“I know you,” she said, not so much as glancing at the boy and earning a blush from Stephen anyway. “Behave,” she repeated once more.
How had she . . . ? The young woman had an uncanny ability to gather precisely what the boy was doing, even with his back presented to her. It spoke to her devotion and their relationship, and for the first time, he saw her . . . not as a thief who’d claimed Stephen . . . but as the sister she’d proclaimed herself to be.
An odd tightening squeezed at his chest.
He didn’t want to witness any hint of Gertrude’s bond with his son. He didn’t want to see the maternal side that marked her not as the monster he’d taken her to be but instead a young woman whose family had, by her insistence, made a mistake. It cast shades of grey upon something that had only existed, and should only exist, in black and white.
Gertrude unfastened the clasp at her throat and consulted the pearl timepiece affixed to her dress.
Edwin hooded his lashes, lowering his focus not to the jeweled pendant there but to the small swell of Gertrude’s breasts, that cream-white flesh barely on display in her modest décolletage. But enough . . . It was enough to entice. Entrance. And make a man hunger to pull back the fabric and reveal every secret concealed there. Yes. He’d been too long without a woman. Too long. This reaction to Gertrude Killoran was a response he’d have to any female. Edwin swallowed hard and forced his attention away, and his gaze collided with his son’s.
Stephen narrowed his eyes, and with slow, methodical movements, he touched his index finger to the corner of his eye. “Careful. There.”
Unlike before, this time there could be no confusion or missed meaning in the inaudible—and implied threats.
And bloody hell, he—a grown man—found himself blushing.
“Where in blazes is he?” Gertrude muttered to herself and knocked again on the heavily nicked door that—Edwin peered at the pane—might or might not contain bullet holes.
The door burst open.
Gertrude had a dagger in hand and herself positioned in front of Stephen and . . . Edwin.
Six inches past six feet and at least fourteen stone, which was surely all muscle, the stranger in the door had the look of a street fighter, and Gertrude had placed herself between the monster of a man and Edwin.
“Bloody hell. Step aside, Gertrude Killoran,” Edwin gritted out, shuffling to reposition himself. He’d be damned ten times to Sunday before he allowed a woman—any woman, including this one with her Diggory blood—to put herself in danger for him.
“There you are,” she called out cheerfully, ignoring Edwin’s command.
It was a rare day indeed when a lord found his orders unheeded. The minx.
“Miss Killoran,” the man greeted. “Mr. Killoran.”
The boy smiled widely, in the first pure, most real expression of genuine happiness, and it cut Edwin to the quick that his joy should be delivered at the hands of this stranger. “Draven.”
And then that name registered. This was the cabinetmaker Gertrude insisted craft Stephen’s furnishings?
Draven spared a glance over at Edwin and then looked to Gertrude.
“Oh, he’s fine.”
With no further assurances needed, Gertrude’s having vouched for him apparently enough, Draven stepped aside and allowed them to enter.
Edwin lingered a moment, scanning the streets and then assessing the trio that now moved deeper inside the establishment with his presence seemingly forgotten. He’d be the madman the world professed him to be if he stepped trustingly into this place. The only reason he stepped forward despite his reservations was the son now amicably chatting beside the behemoth of a man. Closing the door, Edwin doffed his hat and followed at a more sedate . . . careful pace behind Gertrude, Stephen, and Gunner Draven.
As he moved deeper and deeper into the establishment, the smells of Draven’s workrooms filled his nostrils: a pungent scent of cut wood and fire.
His stomach roiled, and Edwin swallowed the bile fighting its way up his throat.
I am afraid she is . . . dead . . . my lord . . .
That whispered announcement from a servant who’d managed to escape thundered around Edwin’s brain. His wife’s death—his fault. All of it. Had he been there. But he hadn’t, and for his failure to protect them—as Stephen had rightfully charged—Lavinia had lost her life in the cruelest way. Burnt beyond recognition. His body broke into a sweat, and he dug his fingers hard into his temple. No. No. No. No. No. “No.”
“Something wrong with you?”
His pulse pounding in his ears, Edwin whipped his gaze over to that child’s voice that had pulled him back from madness. Nay . . . not any boy’s. His son’s.
“Fine,” Edwin managed to squeeze out, his voice hoarsened. “I’m fine.” He let his arms fall to his sides.
For the first time since they’d been reunited, Stephen wandered closer. “You don’t look fine.”
Which was a statement right on the mark. Edwin didn’t feel fine. In fact, he hadn’t been right in any way since the night of the fire.
“Shouldn’t you be with Gertrude?” he asked, needing to be alone. Needing to fight through the horrors that had intruded and still licked at the corners of his mind.
Stephen’s eyebrows went shooting to his hairline. “You called her Gertrude.”
“It is her name,” he pointed out, pretending to misunderstand the reason for the boy’s shock.
“You don’t like her,” his son said bluntly.
“No.” Edwin found the young woman seated alongside a long, rectangular worktable. With a pencil in her hand, she periodically waved it about as she issued some directive or another to the bearlike man at her side. Any other lady, regardless of station, when presented with a stranger as formidable in size as Draven, would have cowered in fear. Gertrude, however, commanded with a greater ease than Wellington. “I do, however, admire her,” he murmured to himself.
“She’s all right,” Stephen gruffly conceded. “Cleo and Ophelia are stronger. My other sisters. Or . . . I used to think they were. I still do, in some ways,” he tried to clarify.
And God . . . it felt so very good . . . so very right, to simply be talking again with his son that he didn’t care if the boy sang the praises of Diggory or the Devil himself in that instant; Edwin just wanted the moment to stretch out unto forever. And he also wanted to know about Gertrude Killoran. “In what ways is Gertrude different from her . . . your sisters?” he murmured, stealing a glance at his son from the corner of his eye. While also watching the woman they discussed.
“Well, Gert’s the bookish one.”
They are quite popular in the Americas. Their George Washington and Thomas Jefferson insisted upon carrying one . . .
His lips twisted in a half smile, the muscles of his face strained under the unfamiliar movement of his mouth.
“On account of what happened to her eye,” his son was saying.
Edwin’s musings snapped, and he grasped on to that statement. “What happened?”
It was too much. Too soon. He’d mistakenly revealed his fascination with Gertrude Killoran.
Stephen instantly shuttered his expression. “Ya tryin’ ta get information from me about moi sister?” he demanded in his thick Cockney. “Ya think ya’re goin’ ta ’arm ’er in any way, and Oi’ll burn yar newest townhouse down, too.”
That arrow found the proper mark, surely where the boy had wished to deliver it, right where his heart beat.
“I’ve no ill intentions toward Gertrude.” Two days ago, he had. Two days ago, he’d have gladly escorted her to the gallows, walked her up the parapet, and slid the noose around her neck himself. And yet . . . that had been before she’d revealed herself to be courageous and resolute and devoted to his son.
“Good,” Stephen said bluntly. “Don’t.” Making a slashing motion across his throat, Edwin’s son stomped off and joined the pair at work.
Gertrude paused in her discourse and said something to the
boy. Stephen ducked his head and gave it a shake. She took his chin gently in hand and guided his gaze up to her own.
Some unspoken exchange passed between them before Stephen offered a reluctant nod. Smiling, she patted the empty chair beside her.
Edwin had known his son fewer years than he’d been lost to him. And yet, he gathered enough about the person he’d become to glean there was no way Stephen would be so commanded to—
Stephen plopped his small frame into the seat and then dragged it between Gertrude and Gunner Draven, and the young woman returned to her earlier work.
Edwin hovered in the background, the interloper time and the Killorans had forced him to be. But in this moment, he didn’t watch Gertrude, sister to that bastard Broderick Killoran, with suspicion or rage.
This time, it was with an inexplicable and dangerous fascination for the woman herself. She was a conundrum presented in the form of a riddle. A woman who carried a dagger strapped to her leg and wielded it with masterful efficiency . . . but a woman whose eyes also radiated gentleness. And her every exchange with Stephen revealed a resolve, but also gentleness.
Gertrude chewed at the end of her pencil and then shook her head. Dropping that charcoal scrap, she used her hands to illustrate whatever design innovation she had for Stephen’s furniture. Edwin watched on, riveted by the animated way in which she conveyed her desires to Draven. No-nonsense, in command, she picked up her pencil once more and proceeded to draw something else onto that page. There was an endearing color to her cheeks as she worked.
Why could he not look away from her?
This need to watch her had nothing to do with the suspicion and fear that had dogged him for this woman or her family. It was for some other reason he didn’t understand and couldn’t explain, nor wished to. His mind shied away from whatever pull she had over him.
He gave his head a tight shake. It is about my son. That is the only reason my hatred doesn’t burn as strong.
Wasn’t it?
Chapter 12
Gertrude hadn’t always lived on the fringe.
For a short time, she’d been an included, welcomed, and more valued member of her family and the Diggory gang.
Until she hadn’t.
Until she’d lost her vision and her role and her rank, and visibility within both of those groups. Oh, she’d never doubted her siblings’ love . . . but their earliest years had been spent on survival. And Gertrude had been seen only as a liability that put the group at risk. From then on, she’d always hovered, just on the outside. There. But not. A member, but not in the same capacity as her siblings.
As such, she’d developed a keen awareness of when someone else found themselves so excluded.
And where every other Killoran had developed a hardened exterior that made them immune to empathy—an emotion that might weaken one—it had become an inherent part of who Gertrude herself was. For better or for worse, she could not make herself not care about another person’s pain or discomfort.
It was why, even as she should be attending Draven’s plans, she could focus only on the looming figure that hovered in the shadows. Also on the fringe. Also on the outside.
A man who’d professed his hatred for Gertrude and all she was and represented. But also a man who’d come ’round at every turn, making decisions that went against what he wished and were instead in Stephen’s best interests: from calling the boy by his street name to accompanying them even now, Edwin revealed there was far more to him than met the eye.
He was not the emotionless monster jaded by the death of his wife and kidnapping of his son. Rather, he was very much a real man . . . a father, doing the best he could with a situation that was only bad and wrong.
Gertrude set her pencil down, and Draven and Stephen both looked up. “I thought it would be good for Stephen to have a moment of privacy to tell you his thoughts on the design.”
Excitement glittered in her brother’s eyes as he brought his shoulders back.
Shoving back her chair, Gertrude stood and left the pair to their work. She tucked her palms inside her deep pocket, seeking out the sleeping Sethos. From where Edwin lingered in the corner by an ornate, hand-designed chair, he watched her approach with a wariness in his eyes that she’d have to be completely blind not to see.
Gertrude stopped at the opposite end of the high-backed seat.
Edwin stiffened and rested his hand atop the gilded and inlaid wood.
She also knew what it was to not know how to be around people. What it was to be surrounded by others and yet, all at the same time, lonely. “It is magnificent, is it not?”
He gave her a quizzical look.
Gertrude motioned to the barrier between them. “It was modeled after ancient Egyptian ceremonial chairs.”
“You have an appreciation for the history of furniture?” he asked without inflection but with a real curiosity that was a welcome change to his biting suspicion.
“I have an appreciation for everything,” she explained. And it was the truth. Having lost her ability to thieve, she’d been forced to occupy her time in different ways. She’d taught herself to read, and an entire world had opened before her. “The Egyptians were the first to use chairs as we know them, and yet ours have become strictly two-dimensional in purpose: comfort, style. There is not the same intricacy put into the design as there was then.” She dropped to a knee and ran her fingers down the feline-like legs of that chair. “They incorporated their religion and beliefs into every aspect of their furniture.” Gertrude glanced up to find Edwin’s hooded gaze on her, taking in her every movement. Unable to read his immobile features but encouraged by his silence, she came to her feet and motioned for him to join her. Not waiting to see if he followed, knowing that if she did he’d likely dig in his heels and remain in his corner, Gertrude continued deeper into Draven’s familiar warehouse. “Too often society sees furniture in that one-dimensional light. Furniture serves—”
“A functional purpose.”
“Precisely,” she said with a nod. “We perform our official business at desks. We slumber in four-poster beds. It is so functional, we too many times fail to appreciate there could be . . . and should be . . . a dynamic need to those articles.”
“Like hiding Stephen’s weapons,” he said with a droll edge.
Deliberately ignoring the biting sarcasm underlying that reply, she again nodded. “Exactly.” Gertrude brought them to a stop alongside a hammock.
Edwin eyed the piece a long while.
“It’s a hammock,” she supplied. “They are used by—”
“The navy. Shipmen. I’m familiar with its uses.”
His words knocked her briefly off-balance. She’d spent her whole life believing noblemen were indolent lords, not bothering with information that did not pertain to their estates, power, or wealth. “They became popular because there was limited space and it was a way to avoid constructing bunks. It’s not simply a matter of convenience for shipmen. Have you ever lain in one?”
“I’ve not,” he clipped out. That austerity was, however, what she’d come to expect from the peerage.
“Lie in it,” she urged in gentle tones she usually reserved for Master Brave, the small black barn cat, when he found himself trapped atop the stables at the Devil’s Den. It was a challenge, couched as an invitation. Nonetheless, she expected a “Go to hell, Killoran” . . . that did not come.
Edwin hesitated a long while, glancing off to where Stephen and Draven conversed on the design plans.
And then Gertrude struggled not to don a mask of surprise as he sat on the edge and shimmied his muscular frame into the woven netting. It swung back and forth rhythmically under the addition of his weight.
His gaze found hers, and an endearing rush of color suffused his cheeks. “This is foolish,” he muttered, making to toss his legs over the side.
Gertrude slid into place along the front of the netting, blocking his attempts. “Only because it is unfamiliar.”
“Becaus
e there is no purpose in it,” he gritted out.
“Everything has a purpose, Edwin.” Every object. Every man, woman, or child. Even if society and the world around them failed to see their value.
He stole another look in his son’s direction.
Gertrude cocked her head. She’d always believed only the unfortunate souls in the Dials were required to keep a careful guard up, to present one image of indomitability to the world and conceal all vulnerability. This . . . Edwin’s diffidence . . . only heightened that most unexpected of links between Gertrude and this man born to an entirely different social universe. “Do you know many sailors would eventually grow so accustomed to the hammocks that even when they were ashore, they carried them and made those hammocks their bedding?”
Edwin went absolutely still.
“Sometimes . . . it is just a matter of something feeling right.” She glanced over to her brother, and Edwin followed her stare. “It hardly makes sense for us to sleep in, and yet there are benefits to them. There is a soothing calm to be found in the folds,” she murmured.
Edwin stiffened, and this time he did swing his legs over the side of the netting. His gleaming black boots landed with a decisive thwack, cutting into the fleeting peace she’d stolen between them. “You are speaking about Stephen’s furniture.”
Gertrude tried to make anything out of those empty tones. She lowered herself into the place beside him, sending the swing into a light rock. “It’s a lack of familiarity that makes it feel wrong, but there is nothing wrong or right in the comfort we find in one’s world. It’s just . . . what we know.”
Edwin narrowed his gaze on her face; the piercing intensity of it would have shaken most any other woman. And yet, as he opened his mouth to speak, no blistering words came forward. No taunts or jibes. Nothing.
Those enigmatic brown eyes darkened, and all at once energy crackled and sizzled between them. Gertrude became aware of the press of his leg against hers, a muscle-hewn thigh that crushed her skirts and molded the garment to her legs. And the absolute heat that spilled from him.
His throat moved. “I don’t want that to make sense.” That gruff whisper filtered the air between them, his voice a hoarse baritone that left a mark upon her cheek like a physical caress. Dangerous and tempting, all at once.
The Bluestocking Page 13