Abruptly, all his attention refocused on the here and now.
He was in a tunnel. A dark tunnel. A dark, narrow tunnel.
Georgiana’s voice echoed ahead. “How quaint this is.”
Alexander froze. Memory swept through him: soot in his eyes, soot in his nose and mouth, the rough warmth of bricks pressing close, no way forward, no way back. No light to see by. No air to breathe.
His panic was absolute. It consumed him utterly. Alexander turned and blundered his way back up the tunnel, bruising himself on stone. He burst out into daylight, bent over, and vomited, his stomach emptying itself violently.
When the paroxysms had finished, he straightened and wiped his mouth, shaking convulsively, gasping for breath. The panic retreated and a measure of sanity returned. He turned and looked at the dark hole he’d escaped from. It wasn’t a chimney, or even a tunnel, but a cutting in the rock, narrow enough that wiry mats of grass met overhead, blocking out the sun.
Alexander discovered that he was crying, hot salty tears that he could no more control than he’d been able to control the vomiting. The taste of tears and bile mixed in his mouth. He scrubbed at his face with shaking hands. “Fuck,” he said hoarsely. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” All that panic because a few blades of grass blocked the sun.
The terror had vanished the moment he’d burst out into daylight, but it had left behind a residue: despair, exhaustion, defeat, a sense that he’d completely lost control of his life, that he was as powerless as he’d been when he was four-and-a-half years old and forced to climb chimneys.
“Vic?” Georgiana emerged from the cutting, closely followed by her father. “Are you all right?”
His humiliation was now complete. Alexander turned away, rubbing his face fiercely, trying to hide the tears.
“Vic, what is it? What’s wrong?” He heard concern in her voice. Concern because she didn’t know the truth, didn’t know that what was wrong was him, that he was twenty-nine years old but he still had his child’s terror of the dark.
Alexander had known two nights ago in the scullery that he couldn’t marry her, and he knew it again now, with utter, stone-hard certainty. And if he told her what was wrong with him, Georgiana would know it, too.
So tell her, a voice said bitterly in his head. You owe her the truth.
“Vic.” He felt a tentative touch on his sleeve. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m afraid of the dark,” he said, and felt shame, such shame, shame in his chest, shame in his belly, shame.
“What?”
He turned to face her, knowing what he must look like, flushed and tearstained. “What’s wrong is that I’m afraid of the dark.” His voice was loud, almost a shout. “I can’t go down there.”
Both Georgiana and her father glanced at the cutting and back at him. He saw astonishment and confusion on Georgiana’s face . . . and dawning understanding on Lord Dalrymple’s.
“Alexander,” he said, “it’s all right—”
“No,” Alexander said. “It’s not all right.” He turned and walked away from them.
He walked fast, almost running, and once he knew he was out of sight, he did run. Not to get away from the Dalrymples but to distance himself from the moment when Georgiana had seen him for who he truly was. He ran until his chest was burning, then staggered to a halt and bent over, hands braced on his knees, lungs heaving.
When he’d finally caught his breath, he straightened and wiped the sweat from his face and looked around. He was in a clifftop meadow fringed with hedgerows and trees. The sea was a vivid, sparkling blue and buttercups were bright in the grass. Alexander stared at the beauty surrounding him and felt despair and defeat. I pretend to be a man, but I’m not one. And now Georgiana knew.
He closed his eyes, remembering the shock on both their faces.
Oh, Christ, he’d practically shouted at them.
Alexander shoved his hands through his hair. “Fuck,” he said, out loud.
At least he hadn’t stayed to see the shock on their faces transform to disgust.
If you’re going to do something, do it well, his father had always told him. Well, if he’d had to burn his bridges, at least he’d done it thoroughly, crying in front of the Dalrymples, raising his voice at them, running away.
“Fuck,” he said again.
He’d have to face them. Of course he had to, at the very least to apologize, but he wasn’t ready for that moment yet, and so he kept walking.
After half a mile, he came to an empty country road. There was no signpost in sight, but he didn’t have to be a genius to know that turning left would take him back to Lansallos and turning right would take him further away.
He went right, striding fast, his boots crunching in the dry dirt and throwing up puffs of dust.
The road sidled closer and closer to the cliffs until there was nothing between it and the sea but an eighty-foot drop. Alexander went to stand on the very edge. The sea breeze was strong, buffeting him back. He had to lean into it to stay upright. Waves crashed on the rocks below. He stared down at them. Why aren’t I afraid of this?
He should be. An eighty-foot cliff, not sheer but close enough, with the occasional thorn bush sprouting from the rock. If he fell, he’d die.
But heights had never been something he’d feared.
Alexander sighed, and stepped away from the edge.
The road turned inland after a quarter of a mile. Alexander stayed by the cliffs, following a rough path. A riding officer’s path, most likely. To deter smugglers.
But he saw no riding officers, or smugglers. Only sheep. And after an hour he came to a sizable fishing village. I could get lost there, Alexander thought, looking down at the busy harbor and the stone houses climbing the hillside. Be someone other than who I am.
It was tempting. Very tempting. To leave Alexander St. Clare behind and simply become Charley Prowse. To never return to Thornycombe. To never see Georgiana again.
Except that if Georgiana wanted to find him, all she had to do was ask herself where he was. And he couldn’t do that to her, anyway—just vanish from her life. Not after what had happened to Hubert.
He sighed, and walked down to the village.
Alexander had a handful of coins in his pocket. He spent one of them on a pint of ale. It was only after he’d drained the tankard that he took note of his surroundings. The tavern was a working man’s one, a primitive place with rough trestle tables and a dirt floor.
Alexander drank his second pint more slowly, observing the other patrons. They were an uncouth lot, loud in their laughter, inclined to rowdiness, their accents so thick that it was almost impossible to understand what they were saying.
I would have been one of these men, he thought. If Joe and Martha hadn’t died, he could have been sitting here right now.
There was an odd, disorienting moment when he felt as if two of him sat in the taproom, one dressed in the trappings of wealth—a coat of blue superfine, soft buckskin breeches, the best top boots Hoby could make—while the other wore a coarse smock and rough leather breeches and wooden clogs. The first man, the wealthy one, sat off to one side; the other man didn’t. He was part of the crowd, laughing with his friends.
The noise grew louder, there was a general stir of movement, men were standing, calling across the taproom to one another, picking up their tankards, jostling each other in the doorway.