"Oh God, I prayed and prayed, Meggie." He kissed her forehead, her nose, hugged her as close as he could without hurting her. "Everything will be fine now. You're coming home with Mary Rose and me."
"I'm very glad to see both of you." Meggie raised her face from her father's neck and smiled at Mary Rose. "Are the boys all well?"
"Oh yes. They can't wait to see you. They hounded us to let them come, but I didn't want to take any chances."
"You look beautiful, Mary Rose."
"Thank you, Meggie, but that's just my outsides. My insides have been a boiling cauldron of mushy fear for you. You're looking much better than I'd thought you would, thank the good Lord."
"Meggie."
Meggie slowly raised her head at the sound of that voice. Jeremy was standing in the doorway, Thomas behind him. There was absolutely no expression on her husband's face, but those dark eyes of his were as flat as a calm sea.
"Jeremy."
"We are relieved to see you alive."
"I am as well." She got hold of herself. "Now, what are you doing here?" And she cursed the fact that he was here. She wasn't glad to see him. However, the sight of him hadn't made her heart speed up, hadn't made her want to cry with the endless wanting of him. No, seeing him had made her want to frown, and tell him to go away.
It was quite true. She savored the lack of feelings for this man she'd believed she would love forever.
"I wrote them about what happened," Thomas said.
Tysen said, "Thomas also wants us to take you back with us to the vicarage."
"Oh no," Meggie said, separating herself from her father. "Thomas wants me right here. He's just afraid that this person will get me on the third try. I'm not leaving Pendragon."
Thomas said nothing, merely walked to the sideboard.
"Come with me to Fowey then," Jeremy said, and Thomas stiffened but didn't turn. "I have some stable cats, tough and mean, all of them. You can train them to race. If that bores you, then I've some horses that could use your fine touch."
"No, thank you, Jeremy. Pendragon is my home. I'm not leaving my home. Now, how is Charlotte?"
He smiled, splitting his face from nearly ear to ear, and Thomas turned to see it, and imagined Meggie crumbling in pain at that smile, in the knowledge that another woman was responsible for that smile, but she didn't appear to be at all disturbed. He frowned. Yes, she was simply looking at her almost cousin with a slight smile on her own face. It was an affectionate smile, no question about that, but he didn't see anything else.
"She is very pregnant," Jeremy said, and Meggie thought he would rub his hands together, he was that proud of himself. "She tells me she is fat and ugly and I just laugh at her and kiss her."
Meggie turned to her husband, who looked more like a statue than a breathing man, and said, "Thomas, will you laugh and kiss me when I am fat and complain?"
He nearly dropped the brandy bottle. "Yes," he said slowly, "I will. I think you would be safer back at the vicarage, Meggie, or at Fowey."
"That is possible. However, I'm not going anywhere. If you've forgotten, I'm not yet quite well enough to get up to dance with you just yet, so I would imagine that travel is equally beyond me as yet."
She was loyal to her toes, he thought, and poured the gentlemen some brandy. He'd eyed Jeremy Stanton-Greville, seen he was still a handsome man, a man he would probably like in any other circumstance, but not this one. No, he would just as soon stick a sword through his belly, curse him and curse Meggie, who was trying her best to show him that she still didn't love the bastard. Hmm. The fact was, she wasn't acting at all like her heart was in danger of crumbling. Not at all.
When Jeremy walked toward him to get his brandy, Thomas saw that he limped. He supposed that he'd noticed before, but it hadn't registered in his brain. Now he wondered why, and hoped it was from nothing that a female would consider vastly romantic.
"Meggie, love," Tysen said, stroking her hair, "we all think that you should come back home, just for a little while, until all this is resolved."
Meggie looked into her father's beloved face, then at Mary Rose, who was nearly wringing her hands she was so very worried for her, and smiled. "I love you both for coming here. I will be fine. Thomas will make certain that I will remain fine." She looked over at him, standing there so still, holding a glass of brandy in each of his hands. One for her father and one for himself, she supposed.
"Won't I, Thomas?"
Slowly Thomas shook his head. "I think you should go back to Glenclose-on-Rowan, Meggie. You will be well enough by next week. If you wish, you can stay at Bowden Close. The servants will take very good care of you."
Then Meggie looked straight at Jeremy. She was aware that Thomas had stiffened. She smiled at her almost cousin. "Tell me something, Jeremy, and tell me the truth. Would Charlotte leave you?"
"If I told her to, she would," Jeremy said, and it was said with arrogance, those words. He sounded infinitely obnoxious.
Meggie just grinned at him. "Give over, Jeremy. You can't pull that ruse on me anymore. The truth now."
Jeremy gave it up and said, without hesitation, "She would stand beside me and fight to the death."
Meggie said, "Good for her. You know, truth be told, I did hate her. I wanted to remove her from England entirely, perhaps even smack her in the jaw before I had her kidnapped aboard a ship bound for far-distant places. But now she doesn't seem so bad at all. I dare say I will even come to like her a lot, particularly if she's as fierce as you say she is.
"When you and she visit us here at Pendragon, Jeremy, I dare say we will have tea and I will tell her about the racing cat competition we're going to hold here, just as soon as all this mess is cleared up."
"Perhaps," Thomas said slowly, never taking his dark eyes off his wife, "you will have some entrants in the competition."
"You never know," Jeremy said, shook his head at Meggie, and laughed.
"I'm not leaving, Papa. However, I would very much like for you to remain here for a while. With all of you here, why, what could possibly happen to me? Now, I cannot wait for you to meet my mother-in-law, not to mention William and Aunt Libby. Oh dear, Jenny is missing. Nothing is going well at the moment." And Meggie lowered her face into her hands and sobbed.
Thomas handed both snifters of brandy to his father-in-law and gathered his wife onto his lap. He lay his cheek against her hair and rocked her. "Everything will be all right, Meggie, you will see. We will find Jenny."
There was no sign of Jenny MacGraff by dark that night. The search was called off until dawn the next morning. In the meantime, Thomas sent Paddy to question everyone in the village. Surely someone must have seen something. Jenny couldn't simply have disappeared.
Chapter 33
REVEREND TYSEN SHERBROOKE, Baron Barthwaite of Kildrummy in Scotland, looked at Thomas's mother, his head cocked ever so slightly, and said in his deep elegant voice, one brow arched, "I beg your pardon, ma'am, I am not exactly sure I heard what you said."
"I said, my lord, that your daughter-well, perhaps it would be for the best if your darling daughter did go back to England with you, don't you think? It simply isn't safe for her to remain here, now is it? No, she'd be far better off away from Pendragon."
Compared to what his mother had first said, this was a capitulation indeed, Thomas thought, turning an admiring eye to Meggie's father. Just maybe her father could turn Madeleine into a diplomat. That thought would surely give him a headache.
"Evidently not," Mary Rose said, ready to hit the old harridan in the nose even though Tysen had managed to get her to change her tune quickly enough. "However, I am very certain that you, ma'am, have made her welcome."