“Nightfall seems to be when the villagers glimpse him. I will take Lizzie up to the house, set her down with some dinner, and ride out.” He smiled at his sister wryly. “Be glad you coaxed Will inside on that dark, rainy night with the mere promise of a bath.”
“You asked me if I can make my choice, being uncertain of his . . . reproductive viability. That will be my price to pay for my part in this if he asks me to marry him.” She hesitated on this next thing. “He said something about his health. He believes he has a limited life force. I don’t know what that means, but I don’t think it’s just his fatherhood prospects that plague his mind. It’s something more serious. His hands, Vic, unless I massage them several times a day, they curl and turn cold. I worry about the future.”
Victor answered with halting care, “I am not at liberty to discuss him.”
“I know. I’m just telling you I’m worried. Are you ever afraid that they cannot survive the things we have done to them in the name of science, and love?”
“I am sick over it. That’s why I need to bring mine home.” Victor’s expression was stark. “I’m worried also about something different.”
“What?”
He dropped his voice to a whisper. “I do not know how to be a father. It’s not in any of the literature.”
“Maintain your faith in natural science. Human beings have been fathers for countless generations. And I have seen how you have searched for your lost man. He has awakened a protective instinct in you, I think.”
“That is true,” Victor replied, cheered up. “Speaking of instincts, I never told you about what happened when Will found you flat on your back in the forest.”
“He told me that he turned a bit uncivilized that day.”
“When he saw you in danger, he stepped out of his present form and became something I have never seen before. His true feelings. I saw a man violently in love.”
Angelika’s heart flipped, then sank. “But he cannot easily show me this side of himself. If he knows one emotion, it is guilt, and I don’t know why.” She had a sudden intrusive memory: dark stone, an ivy-covered building, a white porcelain cross. “What about our chapel on the hill? Get married there.”
Victor was surprised by her change of topic. “I think it is where Belladonna births her piglets.” He leaned further out the window to point halfway up the hill. “It would be a total ruin.”
“But Will could help us repair it, and you could be married at home. You’ve seen how nice his cottage is now after a bit of hard work.” Angelika was determined to make her brother happy. “I will go and assess it. If we can make it something lovely, and pay someone to be as unobtrusively religious as possible, would that be a good option?”
“It would be nice to do something so difficult at home. Thank you,” Victor said, and when they stood up, he opened his arms. That blue-moon hug was being offered, and it was wonderful. He smelled like apple and arsenic.
Above her head, he said, “Do take a glass beaker with you. You never know what you may get if you let him adjust to the idea.”
It was this thought that stuck with Angelika as she walked toward the wisps of smoke from Will’s cottage. Sometimes, a person just needed a little time. When she saw the big man in the forest watching her, she waved to him and kept on walking.
Chapter Twenty-Three
When Will answered the knock at his door, he found Angelika holding up the specimen beaker. His expression slackened with dismay. Before he could say a word, she took some flowers from behind her back, and turned it into a vase. After blowing out a long exhalation, he said, “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry he even asked you.” She dithered awkwardly. Was he still unhappy with her, after their altercation in the driveway?
“Are you sorry? I thought you would have supported it,” Will said, turning back into his cottage. From the doorway she saw him add water to his flowers. “Don’t stand out there. Come in.”
She came in, relieved by his easy aura, and stared around at his décor. There were not many more objects than last time, but somehow it was perfectly snug and comfortable. By the fire, she noticed a flat basket padded with a folded blanket, and an empty dish.
“Do you have a cat?”
“Not exactly.”
“I do not mean to intrude. But if I may offer a suggestion? One tall oriental vase in that corner, filled with peacock feathers, would make this space perfect.”
“How could you intrude into a place that is yours?” He positioned the flowers on his mantel, looking as content as she’d ever seen him. “It’s perfect now. A beaker full of larkspurs was all it wanted.”
“This cottage isn’t mine, and I will never enter without your invitation. This place is yours, for a lifetime if you want it. I have to tell people exactly what they are entitled to.”
He noticed her grimace. “What happened?”
“I accidentally dismissed Mary, instead of telling her she is a valued family member who is to live out her days with us. Typical Angelika.”
“I’m sure you will come up with an ingenious solution. That is also typical Angelika.” His bed had a compression mark on the blanket, and his cheek was creased.
“Were you lying down?”
“I am tired in the afternoons.”
“The sleepwalking?” He nodded. “I was going to see if you wanted to come for a walk with me. I have a project to assess, up on the hill. We are thinking of marrying the duchess and the bear at home. But I can go alone if you’re tired.”
“Walking alone in the forest doesn’t go very well for you.” He sat down to pull on his boots, and Angelika roamed around, admiring his belongings. The leather-bound book Institutiones Rei Herbariae was still in pride of place beside his bed. She flipped it open to reread her inscription. To my love: One day I will write your true name here. With all that I am, I am always, your Angelika.
“I really can’t wait,” she said to him. He didn’t understand. “To write your name in this book.”
“It would be sacrilege to write my name in such a special book. So, where are we going?”
It was another love declaration gone unnoticed by a man she blindly adored; there was a trail of similar gestures throughout the years. This was the first that was permanently inked. Imagine his gentle pity when he noticed it. Perhaps he would have to hide the book from his wife, or tear out the page.
Angelika tried to sound cheerful, even as her cheeks warmed and her throat tightened.
“We always went to church in town, but the estate originally had a chapel. I haven’t seen it since I was a child.”
Will looked up, startled. “I know where it is.”
“Does it still have four walls and a roof?”
“I’ve never seen it in daylight, but I’ve woken up there three times now. We should make sure to get back before nightfall.”
Angelika nodded. “Yes, I have something I need to do before it gets dark.” She’d asked Mrs. Rumsfield to make some small vegetable pies; it would be nice for Victor’s man to find them still warm. Like Will, he would not touch meat, and the sausages she had left in his baskets were tossed into the leaves. “Did you make any progress on your mystery when you rode to the village?”
“Christopher’s information on the travelers’ inn was useful. I went there and met with the landlady but found it too difficult to explain myself. The story of my twin brother is increasingly unbelievable.” He put his hands on his knees and stood with a groan. “I have walked around Salisbury long enough to believe I am a stranger to the village. But sometimes I see a maid look at me a second time, and I begin to doubt again.”
Angelika’s eyebrows lowered. “That is because you are terribly handsome. I will come with you next time.”
“Jealous,” he chided, but his eyes glowed with pleasure for several minutes as they began their walk. “I think I might have to expand my search for myself to London. I don’t suppose you feel like accompanying me on my trip?”
“I would follow you anywhere,” Angelika replied, and she did, into the darkening forest.
The path up the hill was roughly laid with crumbling stone stairs in some places, and in others it was nothing more than deer tracks traced into the fallen leaves. They fell into a companionable silence as they walked, and it was a good thing, too, because Angelika soon found her fitness was not up to this incline. “I’m hoping—it’s in a reasonable state—Victor and Lizzie—” She bent over, hands on knees, and huffed unintelligibly about marriage.
“I know how Victor feels about churches. I suppose he wants to hide away up here to wed her.” Will was unaffected by the terrain and stood patiently until she regained her breath. “Take my arm.”
She gladly obliged, pressing her cheek to his biceps as they pressed onward and upward. A noise caught her attention; she looked back and saw a solitary piglet trailing them. “Is that Belladonna’s runt?”
Will was sheepish. “It’s terribly friendly.”