Heart Burn (21 page)

Neither Myer nor Tate seemed particularly worried that I'd stab them, but neither approached me either.

"Miss Smith, I wasn't going to hypnotize you," Myer said. "I simply wanted to assure you that there is nothing nefarious in the Society's plan to purchase the compound or the cure. We wish to study it, that's all. We seek to understand the supernatural."

"And use it? That's far too dangerous, Mr. Myer. You know that. And you lied to us about not knowing Tate. Clearly you do."

"I concede that I haven't always told the truth. It's a long habit of mine, and difficult to break. Please, sit down again and be rational."

"No!" Tate shouted. "No more sitting. Let's go. I've work to do."

I tightened my grip on the knife. My hands were slick with sweat, and I worried that I wouldn't be able to keep hold of it if I had to stab one of them. "This meeting is over, Mr. Tate. I'll put my faith in Mr. Langley finding a cure in time."

He spluttered a laugh, sending spittle flying onto the floor much like the sparks. Then he realized I was serious and he sobered. "Miss Smith…what choice is there?" Panic made his voice high. "I told you Langley is useless.
I'm
offering you the potential to be cured!"

"I need more than potentials, Mr. Tate. I need certainties. I don't see any point in shortening my life further based on hope." I backed up to the door, away from both men. "It seems that hope has made me do too many foolish things already." Foolish to trust Myer, foolish to meet Tate, foolish not to tell Jack where I was going.

"Stop her," Tate ordered Myer.

"No," Myer said. "I won't hold her against her will."

"I'm doing this for you too!" Tate's face turned pink, but I didn't think it was rage that fueled him. His fingers weren't red, only his face. He was scared and desperate.

Myer turned on him. "We don't want anyone to lose their life over this. She must come with you willingly, or not at all. I, or any other member of the Society, will not stand by and let you destroy her. I'm sorry."

"You promised!"

"I promised to
bring
her, not that she'd comply."

How could he have promised such a thing when I wasn't even certain that I would come myself until yesterday? There was no time to consider it. I felt behind me for the door handle and turned it.

"Hypnotize her!" Tate cried. "
Make
her stay!"

Myer shook his head.

Tate looked as if he wanted to claw Myer's eyes out. While he was preoccupied with his building rage, I opened the door and ran out to the landing. I picked up my skirts and raced down the stairs to the relative safety of the taproom. The five men looked up from their ales and the proprietor set down the glass he'd been drying.

"Everything all right, miss?" he asked.

"Yes, thank you. Is there somebody who can drive me back to Frakingham?"

The proprietor's gaze shifted to the stairs behind me. I turned to see Myer descending them. I quickly looked away.

"It's all right, Miss Smith," he said softly when he was one step above me. "I won't hypnotize you or harm you."

"Where's Tate?"

"Sitting calmly, waiting for me to bring him out of his trance. He was too upset to have the good sense to look away in time. Unlike you."

"Stay away from me, Mr. Myer," I hissed.

"Miss Smith." He smiled gently, as if indulging a child. "I could easily hypnotize everyone in this room and abduct you. But I won't. As I said upstairs, we at the Society are keen to learn more about all sorts of supernatural phenomena, including Mr. Tate's compound, but not to the point of harming anyone. You're quite safe with me."

"Nevertheless, we'll part company here."

He took my hand and bowed over it. "As you wish. I'll give you fifteen minutes to leave safely, then I'll set Tate free of the trance. Be sure to be long gone by then. I can't control him forever."

He climbed back up the stairs, and I left the Red Lion with one of the men who offered to drive me to Frakingham in his rickety old cart. Unlike the farmer who'd driven me in, this one wanted to chat. I politely told him I had a headache and would he please mind urging his horse to go as fast as possible. He complied with a shrug, and we drove the rest of the way in blessed silence.

***

I'd hoped that Jack would still be out and that Sylvia would think me still napping. Neither was the case.

Jack met me half way down the drive, having either heard the cart's approach or seen it from one of the upper windows. His face was a riot of emotions, each one as raw as the next. He didn't try to hide them. Perhaps he couldn't.

Relief came first when he spotted me beside the driver. He ran toward us. His speed scared the horse. It shied and almost took us completely off the drive into the grass. The driver pulled on the reins and Jack grabbed the bridle, steadying the creature. It stopped, but the ears twitched frantically and the muscles in its shoulder quivered. Jack pressed his forehead to the glossy neck and murmured something in its ear. When the horse had calmed, and Jack had too, he let go. I hopped off the cart, landing just in front of him.

He kept his hands behind his back. The stance squared his broad shoulders even more, and somehow made him appear taller. He towered over me, but wasn't intimidating. He was shaking, just as the horse had been. I wanted to press my forehead to
his
neck and whisper calming words in his ear. It would have to remain a wish only.

"Thank you," I said to the driver and watched as he turned the cart around and drove off. I was acutely aware that Jack hadn't spoken. His silence was like a mountain range between us, formidable and near impossible to scale.

I tried anyway. "Jack…" I wasn't sure what to say so I chose the safest course. "When did you notice I was gone?"

"An hour ago."

"Oh. That long."

His eyes flared, their green orbs bright despite the dull day. "It was the longest hour of my life." He closed his eyes and sucked in air. The force of his breathing rocked him back on his heels. "Did Tate take you? Or…"

"I left of my own accord to meet with him."

He opened his eyes. Their color was like nothing I'd ever seen before, a blend of gray and green so dark as to be almost black. "You left. To meet with Tate." He spoke as if his jaw was wired shut. He may have been relieved before, but now he was furious. With me.

I swallowed. Nodded. I was saved from explaining myself by the arrival of both Samuel and Sylvia. They ran along the drive, calling my name. Sylvia's face was red and swollen from crying, and she was still crying as she folded me into a hug.

"Oh, Hannah. We've been frantic." She sobbed into my hair. I rubbed her back and murmured all the things I'd wanted to say to Jack.

"What happened?" Samuel asked, his hand on my shoulder. "Tate?"

I drew away from Sylvia and handed her a handkerchief from my reticule. "I went to meet Myer and Tate in Harborough."

Sylvia gasped and dropped the handkerchief.

"What?" Samuel roared. "Hannah, are you mad?"

"That's one explanation for it."

"Don't joke," he snapped. "Bloody hell. I can't believe you let us go through
that
…" He trailed off with a cautious glance in Jack's direction.

Jack stood there like a marble statue. Only the ends of his hair moved as the breeze whispered through it. His hands were still behind his back and his eyelids half-shuttered.

"We've been searching all over the house and estate for you," Sylvia said. "Jack was…
we
were in a panic. Even Uncle and Bollard took up the search, all of the servants too. We've been terrified. Absolutely terrified. And you went on
purpose
!"

"I'm sorry," I whispered. My heart felt like it was trying to squeeze through my ribs and get away. I wanted to rip it out.

"Why, Hannah?" Sylvia asked, her voice small. "Why didn't you tell us? Why did you go? Why…?"

Nothing I could say would make them any less angry with me, or help them to understand. How could they, when they all believed Langley could cure me? I'd thought perhaps Jack might, but he was a pillar of simmering fury. I'd thought he could never be angry with me. It would seem I'd been wrong.

"I had to," was all I said, offering a pathetic shrug.

He spun on his heel and stalked off, not in the direction of the house, but toward the lake. I went after him, but his long, determined strides were fast, and I was exhausted from the journey. Nevertheless, I picked up my skirts and ran as best as I could.

My chest hurt before I'd gone more than a few yards and my legs felt like logs, heavy and cumbersome. I wasn't really running at all, more dragging my body across the grass.

I stumbled over something—or perhaps it was only my own foot—and fell to the ground in an unladylike heap with my skirts up around my knees. Mud caked my dress, shoes, hands and even my hair. It had fallen out of its arrangement and tumbled around my face in a damp tangle, my hat nowhere to be seen.

I was a mess. A pathetic, horrible, cruel mess who should have kept her friends abreast of her plans. I wanted to sink into the earth and bury myself there until the wave of hopelessness had washed over me and all was forgiven.

But that wasn't going to happen. I'd done something unforgiveable.

I cried instead. I didn't want to. I didn't want to make a scene or have Jack hate me either, but I didn't have the power to make any of those things stop. All I wanted was to wrap my arms around him and tell him I loved him, that I did what I did because I wanted to be with him forever. But I couldn't. I sat there and sobbed, my tears dripping onto the already sodden ground.

I heard footsteps come up behind me—Samuel and Sylvia—then retreat as another approached. Jack. He'd come back.

I didn't want to look up at him, didn't want him to see my face.

He sat beside me despite the mud and scrunched a piece of my skirt in his fist, as if anchoring himself. He swept my hair off my shoulder, careful not to touch me. "Hannah." My name was a mere sigh from his lips. "Shhh, my sweet. Don't cry."

"I don't want you to be angry with me."

"Then I won't be." He wound a lock of my hair around his finger and gently tugged, urging me to look up at him.

I wiped my face with my skirt and blinked away the blurriness. Pain pulled at his mouth and drew deep lines across his forehead. It brought shadows to his eyes and made the muscles in his jaw tense. He swallowed. "I thought you knew that I'd do anything for you, Hannah. I would have taken you if it's what you wanted."

I swiped my cheeks as more tears spilled. I just couldn't seem to control the blasted things. "He wouldn't have seen me with you present."

"I would have found a way."

Perhaps, but I wasn't up to arguing the point, and I suspected he wasn't either. He looked down at my skirt where his hand grasped the silk near my thigh. He slowly uncurled his fingers and released it.

"I don't want to die, Jack," I whispered.

His head jerked up. "You're not going to die. You're
not
."

It was easier to stay silent. My tears had drained me, and I felt hotter than ever. I was no longer confident that either Tate or Langley would discover a cure, but I couldn't shatter his conviction. It would be too cruel.

"I won't let you," he murmured, lowering his head so that I couldn't see his face. "If you go… I can't…" It would seem that conviction was a mask, and a broken one at that.

It was hell not being able to touch him. I didn't want much, just to cup his cheek would have been sufficient.

"Come with me," I said, getting up. I didn't turn around to see if he followed. I slipped off my shoes at the edge of the lake and walked into the shallows.

The icy water bit into my skin, like the needle on Langley's syringe, but infinitely colder and more soothing. I sighed and gathered up my skirts then sat down on the stony bottom so that only my head was above the surface. Jack stood beside me, the water lapping at his knees. I reached up and took his hand. Heat flared, but there were no sparks. He sat and the heat dimmed a little, although it didn't fade altogether.

I was finally able to hold his face in my hands. I dared not kiss him. Not after the last time when our kiss had sparked something so intense it had almost killed us.

He turned his head slightly and pressed his lips to my wrist. I sighed and almost lost my nerve for what I needed to say. Almost.

"Jack, listen to me." I withdrew my hands, but he grabbed one and closed it tightly in both of his. "Jack, you
will
go on after I'm gone."

He jerked his head as if I'd slapped him. "Hannah, I don't want to discuss it."

"We're going to. We have to." I pulled my hand free and held it up when he began to protest. "I know everything is topsy turvy right now."

"That's putting it mildly."

"But you're twenty-two, Jack. Too young to give up on a happy future."

"If you're not here—"

"Don't. People move on from loss. They do, given time and good company."

"Good company!" he barked. "You think I'll stop mourning you if I find myself another girl who is 'good company'? Christ, Hannah, that's absurd. If you think what I feel for you is replaceable, you're wrong. It's not." He clutched his wet shirt at the water line, near his heart. "This feeling won't go away after you die.
If
you die," he corrected. "It's not temporary or breakable, it just is."

My hands began to shake, so I sat on them. I had to tell him how I felt. Otherwise, he might never be able to move on. And he must. I loved him too much to have him suffer endlessly, thinking he owed me something, or feeling guilty because he'd thought he would love me forever.

"Don't speak so hastily. Your thoughts on the matter may change. I've seen how you are with Charity, for instance, and—"

"Charity! Is that what this is about?" He threw his hands up, splashing water in two perfect arcs that plopped back into the lake.

"I saw you together at the ball. There are feelings between you. Don't deny it," I said when he opened his mouth. He shut it again and gave me an arched, impatient look. "She'll be good for you. She's lively and clever, and I can see that she cares for you just as much as you care for her. Don't push her away because of any loyalty you feel to me. Don't reject happiness, Jack."