For one tick of the clock, he thought she spoke of them: of the three of them being a family together. And I want that . . . As shocking as that was after less than a fortnight of knowing her, he felt that yearning in his soul.
“Your brother-in-law wants to begin again with you,” she said, stealing the brief interlude he’d allowed himself. “You have Stephen’s grandparents.”
Edwin gently rolled her off his body and then swung his legs over the sofa. “No.” He stood, and just like that, reality intruded.
“They are his family.”
“You don’t know them.” Nor would she want to. They’d treated him, one born of a like rank, as though he were the scum upon the cobblestones. They’d never see Gertrude’s worth.
“They have a right to be in his life,” she persisted, gathering up her nightshift. She drew it on, and as her slender frame disappeared under that decorous fabric, it signified an end to the all-too-brief interlude he’d shared with her.
“You don’t know anything about it,” he said tightly, rescuing each article of clothing.
“Then tell me,” she urged.
“Tell you how they accused me of murdering my wife? Or should I go back further to the words of hatred they tossed about me when they learned Lavinia and I had eloped?” he asked sharply. “They destroyed our marriage.”
“Your wife, in not standing up for your union together, destroyed your marriage. Her parents did not. Her parents haven’t seen the man capable of great love.”
Edwin wrestled his shirt overhead. “They can go hang,” he muttered into the fabric. He yanked it down and grabbed his trousers next. He’d conceded enough points where she was concerned. This would never be a ground he budged from.
Gertrude lifted an eyebrow. “And Lord Charles?”
Damn her.
“He was your friend. He supported your marriage.”
“He blamed me for her death,” he whispered, collapsing onto the edge of the sofa.
Gertrude sidled up next to him and took his hand. “You blamed yourself and came to find forgiveness. It is not mere chance that we keep running into His Lordship. He wants to begin again with you, Edwin. You should allow both of you that.”
“I . . .” Wanted that friendship again.
God, how could she see and know?
“I’d be bereft without my siblings.” She stared at him with stricken eyes. “I . . . will be.” Stephen. Her eventual departure.
His heart squeezed. I’m not ready for her to go. Nor was it because it would mean he and Stephen would learn how to be alone together, as a family. But rather, when she left, she’d steal a happiness he’d never thought again to know.
“You’ll remain until a proper governess is found,” he said crisply. Those were, after all, the terms.
It wouldn’t be enough.
“We found one,” she reminded him. “You should hire Mrs. Upton.” Why did this feel like a goodbye? Why did it feel as though she was even now putting together the remainder of his life so she could go on her way?
Panic knocked around at his insides, rattling loose logic.
Edwin gnashed his teeth. Damn her. “She wouldn’t do.”
“You know she would.”
“What is this about, Gertrude?” he thundered, surging to his feet.
She cowered, and he felt like the biggest bastard and his frustration only expanded.
“Do you want to leave? Is that what this is about?”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to leave, Edwin,” she whispered in heartbreaking tones that cut across his own fears.
Which implied . . . “You want to remain.”
Gertrude wetted her lips. “I . . . do.”
The energy drained from his legs, and he sank into the seat beside her once more. “You want to stay here,” he repeated. No one wanted to stay. His own wife hadn’t. Stephen didn’t. This woman . . . did. It was foreign and unexplainable, and . . . also set joy seeping to the darkest, dormant corners of his broken self. “Then . . . stay.”
A little snorting laugh shook her frame. “I don’t know what kind of offer that is.”
Edwin joined in. “I don’t know, either.” He crept his hand toward hers and claimed her fingers in his. “I just know I want you here, and whatever this is . . .”—this magic whenever they were near—“we’ll figure it out . . . together.”
Gertrude gave all her attention to their palms pressed together. “All right,” she murmured, two syllables that brought his eyes closed and sent joy surging through him. “But on a condition . . .”
He went still. “No.”
“That’s the condition,” she said with a finality. “Not Stephen’s grandparents. That can come later. Lord Charles.”
Join me for drinks at White’s . . . You can find me there at ten o’clock most evenings . . .
Bloody hell.
“You stubborn minx,” he muttered and spun, catching her quickly in his arms and startling a laugh from her.
“What are you doing?” she asked between breathless giggles as he trailed his mouth down the curve of her cheek and the sensitive flesh behind her right ear, and lower to her neck.
“Making love to you.”
Her eyes formed perfect circles. “Again,” she mouthed.
“If you’d rather I not—” Edwin made to pull away.
Gertrude caught him by the nape and guided him back. “I’d rather you did,” she whispered.
And with volatile talk of his in-laws, or Lord Charles, and the prospect of Gertrude leaving forgotten, Edwin gave himself over to the joy of being in her arms once more.
Chapter 22
He’d been gone thirty minutes.
Gertrude stole a glance at the longcase clock in the corner of the library.
The squeak of metal as Sethos ran in the cylinder creaked gratingly, loud on her frayed nerves.
They should be meeting even now: Edwin and his former best friend, still his brother-in-law. She absently stroked Gus, who rested against her side, this time finding little comfort in the loyal tabby’s downy softness.
What if she’d set him up for failure? What if even now Edwin and Lord Charles were coming to blows—
Stephen stepped into her line of vision.
He cleared his throat. “Gert . . . you are looking . . . nice.”
“I’m looking nice?”
“Yea . . .” Stephen yanked at his collar and then caught her watching him. He stopped. “Like . . . not ugly. Almost pretty.”
Her lips twitched at that most typical of little-boy compliments. “Thank you,” she said dryly. She narrowed her eyes, taking in his dark, threadbare garments, those clothes of the Dials he’d not worn in more than ten days. He was up to something, and she well knew what it was. “Absolutely not.”
Her brother stomped his foot, proving how much a child he still was. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to. I know you. I know what you want, and I know where you are not going.”
“I want to see them. It’s been a fortnight.”
It had been just fourteen days, and in that time, her entire world had been turned upside down. Trust had blossomed between her and Edwin. She’d not go and shatter their new bond by violating the terms of their arrangement. Not even if she herself also wanted to see her family . . . all together.
“You want to see them, too,” Stephen surmised, as good a reader of her as she was of him.
“That’s neither here nor there.” She scooped up Gus and stood, marking an end to this discussion. She’d need to see Marlow had footmen stationed at every entrance, because when her brother had in his mind to do something, not even God himself could barter with him. “One of the conditions of my remaining here with you is that I honor the agreement struck with your father.”
“But that was before,” he whined, rushing into her path.
“Before what?”
“When my father hated you.”
My father . . . Her arms s
agged, and with a feline squeal of worry, Gus leapt from her arms. Once more, he’d called Edwin his father, recognizing that relationship that he’d been so adamant on denying.
Her heart wept from the joy of it. She wanted Edwin here. Wanted to share that gift with him.
Stephen clutched her forearm in his shockingly strong grip, giving it a shake. “But he doesn’t hate you anymore. Now he likes you, and when a man likes a woman like he likes you, he lets her do all kinds of things.”
She blushed. “I’m just a woman in his employ.”
He snorted. “I’m eleven years old, but I ain’t a damn lackwit. I knew when Broderick was lusting after Reggie, and Adair was hot for Cleo. I—oomph.” Stephen glared around the hand she’d slapped over his mouth.
“That is not appropriate, Stephen,” she hissed.
“Ainf ’propriate howf he’s looking atchyou.”
“Bloody hell,” she gasped as he sank his teeth into the fleshy portion of her palm. “He’s not looking at me any way.” He’d been discreet. They’d both been discreet. Hadn’t they? Except . . . she cringed . . . an eleven-year-old boy had noticed the pull between her and Edwin.
“Well, he’s not looking at you nowwww.” Literal as only a child could be, Stephen pointed his eyes at the ceiling. “He’s out doing fancy nob things. But he looks at you, and you know it.”
Yes, she knew it. Her body still thrummed with the memory of his every stroke last evening. But that her brother knew it? Gertrude curled her toes so sharply the bottoms of her feet ached. “He isn’t,” she said belatedly, and made a show of looking for Gus.
Then Stephen’s eyes went wide. “Not like thaaaat, silly. Not like the patrons at the club used to eye all the whores, but you know . . .” Color filled his white cheeks. “Like how Adair watches Cleo. All soft-eyed.” He slackened his features, his jaw falling agape and his eyes going soft, and for all the horror of having her secrets uncovered by the boy she’d raised like her own son, a laugh bubbled up from her throat.
“He doesn’t look at me like that.” She wanted him to. She ached for the “I want you” he’d uttered last night and for his appeal that she remain to be more than sexual, to instead be the bond her brother had mistaken it for.
“Trust me, he does.” Stephen beamed. “And so he’d forgive you anything, including taking me out,” he cajoled, bringing them back to the earlier quest that had prompted his analysis of her relationship with Edwin.
“I’d not break my word, Stephen.” Nor would she betray Edwin’s trust. Gertrude stepped around him, retrieved Gus from under the leather sofa, that place he’d taken to making home. “This discussion is over.”
“Please, Gertrude,” Stephen called out on a tremulous whisper, a plea that brought her up short.
Keep going. If you don’t, you’ll waver . . .
But she’d come to view this boy as the son she’d never bear, and she could no sooner ignore that entreaty than she could pluck out her one working eye.
Gertrude forced herself to face him.
Stephen folded his hands together as if in prayer, holding them up. “Please. I miss them.” Tears flooded his eyes, ripping at her heart. “D-Don’t look at m-me like that. I’m not c-crying,” he rasped, and yet the tears poured down his cheeks. “I-I just want to see B-Broderick and Cl-Cleo and O-Ophelia. I want to see them all.” And then he, this life-hardened little person who’d not cried since his earliest days in Diggory’s gang, dissolved into heaving sobs that shook his frame. At last, he let down the mask of invincibility he’d donned and surrendered to his emotions.
She was across the room in three strides and had him in her arms. Stephen collapsed against her, and she drew him closer. “I-I miss th-them,” he wept into her shoulder. His little hands formed fists at her chest.
“I know,” she said gently, laying her cheek atop his head. Gertrude smoothed her hands over his back the way she once had to urge him to sleep when he was younger.
“N-no, you don’t know. N-not really. S-soon you’ll go and return t-to Broderick and R-Reggie, and you’ll see Cleo and Ophelia all you want, and I’ll never see them, Gert. Never.”
And I’ll never see Edwin. Her tears fell freely. “You’ve been happy here.” Both of us have.
“I-I have,” he said, when in the past he would have offered a lie or curse, or worse. “I don’t h-hate him like I thought I would.”
No, because how could he? Edwin had allowed Stephen to retain pieces of his past and had sought to build a relationship with him: visiting Gunter’s and Hyde Park, joining Stephen at Draven’s to oversee the construction of his furniture. “He’s a good man,” she whispered.
And if it were possible, Stephen cried all the more, until his voice grew ragged and hoarse, and the front of her gown was soaked from the copious tears pouring from him. He cried until his tears dried up and heaving sobs shook his frame.
“It’s all right,” she soothed.
He pushed away. Avoiding her gaze, he dragged the back of his sleeve over his nose. “But it’s not, though. How about just Cleo, then?”
Just Cleo.
Bloody hell. “I can’t,” she implored, needing him to understand.
“But he won’t even find out. You and I will go and return before he even gets back from his fancy club.”
“You don’t know that.”
It was a misstep. She’d faltered, and Stephen latched on. “We’ll be quick. We don’t live far from Cleo. We’ll visit and return, and we’re from St. Giles, Gert. St. Giles. Do you truly think a nob could find us sneaking about?”
No, she didn’t. Not most nobleman, but Edwin, with his acuity and rapier intelligence, wasn’t one to be underestimated. And if you take Stephen without his permission, and he finds out? Gertrude caught the inside of her cheek between her teeth. He’d never forgive her. Or mayhap he would. “I know you want to go now, Stephen. But we can’t. I promise, we’ll ask him,” she hurried to assure him.
He stretched his hands out. “If you ask and he says no, then he’ll have guards on me and you.”
Yes, he would.
It was not Broderick her brother asked to see.
She felt herself wavering.
“It’s just Cleo.”
Was that her or her brother speaking in this instance?
“He owes me a favor, Gert. I want it to be this.”
“You put the favor to him, then, Stephen.” But Gertrude couldn’t be the one to go against him.
“Nope. That ain’t how it works. He conceded at Gunter’s. I won. If we’re discovered, I’ll claim this as my request.”
“And if we aren’t discovered?”
Stephen flashed a half grin. “Then I’ll steal me another favor.”
She sighed. “Oh, Stephen. I’m so sorry. But I cann—”
“To hell with you, and to hell with him, then.” He spat on the floor in an explosive display he’d not shown since Hyde Park. It served as a reminder of how far he’d come in his long road to healing, but how much more he needed to travel and how fragile he still was—and mayhap would always be. “I asked, when I’ve never done so before. I’m going anyway, whether or not you’re with me.” And this time, he stomped off.
“Stephen!”
He continued his march.
“Fine! I’ll do it.”
That brought him to a quick stop. Her brother, however, still made no move to face her. Gertrude glanced to the door, mindful that there could be servants passing by, and dropped her voice to a hushed whisper. “I’ll join you.” Because ultimately, at the end of the day, Stephen would find a way out of this household. Not a single one of Edwin’s servants would be a match for keeping him here. And if Stephen went out, there would be no one to watch after him.
He whirled around. “You’ll do it!”
“On a condition. I’m telling your father when we return.” He’d understand. Two weeks ago, he wouldn’t have. But Edwin was no longer the same spiteful person.
“Tell him what you
want.” His smile widened, dimpling his cheeks. “Now let’s go.”
A short while later, with Gertrude changed into black skirts and Stephen at her side, they slipped out the unattended servants’ entrance, and she prayed Edwin would understand her decision.
Entering the famous doors of the most exclusive and oldest club in London, it was as though Edwin had stepped back in time.
Back when he’d been first a young bachelor and then a newly married man, Edwin had spent hours upon hours at White’s, and never had he felt this cloying panic threatening to choke him the way it did now.
A hushed silence, one Edwin would have believed impossible for the peerage, fell over the club.
What am I doing here? Leave. Turn and go . . .
It would be so simple. He needn’t even collect his cloak from the butler stationed at the famed double black doors. He could run and keep on running until he was home with Gertrude and Stephen and the world made sense the way it did whenever they were near.
As he walked with purposeful strides, cutting a path through White’s, the stares of men he’d once taken drinks with and sat across a gaming table from followed him. Men who now swiveled in their seats, their horrified gazes burning into his back, enough to leave a mark.
No jovial greetings were called out as they’d once been. No invitations for him to join. Edwin had made this walk many times before. Never, however, had the path to this particular table felt longer.
His belly churned, and while he wanted to flee, Gertrude’s voice slashed through the unease.
You’ve done all this yourself. You’re in hiding no more, and you deserve to be out in the light.
At last he reached it.
Edwin stopped at this table he’d spent countless nights at. All previous visits to it, however, had been effortless, with him not awaiting an invitation, simply grabbing a chair, tugging it out, and seating himself. Servants had rushed over with a glass in hand for the regular patron . . . joining his friend. “Charles,” he finally greeted his brother-in-law.
Charles sat motionless, a forgotten snifter poised halfway to his mouth, frozen in his fingers. And then . . . he seemed to jerk back to the moment. He jumped up, sloshing his spirits around his glass. He set it down, forgotten. “Edwin,” he greeted on a whisper. “You came.”
The Bluestocking Page 24