And as he, Gertrude, and Stephen made their way out of the shop and started for Hyde Park, it felt very much like he was lying to himself.
Chapter 19
Throughout her life, Gertrude’s family had tolerated her peculiar interest in rescuing animals and giving them homes. But they’d never understood it. Nor, aside from the occasional pet of a cat or dog, had they tried to form any connection with those animals.
They were, to them, just that—animals offering nothing of any value.
All the while, they’d failed to see.
“You are quiet.”
Seated on the grass alongside the Serpentine, she stared on as her brother tossed rocks out onto the placid surface in a bid to skip them. She laughed softly. “Who would have imagined you should be calling me out on silence?”
They shared a smile, a tender exchange that knew no divide between them. There was no pained past, only this newly forged bond that at the same time filled her chest with both an airy lightness and panic. For nothing good could come of it.
Soon, she would be gone, and he and Stephen would carry on, living their life without her. And by the terms of her family’s arrangement with Edwin, she’d never see either of them again. Pain stabbed at her breast, sharper than any blade to pierce her skin during her years on the streets.
And suddenly, tears stung her lashes. In a bid to hide those blasted drops, she closed her eyes tightly and lifted her head skyward, letting the sun’s rays bathe her skin in their warmth.
“You didn’t like it?” That hesitant question brought her eyes flying open so fast she looked directly at the sun. When she glanced over at Edwin, she blinked several times in an attempt to rid the dark circle flashing there from her vision.
That diffidence from a man who never showed that emotion was a reminder of the lasting effects his sad marriage had left upon him. “No, I do not like it, Edwin.”
A muscle jumped at the corner of his mouth.
Gertrude leaned close and knocked against him with her shoulder. “I love it.”
He stiffened, and then a booming laugh filtered from his lips and filled the air around them. Nearby passersby gawked, and even with those rude stares, he continued laughing, his expression of amusement no longer as rusty as it had first been upon her arrival. “You’re making light of me.”
“Oh, absolutely I am,” she said, not missing a beat, and he laughed all the more.
She smiled, unable to take her gaze from the relaxed planes of his chiseled cheeks, that high flesh suffused with color. And her heart continued on at a double-time rhythm.
When they conversed, there were no longer traces of bitterness or anger. Oh, those sentiments would never completely leave either of them. Life scarred one, and even as one healed, the wounds remained.
Stephen paused midthrow and shot them a look.
Gertrude waved him on. She didn’t speak until her brother was fully immersed once more in his task. “It’s not so very awful, is it?” At his questioning look, Gertrude discreetly gestured at the lords and ladies strolling along a nearby path. The couples averted their curious stares and hurried along. “As a girl, I always wanted to come here. To this end of London. I was certain the air must be cleaner and the roads safer because of the people who moved along them.” And they were . . . in ways. “Several of the prostitutes employed by Mac Diggory were once actresses. They would tell me stories about the park and the gardens, and I couldn’t believe that there was anywhere in London that looked like they described.” She stretched her legs out so that the bottoms of her soles kissed the gravel path. “I was determined that I’d visit.”
“And you could not while he was alive?”
She could pretend it was a statement he’d made and retain those most miserable parts of her past. After Diggory’s death, she’d found a peace in focusing on the best moments she’d ever known with her siblings and life after the ruthless scourge of the Dials, and she’d deliberately fought off the ugliest of remembrances. But Edwin had shared the pain he’d known, and it would be the height of selfishness to take and not give. It violated the code she’d insisted on living by that her siblings had seen her weak for. “I could not while he was alive,” she said softly. “People . . . men, women, children . . .” Her throat tightened. “His own children”—me, I’m one of them—“whoever lived with him, served a purpose. We were no different from the wheel of a carriage or the knife and fork to cut a piece of steak. We served a purpose, and it wasn’t to know joy or love or anything but work.” She’d been Diggory’s daughter in the most primitive way, but she’d never been a daughter to him. Not truly. Until Edwin, she’d never before even witnessed that bond between a father and his child.
Edwin’s fingers crept over, and he discreetly covered her hand with his own, the heat of his touch tingling at that contact. He gave the lightest squeeze, silently urging her on and supporting her through that telling. Moving away from the darker thoughts of Mac Diggory, she went on with her story of these grounds. “When I first started visiting Hyde Park, it was after Dig—” She bit the inside of her lower lip and braced for him to yank his hand back, but he didn’t. He stroked the pad of his thumb in a light circle along the inseam of her wrist, that caress enticing. It gave her the strength to complete that thought. “It was after Diggory was killed.” She made herself say the rest of it. “I came here. It was early.” She stared on wistfully as Stephen launched another pebble that promptly sank to the bottom, leaving a ripple of little waves atop the surface. “There was no one here. I heard birds.” She chuckled. “I’d lived in London the whole of my life and had never heard a bird until Diggory died. It was so . . . peaceful.” And she’d never believed there was a place where it could be . . . that. She’d never believed she could know that elusive gift generally reserved for the nobility.
Except Edwin had not been immune to the hell of the Dials. It had invaded his life and household and left him with indelible suffering that could never fully go away.
She lifted her gaze to Edwin.
He stared on at Stephen playing at the shore, like any other child. “He likes it here,” he said hoarsely.
“He does. Oh, he resisted acknowledging as much at first, until he owned that love of this place. At first, we only came in the morning because no one was about, but then . . . I said, ‘Never again.’ Why should I hide away?” Gertrude tilted her chin toward one intently gawking stranger. “Why should I let them keep me hidden? Their scorn doesn’t go away. Not for me.” It would for Edwin. Soon the same peers who condemned him with their gazes, words, and whispers would recede until all that remained was a nobleman accepted once more amongst them. Gertrude lifted her gaze to his. “And you shouldn’t let them keep you hidden away any longer, either, Edwin. Live your life again. You’ve nothing to be ashamed of.” The dead Diggory did. The ton did. This man, a grieving father, did not.
“I still can’t do it,” Stephen yelled, stomping over and ending the exchange. He wedged his tiny frame between them. “They don’t jump.”
“Skip,” she amended. “You want them to skip.”
“Jump. Skip. It’s all the same.”
“Your sister has been instructing you on skipping stones?” Edwin asked.
“Tried to.” Stephen opened his fist and dropped the pile of rocks onto the grass. “She’s rubbish at it and skipping them.”
“Thank you,” she drawled, giving her brother a light shove with her elbow. He returned that bump with one of his own. “We’ve been working at it for three years now,” she explained to Edwin. For all the lessons she’d managed to deliver on the proper way for him to speak, how to read, and complete basic mathematics, she’d been useless to learn and teach the simplest task a child should enjoy.
Tugging off his gloves, Edwin tossed them onto the ground, and with a bare hand he scooped up the previously discarded stones and pebbles. Head bent over that collection, he sifted through each. “Humph.”
Stephen edged closer. “‘Humph,
’ what?”
“Well,” Edwin expounded, “it’s simply that there is an art form to the whole stone-skipping process. Before one can successfully accomplish the feat, one has to have the proper object to hurl. Here. Hold your hand out,” he instructed.
Gertrude sat on, afraid to move, afraid to breathe lest she shatter the moment unfurling between father and son. Her family had taught Stephen how to steal and survive, and the basic functions of society, such as reading and simple mathematics . . . but this is what they’d failed to provide. These simple exchanges that marked true joy in life. And he found it now . . . with his father, the only one who’d ever had a rightful claim to him.
“Feel that?” Edwin asked. “Slightly round, jagged. That one will never do.” To demonstrate his point, Edwin picked it up and drew back his arm. Releasing it in a flawless arc, he launched the stone. It hopped once. Twice. And then sank.
“You did it!” Stephen cheered.
“Two hops. Now look at this one.”
Stephen examined the next rock placed in his hand.
“Not too large. Not so small as a pebble. But feel the smoothness there?”
Rubbing the impending projectile between his thumb and forefinger, Stephen nodded.
“The smoothness of that helps it sail along the surface. Like so.” Taking the stone back, Edwin tossed it.
It skipped. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six hops, rippling the waters as it went, before disappearing under the surface.
Stephen cheered, that jubilant cry earning more stares and sending several kestrels into flight. “That rock jumped six times.”
“Now, you try it. First, let us find your stone.”
Stephen dropped to the earth and proceeded to crawl along the shore, feeling around as he went. Unhesitant, Edwin went down into a like posture and searched alongside his son.
Just like that that, Gertrude lost every last corner of her heart to this man: one so capable of forgiveness that he’d allow Gertrude, daughter to the man who’d murdered his wife and stolen his child, a place in his household.
No.
It was impossible. She barely knew him. Had known him just under a fortnight. It was illogical when she was only practical, and yet . . .
Oh, God. I do. I love that he is a father in every way to his son. But it was far more than who he was with Stephen. She loved Edwin for who he was with her. For being a man who didn’t doubt her because she was blind or a Killoran, but had instead allowed her a voice within his household and accepted her decisions when her own family had only ever questioned her.
On the heel of that realization came the sobering wave of misery.
There could never be anything between them. It didn’t matter that she loved him. Her father had murdered his wife and stolen his son.
And not for the first time that day, she wanted to cry all over again. Only these tears were not the ones that had blurred her vision at Draven’s establishment over the mouse house Edwin had commissioned on her behalf. These were crystalline drops of misery, and she wanted nothing more than to curl up into a tight ball and give way to that sorrow.
Edwin glanced up, that movement sending a blond curl tumbling over his brow, giving him an almost boyish look. He grinned, flashing a glimpse of who he’d been before his world had been torn asunder.
She clawed through the tumult to present a display of naturalness, forcing her lips up in a smile.
He lifted his hand in a wave. “Join us, Gertrude,” he called, attracting another bevy of stares.
Anxiously, Gertrude glanced around. “Edwin,” she said, giving her head a slight shake. “You can’t.”
“I can’t what?”
“I think it’s because you’re calling her ‘Gertrude’?” In equally negligent tones, her brother piped up. “Right?”
Gertrude briefly covered her eyes with a hand. Now would be the time Stephen chose to display a grasp on propriety. When she let her palm fall to her lap, she found a devil’s smirk on her brother’s lips that indicated he’d known precisely what he’d done by calling out his words about Edwin.
She pushed herself upright and stalked over. “Stop,” she hissed.
“Why? We don’t care what the ton thinks.”
Yes, that had always been the way. And they still didn’t. She did, however, care for Edwin. His and Stephen’s reception amongst the ton was important to him, and therefore, it was important to her. “Your father does.”
“No, I don’t,” Edwin said unhelpfully. “Not really.” As if to drive home that point, he lifted his broad shoulders in a shrug.
Sweeping past Stephen, she drifted closer to Edwin and whispered, “Yes, you do.”
“I’m certain I just indicated I do not.”
“No,” she said calmly.
“Didn’t I? Stephen?” He directed that question over her shoulder.
“He did,” her brother confirmed.
Splendid. Now would be the time this previously dueling couple should choose to be a pair. Contrary bastards.
“Go find some rocks, Stephen,” she snapped.
And for once her brother did as she bade. After he’d wandered off to collect those rocks for throwing, Gertrude moved closer to Edwin. “Your reputation and how Polite Society view you is important to you. Our being here has already stirred the gossips.” She had been born well outside his exalted station, but she knew enough of the world and how it operated to gather that his calling her by her Christian name would only add fuel to the fire of gossip burning its way through Hyde Park.
“I don’t care, Gertrude.”
“But you do,” she implored.
“You’ve helped me see I care a good deal less than I believed. Now take a rock.” He took her hand and pressed a stone in her palm, closing her fingers around it. How odd that a single touch should cast a series of flutters in her belly. “And show your brother how to properly skip it.”
“Gert’s giving it a try?” Stephen shouted from the off-beaten path he’d wandered down.
Edwin cupped his hands around his mouth and called back. “She is.”
Gertrude winced. Passing lords and ladies stared baldly back. “Edwin,” she pleaded.
“I thought you didn’t care about the opinions of others.”
“I don’t, but neither do I wish to deliberately attract atte—”
Stephen raced over, and as he skidded to a stop, he kicked up dust and gravel under the heels of his boots. “Well, have at it, Gert,” he urged. “What are you waiting for?”
With a sigh, Gertrude brought her arm back and let her missile fly. It sailed along the water’s surface, hopping seven times before plummeting below. “There, are you happy?” she muttered.
Her brother let loose a triumphant cry on her behalf.
Edwin brought his hands together in a little clap that brought a blush to her cheeks. “Splendid, Miss Killoran. But I’d venture it was merely a lucky first chance.”
She bristled. “I say not.” Plucking another stone from his fingers, she released it and peered at the small plops it left upon the smooth lake.
“Eight!” Stephen cried, launching himself at her.
Gertrude grunted and pitched forward, knocking into Edwin.
Under the weight of both of them, he tumbled back, coming down on his buttocks with Gertrude laughing, sprawled atop him. Their bodies shook with their amusement . . . until the intimacy of their position hit her at once.
They lay with their bodies flush, her chest crushed to his.
Edwin’s eyes darkened; the glint in their piercing depths radiated the burning heat of his desire. He slid his gaze to her mouth.
His thick, black lashes swept down, hooding his eyes. And the whole world melted away.
Gertrude’s breath quickened.
He wants me . . .
“Maddock.”
And just like that, that same person who’d intruded days earlier stole this moment, too.
They glanced up at the man standing over them.
Lord Charles, the Marquess of Tenwhestle—Edwin’s brother-in-law.
Gertrude pushed away from Edwin and struggled to her feet. “My lord,” she greeted, dropping a curtsy.
The gentleman slid her a brief glance, dismissing her before training all his attention on Edwin. “I . . . thought you might spare me an introduction.”
The trio of adults looked to Stephen.
“Don’t want an introduction.” He spit on the ground, that saliva landing at the tips of Lord Charles’s feet. “We’re busy.”
“Stephen,” she said softly, giving her head a slight shake.
The marquess glanced down at his now-stained boots.
Gertrude stiffened, braced for an onslaught of outrage—that didn’t come.
“I’ll not intrude any more than I have,” the marquess murmured, doffing his hat. “I thought I’d see if you’d join me for drinks at White’s.”
Edwin’s mouth settled into a tight line. “I’m afraid I am otherwise engaged.”
Gertrude gave him a sharp look. These two men had once been friends. Despite the resentment and heartache that had separated them, the marquess now sought to rekindle that friendship. Edwin needed that friendship. And Stephen should know his uncle.
“I . . . see.” Lord Charles fiddled with the brim of his hat before returning it atop his head. “If you change your mind, you can find me there most evenings at ten o’clock.” At Edwin’s answering silence, the marquess looked to Gertrude.
Even half-blind, the hatred in his gaze reached out like a physical touch and burnt.
She took a step back under the intensity of it.
But then as quickly as it appeared, it was gone. “Miss Killoran,” he murmured. “August,” he offered to his nephew. Lord Charles’s features twisted in a display of grief, and with that, he left.
Gertrude stared after him, following his retreat. Even in his absence a chill remained, and she rubbed her arms to ward it off.
“Can we return to the stone business?” Stephen whined.
And as Edwin, Gertrude, and Stephen continued on with their earlier efforts, the levity they’d known was gone as the other nobleman’s presence lingered amongst them.
The Bluestocking Page 21