The Bluestocking

by Caldwell, Christi

  Nothing made sense. Somewhere along the way, their discourse on furniture had shifted, taken on a new meaning that only they knew the implication of.

  His gaze went to her mouth and remained there.

  That glint in his eyes turned molten hot, and had she been innocent, she would have never noted that slight darkening. She would have remained naive to what it meant or signified. But she was neither of those things. Her innocence existed as nothing more than a technicality of a piece of flesh that had been somehow preserved. But she’d been raised first on the streets and then in the gaming hell. There were no secrets or mysteries in terms of lust and passion and desire, and all those sentiments were contained within the heat of his stare.

  Gertrude darted her tongue out, trailing it along suddenly dry lips.

  Edwin leaned down, bringing his head close to hers.

  Her lashes slid closed of their own volition, and she inhaled deeply.

  His breath, not the tobacco- and spirit-tinged scents she was accustomed to, but something purer and quixotic. Less overt and wholly enticing: coffee and honey, both bitter and sweet, those warring flavors perfectly suited to this man.

  “What in hell are you doing?”

  She and Edwin jumped, and the suddenness of that movement sent the hammock tipping back, upending them both.

  With a grunt, Edwin landed with a loud thump on the hardwood floor, and with catlike reflexes not even Master Brave could have managed, the marquess shot an arm out and caught Gertrude before she hit the same floor.

  Her heart raced.

  Stephen stood glowering over them, like a disapproving and rightfully suspicious papa.

  “Stephen,” she said lamely.

  “Yea. Your brother.” He shot a hard look at Edwin. “What is going on?”

  “We were discussing the history of the hammock,” Edwin said with a calm and unaffectedness only a lord could manage. In one fluid movement, he came to his feet and held out a hand to Gertrude.

  “You were spouting on with your odd facts,” the boy said, his voice and the gaze he still moved back and forth between them not wholly convinced.

  “I—”

  Edwin spoke, interrupting her response. “You’d do well to focus on the lessons Gertrude has to teach. She was admirably explaining the various purposes of items like the furniture you’re having designed today.”

  Gertrude’s lips parted at the unexpectedness of that defense. She’d long been an oddity in the Diggory gang, her family, and the Devil’s Den itself. The information she imparted earned peculiar looks or impatient stares from people who either didn’t care or didn’t have the time to spare for those details.

  “All of a sudden you’re going to approve of Gert as an instructor?” Stephen stared at his father like he’d sprouted a second head. “You’re sending her away when you find me a new governess. Don’t seem like you can appreciate her skill that much.”

  And just like that the warmth suffusing her chest dissolved under the weight of reality. They were enemies. Or, by the marquess’s determination, they were. Even with that, she’d not have her brother throw his father’s decision back in his face. Not when Edwin was within his rights and justified in every way.

  Unnerved by the tense wall her brother had unwittingly resurrected, Gertrude focused on the boy. “Why don’t we take a trip to Gunter’s before we return home.”

  The color leached from Edwin’s cheeks, and a muscle ticked at the corner of his jaw. “I do not—”

  With a little whoop, Stephen sprinted to the door. “Come on,” he continued over the marquess’s protestations as he yanked the door open and rushed off.

  Gertrude had started after her brother when she registered that Edwin had made no attempt to join her and Stephen. Frowning, she glanced back and found him motionless, rooted to Draven’s floor. Pale. Not unlike the way he’d been upon their arrival here.

  He is . . . scared.

  Of visiting Gunter’s? Or of his son? Or, mayhap, both?

  Staggered by that realization, she found her heart aching once more for the unlikeliest person. Or . . . he would have been the unlikeliest recipient. Not anymore. Not since she’d come to acknowledge the Marquess of Maddock’s suffering. “Are you all right?” she asked gently.

  Red color splotched his cheeks. “I’m fine,” he clipped out. He made an angry slashing gesture at the doorway, motioning her forward.

  Fool. Do you believe he would accept concern from you, of all people?

  Avoiding Edwin’s volatile stare, Gertrude made her goodbyes to the builder and braced for another outing with the marquess.

  Chapter 13

  He’d almost kissed her.

  Edwin had been just a moment away from descending into the madness that had become his namesake and claiming Gertrude’s mouth. And the only thing that had stopped him from doing so had been his rightfully outraged son’s unexpected interruption.

  And yet, that near embrace was not the reason for the horror clogging his head in this instance.

  Gaze trained forward, Edwin walked along the crowded Curzon Street.

  He had ceased moving in society after his wife’s death.

  Nay, that wasn’t completely accurate. After the fire, he’d ventured out only in the dead of night, and only in the most dangerous streets of London. He’d craved death, courting it in the place most likely to deal him that deliverance.

  Until a night long ago when Edwin had been dragged from a dank alley by Quint Marlow and had given up on death. Instead, he’d shifted his energies to finding the ones guilty for that act of great treachery. He’d kept company only with the men he’d hired to find out details . . . any details he could about the fire, the ones who’d set it. And then about his missing son.

  He’d not attended balls or sparred with Gentleman Jackson or visited his respectable clubs—all those acts that had been as much a part of his life as his daily ablutions.

  And now, walking down the fashionable Curzon Street, he found himself swamped with panic; it choked him and stole his breath. It made him long for the much safer peril that had existed in the Seven Dials.

  But there was no salvation this time. This time, there were only the gaping stares of the lords and ladies of London and the unconventional spitfire who spouted off equally unconventional facts that ranged from history to damned furniture making.

  The spitfire who now walked several paces ahead, her attention squarely focused on the little boy at her side. The greater the distance between himself and that pair, the more Edwin was sucked into the crowd around him.

  Throngs of passersby clogged the pavement, the crush of bodies sending up a raucous din of laughter and discourse that blurred in his ears, innocuous sounds that when wound together rang with a maniacal intent.

  His forehead beaded with moisture.

  Breathe. Breathe.

  These men and women were once your peers. Are your peers. They still were. Except . . . they weren’t. They were strangers to whom he could no longer relate. People who gawked and whispered behind their gloved fingertips.

  I’m going to be ill.

  Tunneling his vision forward, he fixed on the slender woman moving with long-legged strides through the crowds. People rushed out of their way, allowing her and the boy at her side to pass.

  A spring wind gusted; it caught several loose curls that hung about her shoulder. How odd: that color he’d taken as nondescript glimmered like warmed chocolate in the sun’s rays. Those loose curls bounced with every step she took.

  And he fixed on them. He fixed on her. A half-mad chuckle welled in his chest and spilled past his lips before ultimately being lost to the steady stream of carriages passing by.

  What bloody irony that a Diggory should prove the lifeline that kept him from giving over to the terror. His feet twitched with the need to bolt in the opposite direction and continue on until he reached his residence. And then shut the door and keep her out. His son. The world. And go back to the empty existence th
at had not only become familiar but also was the one he so desperately craved.

  Then Gertrude stopped. Several inches shy of six feet, Gertrude was taller than most men, and she easily found him. She squinted. Was it the glare of the afternoon sun? The distance between them? Or that one oddly blank eye that accounted for that stare?

  She said something to Stephen, and the boy nodded and dashed ahead.

  Just days ago, he would have sensed a trap in . . . all this. And mayhap there was. Mayhap he was ultimately to be felled by a Killoran. But right now, his need for her and a connection to . . . something . . . superseded all.

  Gertrude started back in Edwin’s direction. As she did, lords and ladies cut a wide swath around her, allowing her a direct path. All the while, they looked upon her with derision dripping from their austere, noble gazes.

  A young lady in blindingly bright-white skirts yanked them close.

  If Gertrude either cared or noted, she gave no indication, and that strength of courage was so breathtaking in the light of his paralysis.

  “Is there something wrong?” she asked in hushed tones that reached his ears.

  It was the question she’d asked at Draven’s. It was also on the tip of his tongue to turn away her and the concern she showed . . . but he couldn’t. This time he proved too weak. “I should not be here,” he whispered, so quietly the admission barely registered in his own ears.

  He should not, even now, be standing in the middle of Curzon Street with all of Polite Society walking a path around Gertrude and him.

  She glanced around as if just suddenly realizing they were the focus of every passerby’s scrutiny. Gertrude took a step closer. “They don’t matter, Edwin.” How confident she was in that reassurance. “Their opinions matter even less.”

  Yes, he’d been of a like opinion. But it was easier for one to hate the world around one when one wasn’t really moving amongst it. For as much as he didn’t give ten bloody damns what they said of him . . . he cared about the rumors that remained and how they would forever affect his son. Liar . . . you still care. You hate that all anyone sees when they look at you is madness. Including your son.

  Gertrude settled a delicate but strong palm upon his sleeve. Gasps went up around them, along with whispers to follow. “Come,” Gertrude murmured.

  Was she a Devil or angel or both, all at the same time? For it was not society that compelled his feet forward, but rather her. A short while later, they entered under the pineapple sign of Gunter’s Tea Shop.

  That tinny jingle rang out like a shot as the patrons seated throughout the establishment looked up.

  Edwin hardened his features against those antipathetic stares—

  Before he noted their concentration, not on him but on the pair just ahead of him.

  Stephen’s eyes flashed fire, and with a cold grin, he swaggered forward like he was himself the owner of this establishment. One by one, each table of ladies and young gentlemen came to their feet and filed out of the shop until all that remained was the faded tinkling of a bell and thunk of a door shutting.

  And in that instant, the unexpected happened. Rage coursed through him. Not for the likeliest recipient of that ire—Gertrude Killoran—but rather for the gathering of Polite Society who’d treated her like the grime on their boots.

  As she and Stephen walked to the counter to look at the ices, disquiet held Edwin frozen.

  For he hadn’t been any different from every other person who’d judged her and found her wanting. Isn’t that how you’ve felt toward her and her kind, too? Is that family not deserving of such disdain?

  The answer just days earlier would have been an emphatic, resounding yes with a “go to hell” to anyone who thought the family deserving of even the slightest showing of respect. But that had been before. Before she’d bravely squared off with him on his son’s well-being. And before she’d revealed herself to be a bluestocking with an impressive wealth of obscure and interesting facts that made her . . . real. That made her not a monster but very much a woman—and now, a woman unfairly judged by people who didn’t know her.

  An ache throbbed at the back of his head, and he doffed his hat. Edwin rubbed his nape in a bid to right his mind and find stability in how he felt. And how he should feel.

  Fact: she was a Killoran. Fact: she was a former member of the Diggory gang.

  Fact: despite these past years when he’d felt and lived like less than a human, his annoyance on the young woman’s behalf was merely because he was a gentleman. That was all.

  To give her credit, to feel badly for her or about her, was dangerous territory that he dared not cross into.

  She—

  Was just reaching into her pocket and withdrawing several coins.

  Springing into motion, Edwin strode over.

  Stephen glanced up and shot an elbow into his sister’s side, then nodded his little head at Edwin just as he stopped before them.

  “I will pay,” Edwin said.

  “I have it,” she said with an easy smile that belied the earlier ugliness that had been directed at her, or the tumult slapping at him.

  The delicate thread Edwin had retained over his self-control this day frayed and then snapped. “He is my son, and I will pay,” he said sharply.

  “I ain’t your son,” Stephen hissed, taking a jerky step toward Edwin and knocking the coins from his sister’s hand. A jingle of silver, they clattered forlornly upon the counter.

  “Stephen,” Gertrude said on a stern whisper. She took him by his arm, but like an angry, cornered cat, he yanked free. “I’m sorry,” she mouthed to Edwin. Pity and sympathy, all emotions he would have once believed her incapable of, directed his way. And he preferred a world in which she was not sensitive to his suffering.

  “It’s fine.” Edwin’s lie came, convincing to his own ears. For that was precisely what he did: lie to himself. Stephen’s disavowal struck like a well-placed arrow to the heart. For . . . the boy was right. There were different types of fatherhood. Whereas the extent of most gentlemen’s interest and role started and stopped with the creation of an heir and a spare, being a parent had meant something altogether more for Edwin. It had been not only siring him but also loving him and playing with him . . . But then, you lost him. “I just . . . wanted to pay.” To do the smallest of things that fathers did.

  “We don’t need your money. We got money of our own, Maddock. Gert said she was paying, and she can pay. Unless you have a problem with a woman paying?” A challenge blared from every fiber of the boy’s recalcitrant, coiled frame.

  Actually . . . he did. It went against the gentlemanly code of conduct that had been ingrained to him early on. A code his son should have memorized long ago, and yet he had been reared altogether differently: with different norms and beliefs and values. And that discrepancy left father and son existing together, at the same time but on different planets. “I assure you, I do not have a problem with it,” he said smoothly, in control once more.

  Holding Gertrude’s gaze, Edwin made a sweeping gesture to the counter and to the serving lad across from them who could sell the story of the exchange here to any gossip column for a generous payment. And likely would. “As you were, Miss Killoran.”

  Retrieving the coins from the counter, she scooped them up one at a time and turned her palm up once again.

  Edwin’s gaze tunneled, not on those coins that had been the source of contention, nor on the callused, ink-stained palms.

  A letter had been carved into the inseam of her hand. An inch in length, it stood out, a stark, vivid symbol that marked her origins—D. Diggory.

  “Find us a seat,” she was saying to Stephen. And as the boy bolted off as instructed and Edwin was left alone with Gertrude, he remained transfixed by that scar. Gertrude spoke. “Edwin, I am so sorry about . . .” Her words trailed off, and she followed his stare. She hurriedly yanked her hand back from the counter and lowered it to her side.

  Questions, however, swirled around his mind over tha
t marking. Was it one affixed to all that monster’s issue? Had she voluntarily taken a knife and etched that mark upon her skin as a testament of her loyalty? Or mayhap it was neither . . . Mayhap it had been as sinister as the heinous acts carried out against Edwin and his kin . . . ?

  But suddenly, he had no desire to know the truth . . . for reasons he couldn’t understand. They started over to the table Stephen had settled on at the front of the shop. The damned front of the shop. Edwin’s palms grew moist. His son was braver than he. At their approach, Stephen hopped up and perused the jars of sweets and fruits.

  Edwin drew out Gertrude’s chair, and after she’d taken her seat, he claimed the one across from her. “You come here often with him.” He put forward that statement to shift them back to safer areas of discourse. The child who united them, and not the villain who divided them.

  “I do. I began taking him here when he was . . .” She faltered, abruptly cutting off that look into Stephen’s past.

  But Edwin wanted it. He wanted all of what she could offer. “Tell me,” he urged, his voice faintly entreating. He was a beggar who’d take any scraps into the seconds and minutes and hours and years he’d missed.

  “Partially blind, I couldn’t steal for him, so he put me to work instead ‘instructing’ the boys and girls.”

  “Instructing them?” he asked, coward that he was, not wanting the answer but needing it anyway.

  “On the art of stealing. When to commit the acts. Where to commit them. When not to.” She peeled her lip back in an unexpected-for-her sneer, that cynical tilt of her lips that offered a clear window into just how she’d felt about serving that monster.

  Or mayhap that is all she wishes you to see . . . Mayhap she is playing the role of innocent, just like the nursemaid who kidnapped Stephen . . .

  “I would bring Stephen here.” She stared out at the kaleidoscope of strangers moving past the shop window, and he knew that was the precise moment she’d ceased speaking to him and begun seeing only the memories of the long-ago days she spoke of. “Under the guise of conducting his lessons on thievery. All the while”—Gertrude dragged her stare from the passersby—“I brought him here, to Gunter’s. I’d a fancy change of garments for the both of us. I paid a street rat every week to meet me in the alley and keep track of our garments and belongings.” She spoke with the same methodical precision as she must have gone through coordinating those details years ago. “When we were supposed to be thieving, I’d bring him here instead.”