Three Little Secrets (23 page)

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Merrick,” she said wearily. “I am hardly distraught. And children do not notice such things.”

“Oh, Geoff does,” he said warningly. “Indeed, Madeleine, we have no notion what he may actually
know
. I beg you to have a care.”

“I see you are still clinging to that clairvoyant nonsense,” she retorted acidly. “I pray you will not tell Geoff any more of that ghastly business about Cassandra.”

“It is an important myth,” Merrick countered.

“It is a pack of nonsense,” said Madeleine. “Good Lord! The poor woman was raped, taken as a sex slave, then murdered. I do not think Geoff will find her story particularly heartening.”

“The poor woman?”
Merrick had the audacity to grin at her. “Do you believe in Cassandra or not? You certainly seem willing to spring to her defense with all your guns blazing.”

He had a point. Madeleine was forced to turn away and restrain a spurt of laughter. “It is a lurid tale, be it true or false,” she finally said. “I collect you are trying to comfort him, and I am not ungrateful, but haven’t you anything more cheerful in your raconteur’s repertoire?”

Merrick appeared to consider it. “I daresay could tell him about my dead uncle who used the second sight to cheat at hazard,” he suggested. “He outlived four wives, then died fat, rich, and happy at ninety-two—but so far as I know, he was never a sex slave. Though he mightn’t have much minded it.”

She did laugh then, her fingers flying to her lips, too late. “Please tell me you are lying,” she managed.

“You have become very hard to please in your old age, my dear,” he responded. “You seem not to care for any of my stories. Yes, I am lying.”

“And I am
not
old,” she continued. “I am but thirty.”

“Ah, but you will be thirty-one come the sixth of March,” said. “You certainly are not young.”

“I believe we may have to return to the topic of my weight,” she said tartly. “You will be more apt to see thirty-six that way.”

But despite her biting rejoinder, Madeleine could scarcely believe the man had remembered her birthday after so many years. They walked in silence for a time. “I never had much in the way of charm, did I, Madeleine?” he said out of nowhere. “I always wondered…I always wondered what it was you saw in me.”

“You were too impatient for charm,” she said. “Nor did you suffer fools. I think I liked that you were so confident.”

He looked at her, one dark brow lifted. “Confident? Or arrogant?”

She pursed her lips a moment. “At the time, it seemed like confidence.”

“And now?”

Madeleine shivered against the suddenly chill air. “Do not ask me about now, Merrick,” she said quietly. “I hardly know myself anymore. I certainly do not know you.”

He said no more for several moments. She could sense that his mind was turning, but over what, she could not guess. At least they were able to walk together and speak with relative civility. It was, she supposed, an improvement.

Or was it? They still walked arm in arm, and she could feel the heat which his long, lean body radiated down her side. She cast a sidelong look at him and wondered what she had missed. What would it would have been like to have lived with him these last dozen years, to have watched the beautiful young artist he had once been turn into this stern, striking, and very hardhearted businessman? Could she have softened him? Shaped him? Saved him from himself?

Perhaps it would not have been all bad. Certainly, there would have been side benefits. The picture of herself pinned beneath Merrick’s body came suddenly and swiftly to mind. For an instant, she closed her eyes, grateful for the fading light. Dear Lord, what they had done together had been…utterly
illicit
. Deliciously wicked. And wildly satisfying. In that narrow little room, Merrick had pleasured her in a way she had not known possible.

As a young man, Merrick had been a sweet and attentive lover. But that night—oh, there had been nothing sweet about it. It had felt as if all their pent-up needs and wrath and overwrought emotions had suddenly exploded in a firestorm of passion.

She must have shivered again.

Merrick stopped, turned to her, and set a warm, solid hand between her shoulder blades. He was so close, his breath stirred her hair. “Are you cold, Maddie?”

Maddie.
Oh, she wished he would not call her that. Each time, a little piece of her resolve seemed to melt. “A little chilled,” she said with a muted smile. “It is my emaciated condition, no doubt.”

He looked at her with a dubious half smile. They had circled the marketplace now and were continuing down a lovely little street. Mr. Frost and Geoff were a few yards ahead, looking up at the village church. Merrick turned, and called out to them.

“Be so good as to escort her ladyship back to the inn, will you, Frost?” he said when they reached the church. “Geoff and I shall walk on a few moments longer. I wish to speak with him.”

Madeleine looked back and forth between them uncertainly. She did not wish to leave them alone.

“This is a very important church, from an architectural perspective,” said Merrick to the boy. “I thought we might have a look inside, since you are interested in such things?”

Geoff’s eyes were alight, but Madeleine hesitated. Still, what choice did she have? And what, truly, was the right thing to do? “Yes, of course,” she said, taking Mr. Frost’s arm. “You shan’t be long, shall you?”

“We shan’t be long,” said Merrick solemnly.

Madeleine gave Geoff a warm smile. “Knock on my door, then, when you come up, Geoff,” she said. “I might need you to tuck me in.”

At that, he laughed, and she turned away. It was very hard to allow someone else into Geoff’s life, but it had to be done. Not because Merrick had threatened her but because it was slowly coming clear to her that it was the right thing to do. She set off in the direction of the inn with Mr. Frost, and resolved not to look back.

Merrick glanced down at the boy, who was eagerly surveying the church in the approaching dusk. “It is beautiful, Geoff, is it not?” he said. “St. Gregory’s is mostly a late-medieval church, but the nave incorporates some significant Saxon remains. If we hurry, perhaps we can see it before it’s too dark. I will show you how to identify the Saxon elements.”

Inside, the church was dimly lit, and empty. They walked about the nave as Merrick pointed out the oldest parts, including the original features and the ancient arcade. “Now take a good look up at the bell tower,” said Merrick when they came back out again. “This is a rare type of tower. Can you see why?”

In the gloom, the boy squinted. “Well, it looks rather more like a sort of castle than a church.”

Merrick was oddly pleased. “Quite so, Geoff,” he said. “Because this is a bell tower which was fortified for war.”

The boy’s eyes grew round again. “Really, sir?”

“In the mid-1300s,” said Merrick. “Because here, you see, we are very close to those wicked, rowdy Scots. I think the good citizens of Bedale must have feared them, so they fortified themselves against invasion.”

The boy laughed.

“Oh, you may well laugh now,” said Merrick, as they set off in the direction of the inn. “But we Scots were a bold, brave lot back then. The English rightly feared us.”

Geoff cut a glance up at him. “Did the Scots ever take Bedale, sir?”

Merrick shook his head. “Not as I know,” he admitted. “Though they came close to this area many times.”

They walked in silence for a moment. “What did you think, Geoff, of the story I told this afternoon about my grandfather?” he asked, keeping his tone deliberately light.

“That it was sad, I guess.” Geoff paused to kick a little stone from his path. “And that I didn’t understand why no one would listen to him.”

Merrick set a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “It is the way of the world, Geoff,” he said quietly. “People have trouble conceiving of or believing in things beyond their realm of knowledge. It is a form of…of benign ignorance, I daresay.”

The boy looked up at him, his brow furrowed. “But people believe in God,” said Geoff. “And he is beyond our…our realm. Isn’t he?”

Merrick nodded. “Oh, aye, but people have the Bible and the clergy to guide them,” he said. “Have you read very much of the Old Testament, Geoff?”

The boy looked a little pained. “Well, some,” he said. “Mamma makes me.”

“As well she should,” he remarked. They turned the corner back into the marketplace. “Are you familiar with the Book of Joel? I ask, you see, because it says some astounding things.”

“What sort of astounding things?”

“Well, some people believe that it talks about people like my grandfather.”

Silence hung heavy in the air for a long moment. “What does it say, sir?” Geoff finally asked.

Merrick tried to remember the precise words.
“And it shall come to pass,”
he quoted,
“that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.”

Geoff stopped in the middle of the marketplace. “Is that truly what it says, sir?”

Merrick nodded. “I have read it many times.”

The boy stared at the ground beneath his feet as if pondering something.

Merrick set a hand on the lad’s back. “Geoff, if ever there is anything…well, anything you should like to know, I hope that you will ask me,” he said. “Just remember that, will you? That you can talk to me, and tell me anything, or ask me anything you like? I would never laugh, or dismiss your concerns.”

Geoff blinked twice, then nodded. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “I shall remember that.”

Merrick smiled. “Well, that is enough high talk for one day,” he said. “It does not do to fill a boy’s head with too much heavy thought, does it?”

“My head does feel a little stuffed,” Geoff admitted.

Merrick slapped him cheerfully between the shoulder blades. “On to the inn, then,” he ordered. “Tomorrow is another day, and it will be a long one.”

Nothing comes fairer to licht than
what has been lang hidden.

T
hey reached the turn to Gretna Green in the middle of a golden Thursday afternoon. Madeleine had been watching the signposts for a good twenty miles beforehand and praying that they would pass on by. Given the glorious weather, there certainly was no need to stop. But as they neared the village, the road did not look quite as she remembered it, as if it had been altered to bypass the little village altogether.

Accounting that a lucky bit of happenstance, she relaxed a little in her seat and continued to stare out the window.

Suddenly, Merrick cleared his throat, and rapped firmly on the carriage roof. His coachman slowed, and the groom leapt down. Merrick opened the door, and leaned out into the brilliant afternoon sunshine. “Go round by Gretna Green,” he ordered. “We will put up there for the night.”

“Put up for the night?” echoed Madeleine when the door was closed. “It is but half past three. Why do we not continue on until dark?”

“I have some letters to write.” Merrick looked resolved. “Business letters, and I should rather pen them whilst sitting still.”

With her heart heavy, Madeleine watched through the window as they rolled slowly into the village, and past the old blacksmith’s shop. Though she hid it well, the sight of the place where she and Merrick had spoken their hasty vows all those years ago left her unaccountably distraught. Save for a fresh coat of whitewash, the smithy looked little altered. The village, too, was still just as small and tidy as she remembered it, and the choice of lodgings still regrettably limited.

To her dismay, Merrick stopped at the far end of the village, in the yard of the very coaching inn at which they had spent that first fateful night of their marriage. After ordering the coachmen to see to the horses, he strode into the place as if he owned it. When the innkeeper greeted him by name, and enquired into the state of his health and business, Merrick answered graciously. If it troubled him in the least to revisit the shabby little place, one could not discern it from his actions. No doubt he had stopped here many times through the years as he traveled back and forth from his family home to London.

As she had done at all the previous hostelries, Madeleine insisted on registering separately and paying for the accommodations her party would require. As soon as her portmanteau was brought up to the room she and Eliza were to share, Madeleine opened it and snatched out her shawl.

Eliza looked at her from across the bed. “Are you going out, ma’am?”

“Yes, for a walk,” she said. “I need some air.”

Eliza looked at her skeptically. “Will you wish me to accompany you?”

Madeleine shook her head. She wanted no one, not even Eliza, to know what a silly, sentimental fool she really was. “Thank you,” she said. “But I shan’t be long. Why do you not finish the unpacking, then have a rest?”

Downstairs, the reception parlor was empty, save for a rotund woman in a gray serge gown and a white cap who was dashing a feather duster rather ineffectually over the lamps and lintels. Madeleine nodded politely as she passed, and slipped out the door. She felt seized with a restless energy and set off for her destination with a strange determination. She really was quite angry at Merrick for requiring them to stop here. Surely they could have simply crossed over the Sark, and gone on to one of the newer, better inns on the main road?

The irony of it all did not escape her. Never once during her first fateful trip to Gretna Green had she questioned the wisdom of Merrick’s choices. Nor had she regretted her own impulsive decision to run away, or the hope and the joy that that choice had engendered in her heart. She had told Merrick the truth in that regard. But now she questioned all of it wholeheartedly. They had been so young, and the entire world, it seemed, had been solidly against them. And now, all that hope and joy had been crushed out of her by the inexorable grind of everyday life.

Her father had claimed he had paid Merrick thirty thousand pounds to go away, she recalled as she strode down the narrow lane. Madeleine no longer believed that. Rosenberg had said that Merrick started his business with financial backing from his grandmother, the very woman they were on their way to see. It would be a simple enough matter to ask her if it was true.

The blacksmith’s shop had come into view. In the distance, she could already hear the rhythmic
clank! clank! clank!
of a hammer on hot metal. She was not even sure why she was here; perhaps after all the grief, she was ready to revisit just a few moments of that lost joy. Madeleine waited for a passing farm cart to rumble by, then, on a deep breath, dashed across the lane.

In the graveled yard of the smithy, a tumbrel was tipped forward on its tongue, moldering straw poking from its slats, and its axle clearly broken. There was an old iron bench, and beneath it, a sleeping hound, who bestirred himself faintly at her approach. The smell of hot ash and the acrid tang of burnt coal carried on the faint breeze. The main entrance to the shop was clearly marked, and Madeleine hastened in without giving herself time to think about it.

She closed the door behind, turned, and almost fainted dead away.

Merrick was there before her, standing at the rough-hewn counter, his hands clasped tight behind his back in that familiar gesture of rigid restraint. He appeared especially large in the small, sparse room as he turned and lifted one of his hawkish eyebrows.

“Looking for something, Madeleine?”

Still frozen by the door, she opened her mouth, but nothing came out. The roiling heat of the distant forge suddenly seemed almost suffocating. She thought she had perhaps been saved from her folly when a squat, bald man in a leather jerkin emerged through a door behind the counter. Alas, it was not to be.

“Here ye are, sir,” said the man, slapping a bound leather book down on the counter. “This would be everything from 1818. Now, what month did ye say t’was?”

Merrick extended an arm, as if inviting Madeleine to the counter. “It was July, was it not, my dear?” he asked. “The twenty-fourth, perhaps?”

“The twenty-second,” she blurted, darting forward.

Merrick’s eyes flashed with satisfaction. “Quite so, my love!” he said. “I just wanted to see if you remembered.”

Madeleine narrowed her eyes.

Oblivious to the sudden tension, the man smiled. “Aye, and happy’s the man who always remembers his anniversary!” he remarked, winking at Madeleine as he flipped the book open.

“Oh, I never forget it,” said Merrick dryly. “I celebrate it every year unfailingly with a drink or two—or twenty.”

The man flicked him a curious glance, then returned to his book. “July, July, July,” he muttered, shuffling through the pages with a beefy fingertip. “Aye, July! Och, a slow month, that was. And Mr. and Mrs. MacLachlan, was it?”

Merrick smiled down at Madeleine, circled an arm around her waist, and drew her near. “’Til death do us part,” he said.

The man cleared his throat and flipped back and forth through a few of the pages. “The twenty-second, then?” he said. “But might it have been June? A verra popular month for weddings, June would be!”

Merrick shook his head. “Absolutely not.”

Madeleine did not like the look of vague confusion which was dawning on the bald man’s face. “It was the twenty-second,” she said leaning forward to see that he had flipped over into August. “No, that’s too far. Go back a page.”

He did so, then looked up at them blankly. “There’s naught here for a MacLachlan,” he said. “Not in June, July, or August.”

Merrick’s face fell, as did his arm. “But that is impossible,” he said darkly. “Give me the book.” He paged back and forth a little crossly.

Madeleine looked up at the bald man. “There must be another register,” she said.

The bald man shook his head. “Not here, ma’am,” he said, rubbing his palms a little nervously on his jerkin. “Mayhap you did the deed over at Gretna Hall? They cut into our business some a few years past.”

Madeleine looked about the little room in stupefaction. “No, it was
here
,” she insisted. “I recall it well.”

The bald man lifted his hands and tried to grin. “Aye, well, if
he
remembers it, and
you
remember it, the rest of it doesna’ much matter, eh?”

Merrick leaned halfway across the counter, as if he might drag the poor fellow over it. “Call me sentimental,” he snarled. “But I want to
see
the bloody thing.”

The man backed judiciously away. “To be sure! To be sure!” he said. “We’ve just made a mistake of some sort. Still, have you the marriage lines, sir? All’s right and tight, legal-like, long as you’ve the proper papers, whether your name be in this book or not.”

Madeleine had seized the register and turned it around. Merrick had withdrawn the marriage lines from his pocket case and was waving it at the bald man. As their argument grew more heated, Madeleine thumbed more anxiously through the pages.

“Well, this is very odd,” she said sharply.

Both men fell silent, and looked down the counter at her.

Madeleine pointed to the book. “There were eleven marriages here between the fifth of July and the twenty-first of July,” she said. “Then nothing further until the tenth of August.”

The men looked at her blankly.

Madeleine lifted both brows. “Well, does that not strike you as odd?” she asked. “Or are the two of you bent on simply quarreling over it until the names just mysteriously reappear?”

Merrick snatched the book. The bald man peered at it, and scratched his head. “That doesna seem quite right,” he agreed.

“Where’s the fellow who signed this thing?” Merrick demanded, stabbing his finger at their marriage lines. “Living? Or dead?”

“Dead, that fellow is,” he said grimly. Then he went to the door behind him, and shouted into the shop. “Ezekiel!” he shouted into the gloom. “Ezekiel, you’re wanted out here!”

Merrick and Madeleine exchanged wary glances. But the man who appeared did indeed look far too young to be the man who had married them. His eyes had a heavy look about them, and he was chewing rather languidly on what was left of a green apple.

“This is Ezekiel,” said the bald man, setting a kindly hand on the fellow’s shoulder. “That’s his father’s signature you’ve got there. Ezekiel has a fair mind for dates and numbers. Perhaps he’ll recall something about it.”

Ezekiel nodded, his motions oddly exaggerated, and swallowed his mouthful of apple.

“These folk were married here back in ’18,” the bald man explained. “Do you remember July of ’18, Ezekiel?”

The younger man blinked, then slowly nodded again. “Th-Thirty days hath September,” he said in an unusual monotone. “April, J-June, and November. All the rest have thirty-one.”

“We are talking about July, for God’s sake!” said Merrick sharply.

Madeleine put a restraining hand on his sleeve. The young man, she realized, was a little slow, though it was not immediately obvious. “Yes, July of 1818, Ezekiel,” she said calmly. “There is some sort of gap in the register.”

Ezekiel nodded, and began his poem again. “Thirty days hath September,” he intoned. This time, Merrick waited, albeit impatiently, until the lad was done. “Excepting February alone/ which has twenty-eight days clear/ and twenty-nine in each leap year,” he finally finished.

“Quite so, Ezekiel,” said Madeleine.

Ezekiel smiled vaguely, then bent his head to the page, his broad brow deeply furrowed. He began to mouth words to himself as his forefinger ran down the page.

The bald man was looking on a little wearily. He clearly did not know what difference the register made, since the fact that there was a marriage did not seem to be in dispute. Madeleine wondered, too. She
had
married Merrick here, and she assuredly did not need the register to tell her so—not after ruing the day for almost thirteen years. She was not even sure why she had wished so desperately to see it again.

“MacLachlan,” said Ezekiel, jerking his head up suddenly. “Twenty-two July. Capstone, twenty-three July. Hetwell, twenty-three July. Martin, twenty-six July. Anders, twenty-nine July.”

Merrick stopped him by laying his hand softly over, Ezekiel’s. “What are you reading?” he asked, his tone gentler now.

Ezekiel pointed to the center binding. “P-page is gone,” he said. “One page. Ten names. Vickers, thirty July. Elderwood, three August. Pickering, five August.”

The bald man stopped him. “Thank you, Ezekiel,” he said, then he returned his gaze to Merrick. “He could go on like that all day,” he said almost apologetically. “He used to memorize these things for amusement.”

“Aye, and it’s a damned good thing he did,” said Merrick. “Since you’ve been so careless as to lose a page.”

Ezekiel was shaking his head violently now. “N-Not lost,” he said. “Not lost. Flora took it.”

“Flora?” The bald man looked at Ezekiel strangely. “Who the blazes is Flora?”

Ezekiel blinked again. “Papa’s friend,” he said. “She talked…p-p-
peculiar
. And gave money. English money. For the page. A-And she kissed him. Sixteen guineas, three pounds, f-four shillings.”

Merrick turned to the bald man incredulously. “Good Lord, that’s twenty pounds.”

But Madeleine had bent back down to examine the register. Ezekiel joined her. “Sh!” he whispered, pointing to the gutter between the pages. “Flora had a razor. See?”

Madeleine patted him on the hand. “Thank you so much, Ezekiel,” she said. “You have been of great assistance to us.”

Merrick turned away from the bald man, who was clearly trying his temper, and shook Ezekiel’s hand. “Yes, thank you very much,” he said. “Perhaps you ought to write all those names down again someday?”

Ezekiel nodded. “All right,” he said. Then he vanished into the back of the shop.

“Trouble is,” said the bald man, “he can’t write. Any number, citation, or sum, he can recall in an instant, and he can read a bit. But he cannot write so much as his own Christian name.”

Merrick looked at the man in exasperation. “Well, damn it,
you
can write, can you not?” he snapped. “Good Lord, does the poor fellow have to do everything himself?”