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He dried himself. Pulled on clean trousers from the line in the scullery. Did not bother with a shirt. He was too tired and his skin was still damp and the cool air felt good on the burn of his muscles.

He climbed the stairs slowly. His thighs were lead. The day had started with her in the tunnel, her legs around him, her mouth on his. It had ended with her calling him a murderer and throwing a pillow at his back. Between those two points he had confessed to being sent to kill her, dug up a body he had buried twelve years ago, and carried it to a grave beneath an apple tree. He was not sure which had taken more out of him.

He pushed open his bedroom door.

She was on the settee.

He stopped. She was in her chemise. Not her dress, not her stays and petticoat. Her chemise. Thin white cotton, worn soft with washing.

She was curled on her side, one hand beneath her cheek, the other resting on her stomach. Her cane leaned against the armrest. Her hair was loose, dark against the faded cushion, and the chemise had ridden up past her calves, the fabric nearly translucent where it had worn to nothing, so he could see the shadow of her skin beneath it. He could see the line of her bad hip, the joint sitting at the angle it settled into when the muscles stopped holding it in place. Unguarded. Undefended. The body she spent all day forcing upright, surrendered entirely to sleep.

She had come here. To his room. After everything he had told her. The confession. The grave. The name of the man who had paid for her death. She had come here and curled up on his settee in her chemise and fallen asleep, and he did not know whether that was trust or exhaustion or the stubborn refusal to be driven out of any room in her own house by any man. Even him.

He stood there. An ache gathered behind his ribs, too large for the space it occupied. Her collarbones were bare. The fabric had slipped off one shoulder and the skin there was pale and faintly freckled and he remembered pressing his mouth to that exact spot hours ago in the tunnel, and his chest hurt with it.

Then the ache hardened. Her face at the table. Her jaw set. Her palm hitting the wood. Liar. The way she had jerked her elbow from his hand. Murderer. The pillow hitting him between the shoulder blades. Crawl back to your hole.

She had meant every word. She meant this too. Both things, at the same time.

He crossed the room. Slid one arm beneath her knees and the other beneath her shoulders. She murmured, her brow creasing, and turned her face into his bare chest. Her breath was warm against his skin. Her fingers spread over his ribs.

He carried her to the bed and laid her down. Pulled the blanket up to her chin. She settled into the pillow without waking, her face softening, her hand slipping free to fall on the mattress.

He stood beside the bed. She did not stir. Her breathing was slow and even. The bruise on her palm from the fall had gone yellow at the edges. Her lips were still swollen.

He lay down beside her. On top of the blanket, not under it. Close enough to feel her warmth through the wool but not touching. He put his arm over his eyes and listened to her breathe and tried to empty his mind of everything except the sound of it.

The tunnel was open. The grave was sealed. The turf would root by morning. Four days.

He was asleep before he had finished counting them.

Chapter fourteen

Early

Kit

He woke to voices. Audrey's voice. And another, higher, carrying. A girl's voice with a village lilt.

The bed beside him was empty, the blanket thrown back, the pillow still dented where her head had been. Morning light cut through the window. He had slept longer than he meant to.

He swung his legs off the bed and dressed. Trousers, shirt, boots unlaced. There was much work to be done. He took the stairs two at a time.

The voice belonged to the butcher's daughter from the village, twenty and freckled, who had been bringing him provisions since Marian's death: eggs and ham from her father's shop, and alongside them, pots of preserves and marmalade she had made herself, labelled in her own careful hand. She had refused to take payment, one hand on his arm, biting her bottom lip. He would nod, mutter his thanks, and leave her there to show herself out. But she came back, always with glinting eyes and a pout.

He heard them before he reached the kitchen. The girl's voice carried through the passage, bright and loose, the way voices carried when they wanted to be overheard.

"—up before dawn most days, ma'am. My father sees him on the road when he's opening the shop. Works for three different farms between here and the crossroads. Hauling, mending, whatever they'll pay him for. Comes back after dark some nights. My father says he's never seen a man work so hard who wasn't running from something." A laugh, light, practised. "Or running toward something, I suppose."

He stopped in the passage. Leaned against the wall.

"He don't talk much in the village, but that don't stop the girls noticing. My friend Sarah — she's the blacksmith's daughter, seventeen, lovely figure — she goes pink every time he passes the forge. And the Hale twins, they're barely nineteen, they fight over who gets to serve him when he stops at the inn for his ale." Another laugh, breathier this time. "He could have his pick, ma'am. A man built like that, with those arms and that face? Every young woman in the parish has thought about it, I can promise you that."

Audrey said nothing. The silence had a quality to it that Kit recognised. It was the silence she used when she was being cut and had decided not to bleed in front of the person holding the blade.

Audrey's voice, when it came, was level and dry and revealed nothing. "You are very well informed about my gardener's movements."

"Oh, I just hear things, ma'am. Small village. People talk." A rustling. "I only mention it because I wouldn't want you to be caught off guard. A young man like that, living under the same roof as a lady on her own… people will assume things. And assumptions in a village like this can be unkind. Especially to the woman."