse, my stomach complaining of hunger. The sun was low in the sky—I had slept for almost a whole day. I rolled groggily out of bed and stared blearily at my folded gown and shoes, realizing I was without a maid again. My left shoulder was impressively bruised where Mrs. Greene had whacked it, and I had stayed awake the previous evening long enough for Dr. Thornbury to come and tie a clean white bandage around the shallow knife slice on my thigh.

Sighing, I began to dress, eager to go and search out some food. The events of the previous day weighed on my mind, and I was anxious to find out what was happening up at Wainforth Manor.

There was a note on the table beside the bed. I snatched it up and opened it.

Dear Katherine, it said in a spiky male scrawl,

I’m sorry to leave you alone, but you needed the rest. Send someone up to Wainforth when you’re awake, and Joseph will come and fetch you in the carriage. All your belongings are still here, and the other complication in the kitchen has been resolved.

Sincerely,

Thomas Norcliffe

I snorted and crumpled it up. Nothing about me sobbing in his arms yesterday, nothing about affection or trust or promises.

When I finally left the inn, it was dusk. I considered asking one of the stable boys to fetch Joseph, as Thomas had instructed, but I found myself impatient and full of nervous energy. I decided to walk the thirty minutes from the village to the manor. I set out with no possessions other than the clothes on my back, assuming that Thomas would pay my fare at the White Horse. No one questioned me. Maybe rumors about Father Francis and Mrs. Greene had not yet reached the village.

I walked up the road, breathing deeply of the cool evening air. I understood why the Norcliffes had made this place their home for generations. The moor buzzed with life, a multitude of insects and birds and plants all permeating the night with their sounds and clean smells.

As I reached the last little rise in the road before Wainforth Manor, though, another smell reached me—smoke. I looked up at the horizon. The house should have been visible, but all I saw was a thick cloud of smoke and an orange glow. Something was burning. I gasped and increased my speed to a run. What if Mrs. Greene had somehow managed to set the house ablaze? Was Thomas inside?

I hurried along the road for a minute or two, impeded by my bandaged leg. The main iron gate in the Wainforth wall stood open as usual, and I rushed through it while breathing hard and trying not to panic. Three figures resolved in my view, limned by the glow from the fire. I staggered to a halt. The scrubby trees and grasses that bordered the manicured lawn of Wainforth Manor to the north and northeast were indeed burning, but the house was safe. Thomas, mounted on Annabelle, had his back to me as he watched the blaze. Beside him stood Peter, holding a pitchfork, then Joseph, holding one of the work horses hitched to a cart full of dirt or sand.

“Thomas,” I called loudly, though my lungs still recovered from the run, and raised an arm in greeting.

He turned his head and saw me, then wheeled Annabelle around and galloped over. I saw then that he and the other two men all had cloth tied around the lower halves of their faces. Thomas pulled his down around his neck as he dismounted.

“Katherine,” he said, reaching out and grasping one of my shoulders. “Don’t get too close. We’re burning this section off to get rid of those godforsaken belladonna plants.” My eyes widened, and I placed one hand over my nose and mouth. Would the smoke from the burning plants poison me again? But Thomas shook his head. “You’ll be fine. I just don’t want to take any chances. Come, let’s walk this way.”

He gave a sharp whistle to Peter, then pointed at Annabelle. Peter trotted down and took her reins. Thomas led me south toward the creek, away from the burning section. “You should have let me send someone down to the village to fetch you back,” he said lightly.

“Thank you, I felt like a walk.” He didn’t argue with me any further. “What happened to Mrs. Greene?”

“George Nowland came with another man and took her away. There will be a trial in Leeds, I suppose. They had to put a ladder down through the kitchen floor to get her up and out of there.”

“Good.”

He ran a hand through his hair, shaking ash out of the dark loose strands. “I didn’t even know there was a space under the floor there.”

I thought for a moment. “You know, it’s the strangest thing to me, I can hardly believe Mrs. Greene was able to dump Father Francis’ body down the tunnel shaft that night. Why was she moving him? I know she’s strong, but he must have weighed more than her.”

“It wasn’t her,” Thomas said, and I looked at him sharply.

“She had an accomplice?”

“Not exactly. When Mrs. Greene finally succeeded in poisoning Father Francis, she did so via a poisoned pie. From what I can determine, it must have happened last Saturday.”

I thought back. Father Francis had missed church on Sunday. Then I remembered—Mrs. Greene had ridden in the carriage with me and Justine on Saturday, carrying a pie that she said was for a friend. The audacity of the woman was astounding.

“Peter went to visit Father Francis on Saturday,” Thomas continued, “to ask again about his mother’s missing money. He found him dead in the rectory. Or so Peter told me when I caught him, anyway, after he fled from Wainforth.”

“So Peter moved his body? But why?”

“Well, I think he was just being an idiot. He felt guilty about pressuring Father Francis to return their money—apparently he had shoved him the last time they met. So when he found the body in the rectory, he panicked, thinking the blame might be pinned on him. Peter stashed the body first in the crypt of the church. Then, on Monday night, he left the dance alone. He retrieved the body and hid it under that brown blanket in the cart. The cart he briefly left in the stable while he switched into more suitable corpse-disposal clothes—that’s when you glimpsed him in the hallway. When you and I saw him later on the moor, he was moving the body to the tunnel shaft before sneaking up to bed. Apparently he just thought the tunnel would be a better hiding place. I don’t know that he really had much of a plan beyond that.”

We had walked along the creek toward the house, skirting the field that was now mostly embers. I could see Peter and Joseph still carefully watching.

“But you decided to keep Peter on here,” I stated.

Thomas shrugged. “Yes. George Nowland is not pursuing any criminal case against him for tampering with the body. Peter has done good work here, and I think he’ll be especially focused once Martha returns to school next week.” He shot me a wry sideways glance, but his face quickly resumed its serious expression. “He made a mistake, but heaven knows I’ve made mistakes. I don’t believe he’s fundamentally bad. He needs the work, and I seem to have earned his loyalty by giving him this chance.”

I didn’t argue. We turned away from the creek, but not before I paused to admire the bridge folly again where the white limestone shone in the moonlight. We walked on the south lawns toward the rose gardens, and I caught the too-sweet smell of their overgrown late blooms. Thomas suddenly stopped me by grasping a warm hand around my elbow and looked down at his feet.

I thought back to a daydream of a moment like this when I first arrived at Wainforth, but I could not have guessed then how much would have transpired in the meantime. “What is it?” I asked. I tried but failed to see what he was looking at in the grass.

“This is where it happened,” he said quietly. “Only the base layer remains now because Father had it pulled down. There was a little stone gardening shed here; it had a chicken coop built against the outside wall.”

Finally, I could see the rectangular outline of an old foundation in the grass. “This is where Robert attacked Mrs. Greene’s daughter.”

“Yes. Penny is her name. She came out looking for eggs.”

“But you saved her life.”

He shook his head. “It wasn’t heroic, Katherine, you have to know that. She was still raped by my brother. I didn’t save her from that.”

“You couldn’t have.”

“Exactly,” he said bitterly. “I couldn’t have. I saw Robert grab her, and I knew I couldn’t stop him unarmed. He was physically stronger than me. I ran into the house looking for my father, but I couldn’t find him. I grabbed one of his pistols from the case in the library.”

I remained silent, letting him drain the poison from his memory, while my heart broke for Penny.

“You know, when I think back, I had a key for that pistol case. It was locked, but I had a little key on a ribbon. Father gave it to me.” His eyes were distant as he remembered. “I’m sure Robert didn’t have a copy of that key. There’s no way Father would have given him one.” Thomas gave a harsh laugh. “In some ways Father must have anticipated a day like that one would arise.”

“Your father trusted you,” I said.

“Anyway, when I ran back outside, Penny was crying on the ground with Robert’s hands around her neck. In that moment I felt sure that he would kill her. Nowadays I’m not positive, but he certainly could have. He could have killed almost any one of us, including me or Father, for almost no provocation. So I shot him. Twice. In the back. He raised his head and saw that it was me before he died.” Thomas took a deep shuddering breath.

I reached over and took his hand. “Come. We don’t need to linger here.”

He followed me willingly away from the remnant of that day. “Will you forgive me, Katherine?” Thomas asked me.

I just shook my head. “There’s nothing for me to forgive. You have harmed me not at all. In fact, you have helped me once or twice.” I smiled. “Have you spoken with Penny much since then?”

“A few times, mainly about Martha. I think she prefers not to think about any Norcliffes much at all.”

“I can’t put myself in her shoes, to have endured such a horrifying trauma, but I can certainly sympathize with that response. Mrs. Greene had a different reaction, clearly. I hope Martha will forgive me for my role in her grandmother’s downfall.”

“This house turned out to be more of a problem than you knew when you pulled up,” he said. “For that I would cherish your absolution.”

“Well, in that case, I do absolve you of the crime against me of having significantly complicated my life,” I said lightly. I could hardly confess that my life before him had been sorely in need of some complication, that I had been only floating on the surface. His fingers tightened around mine. “There, now all your problems are neatly tied up,” I teased. I reached up and playfully straightened his shirt collar. Traitorous tears threatened to spill from my eyes as I thought about his life continuing forward now in its established path.

Thomas took my hand and curled it against his chest, pulling me in closer. We stood now on the gravel driveway in front of Wainforth, the glow of the burning field still visible but fading.

“Not quite,” he murmured, his lips against my hair.

I was distracted by the scent of his shirt, smoke and soap and warm male skin. “Pardon me?”

“Not quite all my problems. You see, Wainforth is in dire want of a mistress.” He leaned back and looked into my face. “Someone who knows the place inside and out.” Thomas angled his head and slowly lowered his lips toward mine. He kissed me possessively, firmly, pulling my waist forward to meet his hips. My blood ran hot. “Someone who can handle herself during the unexpected. Someone brave and calm and resourceful. Someone who belongs here.” He kissed my jaw, my ear, my neck, leaving scorching marks on my skin.

I struggled to catch a breath and looked up at him. “It sounds like Wainforth does have a dire need. But what of you, sir? What do you need?”

“I thought that no one could ever know me and still trust me.” I shook my head urgently—I didn’t want to hear the sad assessment of himself. “But now I know better. You trusted me when I hardly deserved it, and trusted me more when I dropped ugly truths into your beautiful hands.” He turned my hands over and kissed each palm. I held my breath. “I only need someone beautiful and intelligent and completely delightful. You belong here with me. I need you, Katherine. Marry me, please. I love you and I never want us to be parted.” The tears started trailing down my cheeks. “Don’t cry, my darling. I promise not every fortnight of our life will be quite as taxing as this one.”

I laughed and dashed the tears from my face. “Well, if this is your attempt to get me to write positively about your house in my book, it shall never work.”

Thomas affected a stricken expression, and I laughed again.

“It’s your book now, is it, love? No longer only your father’s book?”

“It feels more like my story now. The Wainforth chapter, at least, will have more of me in it than any reader could possibly guess. I love you, Thomas Norcliffe. I would be honored to become your wife.” I tangled my fingers in his hair and pulled him down for another kiss. His hands cupped my backside and hoisted me snug up against him. After a long moment, maybe the best moment of my life, we parted and looked at each other.

“I therefore instruct you strictly to get this unruly household into order, missus. No housekeeper, hole in the bathing chamber, very tricky library shelf, claret levels are suspiciously low, and I suggest we need a runty half-blind puppy around here to keep things interesting.”

I tilted my head back and took in the night air, the moonlit sky, the moor, the house, and the man in front of me. “Plenty of time for everything, Mr. Norcliffe,” I murmured. “I can’t wait to get started.”