The Bluestocking

by Caldwell, Christi

  Stephen’s lower lip quivered, and he clamped that flesh hard between his teeth. “M-maybe. But it isn’t the first time he hasn’t come around. When someone displays themselves, believe them. Isn’t that what we say?” There was something faintly entreating there, in this child whom she’d raised since he was a boy new to Diggory’s gang, fighting desperately to make sense out of two competing worlds and rationales. And it shattered her inside and out. Her arms curled reflexively around the warm bundle in her arms. Gus squirmed and then propelled back, jumping to the floor.

  Gertrude sighed and moved closer toward her brother. “Our family has a way of speaking in absolutes, but that isn’t the way of life, Stephen.” Edwin had opened her eyes to that. “But I believe your father had his reasons for not coming for you these past weeks, and one day if you ask him, I’m sure he’ll tell you.”

  His little body jerked, and he wrenched away from her. “Ask him?” He hissed. “If I ask him, it means I care. And I don’t. Do you hear me? I don’t.” With that, he spun on his heel and took off.

  “Stephen!” She surged after him. The little boy, however, was already gone, slipping off like the Shadow of Seven Dials, as he’d come to be known for his stealth. With a sigh, Gertrude started forward. There was a soft jingle, and from the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of movement. “No!” she gasped as Gus bolted.

  Sethos. Blast this day to hell. Gertrude took off running, damning her vision that made it impossible to bring the small creature into perfect focus. “Stop,” she hissed after the cat. How was it possible the day with Edwin and Stephen had gone from something magical . . . to this mayhem? Her skirts flew up about her ankles as she sprinted with the same steps that had guided her when she was running from the constables. “Get back here.”

  Sethos jumped onto the stair rail and scurried down. Gus bounded after him with long, leaping strides.

  Her chest pounding hard, Gertrude quickened her steps.

  The mouse continued his winding path lower, and then he disappeared over the side. Catching the rail, Gertrude leaned over and peered out at the white Italian marble. She made out a faint wiggling, and then . . . he was gone.

  At last, Gus abruptly stopped in the middle of the foyer. With a wide yawn, he plopped down and proceeded to lick his paws.

  Glaring at the troublesome cat, Gertrude hurried the remaining way downstairs. “I am disappointed.” Her voice echoed around the soaring foyer.

  “Meowww.”

  “We’ll speak on this later,” she muttered, and with determined footsteps, she went in search of Sethos.

  Chapter 15

  He’d been alone for so long.

  After the conflagration that had left his family’s ancestral London properties nothing more than a pile of tinder and ash, Edwin had dwelled in a new townhouse. There’d been no family nor friends around, only Marlow, an entirely-more-loyal-than-Edwin-deserved servant.

  Edwin had let no one in. He had carefully built towering walls up, about himself and the townhouse he dwelled in, and lived contentedly, alone. Content to feel nothing for anyone or anything, he’d welcomed the gaping hole where his heart had once beat for his son.

  There’d been no laughter or smiles or carefree games. Until for a fleeting instance in Gunter’s today, when there had been all of that.

  Then Charles had arrived, stiffly formal to Edwin and then looking upon Gertrude like she was Satan’s helper. That unexpected, chance encounter with his former best friend and late wife’s brother reminded him all over again that he had no right . . . to any of it. Misery, pain, and heartache were his only due.

  These two days? They had been too much. Too much.

  Augu—Stephen, Gertrude, his mother-in-law and father-in-law.

  And now . . . Charles, who’d gone against his parents’ wishes and helped his sister elope with Edwin. Edwin’s repayment for that friendship and gift had been to fail to protect her as she’d deserved . . . because he’d been too busy avoiding her and the reminder of a love gone cold and the hatred that had grown in its place.

  Hunched forward in his leather, wingback sofa, Edwin tugged at the strands of his hair, yanking slightly, feeling as mad as the world proclaimed him to be.

  Grabbing the nearly empty snifter of brandy, he stared over the crystal glass to the fire that raged in the hearth. Those crimson flames bathed his face in heat, taunting him with an unneeded reminder of the peril they posed and the hell they had wrought.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and allowed the memories of that day to come rushing back: him out at his clubs, partaking in drinks with gentlemen who’d been acquaintances at best. And yet, he’d hated being home when his son had slumbered. When Stephen slept and Lavinia was home from ton events, she had favored him with cold glances and thinly veiled insults and recriminations.

  Coward that he was . . . selfish bastard that he was . . . he’d escaped those tense exchanges whenever he could. That night had been no different. He’d grown tired of the reminder that the woman he’d loved couldn’t so much as stand the sight of him. Through those miserable days of their marriage, he’d accepted that theirs was a special kind of hell—a union that neither could get out of, no matter how much better it would be for them. That they were consigned to a marriage full of nothing but regret until death did they part.

  Then death had parted them, and Edwin had come to appreciate what hell, in fact, was.

  It was the pungent scent of smoke and ash and melted flesh; it burnt a man’s nostrils and remained crisp in one’s memory, long after the plumes of grey faded and new bricks were laid in place of the former conflagration.

  He’d long ago accepted that his fate was to be hated. His own wife hadn’t been able to stomach the sight of him. His own child despised him. His staff feared him. As such, he’d taken that as how it was for men like him. And he’d come to terms with his place in the world.

  Until Gertrude Killoran.

  She didn’t cringe or cower in his presence but boldly challenged him at every turn to be a better man and father to his son. She didn’t sneer at him but smiled and teased, and God help him, when he sat beside her this day, first at Draven’s and then at Gunter’s, he’d had a taste for a life he’d never known. One that he’d never thought to know, and certainly not with a Killoran of all people.

  In just the short time he’d known her, however, she’d challenged everything he’d previously taken for fact. And now he didn’t know which way was up or d—

  A flash of white darted past the fireplace and then stopped . . . only to double back. Edwin followed the rodent as he pumped his tiny legs as fast as they could carry him before settling just beside Edwin’s boot.

  Like a damned family pet might.

  Why, even the damned mice in his household were insane.

  “Sethos.” Gertrude’s breathless voice sounded outside the library, and a moment later she came rushing into the room.

  She held her palms out, feeling her way with her hands around the darkened room, and making himself go slow, he used the moment to study her.

  He’d taken care to learn everything there was to learn about Broderick Killoran and Mac Diggory. The women who’d belonged to that gang had occupied less of his attentions. As such, he knew little about them. The married sisters had been ones he’d kept a closer eye on because of their presence amongst Polite Society and the influence they’d steadily amassed.

  This woman, however—Gertrude—he knew next to nothing about. She was partially blind.

  Had she been born so? Or had illness taken it?

  And what must it have been like for a person on the streets to exist with that faulty sense? Just then, she flitted gracefully around the library; in possession of some innate knowing of which loose floorboard to avoid, she glided like a specter come to haunt. But a library was wholly different from a crowded street of London. What risks had she known, surviving out there with just one functioning eye? The idea of it hit him like a kick to the gut.

&nbs
p; Edwin clenched his hands, and the leather button sofa crackled under those subtle movements. It was enough.

  From her place at the opposite corner of the library, Gertrude straightened and faced him. “Edwin,” she blurted. A splash of color filled her cheeks, and with the fire’s soft glow bathing the delicate planes of her face, she was . . . beautiful. Unable to speak around the staggering weight of that silent admission, he remained seated, cowardly allowing her to cut a path back over until she stood before him.

  “I trust it is not my company you’ve come in search of?” he drawled.

  The minx cocked her head.

  Lifting a brow, Edwin glanced pointedly at his feet. Gertrude followed his stare, and gasped. “You’ve found him.” Sinking to the floor, she held out her palm.

  The white rodent, like some devoted pup, scurried into his mistress’s hand. A moment later, Gertrude placed him into her pocket. And at last, it made sense.

  Let her go. She’d found what she was in search of, and there was nothing really for them to speak on. “So that is the reason for the pockets, I presume,” he said instead.

  Taking that as an invitation to sit, Gertrude settled herself comfortably in the folds of his sofa. She curled up like a contented cat and briefly contemplated the fire. “Not at all. Every garment should be fitted with pockets. They’re really quite beneficial, you know. The more pockets one has, and the clever places one has them, the more one can store items. Particularly those one is wishing to keep from prying hands and eyes.”

  “I . . . see.”

  Her color deepened, and she immediately went . . . regretfully silent. She stroked that mouse resting within her pocket and stared into the dancing flames.

  God, he was rot at this.

  Conversing, striking up a dialogue, making others comfortable . . . he’d always been so very skilled at it all. Now every word that left his mouth was taken as an insult. Was looked at as if it contained layered meaning, none of which was kind.

  When the truth was . . . her admission about her gowns had opened his eyes to a possibility he’d never considered.

  Even textiles were a mechanism of self-defense to her and those in the streets. Gertrude’s admission simply highlighted the ignorance and naivete he still carried all these years later. It didn’t matter that Mac Diggory and his kind had invaded Edwin’s world. Their evil had taught him much about the ugliness of the human spirit, and yet it hadn’t opened his eyes to how the other half lived. Those outside the peerage and the ton, who didn’t have to worry about protecting one’s every cherished item from thieving hands. For if they did, there would be a constable to bring the pickpocket to justice.

  He shifted, unable to look at her.

  Yes, he was rubbish at . . . all this now—talking to people. All he did was make a person feel uncomfortable with his presence: Gertrude. His son. His staff. And perhaps he’d been silent for too many years, and that accounted for this need to continue speaking with her, as well.

  Edwin tried again. “You have a mouse.” He grimaced. Bloody hell. That wasn’t even a question. It was a damned statement. Still focused on the flames, he knew the precise moment her stare moved to him.

  “I do.”

  He waited for her to say something more. She would not make this easy, then. She’d insist that he feed his curiosity with questions. “It seems an . . . odd creature to take as a pet.” Also not a question. “How did you come to have him?” There, he’d mustered one.

  Gertrude drew her knees up to her chest and, reaching inside her pocket, fished the small creature out and then rested him atop the crest of her white night skirts. “He is an unconventional pet, isn’t he?”

  “Quite. But no less unconventional than naming him after an ancient Egyptian ruler.”

  She sat upright and excitement lit her eye, and his chest was filled with an unexpected lightness. “You know of him?”

  “As a boy, I had a fascination with the ancient Egyptians. I wanted to—” A log shifted in the fireplace and sent up a fitting explosion of sparks and embers. His body jerked. Do not think of it . . . do not think of it . . . His entire body broke out in a cold sweat. Damned fires. After the conflagration, he’d not allowed them in his residence, not even in the dead of winter. Since his son had returned, however, Marlow had taken to ordering the rooms warmed and the hearths lit.

  “You wanted to?” Gertrude prodded. That gentle encouragement brought his eyes open.

  “What?” he said in blank tones. What had he been talking about?

  Perfectly balancing the rodent on her knee, Gertrude scooted over until no cushions divided them. “You were saying that you had a fascination with the ancient Egyptians and wanted to . . . ?”

  Share them with my son. I’d wanted to take him to museums and discuss the fascinating stories of those peoples . . .

  “I wanted to know how you’ve come to name such a small creature after that ancient Egyptian leader,” he finished, the lie lame to his own ears.

  His own wife couldn’t have been bothered with anything outside her social pursuits.

  “Surely you know the mouse myth told by Herodotus?” She stared at him pointedly.

  Actually, he didn’t. “The extent of my knowledge on the Egyptians did not extend to those aspects of their culture.”

  Gertrude made a clucking noise with her tongue. “That is a shame,” she chided, setting Sethos down on the arm of the sofa.

  That mouse scrambled along the high back of the leather-button seating.

  His lips pulled into a ghost of a smile that strained muscles still unaccustomed to that movement. “I trust you intend to give me a history lesson.”

  “Oh, absolutely,” she vowed, settling into the seat beside him. And it was a distraction he welcomed. For having her here with him, sharing stories about . . . anything, kept him from giving in to the thoughts of the fire. “You studied Sethos’s leadership, and so you know—”

  “That he disgraced his army and found himself without one when Sennacherib invaded his country?” From the start, he’d expected Gertrude Killoran to be peculiar for the life experience she’d entered his household with. Just not in this way—a clever bluestocking who’d elucidate to him all the interesting stories and details he’d not gathered through the years. “I’m very familiar with his failings.”

  Her eyes went soft. Her lips parted. The air crackled around them. And he was riveted by the evidence of her adoration. His own wife hadn’t even looked at him that way. Once she had . . . until she hadn’t. And when only hate remained, hate was what had become all too familiar, and eventually comfortable. Only this was potent. This gaze filled with awe and appreciation and wonder over mere words to leave his lips. And he didn’t know what to do with it. Or how to be around it. Edwin coughed into his hand. “Your story, madam?” he said, his tone gruffer than he’d intended and all he was capable of anymore.

  She blinked enormous brown eyes. “My . . . ? Ah, yes . . . as I was saying, Sethos . . .” A pretty blush turned her cheeks a pinkish-red, giving her the look of an innocent, and her hushed murmuring cast a spell over him. And perhaps he wasn’t still the naive fool who’d trusted a nursemaid whose speech had occasionally dissolved into Cockney, but Edwin believed the innocence before him. Or mayhap it was now that he craved that simplicity so very much.

  “And he was promised divine succor would come to him,” Gertrude was saying, her enlivened voice bringing him back to her telling. She scrambled onto her knees and shifted closer; her entire body became part of the telling, thrumming with a palpable excitement that was contagious. “The night before the battle, field mice chewed the quivers and shield handles of their enemies, who were disarmed and forced to flee.” Gertrude deepened her voice, and when she spoke, she did so in feigned masculine tones. But God help him, they emerged as a low, husky contralto. “‘And now,’ says Herodotus,” she boomed, her tones a siren’s song that sucked him under her spell once more, and he didn’t wish to break free. Later. Not now.
“‘There standeth a stone image of this king in the temple of Sethos, and in the hand of the image a mouse, and there is this inscription.’” Gertrude lifted a hand to the ceiling; the movement sent the loose belt at her night wrapper falling, and the fabric gaped open. “‘Let whoso looketh on me be pious.’”

  Impossible. His pulse knocked around loud in his ears. Her allure would have been safer had this draw been purely sexual, physical in nature. But it wasn’t. It was her, brimming with energy and excitement and innocence, and he didn’t want to shake free from the hold. “I’ve never . . . ,” he whispered.

  “Heard of it?” She flashed an endearingly cocky grin. “Some dispute the factuality of it.”

  How could she be so very oblivious to the fact that he’d been so upended in this instant? Nay, you’ve been off kilter since the moment she showed up in your household, an avenging warrior to look after your son. “But not you,” he forced himself to say, because he had to say . . . something.

  Gertrude chewed at the tip of her index finger. “I don’t know,” she finally conceded, the happiness dimming in her gaze, and he wanted to call his throwaway comment back and restore that bright light that had set him and this entire library aglow with some emotion other than misery. “There is historical proof attesting to the fact that the tale is of Egyptian and not Greek origins.”

  “That biblical account of when the Assyrian army was destroyed.”

  “Precisely,” she murmured. “Those tales, however, fail to include mention of a mouse, and scholars say that the fact that the Egyptians did not deify the mouse as a godlike figure proves that it is a tale of fiction.” Her expression wistful, Gertrude stretched her arm along the high back of the sofa. Sethos scrambled into her palm and promptly lay there. With steady hands, Gertrude drew him close to her chest and stroked the top of the rodent’s back.

  The minx could command even a wild creature, bending it to her gentle will. Just as she’d done with Edwin.

  Over the top of that small white mouse, Gertrude’s gaze held Edwin’s, and he could not look away if this townhouse were set ablaze and his life destroyed once more. “But there was one mouse included in a monument, and so I prefer to believe in a history where those seen as valueless to society and unwanted are capable of some good that earns them even a bit of reverence.”