Page 20 of Mercy Fletcher Meets Her Match
Naturally, Mercy—who had become accustomed to a good deal more freedom in the countryside than even his sisters had been allowed—would take issue with it. But she hadn’t the experience with the city that he had.
His eyes drifted to the corner of the desk, where a pair of gloves had rested for the past few days. Mercy’s gloves; the ones he’d found discarded in the library that first afternoon. He’d meant to return them to her before now. He simply hadn’t gotten round to it yet.
Hell. Might as well do it now, while he knew she was still awake. And then perhaps he could apologize for being so overbearing and attempt to impress upon her once more the risks she courted with such reckless actions. In the countryside, the worst she could expect to encounter was an adder, if she were particularly unwary where she set her feet.
In London, if she happened to traverse the wrong street, she might well lose her life.
Thomas scooped up the gloves and tucked them into his pocket on his way out of the office. He’d been in a foul mood even before he’d caught her attempting to sneak out of the house, and perhaps he’d snapped at her a bit too severely, forced her onto the defensive when he might have attempted a civil conversation.
She hadn’t truly deserved it, he reasoned as he proceeded up the stairs. She simply did not know any better—or at least shehad never hadto know any better. They lived beneath different sets of rules, she and his sisters. And Mercy had not, in the entire time he had known her, had a mother to guide her the way the girls had. She and her father had lost her even before they had moved to their countryside estate.
Thomas paused there before her door, his hand lifted to knock.Be kind, Mother had said to him, only too recently. And he hadn’t been, he realized—not ever, really. Perhaps he did have too much of his father in him. Perhaps he hadbecometoo much like his father. The very thought nearly provoked a shudder.
He wrapped his other hand around the gloves within his pocket and withdrew them, the fabric soft and cool in the clutch of his fingers. Just like Mercy, they were imperfect. A tiny splotch of ink upon the left thumb. The grey of graphite upon the side of the right one. A fraying thread poking through a seam that had begun to come loose. Almost charming, in a peculiar sort of way. He had the strangest sense that, were a great number of items laid out before him, he would be able to simply know, instinctively, which of them belonged to Mercy.
He rapped the door with his knuckles and pitched his voice low. “Mercy?”
There came no response. Odd, since it had not been quite five minutes since he’d sent her back upstairs again. She had to be awake. And yet there was nothing from behind the door—none of the sounds he ought to have expected of a woman preparing herself for bed from full dress. No crackle of the hearth, no movement whatsoever; not even a snore.
It was just…quiet.
Too quiet.
The hairs upon his arms and the nape of his neck lifted with a queer sensation; rather like someone had walked across hisgrave. He eased the door open and peered within.
The window was open. And Mercy was gone.
Chapter Nine
In hindsight, as Mercy gazed up at her bedchamber window upon her return, she understood that she had made several small but crucial mistakes.
The first had been being caught upon the stairway, naturally. She had never cultivated the particular skill of sneaking, but then she had never really had to. Papa had never begrudged her the occasional midnight walk—or ride, if she had been so inclined. There wasn’t much mischief into which one might become embroiled in the countryside, other than misjudging the boundaries of Papa’s property and accidentally trespassing onto the neighboring Armitage estate.
The second had been in her failure to lock her bedchamber door. Certainly, if she had done so, she would not now find herself in her present predicament. Which was the complete inability to crawl back through her window the same way she had left it. She had, in fact, made it all the way up the trellis—which had creaked something dreadful, given that she heartily suspected it had in no way been fashioned to support the weight of an adult woman—only to find it closed and firmly latched against her. And as there were still several hours left until dawn, she very much doubted that it had been the work of a maid.
The third mistake was in the fact that she had left her house key sitting upon her nightstand. She hadn’t meant to do it, ofcourse. She’d set it out quite deliberately, with the intention to place it within her reticule. Only she had never done so—and since she had not left through the front door, she hadn’t placed herself in the position to check for it until she’d returned home to find herself locked out entirely.
No conveniently open window. No key. And unless Mercy’s eyes deceived her, between the heavy curtains of the drawing room there came tiny flashes of dim light, as of a lamp set upon a table. As ofsomeonelying in wait to ambush her upon her return.
Thomas. It had to be.
A sigh lodged itself in her throat, and she swallowed it back as she trudged up the steps leading to the front door, lifted her hand, and knocked upon it. Just three raps, quiet enough that only someone listening for them would have heard.
There was the click of the lock, and the door flew open with such swiftness that she could only assume he’d been waiting by the window to spot her as she came up the steps. And then he was there, glowering in that severe fashion to which she had long become inured.
A long, hard swallow rolled down his throat and disappeared beneath his cravat, which was no longer quite so pristine and elegantly tied as it had been some hours ago. A muscle jumped in his cheek, and he spoke through what she imagined were tightly-clenched teeth. “Get. Inside.Now.”
The sigh she had swallowed down worked its way free as she slid past him and into the foyer, the hem of her cloak whisking across the polished floor. The snap of the door closing behind her sent a frisson of alarm jolting up her spine. “Well,” she said crisply as she turned for the stairs. “I’ll just be on my way up to bed—”
There was a mutedthump, and the frog closure of her cloak pulled tight against her throat. Mercy halted, turned to seeThomas standing just behind her, one foot planted solidly in the fabric of her cloak, pinning her in place. “I don’t think you will,” he said, and his voice was nearly—but not quite—pleasant. “I think you had every opportunity to do just that some hours ago, when I stopped you on the stairs.”
Through sheer dint of will, Mercy resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Now, Thomas—eep.” Her heels skidded upon the floor as he released the hem of her cloak, only to seize her by the arm and propel her bodily across the floor toward the drawing room.
“What in God’s name were you thinking?” he hissed as he shut the door behind them.
Mercy felt her brows lift in surprise. “I was thinking that I had some business to which to attend,” she said.
“No lady has business to which to attend at such an hour of the night. And I distinctly recall instructing you to return to your room.”
