“Oh, no,” she was quick to assure him. “They are fine.”
He gave voice to that unspoken word dangling there, unsaid by her. “But?”
“They are fine for another child.” Leaning forward, she rested her palms on the edge of his desk. “They are just not . . . fine for Stephen at this moment.”
“And whyever not?” he barked. With the exception of a brand-new mattress and an Aubusson carpet he’d had commissioned, every last item in August’s room had belonged to him as a young boy in the Cheshire countryside. When he’d speculated his son was still alive, Edwin had specifically ordered those items be brought over and the rooms recreated in the image of his son’s own former rooms.
“The bed is too firm. He is . . . accustomed to sleeping on a certain bed.” She paused. “His bed.”
“This is his bed,” he gritted.
“Yes. That is correct. But it does not make it the one he feels comfortable in.”
Bloody hell. “What do you advise?”
If she heard the mocking edge there, she gave no indication. “I would encourage you to allow Stephen’s mattress to be delivered.”
He was already shaking his head.
“As a sign to him that his comfort and what matters to him are also of value to you,” she said solemnly. And had she been chastising or lecturing, it would have been easier to send her and her opinions to the Devil. But she was, once again, putting his son’s own needs first.
When you yourself cannot. When you cannot see past the hatred and fury and fear to sort out what August requires.
He thrust aside that damning taunt reverberating around his mind. “One note to your family,” he clipped out, “and the damned mattress. What else?”
She settled back in her chair, now entirely too comfortable with her hold on the conversation. And why shouldn’t she be? This was yet another time this woman, and the Diggorys as a whole, had bested him. “As I was saying earlier, about the furniture . . .” Miss Killoran chewed at her lower lip, her porcelain-white teeth troubling that plump flesh, drawing his attention where it should not go. “Living in the Dials, one becomes accustomed to . . .” She scrunched her brow.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. To—
“Accustomed to what?” he snapped.
“Hiding their cherished belongings.”
What in blazes was she on about? “I don’t understand.” Such had been the state of his existence for nearly a decade now.
“There need to be clever compartments and locks and—”
“You are asking me to commission furniture so that my son can hide his belongings? Like a common street thief?”
She beamed. “Precisely.”
And blast if she didn’t make him feel like the dim-witted student who’d at last mastered his lessons. “It was a damned rhetorical question,” he said tightly.
“Well, it is what he was.” Edwin went cold at the calmness of that somber deliverance. “He was a pickpocket more years than he was an earl.”
“It is what you made him,” Edwin thundered, slamming his fist down so hard the half-drunk snifter of brandy jumped, sloshing several drops over the rim and marring the leather surface of his desk.
The young woman jumped up and had a dagger in hand, pointed at him, before the last residual of his accusation echoed around the room.
Edwin smiled coldly at that dagger leveled on his throat. “You fear the madman after all, I see,” he jeered.
Gertrude Killoran opened and closed her mouth several times, her stricken gaze alternating quickly between the weapon she wielded and his face. “I did not . . . I would not . . .”
“What?” he mocked. “Harm me or my family?”
With fingers that shook, she leaned down and, edging up her skirts, inserted the blade into a clever strap attached to her ankle, drawing Edwin’s gaze there, to the flash of trim, cream-white flesh revealed above the pale-pink silk stockings.
His face hot, Edwin whipped his head up.
He’d been too long without a woman. There was no other accounting for this lusting after a Killoran . . . and a Killoran who’d pulled a weapon on him in his own home, no less.
The young woman finally lifted her eyes once more to his.
“Let us be clear,” he said with a restoration of his icy control. “My son has always been an earl.”
“I understand that.”
“Do you?” he shot back. “Do you know that August has the blood of marquesses that runs more than six hundred years flowing in his veins? Now”—he tipped his chin at her—“say whatever business it is you’ve sought me out for.” So he could be done with her and try to regain control of his senses.
She managed a jerky nod. “Uh—yes. As I was saying . . .”
“My son, the thief.” It was a reminder he made for himself. That this woman and her kin had transformed not only his life but also his son’s into one of sin and shame.
“People who have lived in the streets cannot ever fully divest themselves of their past.”
“And you believe the nobility is able to . . . what? Simply forget our past?”
She flinched.
Did he imagine the regret and pain that sparked in her eyes?
“No,” she said quietly. “I do not believe . . . they can forget.” Gertrude Killoran glanced briefly back at the doorway, and then when she returned her attention forward and again spoke, she did so in hushed tones. Ones belonging to a person who feared there was someone lurking about, listening . . . “Regardless of the wrong done to both you and your son, the fact remains that this has been the life he’s lived, and as such, he can no sooner separate himself from who he’s become than”—she nudged her head slightly in Edwin’s direction—“you can separate from whom you’ve become.”
Bitter. Broken. Angry. Wary. Empty. They were all parts of whom he’d forever be after Diggory’s treacherous act. Having August back, reestablishing a life together with the son he’d lost, would never, ever take away . . . everything that had been visited upon them.
Edwin glanced at the floor-length windows, the drapes of which hadn’t been drawn for years, only today opened for the first time. “August will have a say in the commissioning of new furniture,” he said dismissively.
“I will let my brother know that tomorrow at noon, after his lessons are concluded, we may begin the process.”
Her brother. This time Edwin managed to swallow the jeering retort.
Several moments passed, and Gertrude Killoran made no move to leave.
“What. Else?” he enunciated each of those words, stretching them out. Layering a warning within. He’d made all the concessions he intended to this day.
The young woman cleared her throat. “There still remains the reason for my visit.”
They still hadn’t . . . ? Bloody hell. “There’s more?”
“There’s more,” she confirmed with a nod.
There always was with these people. They were collectively determined to steal any and every shred of peace from his existence.
“What?” he clipped out.
He’d hand it to the woman. Most any other lady would have shaken at that sharp command. But then this was no ordinary woman, and certainly no lady.
“With regard to his name,” she began, smoothing her palms along her skirts.
“August,” he snapped.
“Yes, I understand that is his name, as do you, my lord.”
He’d have to be deaf as a post to fail to hear the lingering statement hanging on her sentence. “However?”
Several lines creased Miss Killoran’s high brow. “Beg pardon?”
“There was, I trust, a ‘however’ there, Miss Killoran?”
“Oh, uh . . . yes.” She flashed a pleased smile. “There was.” She began again. “I understand there has been some confusion in what to call him.”
“No,” he said flatly. Climbing to his feet, he stalked back over to his sideboard with his snifter in hand. He assessed the row of decanters and
grabbed the nearest, fullest bottle. Many times he’d turned to drink. After his townhouse had been burnt down and his wife and unborn babe had perished. Then in the subsequent days when the nightmares came. “There is not,” he clarified. “It is quite clear as to what August should”—and more importantly should not—“be called.”
“And though I’d not intended to debate the matter of names with you,” she went on as though Edwin had not even spoken.
My God, the insolence of the chit. She was breathtaking and infuriating all at once. “Good.” Edwin hooded his lashes. “Then don’t.”
“But,” she persisted, “I suggest it would be beneficial if we also speak about forms of address.”
“Forms of address,” he echoed dumbly.
“Names,” she clarified with a perfunctory nod of a noticeably untidy chignon. “For all of us.”
Decanter and glass in hand, Edwin sank his hip onto the edge of the mahogany sideboard. Good God, the whole world had been turned upside down. And here he’d believed his life couldn’t become any more disordered than it had been these past seven years. He poured himself a healthy glass. Thought better of it and added several more fingers into his snifter.
“You prefer to call him August.”
His hand shook, splashing several droplets over the rim. With a curse that would have sent any proper lady to blushing, Edwin slammed his bottle down. “Because it is his name.”
This woman, however, remained implacable. Calm when others would have either run off crying or cowered before him. “It is not the name he has gone by these past seven years, my lord,” Miss Killoran said quietly in sober tones.
Suspicion darkened the back corner of his mind. “Surely you are not suggesting . . . ?” Unable to finish the rest of that query, he tried again. “Never tell me you expect . . . ?” Again the remainder of that failed him. “What in blazes are you saying?” he snapped.
Gertrude Killoran sailed to her feet, and turning a palm out, she walked closer. “I understand his name is, in fact, August. I understand he is an earl, and your son, and that my family is n-not his.” That single trembling syllable was the only indication of weakness she’d otherwise not shown. A quake that wasn’t a signal of her fear, but rather her heartbreak.
Do not be fooled by her or any other Killoran. Their skills at deception could rival the most accomplished actor on any London stage.
“Out with it, Miss Killoran,” he said coolly.
Only . . .
As she lifted her gaze to his, the pain and regret spilling from within their brown depths made a mockery of his frostiness. And goddamn it if she didn’t look like a kicked dog, and he the very bully who’d seen to the kicking. “His name is August. You and I know that. My family knows that.” He stilled at that allusion to her equally hated kin. “Even Stephen knows that,” she said softly, drifting closer. “And someday he will take ownership of that name and take pride in it as he should.”
Some unfamiliar scent clung to her skin. It wafted about his senses, dangerously quixotic for the pull of it, and he fought through the thick haze cast by the unlikeliest of people, to attend her. Tread carefully. Monitor. Watch her at every turn. It was a litany he clung to; otherwise, she’d win at whatever game she and her kind played.
At last, Gertrude Killoran stopped before him with a few paces between them; it was enough space that with the height difference, they might meet one another’s gazes. Or was it distance she herself also craved around him? “But my lord,” she finally went on. “That time is not now,” she said flatly, effectively killing whatever momentary spell she’d cast and returning them both to the battle they waged. “Now is a time for making Stephen feel comfortable and secure, and you”—she took a step closer and continued coming until only a step separated them—“insisting that he change, insisting that he shed who he’s been and the people he has called family, will not endear him to you.”
Edwin balled his hands, damning her. Damning her family. Damning his bloody life and the mess it had become. “I don’t need to endear myself to him.” It was true and yet not at the same time.
He may as well have remarked upon the weather for the casual up-and-down glance Gertrude gave him. “I don’t believe you mean that.”
“I don’t care what you believe,” he thundered, slamming his drink down. The delicate stem of his glass splintered and sent the bowl of the snifter tumbling, spraying the drink cart and floor with a steady stream of amber.
Miss Killoran’s cheeks went an ashen white, but God help him, she remained rooted before him. Unbending in her courage and unwavering in her determination. That strength she proved herself in full possession of as she was the first to speak after his outburst. “Allowing Stephen the right to a name he feels comfortable with will allow him to see that you do not reject him.”
“I do not reject him,” he said, her insinuation grating on his nerves. “I’m the one who insisted he return.”
“You are also the one who learned of his existence and allowed him to remain with my family and still did not believe he was yours . . . until you saw the proof upon his skin,” she corrected, tenacious at every turn.
He winced. For damn if the chit wasn’t correct. His mind and soul shied away from the reasons for that decision. “I don’t owe you any explanations,” he barked.
Miss Killoran lifted her shoulders in a little shrug. “I am not asking for them.” She folded her palms before her in that prim abbess’s way she had, which was utter rubbish given she’d lived amongst the most ruthless gang in all of London. “I’m merely trying to help ease August’s return into his new world.”
New. Old. Edwin wouldn’t debate her on this particular point. Restless, he stalked over to the floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the streets below. Clasping his hands at his back, he stared out. A sea of passersby lingered upon the pavement, whispering, stealing glances, pointing at the doorway, periodically nodding to one another.
They were lords and ladies dressed in the finest garments, accustomed only to the world of Polite Society.
And then there was August. August, who, as Gertrude Killoran so aptly pointed out, was an outsider. And likely always would be. Scandal would always follow his name. Talks and whispers of August’s days in the streets, and the fire that claimed his mother, and the pockets he’d picked, and—
Edwin’s eyes slid closed, and he squeezed them shut.
He didn’t want to call his son anything other than the name that he’d personally selected for the child. A family name his wife had simply agreed to. Back when everything had been . . . simpler. And yet, at the same time, not. How complicated those earliest days of his marriage, and then fatherhood, had been. “Stephen, then,” he said, that concession costing him the remaining piece of his soul he’d not sold along the way to this point. “Now get the hell out.”
“I’m afraid there is still one matter I’d discuss with you.”
“Never tell me,” he boomed, sweeping his arms wide. “My family’s silver. The jewels passed down since William the Conqueror.”
“I’ve no need of jewels or silver,” she said calmly.
“I was being facetious.”
“Well, I was being honest. It is a good deal more useful than”—she flicked a disapproving stare up and down his frame—“facetiousness.”
“If you’re opting for directness, have out with the remaining favor you’d put to me.”
“My name is Gertrude.”
Oh, God in heaven. What in blazes was this game? “I know your name, Miss Killoran,” he said dismissively.
She shook her head. “No. I’m indicating that you should, as long as I’m living here—”
“A fortnight.” He supplied that reminder for himself that her time here was limited, and then he could move on to building a new life with his son. “Until a proper governess is found for my son.”
“In that time, however long it may take, you should call me by my Christian name.” She paused. “Gertrude,” sh
e repeated. “Rather, we should call one another by our Christian names.”
Edwin ignored the latter part of that suggestion. “Do spawns of the Devil have Christian names?” he taunted.
Miss Killoran lifted her head, regal like a princess and in possession of heaps more strength and power. “Actually, they do not. My brother Broderick conferred one upon my sisters and me when I was near two and ten years.”
That knocked him back, the unexpectedness of that composed revelation hitting him square in the chest. She’d been without a name, the most basic thing passed to a child. It required no coin and only a thought from a parent. Only, she—Gertrude—had been without. This was an unwanted look at how she . . . and his enemies within that gang . . . had lived. It humanized her when that weakening would certainly only set him up for peril. And yet, there it was.
Miss Killoran—Gertrude—lifted her chin in mutinous defiance.
And a kernel of some emotion so very unexpected for this woman pitted low in his gut—guilt.
She continued as if they spoke casually over tea and biscuits. “It would do good for Stephen to see some amicability between us.”
Edwin dragged a hand over his brow. “Edwin,” he forced out between clenched teeth. “My name is Edwin. I’ll call you by your damned name, but I draw the line at any pretend shows of friendship. Now, is there anything else,” he said firmly, this time with a warning. This time, resolved to throw her out on her arse before he conceded another proverbial inch.
She shook her head. “No. Thank you . . . Edwin.” Gertrude glided over to the doorway, her skirts sweeping about her ankles at the long steps she took. When she had her fingers on the handle of the door, she stopped and glanced back. “That will be all.” She paused. “For now.”
With that ominous warning, she swept from the room.
Edwin stood there, unease settling in every corner of his life-hardened body, and he was unable to shake the possibility that he’d made a perilous misstep in allowing Gertrude Killoran to call this townhouse home for even a day more.
The Bluestocking Page 10