That assurance fell on deaf ears. “Killoran?” he gritted out through clenched teeth, that most loathsome of names.
“Was not seen exiting with your son, or any time prior or after.”
Hatred pumped furiously through Edwin’s veins. That bastard . . . the man who’d served in the role of father after Satan’s spawn, Mac Diggory, had thankfully been erased from the earth. Edwin balled his hands so tight his wrists strained under the force exerted.
After Diggory, another man had stepped in as a father when that distinction should have only ever belonged to Edwin. Another man had raised August. Reared him. Chased away the occasional nightmare that had once sent his son toddling into Edwin’s chambers in the dead of night. Or worse, had not driven back the boy’s fears and had allowed him to suffer those terrors alone.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
There had been a certain vicious kind of pain in losing one’s child, but having been made to suffer through life when everything that mattered was taken from him, Edwin appreciated there were far worse fates than dying a physical death.
What had August’s life been on the streets? What horrors had he seen or been forced to carry out, all in the name of survival?
His stomach pitched.
With jerky movements, he stalked over to the window and tossed back the curtains.
Those three carriages remained motionless below, as they’d been since they first arrived. Nor were they the only ones lining the streets.
Crowds of carriages and onlookers sat in wait, lining the streets of Mayfair.
Strangers made no attempt to conceal their morbid curiosity at the scene unfolding before them. Or the one that would unfold the moment the carriage doors opened and August stepped out.
As if on cue of that truth, several gentlemen with ladies on their arms pointed and gestured to Broderick Killoran’s marked, black-lacquered conveyances and then over at Edwin’s townhouse.
Fodder is all they were. It’s all he’d ever been. First, for reasons he’d visited upon himself as a rogue and scapegrace, causing scandals about society. And then, for the whirlwind love affair and marriage that had set the ton to sighing.
And . . . everything that had come after. Death. Murder. Madness.
One of Killoran’s thugs, a burly guard with a shock of red hair, folded his arms threateningly at his chest and glared daggers at a pair of portly gents who moved too close to the carriage.
They immediately fell back, darting off to a safer distance where they might take in the grand “show.”
Edwin released the gold-fringed curtain. “What in hell are they doing out there?” he growled.
Through the gossamer fabric, Marlow’s visage reflected back in the crystal pane, just beyond Edwin’s shoulder. It was his man-of-affair’s usual telling, introspective silence.
“What, Marlow?”
At that invitation, the younger man spoke. “You might always . . .”
Edwin waited.
And when no further words were forthcoming, he spun about. “What?” he snapped when Marlow made no attempt to speak. “I might what?”
“Greet the boy yourself, my lord.”
Under his thin leather gloves, Edwin’s palms grew moist, and he reflexively wiped the sides of his pants before he realized what he was doing. He stopped. “Go find out what in hell is keeping him.”
“As you wish,” Marlow said tightly, his disapproval as transparent as if he’d spoken that disparagement aloud. Clicking his heels together, his man-of-affairs marched off.
As soon as he’d gone, Edwin began pacing. Greet him. In the streets with all of Polite Society clogging the thoroughfare, waiting for a hint of their reunion.
He’d not allow those insatiable gossips to feed on the morsels that were his and August’s lives. They weren’t fodder meant to entertain the lords and ladies of London, and Edwin would be damned if he gave them any more of his life than they’d already taken from him over the years.
Liar. You are nothing but a bloody coward.
He cursed as that taunt throbbed around his mind. Mocking him. Calling him out.
Edwin stood stock still. For there was some truth to that. He didn’t know what to do with this child who was his.
The snarling, snappish boy who’d been grazed by a bullet had stared back at Edwin with nothing but hatred. In that instant, kneeling beside him, with blood coating his fingers, Edwin had confronted the realization that the child was, all at the same time, both his son . . . and a stranger.
There’d been no hint of bright-red, cherubic cheeks or a wide, dimpled smile.
There had been a void of coldness and emptiness that was now an inherent part of who Edwin himself was.
That deadness suited to one who’d lived three lifetimes had glimmered back in the eyes of a boy he’d once cradled close as the world slept on. The same boy whom Edwin had tossed at the sky to Lavinia’s scolding and August’s chortling laughter.
Numb, Edwin gathered the gold enameled timepiece once more and, pressing the button top, opened it with a click.
He stared at the miniature portrait inside of August as he’d once been.
There had been an ease to fatherhood. Made stronger by the uncomplicated, unconditional love that had existed in that tiny, helpless child.
When his in-laws had hated him and his wife had grown melancholy and then angry over the duke and duchess’s disapproval, loving his son had been simple.
But that had been before. Back when Edwin had been alive; back when he’d been capable of laughter and smiling and hadn’t descended into madness, where he’d dwelled for seven years.
They were both strangers, cold and full of hate, destroyed by life. August’s place was here, and yet, Edwin could not offer him the life he deserved. The one he’d once known as a cherished child with a doting mama.
And there was to have been a younger brother or sister for August to look after and guide through life as siblings were expected to do.
And now there was nothing.
He stared grimly down at his son’s image.
There was nothing but Edwin, twisted memories, and a house riddled with sadness and horror.
A hesitant rap echoed outside his office.
His heart knocking harder against his chest, Edwin hastily closed the watch and looked up.
Pruitt, one of the Runners whose services he’d enlisted these past days, watching over the Devil’s Den to be sure August wasn’t stolen out from under him again, stood framed by the doorway with Marlow at his back.
His hat clenched in a white-knuckled grip, the greying man fiddled with the article.
A frisson of dread snaked along Edwin’s spine; it was that intuitive sense of knowing that all was not as it should be. Intuition that went back to another, darker, day. “What?” he asked on a steely whisper.
“There’s a problem,” Marlow announced.
“N-no problems, my lord,” Pruitt squawked. “Not truly.”
Edwin’s loyal man-of-affairs demonstrated the shockingly unexpected fearlessness that he had all those years ago at their first meeting, that fierce command at odds with the bookish, bespectacled man. “Get in there.”
Edwin gripped tight the timepiece with that precious portrait contained within. “The boy?” My son . . . ?
Pruitt twisted his hat in his hands. “The boy is here, just descended from the carriage. Entered the household.”
“That isn’t all,” Marlow snapped. “Tell him!”
Edwin stalked over, and the Runner shrank back. “What is it?”
“The child was accompanied by . . . someone.”
Edwin jerked erect. “You assured me Killoran had not exited his clubs,” he seethed.
Pruitt gulped. “It wasn’t Killoran.” He paused. “That is, it wasn’t Broderick Killoran.”
“Who?” he asked, that steely whisper measured and in full control.
Marlow nudged the other man between the shoulder blades, and when the Runner made n
o move to speak, the servant let loose a sound of disgust. “It was a Killoran. A Killoran is with him.” Marlow pursed his mouth. “And she’s refusing to leave.”
“And you left them . . . unattended?”
Both men exchanged nervous looks.
Marlow’s cheeks paled. “The servants are with them,” he offered lamely.
“The servants?” Edwin repeated. “You bloody fool, Marlow,” he hissed, and with rage snatching him in a manacle-like grip, Edwin stalked past the pair at the entrance of the room, who hurried to step out of his way.
A damned member of Diggory’s gang in his home, defying their orders and refusing to leave?
Edwin lengthened his stride.
By God, I’ll see them destroyed.
It was too quiet.
And as one who’d developed an overheightened sense of hearing, Gertrude had come to learn that unwavering silence never promised anything good and portended only doom.
Standing in the Marquess of Maddock’s foyer with a small contingent of servants all neat in a row like soldiers in His Majesty’s army, Gertrude and Stephen had not heard a sound since they’d entered the townhouse. In fact, Gertrude’s presence alone had been enough to send Reggie Spark’s brother, the marquess’s butler, sprinting with a Runner at his side.
Yes, because there could never, would never, be a warm welcome, or any kind of welcome, for any of Diggory’s kin.
A chill snaked along Gertrude’s spine, tingling ice along it, and she huddled deeper into her cloak.
She was here. She, the daughter of the man who’d as good as killed the mistress of this residence, had stormed the townhouse and intended to put demands to the gentleman. Seek his permission to remain.
Her stomach lurched. How would a man purported to be dicked in the nob respond to such an order? Would he himself toss her out on her buttocks? Or would he launch into a blistering, nonsensical berating?
Feeling Stephen’s eyes on her, she glanced over and found him smiling from ear to ear. He gave her a jaunty little wave.
She told her brain to tell her lips to tilt up in a requisite smile. As soon as Stephen glanced away, surveying his . . . their . . . surroundings, she let that false smile fall. Stuffing her trembling hands inside her cloak pocket, she found Sethos there. The mouse nuzzled around at her gloveless fingertips.
His tiny presence did little to ease her nervousness.
Stephen was the one who broke that tense quiet with words that were barely audible.
“You’re staying.”
She forced her lips back up at the corners. Since they’d climbed down from the carriage and strode along the crowded pavement and into the marquess’s household, Stephen had put those two words to her thrice.
Each time, they’d been spoken with a different inflection.
You’re staying?
A query that suggested Gertrude had been the last of all the Killorans he’d have expected such a showing from.
You’re . . . staying?
A hesitant, hopeful child’s question that had set Stephen to blushing.
“I’m”—What have I done?—“staying,” she said from the corner of her mouth. All the while the marquess’s servants ogled her and Stephen like they’d come for the household jewels.
Which, in fairness, was a fear that could have been rightly attributed to any one of the Killorans, for the number of treasured heirlooms and valuables they’d filched over the years.
Herself included—before she’d gone and lost her vision.
Stephen’s question, however, also seemed to shatter the tense impasse between the Killoran interlopers and the marquess’s staff.
A young footman was the first to take a step in their direction. “May I take your cl—?”
Gus hissed and shot an angry paw out, batting at the footman.
The servant blanched and instantly fell back, returning to his place in that neat line that went quiet once more.
“Do behave,” Gertrude chided. Drawing her hands out of her pockets, she scooped the tabby into her arms, the soft weight of his body against hers offering some reassurance.
“Pathetic bastard,” Stephen mumbled under his breath. “All of them.” His gaze went to Gertrude’s still trembling arms, and she stiffened, braced for her brother’s disdain.
He’d never had any tolerance or use for those who were weak. By St. Giles standards, cowering earned nothing but derision and shame. What did it say about Gertrude’s own character, then, this unease snaking around her belly?
Only this time, when Stephen glanced up and held her gaze, he gave a slight, near-imperceptible nod. An assurance that all would be all right. And this from her brother. A child thirteen years her junior, who was being ripped from their family and thrust into a new world and new life.
Shame sat heavy as a rock in her stomach as he turned his focus back to the marquess’s servants and the palatial foyer.
Gertrude drew a breath slowly through her nostrils, steadying herself, fixed on that silent intake of air in a strategy she’d used as a child whenever Mac Diggory came near.
Now she used this moment as an opportunity to study her surroundings, as Stephen had wisely done from the start and continued to do even now.
Take in every last detail of unfamiliar grounds . . . or else. It was a hard lesson, ground into a person on the streets of East London. To overlook strangers around one and one’s space had seen too many men, women, and children dead before they’d even realized the fatal mistake they’d made.
From the white Italian marble floor to the sweeping red-velvet-carpeted staircase and the crystal chandelier that hung overhead, the entryway to this lair exuded wealth and power.
Double Doric columns drew the eye to arched marble doorways, which offered intersecting pathways to this home.
Reflexively, she ducked deeper inside her wool cloak. Nay, there was nothing homelike about this place. Empty. Cold. The hum of silence and loss pinged off the walls.
Was it the loss the marquess had known that accounted for the palpable misery? Or mayhap Stephen was, in fact, correct, and any place Edwin dwelled would be devoid of love, warmth, or joy. And that lonely fate had come long before Diggory had visited death and darkness upon him. Perhaps the marriage had been cold, a formal arrangement between a pair who honored tradition and rank and gave not a jot for a child, outside of how that babe might have advanced those same traditions.
Impossible . . .
And yet, is it?
You’ve witnessed the gentlemen who visit your family’s clubs. Men who, when prostitution had been allowed within the Devil’s Den, had betrayed their wives. Men who’d beaten those women they’d taken as temporary lovers, some for pleasure. Some because their tempers ran as dark as their souls.
And not for the first time since she’d set foot inside the marquess’s residence, she took in the nearly two dozen servants stretching the length of the foyer, their line continuing on down a hall. And they all stared at her and Stephen unabashedly.
The male servants all wore pale-gold knee breeches and crimson jackets with gold adornments that ran the length of the high collars to the lapels and down to the tails. Those lavish liveried uniforms stood in an ostentatious contrast to the dark blues and blacks worn by servants at the Devil’s Den.
Unable to muster the furtive yet thorough study done by her brother, she stared baldly back with something akin to horror spreading through her. She alternated her stare over to the female staff and housekeeper.
Everyone standing close to Stephen, on down to the most wrinkled of the servants, wore like expressions. Their faces were contorted with fear. That primitive emotion spilled from each pair of eyes.
As if in feline agreement, Gus leapt from her arms and hid behind her skirts.
She glanced down at Stephen, and her heart spasmed.
For it was there, too. In this child who put on such a masterful display of unaffectedness, it was too easy to believe it true.
The white li
nes at the corner of his tense mouth and pale cheeks all bespoke a boy who was afraid of the uncertainty that awaited him here.
Gertrude slipped a hand into Stephen’s.
Her brother stiffened, and then his small, sweaty palm gripped hers. He squeezed so tightly her knuckles cracked from the pressure, thundering loudly around the foyer.
Gus darted under the narrow opening at the base of Lord Maddock’s walnut longcase clock, and not for the first time in her life, she envied those creatures for the ease with which they took flight.
Stephen blanched and made to tug free, but she gave a reassuring squeeze and he clung to her still.
Her ears caught the rapid flurry of steps from down the central corridor. Three pairs. Equal in their franticness. Two chasing, one leading.
Gertrude’s mouth went dry. For there could be no doubting who was the leader of this sinister household.
She straightened and faced the inevitable storm directly.
And when it came, it was not the raging tempest of lightning, fire, and fury, which would have been safer, as rage and what to do with it had always come far easier to Gertrude.
Rather, it came with more . . . silence.
The Marquess of Maddock.
He strode forward, these steps different from the earlier ones she’d merely heard. These were measured. Practiced. They were steps that belonged to a man in complete control of this moment and impending exchange. Until he stopped, only three paces dividing him from Gertrude and Stephen.
Energy thrummed around the foyer; it bounced off the tension-filled frames of those who answered to this man.
Gertrude cocked her head. She’d not known what she’d expected of the marquess.
Nay, she had.
In her days in St. Giles, she’d known any number of men and women who’d fallen to madness. Garments tattered, their eyes glittering with their lunacy, those unfortunate souls had sat on corners or paced pavements spouting words strung together into a jumble of incoherency.
With unfashionably long, gleaming golden locks, drawn back almost as an afterthought behind his ears, and with the spark of intelligence that lit the marquess’s brown gaze, he bore no hint of those hopeless souls in St. Giles.
The Bluestocking Page 5