“Yes, it feels safe enough. Unless the owner barges in with a pistol.”
Garrick laughed and laid potatoes, carrots, and leeks on the table. “No, I mean it’s been outfitted for exactly this purpose. Anyone in our network can retreat here if they need to disappear. We pay a local to keep firewood and food stocked just in case.”
“Is there any tea in the cupboard?” Victoria riffled through the larder and pulled out a tin with an exultant, “Aha!”
“There might be something even better.” Garrick shifted the cupboard aside and retrieved a bottle of brandy from behind it that had come straight from France. A perquisite of the job. He uncorked the bottle and poured a liberal amount into two chipped, unmatched tea cups. Garrick downed his in one swallow. Victoria picked hers up and sipped as if it were boiling-hot tea.
She coughed but smiled at him over the rim. “Mother only allows me a small glass of port after dinner or one flute of champagne at soirees. According to her, liquor muddles your thoughts and leads to poor decisions.”
“Your mother is entirely correct, but we can afford a little muddling while I prepare our dinner.” By the time he gathered the water needed for their soup and hung the black pot over the fire, Victoria had downed the contents of her cup and poured herself more.
She propped her chin on her hand and pouted. “I could help if I still had my knife. I forgot to retrieve it after you disarmed me.”
Garrick cut the vegetables, dropped them into the small black pot, and seasoned it liberally with salt. It would be simple fare without even a loaf of bread. Not what Victoria was used to.
“I must say I do feel much warmer and delightfully muddled.” She raised her arms into a stretch and then plucked the remaining pins from her hair. Snow-dampened curls unspooled, and she finger combed them back from her face. “I understand why Mother would be worried if I over imbibed.”
Garrick mouth had gone dry. He wasn’t sure he could speak even if a pistol were being held to his temple. Watching her perform the mundane task of taking her hair down nearly unmanned him. It was an act only a maid or husband should be privy to, yet here he was with a front-row seat.
He remembered that day they’d been alone in her father’s study, the day he’d succumbed to his longing for her. The two years since had blunted the constant frisson of tension between them, but the afternoon at the modiste had awakened his desire like a hibernating bear, starved and ready to devour her. The silence built until it was unbearable.
“How many times have you used this cottage?” she asked.
“Twice.”
“Where are we exactly?”
“North of London.”
“That’s not exactly exact.” Her look was so sardonic, he fought a smile and lost.
“The more people who know about this place, the less safe it is.”
Her hum was full of annoyance. She took a sip and examined him over the rim of the cup. “Because you never mentioned a life before the orphanage, I assumed you had been abandoned there as a babe, but you weren’t.”
He shook his head but said nothing, not expecting her to circle back to their earlier conversation.
“What happened?”
“An illness took my mum and da within days of one another. I was ten.” He felt like he’d swallowed a whole turnip and it had stuck in his throat.
She slipped her bare fingers around his palm and gave his hand a squeeze. Her skin rasped delicately against his. “I’m so sorry. I should have asked. Why didn’t I think to ask?”
He stared at their hands. His large and rough, hers slender and strong. “Because you were young and sheltered and such tragedy would never have occurred to you.”
“Tell me about your parents.”
He hadn’t talked about them for years. At first his grief had been too raw, and later he’d learned missish feelings invited bullying in the orphanage. To cry was the mark of weakness, so he’d buried his grief and love and had never attempted to excavate them. Why bother now?
“They were good people.” He shrugged and tried to sound dismissive. “From what I remember.”
“What did your father do for a living?”
Her questions were a spade to his defenses. “Blacksmith.”
“Ah, you must take after him. You’re very…” Her voice petered into nothing. He raised his brows, waiting. She cleared her throat, and whispered, “Strong.”
“Yes, Da was a big man. Mum called him a gentle giant. He would bring home strangers in need of a hot meal.” The years had dulled Garrick’s memory like a watercolor left in the rain, but his da’s laugh was indelible. Even so many years later, hearing a deep, booming laugh would spin Garrick around in search of his long-dead father. “His kindness got him killed.”
“But you said he was felled by illness.”
“One of his charity cases was sick and died on a cot in the smithy. Mum and Da were taken by the same sickness not two weeks later, a day apart.” He didn’t like revisiting the memory of his indomitable da gaunt and weak, dying in the same bed his mum had died in the day before.
So much death. It was only when he went to war that he became inured to it.
“You had no relatives to go to? No one in the village offered to take you in?”
“They were afraid of me. Three people had just died in our cottage of some unknown plague. They burned the cottage and the smithy and banished me from town.”
“They burned your cottage down and refused to take you in? That’s barbaric. Heinous. It makes me want to—” She slammed her fist on the table, jostling the cups.
Her outrage on behalf of the ten-year-old boy he had been resettled something inside of him. He had tried to justify the way men, women, and children who had known him all his life had reacted, but he finally felt entitled to the anger he’d tried to deny. His da had been an important part of the village and had helped everyone at one time or another. Yet the villagers had only offered Garrick their backs.
“What would you do?” he asked.
“I would rain curses upon them. I would visit them in the dead of night and release a wild boar in their houses. I would see them on their knees in the town square begging for your forgiveness.” Ruthlessness shrouded her words with an ominous promise.
He smiled in spite of himself. She was her father’s daughter. “I understand now,” he said.
“Understand what?”
“Why Lady Eleanor came to you for help. You are a protector by nature and a formidable woman. More so than anyone realizes.”
The ghost of a smile crossed her lips. “Would you please tell Mother? She seems to think I must marry in haste because I require protection. You’ve seen the gentlemen who come to call. Tell me the truth. Would any have been able to best the men in the alley and protect me?”
He declined to answer her question and focused on what made his heart pound faster. “Marry in haste?”
“Indeed. Mother wants me to pick a likely candidate at the Stanfields’ yuletide house party.” A sly smile spread her lips. “Can we hide here together until it’s over?”
“I’m afraid we won’t be trapped here for long.” Garrick turned to stir the soup to hide his reaction at the thought of spending days—and more to the point, nights—alone with Victoria. The feeling approached an intense longing. But he longed for the impossible.