The Bluestocking

by Caldwell, Christi

  Chapter 20

  Edwin’s loathing of fire would always be there, but where he’d embraced a cold, empty hearth in the past, now he sat before the lightly blazing embers.

  Yet another demon had been conquered.

  And yet so many remained.

  Cradling a snifter of half-drunk brandy in his fingers, Edwin stared into the amber contents.

  His brother-in-law . . . his former best friend . . . sought a meeting with him. Once, that was all he’d wanted. Nay, he’d wanted that which he’d been undeserving of—forgiveness for costing Lavinia her life.

  He and Charles had been as close as brothers, both scoundrels of London who’d reveled in their reputations and lived that carefree existence of rogues together. As such, Charles had possessed every reason under God’s sun to reject a match between Edwin and his cherished sister. But he hadn’t. He’d trusted that Edwin could and would do right by her.

  You should have been the one who burnt in that fire . . . My parents were right about you . . . Lavinia was right about you . . . You are dead to me . . .

  You are dead to me.

  Those had been the last words ever spoken between them . . . until Charles had come upon him and Gertrude and Stephen at Gunter’s . . . and now, today, at Hyde Park.

  Where the former friend had requested that Edwin join him.

  And less than a fortnight ago, as emotionally deadened as he’d become, Edwin would have gladly sent his brother-in-law on to the Devil . . . just as he’d done with Charles’s parents. They’d blamed him . . . but no less than he’d blamed himself. His in-laws’ opinion of him hadn’t mattered. They’d always hated him. To them, he’d never been anything more than the contemptible cad who’d stolen their precious daughter.

  Charles? Charles, however, had been altogether different.

  His was the betrayal that had stung most. As such, it had been far easier to resurrect barriers insulating himself from the pain of having lost not only his wife and his son but also the friend he’d so desperately needed in those earliest, most agonizing days.

  But now, the walls had been knocked loose.

  By her.

  Gertrude.

  Gertrude, who’d challenged him when everyone else had feared him, who’d helped him to see the fears he’d carried, ones he’d not even acknowledged to himself—about Stephen and their life together as father and son—and likely wouldn’t have come to terms with, without her forcing his eyes open.

  You were afraid, Edwin. That does not make you a bad father or terrible person. It makes you human . . . What makes you a good, honorable father is that you call your son by his street name and not the noble one you gave him at birth. You are here now, when you’ve not left your household or wanted to leave your household . . . but you are here for him . . .

  The irony was not lost on him. He’d hated her on sight, blaming her for the sins of her father. He’d snapped at her. Taunted her over her birthright and been cruel at every turn. With all that, she could have let him flounder with Stephen’s reintegration into his life. She hadn’t, however. She’d eased his son’s way and helped Edwin accept that he was a father again.

  She had proven the one who’d pulled him back to the living. Not his mother-in-law or father-in-law. Not his best friend and brother-in-law, Charles.

  Gertrude had been the one. It was because of her that he’d learned himself capable of smiling and laughing again . . . and of being someone other than the scared, wounded beast hiding away in his townhouse.

  His throat moved. She had set him and Stephen on a path together as a family and given him a gift for which he could never repay her. Edwin went still.

  A palpable energy hummed to life within the room.

  She’s here.

  He felt her presence before he saw her.

  Gertrude hung back at the entrance, her arms wrapped about a grey tabby. “Hullo.”

  She would be here now. Conjured by his own thoughts of her. His need for her.

  He was supposed to say something here. He’d not lost so much of the proper way to move about people that he’d forgotten as much, but neither could he form words on his lips.

  The faint glow of the lit sconces in the hallway cast a soft light about her; her plaited hair hung over her shoulder, those strands, dark like chocolate, glimmering with shades of auburn. Had he once thought her plain? Hers was the bold beauty of Joan of Arc; fearless and spirited, it radiated from within her and made a man hungry with the need to hold her and that vitality within his arms.

  “I didn’t hear you,” he said quietly, twirling his drink in a light circle.

  She drew the cat almost protectively to her chest. “I’ve learned to move silently through the years.”

  “Because you were a pickpocket.” It left him before he could call the thought back, words blurted out from one who’d forgotten how to be around people.

  “I’ll go,” she said quickly, turning on her heel.

  “No!” With a curse, Edwin exploded to his feet, splashing several droplets over the rim of his glass and onto his fingers. He set his drink down on the table beside him and rushed to the entrance of the room. “I didn’t intend it as an insult.” He stretched a hand out, even as her back was presented to him, wanting her to remain. Needing her to remain. Only knowing he didn’t want to be alone . . . and that something in her presence filled him with a lightness he’d not known since long ago, back before his wife’s love had turned to hate. “Please, don’t go. Stay.” His was an entreaty that a prouder man wouldn’t have made. His pride had died long ago. She was going to leave. Poised on the balls of her feet, her whole body sang of flight.

  Gertrude wheeled slowly back. She surprised him at every turn.

  Burying her nose in the top of that deucedly lucky feline, Gertrude pinned him with an accusatory gaze that caused Edwin’s heart to stutter in his chest.

  In a short time, her opinion had come to mean something. He’d not have her believe he sought to disparage her.

  “I didn’t mean it as an insult. I wanted . . .” To know. Which was equally offensive, in asking her to speak about crimes she’d committed. It bespoke an insensitivity—him, a gauche noble curious about a woman who’d survived in ways he never had to or would have. Only it wasn’t that. It was more. It was a yearning to know the secrets she herself carried.

  “You wanted . . . ?” She drifted over, wafting those fragrant floral scents as she walked. “To know?” she put forward without malice.

  He cleared his throat. “I . . .” Edwin glanced away. Tell her no and let her either go on her way or enter the room so you might speak about safer topics, like tossing stones and Draven’s recently completed furniture for Stephen. Edwin opted for the truth. “I was asking so I might learn more about you.”

  Please, don’t go.

  That plea pinged around his mind.

  Gertrude ruffled the cat—Gus—at the base of his neck. The cat purred contentedly. “I was, you know . . . a pickpocket,” she clarified. Gertrude slipped past him and moved deeper into the room, so fleet of foot she’d left him and found a place at the center of the library before he’d even completely turned. Reaching out, he pushed the door closed, shutting them away.

  Gertrude paused, taking in the panel before going on. “I hated it, but I was quite good at it.” Her gaze grew distant. “Every time, my stomach would turn, and I was so certain this would be the time they caught me that I threw up before I went out.” Oh, God.

  He briefly closed his eyes, imagining Gertrude as a young girl, a smaller version of the woman who stood before him, living with terror.

  “For five years I filched purses,” she said softly, bringing his eyes flying open. “I was taller than the other children, and they doubted I’d be able to manage it, but Diggory . . . my father”—she wrapped that word in a hated sneer—“insisted I try.”

  “Because he knew you were capable.” There was nothing this woman couldn’t do. She would have been the same way as a c
hild.

  She laughed softly. “Because he said a child’s only value was the number of pockets they could pick, and if I couldn’t manage, then the constable would do away with me and he’d not have to worry about having another mouth to feed.”

  “He . . . said that.” Her . . . father. The man who should have taken care of her and loved her had spoken so flippantly of forfeiting her life. A red haze of fury fell over his vision; briefly blinding, that rage throbbed within him, and a hungering took him in its grip to drag Diggory from the pit of hell he even now burnt in and murder him all over again.

  “He wasn’t really my father, Edwin,” she explained, absently stroking a finger down one particular tabby stripe. “I mean . . . he was in the way that you and Polite Society so value, but those sentiments? Paternal concern? Respect for one’s child. Love. Dedication. Pride. They don’t exist for children in the streets. Not from parents. If one is lucky, one finds family in strangers or the bastards unfortunate enough to share the blood of those sinners.”

  Like she had.

  Gertrude spoke quietly, in muted, disguised tones close to Gus’s ear, and with her focus wholly trained on that grey tabby, Edwin freely watched her . . . unable to look away.

  I condemned her for her connection to her siblings. Those women, that man . . . Broderick Killoran . . . they had been the difference between Gertrude’s knowing only hell at Mac Diggory’s cruel instruction . . . or having some sense of family.

  Needing to move . . . needing a drink, Edwin went and rescued his previously abandoned glass and took a much-needed swallow.

  He’d been wrong. On so many scores.

  Do not ask . . . do not ask. You do not want to hear the answer . . . Regardless, the question left him anyway. “Why only five years?”

  She cocked her head at an adorable little angle that sent her braid flopping over her shoulder.

  “You indicated you were skilled, so why should he not have used you?” From the Devil Diggory had been, such a decision would have never been about concern for his child.

  “I don’t . . .” She shook her head. “I won’t . . .”

  She didn’t wish to talk about it. Shivers of apprehension dusted along his spine.

  Gus squealed and scrambled to get out of his mistress’s arms. Gertrude released him and stared after the cat as he took flight, finding a place under the leather button sofa. Her fingers shaking, Gertrude picked up the hard-paste Sèvres porcelain statuette of a mother with her bare babe as she led him by the hand.

  Edwin knew the very moment she’d forgotten his presence. A far-away wistful smile graced her lips as she trailed a cracked fingernail along the clasped hands of the jubilant young mother and child.

  Edwin’s heart buckled. And he wanted to call back every question he’d put to her. He wanted to put each back in a box, tucked away, and then carry it over to the still-burning hearth and let that blaze consume her pain until all that remained were ashes left in its wake.

  “He loaned me out.”

  Edwin’s mouth went dry. He didn’t want to hear anymore. And by the way she dropped her attention back to the white porcelain statue, she was allowing him the ultimate decision, the decision on whether that statement and the story of her past went nowhere.

  But yet, for her, he did want her to continue. Because just as she’d aptly gleaned about him . . . she needed to share. She needed to let those demons out, and he wanted to be the person there for her when she did. “What do you mean?” he finally brought himself to ask.

  Gertrude stroked her thumb over the top of that white porcelain babe and directed her answer at it. “London is vast. The sheer size of it alone makes it too much for any one man to lay domination over. Diggory was just one gang leader, but there are many. He was the most powerful, and also clever enough to recognize he couldn’t rule all of East London without help. He would loan me over to a rival thief to use. Diggory would receive a share of the profits, and Jake-O would pay a fee for using me.” Her lips tipped at the corners into a heartbreaking smile. “He won twice, that way.”

  Edwin’s legs carried him over. He stopped a pace away and, brushing his knuckles along her jaw, brought her gaze up to his. “What did he do?”

  Gertrude drew in a shaky breath, and then with the same courage she’d shown since their first meeting, she met his gaze squarely. “He wanted more than the purse I’d filched one night.” The muscles of his stomach contracted into a twisted mass of knots. “I insisted that wasn’t the deal Diggory made with him. He tried to take it anyway.” Bile stung his throat as rage briefly blinded him. Through his tumult, she continued on, so very calm when her every admission hit like a fist to the gut. “I knocked him out cold. I ran and didn’t stop running until I returned.”

  His admiration for the woman before him swelled. Back when he’d moved amongst the living, a young rogue set loose on the ton, the ladies he’d kept company with hadn’t given a jot about anything beyond baubles and balls. They’d been cherished and pampered, and they’d never had to fight to survive. And shamefully, he’d failed to see the world outside the one he dwelled in. While he’d caroused about the ton with Lord Charles, young girls like Gertrude had been fighting tooth and nail for their survival. Shame stuck in his gut.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she snapped.

  “Like what?” How did she think he was looking at her? In wonder. Awe.

  “Like you pity me,” she said flatly, stepping away from him.

  Edwin caught her by the upper arm, encircling that soft flesh in a light grip. “Never,” he vowed. “You are amazing.”

  “I’m not,” she said, drawing away from him. She scoffed. “If I were, I would have known Jake-O would have never settled until revenge was met.”

  And once more, he was reminded of how foreign the existence she’d lived was to him that he’d believed that to be the end of her story. It wouldn’t be. Those streets were ruthless, and the men who served as kings over them ruled with cruelty and delighted in the suffering they inflicted. “What happened?” he asked, his voice hollow.

  “Jake-O came ’round to see Diggory. It was the worst time for him to come. Diggory was always a ruthless bastard, but that day . . .” She shivered and clutched her arms close. “One of his thugs was in the middle of reporting on my sister for having freed another street urchin. Jake-O was insisting that I’d lost a purse promised him.” As she talked, her words came more quickly. “Diggory walloped me twice in the face. A punch . . . right here.” Gertrude laid her palm against her left eye. “One to atone for my mistakes against Jake-O, and the other here”—she motioned to her temple—“a message to Ophelia that if she helped others, her sisters would pay the price.” Her voice quavered. “H-he said both matters were settled.”

  So that was how it had happened. She’d been left partially blind by that monster. He struggled to get words out. But there were none. Years earlier, he would have been the man with soothing murmurings. Now he could manage nothing more than three syllables: “Oh, Gertrude.”

  “I passed out. Everything went black, and when I woke up . . .” Her long, graceful neck moved from the force of her swallow. “Everything was still black in my left eye.” She breathed slowly through her clenched lips. “The one good to come of it was that it was the last pocket I was ever made to pick. From then on, I was assigned the role of mother to Diggory’s bastards. I looked after my sisters and the other children, and eventually . . .” Stephen.

  It was because of this woman his son had survived. Had she not taken him into her care, none of the street lessons doled out by the others would have meant anything, for Stephen’s soul would have withered. She’d kept that spark alive and allowed Stephen a path forward. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

  Gertrude gave her head a little shake. “I don’t . . .”

  Edwin cupped her cheek. “My son is alive because of you. He is able to laugh because you saw that he knew visits at Hyde Park and trips to Gunter’s. You saved him.”
/>
  A watery smile formed on her lips. “I did—”

  He touched two fingers to her mouth, cutting off the remainder of her erroneous assumption. “You did more for him than anyone else . . . myself included.”

  All at once, the air sizzled between them, and he registered that his fingers still brushed that mouth he’d kissed a week ago. That he’d hungered to again take under his. He yanked his hand away and forced his arms back to his side. Bastard. You are a contemptible bastard. “I owe you an apology.” She was deserving of many where he was concerned.

  “For what?”

  How did one who’d suffered as she had retain such a pure spirit? “I was a fool.” He tossed back the remaining contents of his drink and then grimaced as it burnt a fiery path down the back of his throat. With a sound of frustration, he stalked to the sideboard and retrieved the bottle. Desperately needing another drink, he set his snifter down and went through the motions of pouring a glass. “All along I held you to blame. I placed crimes committed by another at your feet.” The amber spirits brushed the brim of the glass and spilled onto the table, staining it with errant drops. Edwin stopped. “I was wrong about so much where you were concerned,” he whispered. He gave his head a disgusted shake and made himself face her. She stood precisely where he’d left her, unmoving. Setting his glass and decanter down behind him, Edwin lifted his palms. “All along I’ve behaved as if I’m the only one who has known pain. As though I’m the only victim of Mac Diggory, when the truth was . . . you lived a life of suffering.” While her life had always been one of drudgery and fear, Edwin’s had been, until seven years ago, a charmed existence.

  “No,” she said emphatically, sailing over, and he was a cad for lingering his gaze on her delicate ankles as her skirts twirled about her legs. He turned away to take another long drink. Surely this yearning to tug that scrap of fabric higher and explore the length of her legs was a product of years of celibacy.

  “You aren’t allowed to do that, Edwin,” she chided, and for a devastating moment he believed she’d gathered the improper wanderings of his mind. “We are so accustomed to measuring everything—rank, wealth, power—that we would do the same with degrees of suffering.” Gertrude took his snifter and set it down hard, and then filled her hands with his. “What happened in your life, your losses and your pain and how you feel”—at that emphasis, she gave his fingers a firm squeeze—“is no less significant because of what happened to me in mine.”