MacHeath slept until three that afternoon.
Someone had alerted Mr. Featherbridge to the tragic mishap down near the waterfront, and he’d appeared, just as dawn broke, to take over the arranging of things. “It’s what vicars do, dear boy,” he’d said to MacHeath. “You just get on back to the rectory and have my housekeeper put you to bed in the spare room. And have her take a look at that wound, as well.”
So MacHeath had dragged himself to the vicar’s house, where he immediately tumbled into bed. He’d only stirred slightly when the church bells tolled to announce the Christmas morning service, and he wondered if Mr. Featherbridge had returned from Fuller Lane in time to give another of his heartening sermons.
At three, the housekeeper came in with a tray and set it on the bed. “There’s Miss Alexa waiting for you downstairs. She’s been here since one o’clock, actually, but I told her you looked like you needed a week’s worth of sleep.”
“Thank her for her concern,” he said gruffly as he ladled up a spoonful of hot soup. “But I am in no state for visitors.”
She nodded and went off without argument. She privately agreed with his assessment—he cut a sorry figure, with his beard all coming out in bristles and his clothing dashed with mud and blood—though she had a notion he’d be something to behold once he was cleaned up proper.
A youth who looked the way Simeon Hastings had, could not possibly age badly. Pity about that hand, though. She’d bandaged his wounded left wrist that morning, and had managed to get a peep at the severed stump while she was at it. Not as gruesome as she’d expected, but still a sorry shame.
MacHeath lay back, once he’d finished his Christmas lunch of invalid fare, and wondered what to do.
He could stay here in Cudbright, no doubt with the old man’s blessing. For ten years he’d dreamed of that moment in the rooming house, of facing Prescott and receiving absolution. But now that it had finally happened, there was none of the joy or relieved elation he’d expected to feel. No victory, no sense of vindication ... only a dull awareness of completion.
An icy shivering began deep inside him. It was too late, he realized. He was too broken to be mended by mere words. Or by any forthcoming offers of restitution. Ten years of his life, his prime years, had been wasted because of Quincy’s falsehood, and there was nothing Prescott could offer him that would undo that.
And there was another thing gnawing at him now.
He’d thought during the church service last night that he could take on a new mantle. There, with Alexa standing beside him, he’d felt like he could do anything. But this morning, in that seedy rooming house, he’d been made humble. It was hard not to feel humbled when you’d screamed your heart out in front of other men.
The instant Finch set that knife against his wrist, any chances he might have at a new life had vanished. It hadn’t taken a blade cutting through flesh and sinew, it only took the threat of it. The pride that had been his sole bulwark through all his deprivations—the thing that had kept him from sinking completely into despair, from taking on cutthroat work in the East End, or from succumbing to the lures of gin—was gone. He’d been humiliated, reduced to a whimpering, abject cur.
It didn’t matter that he’d been saved in the end. The horror of that threat, coupled with his own horror at his reaction to it, had destroyed him. His honor with Prescott might have been restored, but the price of that restoration had been his soul.
* * *
Alexa also slept for a few hours that morning, though fretfully, hearing MacHeath’s screams blended with those of her cousin and Finch, every time she started to doze off. Afterward, she rode off to Mr. Featherbridge’s rectory to find MacHeath. The housekeeper had kept her cooling her heels for two hours, and then announced that although Mr. MacHeath had awakened, he was not feeling up to any visitors.
She’d come home in a funk, and had barely managed to choke down a bit of Christmas dinner. Both she and her father spent the meal conversing in hushed whispers. He told her that Quincy had been moved to the surgeon’s house, which adjoined the shipyard. The prognosis had not been good—a broken back, and two broken arms, at least.
“He’ll spend the rest of his life in a Bath chair,” her father said wearily. “I’ll have to find someone to look after him.”
“You wouldn’t bring him here?”
The expression on his face answered her well before he uttered a soft, final, “No.”
“His family home is let,” she said after some thought. “But we could find him a place somewhere near there, in Salisbury, perhaps.”
“You are generous, Alexa. I didn’t think you’d want anything to do with him.”
She set down both fork and knife on either side of her plate, and leaned toward him. “He went a little mad, don’t you think? I saw it in his eyes up there in that room. So I’m not sure he was totally sane any of the time. It’s why he could lie and deceive, and still think himself a gentleman. He was all turned about in his head.”
“Yes,” he said, “what was it Mr. Shakespeare wrote? That ‘a man might smile, and smile, be a villain.’ “
“And meanwhile there was MacHeath, with all his scowls and bitter melancholies who ended up the hero.”
Her father looked as though he was about to say something, and then thought better of it. He fidgeted with his napkin, then rose and excused himself from the table, “I’ll be in my study, if you need me. We’ll open our gifts tonight, if you don’t mind.”
It was nearing six o’clock when Mrs. Reginald arrived, unannounced and completely unexpected. Alexa greeted her with cries of relief, and then sat with her in her bedroom and patted her hand while the lady tried to weather the shock of Quincy’s tragedy. Alexa insisted she nap, and promised that later that night she would fill her in on everything that had happened.
Well, she thought as she went down the stairs, we’re all here now. All together for Christmas. Just like old times.
Yet the pall that hung over the house, reminded her of Christmas the year her mother had died—the whispered conversations, the servants tiptoeing about. No laughter or gaiety, only a somber determination to acknowledge the holy day.
A footman approached her. “There is a gentleman here to speak with Mr. Prescott. Your father asked me to put him in the drawing room until he was free, and he suggested you might want to entertain his visitor in the meantime.”
Alexa slid open the double doors, wondering who would intrude on her father at a time of family crisis.
MacHeath rose from the sofa and bowed once as she stepped into the room.
“Oh,” she said in a small, flustered voice.
“I didn’t expect to see you,” he said bluntly. “I have business with your father.”
“Yes,” she said with a bit of her usual spirit. “I’ve heard that before.”
Without asking her permission, he sat down again and began to study the ceiling, his arms folded over his chest. She noticed that he was not wearing gloves; there was a bandage on his left wrist, and the cuff of his shirt was pinned up under his right-hand coat sleeve. It jarred her a bit, seeing that unnatural truncation, and then she shrugged it off. She’d get used to it soon enough ... well, if she was ever given the chance.
He’d also managed to find a razor—his chin was clean shaven—and someone had removed most of the road grime from his greatcoat. He looked a lot less piratical now, almost civilized. But no less attractive.
“Did my father send for you?” she asked as she settled on the far end of the sofa.
“No. As I said, I have—”
“—some business with him,” she finished. “Is this business anything to do with me? Because if it is, I think you ought to tell me first.”
MacHeath shot her a look of rebuke. “It’s not that kind of business, Alexa.”
She decided to overlook this unsatisfactory disclosure. “So what will you do now?”
He shrugged, “Go back to Nat’s, I expect. See if I can’t scrape up a ship somewhere.”
She shifted closer to him on the cushions, fighting the urge to take him by the shoulders and declare herself. It was nearly impossible to hold back. Her heart would be heard. “Why wouldn’t you see me at the rectory? I waited there for hours.”
“I wasn’t in the mood for visitors,” he said in a flat, distant voice.
“What’s wrong with you?” she cried softly. “Why won’t you look at me? You are talking to me as though I were a stranger. Is it this house? Is it being in here, sitting in this drawing room for the first time, that has struck you dumb?”
His eyes flashed at her, the first sign of animation she’d seen in him since she came through the door. But his voice was icy and remote when he answered her. “I haven’t very much to say, I suppose.”
She flew off the sofa and faced him, her hands clenched. “You hate us now, don’t you ... not just Quincy, but me and my father. Because we wronged you horribly, and then stood by while you were humiliated and imprisoned. And it happened again last night ... no one believing in you, no one listening to you. No one there to aid you when that fiend laid his knife on your good hand—”
“Alexa!” He stood up, and his face was quite white.
“I heard you scream, MacHeath,” she hissed at him. “All the way down in the street I heard it. My whole life long I will never forget the horror of that sound.”
“Please go,” he said between his teeth. “While I still have some command of my temper.”
“No,” she said. “I ... I am not saying this to anger you or embarrass you ... God, not that. I only wanted you to know that I would have torn those men to pieces if I had known what they’d done to you. I ... I only sorted it out afterward.”
She forced her hands to relax; her nails were carving half-moons into her palms. “Still, I don’t blame you if you despise me. We all failed you, in one way or another. I saw your face before you left us this morning ... it was so sad, so weary.”
She reached toward him, but he drew back. “But the thing is, I tried. I really tried. To help you, to be your advocate.” Her voice started to break, but she kept on regardless. “So please don’t hate me, MacHeath. I was the only one who never stopped believing in you.”
He finally met her eyes. His own were a dull black, and there were smudged shadows on the skin beneath the filigreed lashes. “I know that, Alexa. And I don’t hate you, or your father. The truth is, I don’t feel much of anything right now, good or bad.”
She paced away toward the windows, needing to work off her anxiety. In the Chelsea Hospital she’d tended men sent home from the war, some whose mental wounds were far greater than the ones their bodies had suffered. She’d seen in their eyes the same dead expression that now dwelled in MacHeath’s eyes. Shock, despair, hopelessness. As if the foundation of their every belief had been shaken.
She wanted to rail at him, challenge him, do something to stir him from this frightening malaise. But she feared throwing her anger at him would just make him retreat farther.
It was like that time in Gable’s barn, when he’d hidden in the shadows rather than have his shame revealed to her. But what was his shame this time, what did he have to hide from her? She’d seen him without the false hand before, surely that was not it.
What made men ashamed? What drove them to punish themselves and, therefore, those who loved them? The answer formed itself, once she thought back to that fearful scream.
Cowardice.
One of the worst slanders one man could level at another, and possibly the worst a man could level at himself. She’d have to go delicately with him for a change. No foot stomping, no fierce lectures, no flashing eyes.
“Come,” she said, taking his good hand and drawing him down to the sofa again. He went unresisting.
“Remember the night you told me that you’d chosen your life, and it had failed you? It occurs to me that you were wrong on both counts ... you didn’t choose it. It was forced on you. But I believe you always made the best of it, when you could. William told me something Nat Tarlton said to him, that three years ago you’d stopped smuggling brandy and started smuggling English spies into France.”
She added with a gentle drawl, “Of course, you would never tell me of this ... it might reflect well on you. Eb Gable told me you’d more than once rescued one of your crewmen when they were in danger, I’m sure there are any number of admirable things you’ve done that you’ve never told anyone.”
“I’m a bleeding saint,” he muttered.
“Well, an unlikely one,” she said, pleased by his small show of ire. “Still, you perform these noble, even selfless acts, and then dismiss them. As if you don’t deserve any credit for your deeds. As though MacHeath is always in the minus column, no matter what he accomplishes or withstands.”
“I wish you would get to the point,” he said, keeping his face averted from her.
“I just said withstands ... think on that word. I believe if someone asked me to describe you, I would say, ‘He withstands a great deal.’ Scorn and loss and pain. Betrayal and deceit.”
She shifted onto her knees before him, still clasping his hand. “Perhaps courage is not always measured by going out and fighting battles. Sometimes it means tolerating that which is intolerable, sustaining your honor when there is no honor around you ... putting yourself at risk so that another will be safe. Withstanding, MacHeath ... enduring their blows, even if you cry out, even if you scream out, but not letting them break you.”
“They did break me!” he breathed raggedly, pushing away from her and leaping to his feet. “Don’t you understand that? They snapped me like a piece of kindling. Good God, Alexa, you said yourself that you heard me scream. I shouldn’t wonder if they heard me in Exeter.”
“You don’t sound very broken to me,” she observed from her position on the floor. Her eyes danced wickedly up at him. “Maybe they just bent you a bit.”
He reached down and dragged her to her feet, his good hand clamped hard on her shoulder while he shook her.
“You dare laugh at me?” he stormed. “You dare laugh in my face?”
“It’s better than crying,” she said evenly. “Stop lamenting, MacHeath. Life is too short.” Her hands slid up to cradle his face, and she said gently, “We all have moments we’d like to erase. But think how many more there are that we want to cherish and preserve.”
Unable to weather the stark uncertainty in his eyes, she tugged his head down to her shoulder and held it there, her fingers stroking soothingly over his hair.
“You used to be naive and full of foolish pronouncements,” he murmured into her throat.
“And now?”
“Now you make sense a great deal of the time. It’s unnerving.”
She chuckled. “Shall I tell you about the thing I would like to erase from my past?”
“You mean Smelly Ned?”
“No,” she chided him, “Something I did that I would wish undone.”
“Tell me,” he said, pulling back a little so that he could see her face.
“Well, first you must understand that money became my curse once I got to London. I saw there that Alexa Prescott was of less value to the world than her purse, and so I began to wither on the inside. I became sour and discontented with life ... a grumbler of the first water. I wasted seven years of my life refusing to see the good around me, and only ever saw things that displeased me.”
“We are a pretty pair,” he muttered. “The cripple and the malcontent.”
“We are neither of those things now, Simeon. That’s the beauty of what’s happened between us. We both found the spark that was missing. You have gotten past your fears and your loss, and I have found something to make me smile again.”
“Being home?”
“Being with you.”
“Oh.” He was just starting to smile himself when the footman came into the room.
“Mr. Prescott will see you now, sir.”
For an instant her eyes closed tight in frustration. This was dreadfully bad timing.
“Thank you for that, Alexa,” MacHeath whispered as he set her away from him. He went to the doorway, where he lingered a moment. “Maybe someday I’ll return the favor and give you the answers that you require.”
“I don’t recall asking for answers,” she responded gently.
But she knew the questions were in her eyes, all of them beseeching him, and she knew, further, he was not unaware of them. He started to say something, but curbed himself.
And then he pushed roughly away from the door; he re-crossed the room in a heartbeat and dragged her into his arms. She moaned softly when he kissed her, a brief but surprisingly thorough kiss.
“Such a spark, Alexa,” he said hoarsely, up against her ear.
And then he went striding out, right past the astonished footman.
* * *
Alexander Prescott greeted his entry with a nod. And then went back to sorting through the papers on his desk. It was not rudeness, MacHeath realized—the man was nervous as a cat on a griddle. His fingers shook enough to be detectable, and his gaze never once crossed the desk to where MacHeath sat after that first, curt acknowledgment.
“So?” MacHeath asked at last, feeling an edgy gnawing begin in the pit of his own stomach. He wanted to say his piece quickly, and then get away. That brief, heady taste of Alexa had shaken him, and the longer he sat here, the harder it would be to resist the urge to taste her again.
“So,” Prescott echoed as he set down his papers. “If you’ve come to hear a formal apology, consider it spoken, and from the heart, I might add. However, there are other things I could offer you, to make restitution—”
“You don’t owe me more than an apology,” he stated flatly. “It was all I came back for, originally. But now I find I still have some unfinished business with you. There is the matter of Alexa.”
“I see you still don’t shilly-shally. I always liked that about you, Hastings ... er, MacHeath.” He shot him a look of apology. “My girl tells me you prefer that name. So out with it, then. What about Alexa?”
The old man wore a smug expression, as though he knew beforehand what MacHeath’s business was.
“She needs to be here, with you, sir. Not off in London wasting herself on idle people and pointless occupations.”
Prescott’s brow knotted, and one hand began to tap on the surface of his desk. “Forgive my confusion ... I suspected you wanted to speak to me of her future, but this is hardly what I envisioned.”
MacHeath slid forward in his chair. “Her future is here, at Prescott Shipyard. It was her life for seventeen years, it’s where she belongs now. And don’t hand me some trumped-up objection because she is female. We both know she could run this place better than any man ... it’s in her blood. You’re a fool if you don’t see the potential in her. You raised her to be your heir, so why not let her take her place, then, as is fitting?”
Prescott made no comment at first. He rose and went to the sideboard, where he poured them each a glass of wine.
“Well, you don’t mince words, do you?” he said once he’d resumed his seat behind the desk. “I’ve a mind to call you an interfering jackanapes, but I don’t fancy a bout of fisticuffs. I will think on what you’ve said ... Lord knows the girl’s been bringing it up time out of mind. But what of your own future, MacHeath? What will you do, now that you are a free man again?”
“That’s not the issue here.”
“Then, you have made no plans? Well, I’m not surprised ... only yesterday you were a fugitive from justice. But now the world has turned about for you. Would it be rash for me to offer you a job here at Prescott? Something, say, with a bit more responsibility than your previous position. I could use a good right-hand man.”
MacHeath’s eyes flashed up at him, and then he shook his head. “I want no favors ... for myself. All I ask is that you keep Alexa here.”
“Still got that proud, stubborn Scottish streak, eh? It’s a wonder you and Alexa didn’t butt heads constantly during your journey here.”
MacHeath’s face relaxed for an instant, and he almost smiled. “There were ... um, occasional moments of conflict.”
Prescott did smile, a wry crooked smile. “Ho, there speaks a diplomatic man.”
“She set my coat on fire at one point, actually.”
And then both of them were chuckling, MacHeath shaking his head in amused recollection, Prescott grinning back at him.
“Stay, lad,” he said with sudden intensity, the humor in his eyes now replaced by earnest appeal. “I have need of you. We both have need of you. Stay here in Cudbright.” He hesitated, and then added in a gruff whisper, “Please.”
Well, that’s it, MacHeath thought. Full circle. He’d been carted away in disgrace, deprived of everything he held dear, only to return a hero ... with old Prescott himself begging him to stay on.
“I had a feeling this was how the wind was blowing,” he said at last. “And I am not ungrateful. But I cannot accept your offer. I cannot stay here. Cudbright, the shipyard”—he’d almost added Alexa—”they remind me too keenly of all I lost.”
“What was lost can sometimes be regained,” Prescott pronounced. He rose from behind his desk, leaning his splayed hands on the gleaming surface. “I’ve made you an honest offer, not out of guilt, but out of my own need. I value you, lad. Damn it, I’d have taken you back the instant you were cleared of those charges—”
“Ah, but what if I hadn’t been cleared? Would you have stood by me, found me a clever lawyer, kept me from the noose? Or would you have washed your hands of that proud, stubborn Scot? Good God, Prescott, you never even came to see me in Exeter. Never came to ask me my side of the story. I was a condemned man the instant Quincy pointed a finger at me. I saw then what it truly meant to have nothing ... no friends, no allies, no one who believes in you.”
“Alexa believed in you ...” Prescott injected. “But she was a child of fourteen, I did not heed her. I was too shaken, my feelings over your betrayal were too raw. Perhaps if my admiration for you had not been so great, my shock and disappointment would not have been so extreme. For a time those feelings blinded me to any possibility of your innocence. Then, when you escaped, I saw it as proof positive that you were guilty. I see now how naive I was to think that.”
“Another trait that runs in your family,” MacHeath said under his breath.
“Still, why would I have doubted Quincy, standing there with his head all bloodied, swearing to your guilt? He practically grew up in this house, MacHeath, I never thought he would steal from me.”
“No, it was easier to think that I would.”
“Devil take you! What else was I to believe?”
MacHeath cast him a long, potent look before he murmured intently, “You might have sided with one of your own, Alexander.” He rose from his chair, “But it’s water over the dam, as my old captain used to say. I didn’t come here to fight with you or to make you feel remorse. My only issue was Alexa.”
“Well, then, what of my girl?” he asked as he came around the desk. “You going to run off from her yet again? She’s kept you in her heart all these years, but I should warn you, even obstinate Prescotts weary of the chase eventually.”
“She’ll find another man if you allow her to stay here,” he said. “I suspect she was like a falcon in a cage in London, fretful and unhappy. But once she can spread her wings, once she’s back in her own patch of sky, she’ll soar again. You’ll see, she’ll have suitors lined up from here to Penzance.”
“And that notion doesn’t bother you?”
“Why should it?” MacHeath spoke the untruth with boldfaced calm. “I desire her happiness as much as you do.”
Prescott shook his head. “You’re a fool, MacHeath. And a dashed poor liar. But it’s not my job to make you see the right of things. I suppose I could argue that you ruined the chit, haring over half the country with her. But the last thing I want for Lexie is an unwilling husband.”
“When she meets the right man, it won’t matter to him whether she’s ruined or not. Not if he cares for her.” He paused to take a steadying breath. “I’m going now. Tell her ... tell her that—” He winced slightly, and a small tick throbbed twice in his cheek. He drew an oblong package from the pocket of his greatcoat and laid it on the desk. “Well, just give her this.”
“You’re not going to say good-bye to her?”
“We’ve said everything that needs to be said.”
He crossed the room, and then turned at the door. “Please remember what I told you about your daughter, Prescott. She needs that patch of sky ... we all do.”
And then with a swift nod of farewell, he went out.