“We’re here.” His eyes ran over the village in that intense way he had, as though he was scanning and cataloguing every detail.
“You’ve been here before,” she reminded him, nerves jangling under her skin.
“Yes. But it looks different to me now.”
“Why?”
“This is where you come from,” Nathaniel said, in a tone she couldn’t place.
Bess’s breath hitched. It wasn’t a question, but she nodded. “Yes. My father’s farm was half a mile in that direction, on the Duke of Havilocke’s land. We passed the turning to Kissington Manor a ways back, that will be where Hal, the current duke, lives. With your sister, Gemma.”
He didn’t react to the reminder of his last, ill-fated visit to the village, only carried on driving.
“When you told me you’d had schooling on a neighboring estate, you meant Kissington Manor. My sister’s new husband was the younger son for whom you were meant to be a calming influence.”
Bess struggled not to be warmed that he clearly remembered every word she’d ever spoken to him. “That’s right. I took lessons with Hal and his tutor for several years.”
She paused, a small, hot coal burning in her chest, then burst out with, “Nothing I said to you was a lie. I wouldn’t want you to think that, though of course I did not tell you everything in our conversations at The Nemesis. But I have never outright lied to you.”
“Everything I told you was the truth, as well,” he said quietly, his eyes on the road.
Bess’s mouth was dry. She couldn’t swallow.
If the entire rest of the world burned down, I’d still want you.
That was something he’d told her, but it couldn’t be true. She knew it couldn’t. Yet still, weak as she was, she heard herself ask, “Everything?”
He looked at her, his eyes a silver gleam in the moonlight. His voice was dark velvet rubbing over her skin as he replied, “Everything.”
Her heartbeat was still racing when he turned the curricle under the arched entryway to the courtyard behind Five Mile House. Bess caught her breath at the sight of the place. It seemed…smaller, somehow. But the old building was as dear to her as her memories of the farmhouse where she was born—dearer, in some ways, for this place had seen less tragedy.
The farmhouse was where she grew up. But Five Mile House was where she became an independent woman.
The windows, the ones she and Gemma and Lucy had scrubbed until they sparkled, were dark. A lazy wisp of smoke curled from the chimney over the kitchen hearth fire, a fire that was never allowed to fully die out, but other than that, there were no signs of life about the place, though it was early for the inn to be closed. Even the chickens that normally scratched and pecked through the scattered hay in the courtyard had gone to bed.
Now that she was here, Bess found her feet itching with impatience to get inside, to find Henrietta and unburden herself of her sins, and begin to concoct some sort of plan to get Lucy back.
She tapped her toe while Nathaniel secured the horses, then towed him up the steps to the back door of the taproom, and into the darkened interior of the public part of the inn.
It smelled the same as her memories—tart apple cider and honeyed hops, the yeasty warmth of fresh-baked bread and the buttery savor of shatteringly flaky pie crust, the smoke from the banked fire in the far wall.
She knew this wasn’t Nathaniel’s first view of Five Mile House; he’d been inside once before, on May Day of the previous year, the very day Gemma and Hal had finally resolved their differences and put everyone else out of their misery by admitting how deeply, madly, and adoringly they loved each other.
Into that maelstrom of emotion, Bess knew, Nathaniel had stomped. He’d blustered and thrown down an ultimatum and been told what was what, in no uncertain terms, by his defiant sister. And he’d left, without Bess ever getting even a peek at him.
She looked around the taproom now and saw it as she imagined it must appear to his eyes.
Where it looked warm and welcoming to Bess, he probably found the mismatched chairs and scarred wooden tables pitiful. The gleaming bar in the corner spoke to Bess of countless nights of friendship and laughter, families she’d known since she was a girl begging her to sing them a tune and clapping in delight when she dried her hands on her apron and launched into some well-loved ballad.
To Nathaniel? She bit her lip. It no doubt appeared quite sad and shabby.
But there was no time for this. “They must all be abed, though I cannot think why when it’s barely half six. I hope no one is ill.”
Bess tugged Nathaniel across the empty taproom and up the stairs that led to the bedrooms above.
When they got to Henrietta’s chamber, Bess hesitated for only a second before she lifted her fist and knocked sharply on the door.
No sound or movement came from within, so Bess knocked again, louder this time. Finally, she heard a thud and the slow plod of bare feet padding closer. Her stomach flipped, sweat springing damp to her palms, but when the door cracked open and Henrietta’s sleepy, bewildered face appeared, Bess nearly wept.
