by Goodman, Jo
Surprised, Nat still did not hesitate. “Yes, sir.”
“We had a boy here, a few years older than you. Beetle. Do you recall seeing him about?” When Nat shook his head, Griffin went on, remembering how the child had rarely left his mother’s side. “He’s gone now, moved away with his family. There are things he did for me that you could do.”
“Griffin,” Olivia said softly.
Griffin did not give any indication that he’d heard. “Everyone here does something, Nat, and earns a wage for it. What do you think of that?”
“Would I be a servant, then?”
“You would be Nathaniel Christopher, I believe. Nothing about working for sixpence a week makes you more or less than that. I will speak to Truss about what he can expect. You will have to make time for your studies, of course, and what you get by way of compensation there is a head full of peculiar things that someone else thinks you should know. As fine a memory as you possess, you will take to it admirably.”
“I shall have a tutor?”
“As soon as I can secure the services of one. Later you will go to school, but not just now, I think. You’ve had a tutor before, haven’t you?”
“Mother taught me.”
Griffin tried to imagine it and failed. “Then she did well by you,” he said vaguely.
“She did not know about battles, sir. History was tedious, she said.”
“And you like it?”
“Yes. Very much. Comte DeRaine liked it also, and he had books and maps. Do you have maps, sir?”
“No, but that is easily rectified.” Griffin might have imagined the smile that tugged at the boy’s pinched mouth, but he was quite certain he did not mistake the wistfulness in his eyes. Satisfied, Griffin finished the last of his coffee. “Did I tell you, Miss Cole, that Nat left his room last evening?”
He had told her all about it, but she feigned ignorance. “You did not, my lord. What was that in aid of, Nat?”
Nat fought mightily to refrain from squirming. Beneath the table, he gently swung his legs. “The noise,” he said. “It woke me.”
A slightly different version, Griffin thought, than he’d heard the night before. He’d thought Nat hadn’t been able to fall asleep. He said nothing, allowing Olivia the opportunity to learn what he had not been able.
“The voices from below rumble through the house,” Olivia said. “Sometimes you can feel it when you’re lying abed. Did you?”
Nat nodded.
“You probably didn’t notice when you stayed before. I’ve been told you were very attentive to your mother.” She regretted causing the flash of pain she saw in his eyes. “When I slept there, I could sometimes hear shouting from the street. It is hard to imagine anyone could be so loud, but there you have it. The hours on Putnam Lane are rather different than what you’re accustomed to, I expect.” She watched him closely, trying to divine what it was that she saw in him. There was a reserve in his demeanor, a sense that he was holding something tightly to his chest. She imagined herself lying in that bed again, alone, hearing and feeling every strange sound, and then she imagined herself at his age.
At not yet quite six.
“I was afraid,” she said. “Deeply so. And I am ever so much older than you.”
“You are a girl.”
“True, though I am not certain that alone accounts for it. I know I didn’t show your courage, because I stayed in bed with the covers pulled up around my head, while you went off on your own.”
Nat’s eyes dropped to his plate, and he bit his lip. He thrust out his chin, but it still wobbled.
Olivia felt very much like weeping herself. She didn’t dare look at Griffin. If he was in any way sympathetic, she would most certainly cry, and if he wasn’t, she would be provoked to stabbing him again.
“Tell us about the noise you heard,” Griffin said. His tone was quiet and firm and did not invite refusal. He put his hand over Olivia’s when she would have answered on Nat’s behalf. “I think Miss Cole and I have mistaken the matter. You must set us right.”
Nat nodded ever so slightly. His feet stopped swinging under the table.
Griffin and Olivia found themselves actually holding their breath.
“The window,” he said.
Now Griffin and Olivia exchanged glances. They realized as one that Nat had not gone to find the source of the noise that had disturbed him, but fled from it.
“What sort of noise was it at the window?” asked Olivia. “Tapping? Scratching? Rattling?”
He nodded again.
“All of that?” asked Griffin.
“Yes, sir.” Nat finally looked up, his features set as stoically as a Spartan’s. “It was my mother come for me. She said she would come for me.” The remains of his muffin crumbled between his fingers. “I do not want to go with her, sir.”
Griffin stared at Nat. Throwing a few coins to the urchins every morning, sending Wick on an errand, exchanging words with Beetle as he handed over his boots, none of that prepared him for dealing with this child, or this child’s fears. “It was the wind,” he said. “Or a tree branch. Many things can cause noises such as you heard. It was not your mother.”
Rather than mollifying the boy, Griffin saw Nat’s large, dark eyes well with tears. Before he could speak and make right whatever he’d made wrong, he felt Olivia trod hard upon his toes. Relief far surpassed the pain.
“Of course you will not go with her,” Olivia said. She gently removed the mangled muffin from between Nat’s hands and used her serviette to briskly dust off his palms. “Lord Breckenridge will not allow it. It is his wish that you will remain here, and no one, not even your mother, can gainsay him. He will also not allow her to disturb your sleep, so you can be certain that when you hear a noise at your window, it is naught but one of nature’s moody tricks.”
Nat regarded her uncertainly.
“Look to his lordship, Nat, and see for yourself that what I’m telling you is true.”
Nat’s attention swung to Griffin. “Is it so, sir?”
The cast of Griffin’s features was solemn. “It is.” Griffin expected his word to be the end of it, but he watched Nat’s eyes dart to Olivia again, this time settling on her hands, both of which were resting lightly on the tabletop. “You are perhaps looking to see if she has a fork in my side?”
Nat offered a guilty, watery smile.
Under the table, Olivia carefully removed her foot from Griffin’s instep.
Griffin simply nodded to each of them in turn, affecting lordly condescension to indicate his satisfaction with the morning’s work. He was pleasantly surprised when Olivia’s hands and feet remained where they were, although he suspected her show of restraint was for Nathaniel.
The child’s presence at their table was not without its benefits.
“There are no tree branches close enough to scratch at his window,” Olivia said when she and Griffin were alone. “And no wind at all to speak of last night.”
“I know. The same occurred to me.” He closed the book of accounts, pushed it to one side, and leaned back in his chair. “Perhaps Truss and Wick can engage the boy…Nat, that is…in some activity so that I can have a look without alerting him. He will have no confidence at all in me if he thinks I am looking for evidence that it was his mother.”
“I think we mistook the matter there. He is not grieving her absence as much as he is fearing her return.”
Griffin pushed his fingers through his hair. “God’s truth, but she was ever a piece of work. It is little wonder he was so attentive to her. How frightened she made him of her passing.” Shaking his head, he blew out a large, noisy breath. “It does not bear thinking the kind of things she must have told him about me.”
“Nat will come to his own opinion. He is as bright as a new penny and will only require time to put order to what he’s been told and what he sees for himself.”
“Time with me, you mean.”
“You would not begrudge him that, would you?”
<
br /> “Begrudge him? No. But that does not mean that I know what to do with him. You tried to caution me when I began to offer him an opportunity to earn a few coppers.”
“And it was well done of you to ignore me. You did right by Nat, giving him a purpose and such dignity as a child can manage. You have a deft touch.”
Griffin was not as certain. “Do you think he’s my son?”
“I don’t know. But I think it is the wrong question.”
“Oh? What is the right one?”
“Do you want him to be?”
Frowning, Griffin rubbed the underside of his chin. “Bloody hell, Olivia, but you force me to look at a thing sideways.”
She came around the desk, bent, and kissed his furrowed brow. “It is not a punishment,” she said, chuckling. She tugged on his wrist. “Come, I want to see for myself what might have been at Nat’s window. Set Truss and Wick on him so we may have done with it.”
Nat obediently trotted after Wick when the older boy came for him and announced Truss had work for them below stairs. As soon as they disappeared from the hallway, Griffin and Olivia went to Nat’s room.
Griffin pushed open the window. Foster was already in the yard, making a survey of the ground. He looked up when he heard Griffin call to him.
“Footprints all around, m’lord. Can’t say whose they might be or when they were made. There are an uncommon number of them at the corner. That doesn’t seem right. Can’t think what anyone’s doing there.”
Griffin eased himself out of the window and dropped a few feet to the porch roof. Olivia immediately thrust her head out the opening. He gave her a cautionary glance.
“I am not coming out,” she told him with some asperity. “I am here to make certain you do not break your neck.”
He did not inquire how she meant to do that. He stepped carefully on the steep incline of the porch roof, looking for evidence that someone else had recently done the same. He found it at the edge, two small dents where the gutter had been pushed in. Leaning over as far as he dared, he caught Foster’s attention. “Look for a place where he might have set a ladder.” He pointed to the approximate location on the ground. “There and there.”
“Right you are. Just so. Two gouges, an inch or so deep.” He bent, examined them more closely. “Made recently. No rainwater collecting in them.”
“Where is our ladder, Foster?” The footman was already on his way to the outbuilding where such things were stored.
Griffin straightened and climbed the slope back to the window. By the time he reached it, Foster was emerging from the building.
“Looks to have been our ladder that was used,” the footman announced.
Not surprised, Griffin merely nodded. He waved Foster back inside and turned to examine the window. Olivia pointed out the scrapings she had already seen.
“Someone was trying to get in,” she said.
“Mmm. I thought we might put it down to a bluey-hunter, but that does not seem to be the case.”
“Bluey-hunter?”
“A thief who steals lead from the tops of houses. It is common enough around here.” Griffin checked the sturdiness of the window frame. It would hold, though nothing would stop a glass cutter. “I think we would do well to suspect it is the work of the gentleman villain.”
Olivia helped him back inside, closed the window, and set the latch. “We will have to move Nat to another room.”
“Of course. I will depend upon you to arrive at a suitable explanation.”
Nodding absently, Olivia asked, “If it is the gentleman, do you suppose he came for Nat?”
Griffin cupped the side of Olivia’s face. “You know that is unlikely, and while I appreciate your desire to protect him, I think we must apply ourselves to protecting you.”
Chapter Fourteen
Olivia held her candle high and surveyed the floor so she might carefully pick her way through the battlefield. Nat had arranged his regiments so they flanked his bed, guarded his window and door, and stood fast on the edge of his night table. A single misstep would alert him to an intruder—or at least he thought so.
She had promised that she would look in on him, just as she had every night since he’d been moved to the room above the one she and Griffin shared. He’d made the move to his new room obediently, never questioning the necessity of it, but Olivia had seen the flash of alarm in his eyes and had offered her company to ease his fears. The first few evenings she’d stayed with him until he fell deeply asleep. By the fourth night, she was able to ease out of the room shortly after his eyelids began to droop. Now that almost a fortnight had passed, she left after he said his prayers.
The soldiers, though, remained alert to the slightest disturbance.
Olivia reached the bed and gently pulled back the blankets that were covering Nat’s thickly thatched hair. She could make out the narrow furrows where he’d pushed his fingers through his hair in perfect imitation of what he’d seen Griffin do. Her throat grew thick with tender emotion, and she did not resist the urge to put her own imprint upon his tousled head.
Assured that all was well with him, Olivia stepped away from the bed—and onto the raised bayonet of a foot soldier. She was still cursing softly as she limped out of the room.
“A casualty of war?”
Startled, Olivia’s head snapped up. She managed to hold on to her candle, but a fat droplet of hot wax slipped free and spread over her thumb.
Griffin caught her hand, steadied it, then removed the candlestick. “I am most sincerely sorry, Olivia. Are you burned?”
She pulled back her hand and blew on the wax until it was hard enough to peel away. “It is nothing,” she said, showing him the pink blossom on her thumb. “But, really, Griffin, you have a way of simply…appearing. It is disconcerting.”
“And you have a way of simply…disappearing.” He gave her a measuring look. “You said nothing about leaving the faro table.”
“I told Mason.”
“You did not tell me.”
“I was looking in on Nat.”
“You did not tell me.”
Olivia sighed. It was no good telling him she thought the precaution excessive. He did not agree, and in this he would have his way. “I will endeavor to do better. It is not so simple a thing as you would like to believe. I am not accustomed to accounting for my whereabouts.”
“You did just fine when you were confined to your room.”
There was nothing subtle about the threat. “That is unfair, Griffin. I will not be put away.” She held his level gaze and gave no quarter. She would not be moved, and she would not be threatened.
Griffin finally shook his head. “Bloody hell, Olivia, but you define obstinate.”
“I do.” She raised herself on tiptoes and kissed him on the mouth. His own jaw was stubbornly set and softened only marginally as she pressed the kiss. “You know something about defining it yourself,” she whispered. She kissed him again, then set herself back on her heels. “Did you only come here in search of me?”
“You were half the reason.”
“I thought that might be the way of it.” She reached behind her and opened the door. “Have a look yourself and mind the troops.”
She stepped aside and waited for him at the top of the stairs. He was gone for several minutes, longer than was strictly necessary to assure himself of the well-being of a sleeping boy. She imagined him standing at Nat’s bedside much as she had, attending to his breathing, the gentle parting of his lips, looking for some trait in that narrow face that was familiar from the study of his own reflection. When he returned, she sidled close to him and slipped her arm in his. Giving him a light squeeze, she laid her head against his shoulder. “He makes furrows in his hair.”
“Does he?”
Olivia didn’t believe he’d never noticed, but she didn’t challenge him. “Mmm. Like you.”
“It doesn’t signify.”
“It doesn’t have to. It’s endearing.”
G
riffin thought about that. “He is rather more interesting than I supposed he might be.”
Chuckling, Olivia straightened and began to pull him down the stairs. After the first few, he held her back. She looked up at him, saw the gravity of his expression. “What is it?”
“I was thinking about you.”
“Me?”
He nodded. “When I was looking at Nat, I was thinking about you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You were his age, probably every bit as small and fragile as he, and someone looked at you and decided…” His voice trailed off as words failed him. He cupped the side of Olivia’s face in his palm. “It is incomprehensible to me.” What he glimpsed in her eyes told him it was the same for her. “Was there no one, Olivia? No one who stepped forward to offer protection?”
“There was.” The memory raised a bittersweet smile. “Honey Shepard.”
“Your nanny?”
“Yes. You look surprised.”
“You were packed off to school. How could she have known what was happening?”
“She didn’t. I have always imagined she thought I was well out of it there. It would have been a reasonable assumption.”
Griffin frowned. The implication was that she had not been safe at Coleridge Park. “Well out of it?” he asked. “Or well away from it?”
“The latter, I suppose.” Olivia shook her head as he would have posed another question. “This is no place for it, Griffin, and you should be very certain you want to know because there is nothing you can do as a consequence of it.” She tugged lightly on her arm and was released, then pivoted on the step and hurried off.
Olivia lingered in the gaming rooms after the hell’s patrons had taken their leave, completing her own duties with something less than her usual efficiency. It was only when she began to find reasons to be dissatisfied with the work of others that she realized what she was about. Griffin, also, would be aware of her delay and know the reason for it. She recalled how he’d tested her that first day, standing imperiously at the top of the stairs, pinning her back with that dark, remote glance of his, then walking away as if he were indifferent to what he saw.