“Day-vee!” A woman’s ragged voice filtered out of the woods.
The boy straightened, face snapping towards the tree line. “Mama?”
Just like that, the spell was broken.
“Yes, young Davey, you are missed.” He swung the child up to his shoulders, taking great care to keep his own face hidden in the shadows of his overlarge hood, then tramped back along the path. “Call for your mother.”
“Mama!” Davey hollered.
As they stepped from the sunshine of field to the shadow of forest, a brown-haired woman, braids unpinned and flitting about her shoulders, ran headlong towards them. “Davey! Naughty boy. You gave me such a fright.” Fear and longing, anger and relief, all bled out in her words and the great heave of a sigh as she stopped in front of them.
She peered up at Colin, and he instinctively recoiled deeper into his hood. “Thank you, sir, for finding my son. Please, come back with us, and I shall feed you breakfast for your good deed.”
“No need, madam. My own plate awaits me at home.”
“Look, Mama! Look!” Davey bounced on his shoulders, his little hand dangling the pocket watch by its chain and bobbing it in front of Colin’s eyes.
Horror folded the woman’s brow. “Give the man back his watch, Davey. You cannot keep such a thing.”
“It is no longer mine, madam, for I gave it to your son. A reminder, of sorts, for young Davey.” He swept the child off his shoulders, shifting him to one arm, and pointed to the watch. “This is to help you remember to never again run off alone. Do you understand, boy?”
Davey nodded, mumbling a solemn, “Aye, sir.”
The woman gaped. “But we cannot possibly accept such a fine gift. You are too kind.”
“I insist.” He wrapped Davey’s fingers around the watch, then held the child out.
His mother reached for him just as Davey launched into her arms, but in so doing, the boy’s foot kicked Colin’s hood, knocking it off. Exposing his face.
He swiped for the fabric.
Too late.
A scream rent the air. Loud as a siren’s call. The woman’s eyes bulged as she staggered backwards, face grey as death. “Help! A beast!”
The boy squirmed, twisting in her grip, and when his gaze landed on Colin, his high-pitched wails joined hers, along with a torrent of fat tears.
All the earlier communion he’d felt with the boy, the fledgling hope for a child of his own and woman to love, shattered into jagged shards. Cutting brutal. Cutting deep.
“Mary! Davey!” A man’s voice bellowed off to Colin’s left. Footsteps pounded. Crushing undergrowth. Coming fast.
Colin spun the other way as a shot rang out. He sprinted, praying to God he could outrun a bullet between the shoulders, yet knowing that no matter how fast he ran, he could never outpace the gruesome ugliness of his face. Breathing hard, he pumped his legs all the faster, racing pell-mell away from the awful screeches and howls, the blast of another shot, and now—more than ever—he was sure of one thing.
Whether it killed him or not, his only hope to ever be out in public again was Peckwood’s surgery.
FOURTEEN
“I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind.”
Afull day after setting the sparrow free, Amelia herself flew from
Balfour House, much to Betsey’s chagrin. Her maid had engaged in a proper fit over it, her lips all pinched. She’d mumbled about how she should be the one to run an errand, not to mention that someone with barely recovered toes ought not be trampling around town. Yet Betseyhadmentioned it. Even now Amelia couldn’t help but smile at the gruff maid with a heart the size of Brighton.
But Betsey had also been right. Though Amelia tried to ignore it, there was a residual ache in her foot. Still, every step of the short walk from Clifton to Bristol had been worth it. Summer was short, pledging but a fleeting friendship, a companion she would keep company with for as long as possible.
As soon as she entered the small, brick post office, the clerk behind the counter lifted a face as flat as the bottom of her shoe. His nose was a straight line, his lips nearly nonexistent. But when his smile broke, two large front teeth protruded quite nicely, yellow as a rodent’s. “Can I help ye, m’um?”
“Yes, please.” She set her carefully wrapped manuscript on the counter. After a week of late nights writing until the ink would not be scrubbed off her fingers, she’d finished a rough draft of Bristol folklore. “I should like to have this sent on the next possible mail coach.”
