Page 15

“I’m sorry, Mariah.” Harrison’s voice came from just beside her ear.

“It is n-not your fault,” she said without opening her eyes.

“That is not the only reason I am sorry.”

Harrison had known of her dreams of the theater, of how she had hoped to transform the assembly hall into…something more. She had anticipated today evoking one of the best memories of her life, attending a play for the first time, but instead it evoked the tragic instance of one of the worst.

Opening her eyes to take in the ruined tent before her, the linen now singed and unusable even for a tent, that dream of a theater seemed to taunt her.

“Mariah,” her husband’s tone carried a hint of agony that surpassed even his brother’s.

She had temporarily forgotten James in her fear for the children. In the physical reminder of how her dreams lay burnt and broken before her. Now, it was almost too painful to even look at him.

Now hardening her heart was easy.

“Get out,” she whispered, no stutter in her voice.

“Mariah, I⁠—”

“Get out,” she said, more firmly this time, though a hysterical scream danced on her horizon. “Do not return to the school or the assembly hall. Do not⁠—”

“What you read, that was before, I didn’t know⁠—”

“Go back to London, J-James.” Her stutter returned, but with it came a detached calm. “Go.”

Finally turning to him, for a moment, she almost pitied the man before her, who appeared more lost than she had ever seen him, his attire askew in a way that possessed none of the artful carelessness that had carried him through life. His face had lost all vestige of charm, as if an inescapable heaviness had descended upon it. A gravity she had long known. That Harrison knew. That the children and workers present that day had known since birth.

But then the screams of Thomas and the others rang in her ears. The smell of the burnt linen lingered in her nostrils, carrying memories of horror from the past. The letter was still clutched in her hand, as if her fingers had become a vice grip.

“Go,” she repeated, shoving the letter back at James, wishing it and him anywhere but there.

And he went.

5

James had no recollection of his walk through town.

All he knew was that he ended up exactly where he had been hours earlier, though this time, lancing pain coursed through his entire being.

“Don’t you think that’s enough, lad?” a ragged voice with an Irish lilt came from behind him as he drained yet another tankard of ale.

Without looking, James was absolutely certain the voice was that of the older man he had seen the previous day. How he could not say.

“Do you not know who that is? Came another voice, this one laced with what James recognized as East Riding. “That is Lord St. George. He and his wife gave me a roof over my head. And who are you? An Irish scab?”

The sound of more footsteps behind him finally forced James to turn, finding the unpleasant sight of a group of laborers as they surged toward the older man, who swayed, but did not cower.

Despite the gnawing inside of his chest, James rose to defend the man from the growing throng. Mariah would probably have something poetic to say about it, like hunger makes monsters of us all.

Mariah…

Angling his body between the old man and the growing throng, he held up a hand that was unsteady with drink.

“Gentlemen, why don’t you have a meal this evening, courtesy of myself and my wife?” At his nod, the bearded barkeep gestured to the men toward a long wooden table on the other side of the taproom.

“I hear the mutton is particularly good,” James added, and with one final look toward James, the man from East Riding gave a casual shrug before guiding the others away.

“You did not have to do that, my lord.” The man tipped his cap, which he still clutched in his gloveless, wrinkled hand. “To thank you may I⁠—?”