Gwyneth drew her knees to her chest and buried her face in them, but could not stop her ears against the words. Nor insulate her mind from the new pounding of fear. What had he asked the Wesleys about them? What had they told him, never suspecting him to be an enemy? What did he know from their lips that could be her undoing?
“You are a stranger. Not the child I knew all these years, and I don’t much like the creature I see in her place. Selfish and cruel and...and unhinged.” A sob interrupted, though Gwyneth daren’t look up. “To think of how I’ve served you these months, with you lying about everything. Snapping and biting at me—and now this? You have betrayed your family. Your country.”
She wrapped her arms tighter around her knees, squeezed her eyes shut.
A slight breeze moved over her exposed wrists and toes, and footfalls moved to the door. No longer shuffling, nay. Now heavy and brisk. Furious. The door whooshed as it opened, but the expected slam didn’t immediately follow.
“Mr. Wesley has a cousin in Canada. We will make our way to him, and from there go home whenever we may. Rest assured we will take no more coin than is rightfully ours. We want nothing of yours.”
She winced as if the door had slammed—directly onto her fingers. She had thought yesterday’s bout would be all she could possibly cry in the span of a few hours, but no. The tears rolled down her cheeks, scalding and sticky. Filled her throat so that it was all she could do to keep them silent.
They were the only link she had to home, and they were abandoning her.
Of course they were. Why would they stay when they realized she had lied to them for months? About something as important as her father’s murder? They wouldn’t trust her anymore, couldn’t. They ought to leave. Go home and see their son, their friends, find employment elsewhere and…and…
And they would likely go straight to Uncle Gates and tell him what she had said. Where she was. Everything. He would laugh with them, shake his head, call her a madwoman, and promise to look into an asylum for her.
Then he would come.
Fire licked at her nerves and sent her scrabbling for the edge of the bed, her brine-filled eyes focused upon her trunk. She must leave, must escape before he could find her. Before he could kill the Lanes for harboring her.
Her feet tangled in the hem of her nightgown, and rather than leap to the floor, she fell to it. Pain bit at the rap of her knees, but what did it matter? She rolled onto them and fought her nightgown into place. And then she swallowed another sob when a brown skirt filled her vision and a brown hand reached to wipe away her tears.
“Don’t you fret none about the Wesleys.” Rosie put a finger under her chin, bidding her to look up. Where Mrs. Wesley’s eyes had shown a dark eruption, Rosie’s were as calm and gray as a morning fog. “Folks deal with loss in their own way. Hers is getting angry, with you the only one she has to blame. You just let her go. Let them go home, or at least make a start for it before they come to their senses. We’ll take care of you.”
Perhaps that advice edged out the panic. Yet when emptied of that, ’twas just a return to yawning nothingness. She pulled her chin away. “They will tell my uncle, the man who killed my father, where I am. He will come for me.”
“Not today he won’t.” Rosie lifted her apron and used the material, worn soft and thin, to clean Gwyneth’s face. “I have been helping Thaddeus long enough to know how long it takes to cross the Atlantic and come back again. We got four months at the least before he could get here. More likely six or seven, taking into account that they won’t have an easy time of finding a ship home, ’specially if they mean to go to Canada first.”
Six months. Half a year. Gwyneth’s shoulders sagged. Far better, then, to let them get well on their way before she devised any plans. Plans they couldn’t be privy to. Time to prepare. Time to pray they would change their minds and not go to England yet. Stay in Canada. Return to Baltimore.
Forgive her.
Fourteen
Thad let his horse have her head over the last open stretch between Washington and Baltimore and wished he were the one pounding the ground until he made thunder rumble beneath him. Happy as Electra may have been with the gallop, it did nothing to relieve the frustration boiling up inside him.
Nothing new upon a return from Washington. But worse than usual.
“Whoa.” He reined her to a halt when his city appeared over the rise. So many familiar streets and well-known buildings. All the avenues and alleys he had prowled with Arnaud, hunting up any tidbit of information that could prove useful. The Chesapeake’s harbor glistening in the sun, Fort McHenry looming in the distance.
Exposed. Ill-prepared. All because the blasted politicians would take no action. Thunder and turf, a more pigheaded lot he had never encountered. He had thought for sure the news from the ambassador in Belgium would have convinced them, but no. The cabinet had all dismissed the president’s concerns this morning when he demanded action.