“I’m sorry. So sorry. I wish I could have told you sooner, but—”
“But what, Meredith? You could have told me sooner. You could have told me weeks ago. At least the latter bit.”
Her heart squeezed. Scrambling to her knees, she turned to him and wrapped her arms about his shoulders. She simply had to hold him. “I’m telling you now, Rhys. I love you.”
His muscles went rigid. “I said, don’t touch me. Not in this place.”
“All right. I understand.” Reluctantly, she let her arms slide from his shoulders and settled back on the floor. “Don’t you see? You don’t owe this village anything. You don’t owe me anything. But you owe it to yourself, after all this time and all this pain, to find your own happiness. If you could find true contentment here, I’d want nothing more than to share it with you. But if not …” Despite her quivering lips, she willed her voice to be strong. “Then you should go.”
He sat in silence. His breath came so quick, she could feel the cellar’s humidity increasing by the second. Brushing the dust from his trousers, he rose to his feet and tossed a plank on the fire before wiping clean another bottle of brandy.
“Don’t you want to talk about this?”
Crash. The bottleneck broke against a stone. “Talk about what?” he asked tightly, sloshing brandy into his cup.
“You. Us. The past. The future.” Could he forgive her, or couldn’t he?
He didn’t answer, only drank.
She forced herself to be patient. After all she’d told him tonight … about the fire, about her feelings … she’d altered everything he knew about himself, his past. And everything he knew about her. He must be overwhelmed, just struggling to make sense of it all. And to make it all worse, they were trapped in this place where he’d endured so much pain. Perhaps conversation was beyond him at the moment. For God’s sake, she was surprised that standing wasn’t beyond him at the moment.
It certainly didn’t come easy to her. Using a nearby crate for support, she rose to her feet on wobbly legs.
“I know you must be upset,” she said carefully.
“I’m not upset.”
“Of course you’re upset.” How could he keep denying the obvious? “You’re angry as hell. It’s natural, Rhys. It’s all right to show it.”
“Why would I be angry?” He sliced the air with his hand, and brandy splashed from his cup. A few drops landed on Meredith’s arm. Others spattered and sparked in the fire. His emotions, by contrast, remained at a quiet smolder. “The fire wasn’t my fault. You say you love me, always have. The last fourteen years of torment were all just a big mistake. I should be happy, shouldn’t I? Goddamned ecstatic. Stop telling me I’m angry.”
“Very well. You’re not angry.”
A tense silence followed.
“Just what are you expecting?” he finally asked. His voice was flat. “Tell me what reaction you’re waiting to see. Am I supposed to fly into a rage and smash crates against the wall? Lay my head in your lap and weep while you croon sweet words and stroke my hair? Or … or I know. You’re hoping I’ll push up your skirts and pump you like an animal all night long. Because somehow a few hours of rutting will erase decades of living hell.” He shook his head. “You’re good, Merry. But not that good.”
She tried not to let his words hurt her. “No. I’m not expecting any hysterics, nor any … rutting. But I’ve given you a great deal to absorb, and this place would make anyone feel a bit crazed.” She reached out to lay a hand on his arm, striving for a soothing touch. “We’ll make it through this. Come sit with me and wait out the night.”
“I said, don’t touch me.” He whipped his arm from her grasp and took a lunging step back. He leveled a finger at her. “I mean it, Merry. Stay away from me right now. I don’t trust myself.”
“All right.” Tears burned in her eyes as she slid back to the pile of furs. “All right. I won’t bother you further.”
She lay down on her side, hugging herself against the cold. He slunk to the opposite side of the fire and crouched there, leaning his back against a barrel and stacking his arms on his knees.
From this vantage, the flames and smoke appeared to dance around his face, distorting his features. His hands were clenched tight into fists. He was so tense, she could feel him vibrating with the force of his repressed fury.
He was fighting, she could sense it. Quietly doing battle over there in the corner. With himself, with his demons, with her. Maybe just with the rage itself … she couldn’t be sure. All she knew was that he wouldn’t let her help. He wouldn’t even let her near.
She must have slept eventually, for the next thing she knew was the sound of rock grinding against rock.
She shivered. The fire had gone out, and the furs had fallen away from her sleeping form. Her knees curled up to her chest, and she wrapped her arms about them, trying to warm herself.
After a moment spent blinking at the gooseflesh on her arms, a realization dawned. Or rather, dawn itself was her realization. The fire had gone out, but there was light enough to make out her surroundings. It had to be daylight. Weak, dusty daylight, but daylight just the same. The entire cavern was illuminated.
Rhys was nowhere to be seen.
“Rhys? Are you here?”
She struggled to rise from the carpet. Surely no matter how angry Rhys was, he wouldn’t have left her here all alone. Would he?
“Rhys?”
Her call echoed through the cellar, unanswered. Meredith’s heart began to race. Her skirts had tangled about her legs, and she tried to shake them out as she came to a sitting position.
Then, from the stairway, she heard a low, masculine grunt of effort.
Followed by a mighty crash.
“Rhys!”
Dust choked the air, but she clawed her way through it to reach the staircase. As the clouds of grit settled, she saw him silhouetted in the newly cleared entryway, hunched as he prepared to roll back one final stone. Wedging a length of iron beneath the boulder, he pried and heaved with all his strength. Certainly, they could have scrambled over the rock the way it was. The opening was already large enough. But she didn’t interrupt. He was clever enough to have realized the same. For whatever reason, it was important to him to clear the entire way.
With one last straining effort, he managed to rock the boulder onto its narrow end. A final shove with his boot, and the thing rolled clear.
“There,” he said, wiping the perspiration from his brow. His knuckles were skinned and bloodied. “I’m done with this place.”
His words had the edge of finality. She wondered what they meant. Was he done with this horrible cellar? Or with Nethermoor completely?
What about her? Was he done with her?
They descended back to the village, trudging along in silence. He seemed disinclined to converse, to put it mildly, so Meredith gratefully dropped a few steps behind. She ached all over. Her muscles complained about their night spent on cold, rocky ground, her head pounded, and her stomach demanded food. Worst of all was the wrenching pain in her chest.
The pain eased considerably when they entered the tavern of the Three Hounds to find the room filled to bursting with people.
“They’re back!” Darryl called out over the room. “Mrs. Maddox and his lordship, they’ve returned!”
Stumbling his way through the cheering crowd, her father carved a path to her and all but fell into her arms. “Merry,” he rasped, drawing her into a tight embrace and stroking her hair. “I was so concerned. I mean, I knew you were with Rhys and he’d look out for you, but still …”
“I’m well, Father.” She hugged him in return. “I’m so sorry to have worried you. Is everyone else returned?” Craning her neck, she looked over his shoulder into the crowd. So many people—every resident of the village, it seemed—but no sign of the one person she sought.
Until she spied a basket of fresh yeast rolls, and her breath caught in her throat. She pulled out of her father’s embrace.
“I’m here, Mrs. Maddox.” Cora rushed out from the kitchen, clapping flour from her hands. “I’m here. I’m back to work. I’m ever so sorry, ma’am. And I don’t know if you can ever forgive me, but I swear I’ll never let—”
Meredith cut off the girl’s speech by grabbing her into a tight hug. Cora immediately dissolved into tears. Meredith threw a glance of relief in Rhys’s direction, but he’d moved into the crowd. She couldn’t see him anymore.
She turned her attention back to the sobbing girl in her arms. “Poor dear girl. You had us all so worried.” The layer of dirt and grit she wore mingled with Cora’s dusting of flour. Regardless, Meredith stroked the girl’s hair.
Cora twisted in her arms. “The rolls will burn.”
“Never mind it.” She quietly gestured to Darryl, directing him to rescue the bread. Then she directed Cora to the nearest table and helped her into a chair. “Where were you, dear?”
Cora bit her lip and turned her eyes to the flagstones. The room went very quiet.
“Don’t be frightened,” Meredith urged. “You can tell me.”
“She was with me.” A heavy, masculine hand landed on the girl’s shoulder.
Meredith’s gaze swept from hand to arm, from arm to shoulder, and straight up to the face she should have been expecting all along. Damn it, she ought to have known.
“She was with me,” Gideon Myles repeated. “All night.”
As she glared at him, red waves of anger swam before Meredith’s eyes. She could only manage one word. “Where?”
“Someplace private. Someplace safe.”
“We only went out for a walk,” Cora said, sniffing earnestly. “But the mist came up, and Gi … and Mr. Myles said we ought to wait it out. That it wasn’t safe to go home.” Her grip tightened over Meredith’s hand. “Ma’am, I swear to you. It weren’t my intention. We only went out for a walk, and once the mist came up …”
“It wasn’t safe to come home. I know.” Meredith swallowed hard and turned to Gideon, confronting his unrepentant gaze. “It wasn’t safe for you, who’ve called this moor home for more years than this girl’s been alive, to walk home. But it was safe for everyone else in the village to go searching valley, tor, river, and bog for her? Someone could have been killed.”
He shrugged and turned his gaze.
“Don’t you look away from me.” With a final squeeze, she released Cora’s hands. Trembling with fury, she planted both hands on the tabletop and slowly rose to her feet. “Did you touch her?”
Cora bent her head to the table and wept.
Meredith firmed her chin and stared at Gideon until he met her gaze. “I asked you a question. Did you touch her?”
“It’s not your business, Meredith.”
“The hell it isn’t.” She kicked the chair out from between them and stepped closer. “Answer me.”
“I didn’t do anything she didn’t want me to do.”
She didn’t even remember reaching back with her hand and letting it fly, she just heard the smart slap of her palm against Gideon’s unshaven face. “You bastard. She’s a girl.”
“She’s not a girl, she’s a—”
“Don’t you say it. Don’t you call her that.”
Before she could strike him again, he caught her wrist in a fierce grip. “Believe me, you have no idea what I was going to say.” Releasing her, he raked her with a look of pure contempt. “What? It’s all right for you, but not me? You’re allowed to get tarted up and run away with Ashworth for a week’s worth of high-class fornication, but I’m not allowed to—”