The Orphan of Cemetery Hill - Hester Fox Page 0,83

to see Tabby again. What if she didn’t reciprocate his feelings? He didn’t have experience with being rejected by women, and to be rejected by the woman he esteemed above all else—well, he was not eager to find out just how much it would sting. Now all those insecurities melted away as he thought of her in danger. “Can’t this goddamn horse go any faster?”

“She could be anywhere.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” he snapped. “For God’s sake, I’ve been gone for six months. I doubt that an extra hour will seal her fate.” He said it for his own peace of mind as much as Alice’s. He didn’t add that it was his fault, that he was the one who had shared her secret gift with Officer Hodsdon, and then she had somehow found herself at his mother’s house amongst a den of wolves. If Whitby had so much as touched a hair on her head...

Drawing a deep breath, he rubbed at his temples. “I’m sorry. It’s just...”

The tension in Alice’s shoulders softened and she gave him the ghost of a smile. Reaching across the seat, she squeezed his hand. “It’s just that you love her,” she said softly. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

He opened his mouth to deny it, the rogue inside of him rebelling against the idea of love and domesticity and all the nonsense that went with it. But then he closed his mouth, and gave a resigned nod. He did love Tabby, and God, it felt good to admit defeat, to bow down and lay his battle-scarred heart at her feet.

“Good,” Alice said, looking back out the window. “It’s about time you realized it.”

28

IN WHICH OUR HEROINE IS A PRISONER.

OUTSIDE HER TINY room, Tabby could hear the faint tapping of rain on the window, the muffled clip of horses passing below. How much time had passed since she had been confined to the prison of this forgotten room? After her capture at Harvard, she had been examined and drugged, transported to this place without so much as an explanation of where they were taking her.

The cemetery had been a home, but it had also been something of a prison in its own right, a tiny, stagnant corner of the world where she was hidden away like a princess in a tower. But now she missed the peace, the safety of it, and would have done anything to be back there. She closed her eyes and thought of the day she and Mary-Ruth had run amongst the graves, racing for flowers in the pollen-sweet air.

When she opened her eyes again, the scene that met her could not have been farther from the gentle colors and subdued ambiance of the cemetery. The air was stale and damp, the chinoiserie wallpaper faded. There was a cobwebbed cradle in the corner, a relic of when this room must have been a happier place, filled with the laughter of children. The only window faced another gable so that there was no hope of being seen below. When she had tried to open it, she’d found it was nailed shut and would not budge.

In an effort to preserve her sanity during her imprisonment, she had undertaken a census of the room, counting every nick in the wooden bedposts, every blue tuft of wool in the flowers on the Oriental carpet. There were exactly seventeen hairline cracks running the length of the plaster molding. It was still by far the most luxurious place she’d ever slept, but even so, she would have preferred a dank crypt to the mind-numbing boredom and melancholy of her prison.

On the wall, a row of tiny scratches marked the number of days she had been confined here. Although it had been thirty-seven days, she still had no idea where exactly she was. Twice a day, a dour serving woman came in with a tray of food. Every single time Tabby had pleaded with the woman to help her, but if she understood Tabby’s pleas for mercy and escape, she gave no indication as she went briskly about the business of changing the linens and emptying the pot. It didn’t matter anymore; there was nothing worth escaping for. To escape would be to sign Eli’s fate over to the cruel slave hunters. She thought about Caleb, wondered where he was. No doubt some sunny, faraway coast with a blushing girl on his knee. Why had she been so resistant to him when he was here? Even if he was