Page 35 of Black and Silver

That was almost as vain a task as preventing Minnie from crying over every wrong that had ever been done to her. She pushed Lawrence’s hands away, then in a motion that was almost contradictory to that, she flung herself against him. Without a drop of shame, she threw her arms around his neckand wailed as she buried her face against the exposed crook of his neck.

Lawrence hugged her tightly, but instead of comforting her with more soft words or, perhaps, stroking her mud-soaked head, he said, “My God, Minerva. You’re burning up!”

The words barely penetrated Minnie’s brain. She was too bone-weary and defeated to think of anything but the support of Lawrence’s body against hers. She did not want to stand on her own or move a single muscle. She didn’t even protest when he shifted to sweep her into his arms, carrying her like a child. She just wanted to cry until every last drop of her life had bled from her.

“There’s a small church with a parsonage just over the rise,” Minnie heard Silas say as Lawrence carried her forward. “Perhaps they’ll be able to provide you both with a bath and a meal. Or even lodging for the night.”

“I fear we’ll need more than that,” Lawrence said, carrying Minnie on. “Lady Minerva seems to have a fever. I do not know why I failed to notice it before.”

“A fever?” Silas asked, his voice worried. “Like the kind at the inn we passed a few days back?”

Lawrence didn’t reply to the question. Minnie felt his body tighten as he carried her on. He walked past the carriage, surging forward, as if he would carry her all the way to the parsonage on foot. That made sense, considering the difficulty of cleaning mud from a carriage’s interior, but there was something more desperate to Lawrence’s mien as he moved onward in the rain.

“Hold on, my darling,” Lawrence said, almost as if he were speaking to himself. “I’ll get you to safety soon. The parson must have some sort of medicine to treat a simple ague. It won’t be anything more than that, I’m certain.”

Minnie sucked in a breath through her tears as the pieces fell together in her mind. The inn they’d passed had been quarantined because of a dire illness, not an ague. Illnesses of that sort took a few days to manifest. They also took only a few days to kill.

Perhaps she would die in earnest after all.

Chapter Twelve

Damn the mud, damn the rain, damn the carriage, and damn that blasted statue and everything that had led to its creation. Lawrence did not have enough damns inside him to express his anger, frustration, and fear at the situation he found himself in. As he clutched Minerva tightly to him and rushed down a slope, then up a small rise to the small, sad church and the drenched parsonage beside it, he was ready to damn his entire life.

“Where are we going?” Minerva asked in a small, breathless voice as she clung to him. “Could we not return to the club so that I might bathe?”

Lawrence nearly missed a step. He glanced quickly down at Minerva as he sped forward. Her eyes were closed, and her already pale face was splotched with fever. She had seemed cognizant of their surroundings in the carriage, and even after, when she’d foolishly helped him and Silas move the damnable thing, but the strain of that effort and her subsequent fall musthave been too much for her. Her eyes were closed now, and it was only a miracle that helped her maintain her grip on him.

“We’re going to try the parsonage,” he explained to her, attempting to keep his voice light, but knowing he failed. “With any luck, the parson will have a wife with competent healing skills. She’ll have you out of these muddy clothes, bathed, and tucked away in a nice, warm bed with a bowl of broth in no time.”

Minerva made a sound that might have been an attempt at an answer to his statement, but which came out sounding more like a pained wail of desperation.

That sound caused Lawrence to pick up his pace, despite the difficulty of running in the mud and rain with Minerva in his arms. Everything depended on him finding help for her at the cottage he raced toward.

He was relieved at least to see the parsonage appeared clean and well-kept. It seemed somewhat dark to his eyes, but the thought occurred to him that Minerva would most likely enjoy that.

With a quick shuffle of her increasingly heavy form in his arms, he freed a hand enough to knock on the door. When no immediate answer came, he knocked again with more force.

“Hello?” he shouted, all too aware of Minerva shivering as she pressed her body into him. “Hello? Is anyone at home? We need help.”

His calls went unanswered, and he knocked again before cursing under his breath. The parsonage was not so large that its inhabitants could not hear him. He was either being ignored or, as was more likely, no one was home.

A twist of panic filled his insides. Minerva needed immediate attention. She needed to get out of the rain and into a warm, dry bed as swiftly as possible. He considered kicking at the dooruntil it caved in, but that would only compromise the warmth and protection of the house once they were able to enter it.

Minerva made another plaintive noise in his arms that nearly broke Lawrence’s heart.

“There, there, my love,” he said, forgetting for a moment that they were not married, not even courting. “I’ll think of something.”

He turned away from the parsonage door, glancing around for a moment. In one direction, he spotted Silas working to convince the horses that they wanted to pull the damaged carriage the rest of the way to the parsonage. In the other was the church.

He hurried down the small lane that connected the parsonage to the church. If the parson was not at home, perhaps he was within his church, writing the week’s sermon or taking care of other spiritual matters.

The church door was unlocked, which was a relief, but the entire building felt as empty as the tomb on Easter. It contained two small rows of pews, and for a moment, Lawrence considered laying Minerva on one of them while he continued his search, but he found himself deeply unwilling to let her go.

A short search of the church proved that it was empty as well. It had not been abandoned entirely, however. The air still held the scent of wax candles and woodsmoke. The linens on the altar were all in place and in good repair. The parson’s small office off to one side of the sanctuary contained books, vestments, and even a teapot that still held some water. But no parson.

What it did hold was a set of keys hanging on a hook attached to the end of the room’s bookshelf.

“I hope the good parson can forgive me for taking these and testing them in his own door,” Lawrence said, grabbing the keys, then hefting Minerva in his arms to restrengthen his grip on her. “Desperate times and all.”

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