Page 111 of Counting on a Countess
They were smugglers, too. Their suspicion of him was well-founded. Yet no one knew that he was aware of their secret.
“Morning, my lord,” one woman on her step murmured. She held a sleeping baby swaddled in a striped blanket, and gently jogged the infant up and down. Nessa came out of the house, watching Kit warily. The child and its mother looked perfectly healthy.
Nessa had lied to him, too.
He moved on without speaking.
No one in the village appeared gaunt or ill. There were no listless children dragging themselves along the street, followed by hollow-eyed mothers. Men weren’t hunched with anger because their families’ bellies were empty.
Kit had seen what famine did to people. So many villages on the Peninsula had been decimated by hunger. One little boy in Portugal had followed Kit’s unit for miles, begging for something to eat. Kit had given the boy his remaining bread and a hunk of cheese—though not before scraping off the mold.
The child’s haunted dark eyes looked at Kit now, through the veil of time.
Starvation had come to this village, too. Eight years ago, it had withered flesh on bone and made stomachs angry caverns echoing with want.
Rescue had come in the form of one redheaded sixteen-year-old girl with an audacious plan. She had conceived and executed it, saving the lives of hundreds of people. Despite the losses she’d faced and the neglect she suffered at home, she did not abandon her need to help others. She persisted.
Kit walked to the seawall and sat down, looking out at the ink-dark ocean. At once, images of Tamsyn filled him—watching the water, inhaling its brine, walking along the edge of the foam on the beach. There had been so much life and joy in her, he couldn’t help but share that happiness. Its reverberations continued even now, his heart lifting in time with the waves.
She had committed many crimes against his country, the one he’d been sworn to defend against enemies. Could he fly in the face of the law? Yet the government had taken from this village in the form of punishing taxation, endangering everyone. That wasn’t right, either.
Uncertainty was a chasm, surrounding him on all sides.
Would he have done the same in her place? She’d taken a massive risk in order to help the villagers. She’d imperiled her own life. For them.
He studied the churning sea. He wasn’t a waterman, but he understood enough to know that the ocean was never idle. It changed from day to day, from moment to moment. Yet it was eternal, too, despite—or because of—its constantly shifting nature. One could try to predict its moods and movements, but there were times when there was no choice but to surrender to its changeability. It was either that or drown.
Making a choice was difficult and thorny. Yet he had to make one.
His thoughts wove through a labyrinth like Theseus searching for the minotaur. At the center of the maze, the beast awaited him. Did he kill it or learn how to live with the creature?
The answer came to him with sudden clarity.
He got to his feet, causing several heads to turn in his direction, but he paid them no heed. Instead, he traveled back up the high street, back on the road that led to Shawe’s house—and Tamsyn.
Tamsyn paced moodily through the derelict garden her mother had labored over, as if trying to outrun her thoughts.
Soon after her mother’s death, Tamsyn had tried to maintain the garden herself. She’d pulled weeds and pruned hedges to the best of her ability, but her knowledge about gardens was scarce, and she hadn’t her mother’s patience and skill in coaxing the plants to thrive. The books she’d studied had told her precisely what to do. Despite her following their instructions, the garden had withered.
It wasn’t dead, but it didn’t flourish. Whatever managed to remain alive did so out of sheer obstinacy.
We’re much alike, she thought, stopping long enough to touch the jagged leaves of a shrub. She and the plant continued to exist because there was no other option other than surrender. It was said that the barony had been given to her ancestor because he’d fought against Cromwell at Worcester. Perhaps there was a little of the first Lord Shawe’s blood left in her, keeping her on her feet when all she wanted to do was crumple to the ground.
Yet how was she to move forward? There was no enemy, no obstacle to overcome. Her fate, and the fate of the village, was in Kit’s hands. She didn’t know what he would do. Unsettled misery sat on her shoulders like a gargoyle, its claws digging into her flesh as it weighed her down.
Footfalls approached, the gravel crunching beneath the newcomer’s feet. Tamsyn’s body went still as her heart pounded. The footsteps were too heavy to be Gwen’s, too quick to be Jory’s. None of the male servants ever sought her out, since Gwen was the mistress of the house.
There was only one person who moved with such speed and purpose.
She forced herself to turn and face Kit, struggling to compose herself. Yet her heart sprang into her throat at seeing him approach, his gaze fixed on her.
He stopped a few feet from her and said nothing, studying her face for a long time. All the while, her breath came fast and the ground felt unsteady beneath her feet.
“I don’t regret what I’ve done,” she said evenly. “Not when it comes to the villagers. They were suffering and I had the means to alleviate that suffering. Perhaps another person, a better person, might have found another solution, but this was the one that seemed the best to me.”
A muscle moved in his jaw, but he remained silent.
“In eight years,” she said, her words low but insistent, “there have been seventeen weddings. Twenty-four children have been born. Fifteen burials took place. No one died because they didn’t have enough to eat or because they couldn’t pay a doctor. That was my doing, and I would gladly steal the diamonds from the Prince’s waistcoat buttons if it meant Newcombe’s survival.”
