“To eat?” she asked.
“Anything.” He honestly didn’t care. At this point, he only wanted to fuel the clockwork of his body. Food now only tasted of dust, anyway.
The girl eyed him with puzzlement, but after a moment, she shrugged and went off to fetch him his meal and a drink.
“You ain’t going to talk, I hope,” Seb’s tablemate grumbled. “I don’t want no nattering.”
“I’ve no intention of engaging you in a dialogue.”
“Good. Just leave me to my book.”
Seb peered at the little volume in his hands. A Treatise on the Benefits of Effective Drainage. Yes, he could see how that topic might preclude all conversation.
Seb dug from his pack one of his own books, this one on the marriage customs observed in the cultures ringing the Mediterranean. He snorted softly. Most likely, the old man with the tome on drainage would find Seb’s choice of reading matter impossibly dull. Therein lay the mystery of taste.
This wasn’t the first time he’d read this particular book, but he found it so engaging, the subject matter so endlessly fascinating, that he could read it a dozen times and find something new within it.
Yet when he turned to the opening chapter, he saw only lines of type that meant nothing. The letters swam before his eyes before arranging themselves into a sentence: she loves someone else.
He snapped the book shut.
Hellfire. Could he find tranquility anywhere? Or was that a dim and hopeless cause?
The girl approached with a bowl full of something rich and savory. She set it down in front of Seb along with a tankard and a key, and he pressed a coin into her palm. She curtsied before moving on to another table.
The stew smelled delightful, yet when he took a bite, he tasted nothing.
Still, he knew logically that if he didn’t eat, he’d grow weak and ill, so he made himself finish his meal. The ale washed everything down but had no effect on dulling the continuous pain that split him from the top of his head to the soles of his boots. Once his bowl and tankard were empty, he pushed up from the table.
“Good night,” Seb said to the man across from him.
A grunt was his only response.
He wove through the taproom and plodded up the steep stairs. Close on his heels was a giggling couple, who, mercifully, found their room on the first floor. Seb continued up and up, until he reached a narrow door at the very top of the stairs. He unlocked the door before stepping inside.
“Fuck.” Stars exploded behind his eyes as his head connected with the sloping ceiling. He’d forgotten the innkeeper’s warning.
In the darkness, he fumbled around until he found a lamp, which he lit. The glow flared brighter, and he saw that the room was as described: hardly more than a closet, with a bed that he could already tell wouldn’t contain him. His feet, and some of his calves, would hang off the end.
It hardly mattered. In a daze, he pulled off all the garments covering his upper body. He poured water from a pitcher into a basin and hurriedly washed. With that task completed, he tugged off his boots, and doused the lamp before collapsing onto the bed.
Tired as he was, sleep would not come. The phantom shape of Grace curled against him, warm and soft, while her breath fanned over his torso.
He wrenched himself onto his back, draping his arm over his eyes.
How far will I have to go to outrun her?
The answer came, cold and brutal.
There’s no distance great enough. She will always be with you.
Chapter 26
Even at this early hour, the docks teemed with activity and noise. Stevedores loaded cargo onto waiting ships, crews made their vessels ready for sail, while passengers stood prepared to embark. An air of anticipation and urgency hovered over the docks themselves and floated on the surface of the slick gray water. Everyone was in a fever of anticipation, eager to leave.
Grace tried to cling to this sense of excitement, struggling to grasp it like a salamander. But it squirmed away, leaving her with an echoing emptiness.
“You needn’t stay until the ship departs,” she said to the group of people who waited with her. “The crew has our baggage aboard. There’s naught to do.”
“We’ll wait,” her father announced. He’d recovered sufficiently to come back to London, and had insisted that he accompany Grace to the docks. She was relieved to see that his cheeks were pink with health and he appeared to have more vigor than he had in years.