Blast and damn.
“What is going on there?” Cleo asked bluntly.
“I don’t know what you are talking about.” Gertrude shot a glance toward the doctor, still wholly absorbed in his cleanup, and sent a pointed look in his direction. “Furthermore, this is hardly a conversation to be had with strangers about.”
Ophelia snorted. “Come, we don’t have much time here. We were invited to see that you are well, and then he’s going to toss us out. So do not think to drag out the time on the hope that you can avoid answering.”
Damn her sister for being too clever by half. “There’s nothing there.”
“If that were true, then that would have been the first thing you said instead of pointing to the good doctor there.”
Another fair and accurate point, and also further proof that she’d never mastered subterfuge in quite the same way her sisters had.
“There’s nothing to say,” she whispered. “He resents us for having stolen Stephen, and he can never, ever forgive that.” His explosive outburst had reached her in the foyer; she’d heard his fear, seen his mistrust. For the illusion she’d allowed herself—the illusion they’d both allowed themselves—there could never be anything between them. Not really. Tears clogged her throat, and she struggled to swallow around them.
The mattress creaked slightly as Ophelia settled herself on the bed close to Gertrude, offering a shield from Dr. Carlson. “And . . . it’s important that there is forgiveness between you.”
It was a statement, not a question. Nonetheless, Gertrude nodded.
“Oh, bloody hell,” Cleo whispered, sinking onto the opposite side. “You care about him.”
Gertrude bit down on her lower lip and shook her head.
Cleo slid her eyes closed. “Oh, bloody, bloody hell. You love him.”
Gertrude dropped her gaze to her lap and offered a slow nod.
Ophelia made a pitying sound. “Gertrude.” How odd that one’s name could be delivered as nothing more than a chastisement.
“I know.” Vehemence ripped that whisper from her. She knew precisely the folly in what she’d done here—falling in love with the last man she should. A man whom she could never have anything with. Not truly. Gertrude stared at the mural overhead. “I know,” she repeated. “It wasn’t supposed to happen. But it did. So quickly. He made a mouse house for Sethos, and commissioned all new furniture from Draven, and sat through all of it while Stephen designed those pieces, and—” She was rambling. “I’m a fool.”
Her youngest sister sighed. “Yes. Yes, you are. But then, we all do foolish things. I fell in love with our rival.”
“And I fell in love with the man investigating our family,” Ophelia piped in.
A half laugh, half sob spilled from Gertrude’s lips, and she instantly cringed as pain radiated from her injury. “Those are different. What Diggory did to Edwin . . . to his family . . .” Could never be forgiven.
Ophelia caught her fingers. “I know . . . it sometimes seems like the odds against one are insurmountable. But . . . Diggory also killed Connor’s father, and . . .” Tears glazed her sister’s wide, luminescent eyes, giving her a haunting look. Or mayhap the better word was . . . haunted. “He did”—hatred poured from her slender frame—“horrific things to his mother. And there was forgiveness between us.”
A fledgling hope stirred where there should be none. And then died.
. . . Summon the damned constable . . .
“This is different,” she said with a shake of her head. “Connor never doubted you. He didn’t hold you to blame for Diggory murdering his family.” Her throat closed, and she struggled to get words through the emotion choking her. “When Connor’s adoptive father orchestrated your downfall, Ophelia”—one that had seen Ophelia thrown in gaol—“Connor went toe to toe with his father, the earl, who despised you. He fought for your honor and married you anyway. He battled the Earl of Whitehaven and anyone else who’d done wrong by you.” Because that is what one did in a relationship: they trusted, defended, and loved. Unlike Edwin . . . Her shoulders sank. “Edwin has only ever blamed me and our family.” She’d deluded herself into believing that the friendship they shared and the bond far greater than friendship, which had grown between them, were enough. They would never be. He hadn’t trusted her. And that was what hurt most and meant there could be nothing between them.
“But . . . mayhap it’s not different?” Cleopatra put forward hesitantly.
Mayhap it’s not . . .
When had her sisters become the hopeful optimists of their trio? Gertrude smiled sadly. “He believed I took Stephen.” Her sisters cringed. “Precisely.” Somewhere along the way, the roles had reversed, with Gertrude becoming the one who saw struggles as insurmountable. “I’m a realist,” she said quietly as the young doctor finished packing away his supplies.
“Very well.” Ophelia glanced at her wound. “Then you also know, given the circumstances—the peril you’re likely in and the lack of a future with the marquess—you cannot remain here indefinitely.”
Actually, she did know that. As Dr. Carlson had sewn her up, she’d come to the sad realization about her and Edwin’s fate. “I do.” And as several maids came forward to gather up the bowls of bloodied water, Gertrude knew that what she had to do must come sooner rather than later for all of them—Stephen, her, and . . . Edwin.
It was the logical, rational decision. One that, given Edwin’s lack of faith in her, should be easy . . . and yet as the servants and doctor gathered up the supplies, she was besieged all over again with the dratted urge to cry.
Chapter 25
Edwin wore a back-and-forth path along the hall outside Gertrude’s rooms.
The doctor had been in there for nearly—he paused and consulted his timepiece for the tenth time—fifty minutes. Dr. Carlson, the doctor who’d arrived with Gertrude’s sisters, Cleopatra Thorne and Ophelia O’Roarke, had been in there for nearly an hour. In that time, Edwin had strained his ears for some hint of cries or screams or . . . anything through that heavy oak panel.
Edwin resumed his frantic pacing.
Nothing.
There was nothing.
Which was surely a promising sign. Had Gertrude been on the verge of death, there would have been some sounds from her . . . or her sisters.
Or mayhap there wouldn’t have been sounds from her. Mayhap that silence was in fact an ominous sign that the knife wound she’d suffered had pierced an organ.
Edwin stopped abruptly. Do not think of it . . . do not think of it . . .
And yet, the haunting image slid in: Gertrude drawing slow, shallow, labored breaths. Her bleeding uncontrollable.
Dread scissored through him, crippling. Nothing could happen to her. He’d be lost, and this time would remain adrift. I love her. I love her for her strength and her sense of right and her ability to have emerged triumphant and filled with a lightness and optimism in life and love and trust, despite the hell the world has visited upon her. Nay, her own father had brought that suffering into her life. He was going mad. Edwin dragged a shaky hand through his hair. She had saved him. And he’d repaid that gift with the ugliest doubt.
Footsteps sounded from within the bedchambers, and he straightened.
But no one exited.
With a growl, he resumed his march along the carpeted floor.
“They’re tough.”
He’d been pacing in silence so long, dwelling in the miseries of his own tortured mind, that it took a moment to register that those words belonged to someone.
Edwin glanced over at the quiet-until-now figure of Adair Thorne. Positioned at the doorway across from Gertrude’s, his arms folded at his chest, the slightly taller, burlier man looked back. Stephen stood alongside the other man . . . who would be his uncle.
“The Killoran women,” the notorious gaming hell owner murmured.
“A street rat with a knife won’t bring any of my sisters down,” Stephen said, puffing out his chest like a proud
papa. And then his gaze flitted over to Gertrude’s door. His lip trembled. “It can’t,” he whispered.
Thorne dropped a hand on the boy’s shoulder and squeezed. “No one has looked after Gert’s animals. She’ll be worrying after them. Would you be able to do that so when the doctor finishes, I can assure her that they’re cared for?”
Stephen brought his shoulders back. “Clever thought, Thorne. I can do that.” He started to go and then hesitated. “You’ll send word . . . when they are done with her?”
“I will,” the other man vowed and watched as the child darted off, disappeared around the corner, and then was gone.
How easily some other man had eased Stephen’s worrying. It should have been Edwin, but the role was still new to him. He was still relearning his way around being a father. In the past, he would have been riddled with fury and frustration. Gertrude, however, had taught him there was no shame to be had in refinding his footing in the world.
“They are, you know . . . tough. The boy is right.” Thorne grimaced. “Your son,” he corrected, “is correct. A Killoran isn’t going to be felled by a thug in the streets.”
How confident the other man was. “Would you be so calm if the roles were reversed between Gertrude and Mrs. Thorne?”
The sandy-haired proprietor contemplated that for a moment. “No,” Thorne admitted. He arced a single brow. “But Mrs. Thorne also happens to be my wife. And what exactly is your relationship with . . . Gertrude?” The layer of steel attached to that latter word, a name, contained an icy threat.
Edwin had said too much. Terror had made him careless. “Forgive me,” he said curtly, and resumed pacing.
Quiet descended between them yet again and was even more welcome than before.
“Do you care about her?” Thorne wouldn’t be the sort content to let the matter rest. “My sister-in-law,” he clarified, as though there could be some other woman they possibly spoke of.
Yes, Edwin cared about Gertrude . . . but he also loved her. It was a revelation still too new and terrifying to reveal to anyone, especially this stranger from the Dials. “I do,” he said, hoarsely, unable to look the other man in the eyes.
Thorne released a long sigh. “My apologies. I’ve been there.”
Edwin abruptly stopped, facing the other man. “Where?” he pleaded. Needing someone, anyone, even if it was a bloody stranger, to help him make sense of . . . all this. Any of it.
“Spending my life hating someone only to find that she is the one person I cannot live without.”
So the other man did know something of it. A great deal of it.
“I made a blunder of it . . . today,” Edwin admitted, shame stinging his cheeks with color.
“Then fix it,” Thorne said flatly.
“You don’t even know what I did.” His tongue felt heavy in his mouth, and he couldn’t force out that tale of his guilt.
Thorne narrowed his eyes on him. “Did you hit her?”
He recoiled. “Good God, no!” The denial ripped from him. Edwin’s shoulders sagged. “But I . . . hurt her all the same.”
“Make your atonement, but there ain’t place or use for self-pitying.”
How very direct these people were. Having lived amongst Polite Society, who prevaricated and danced around anything and everything, those responses were wholly foreign to Edwin.
The door opened, and a row of servants filed out. Edwin caught sight of the bowls filled with bloodstained water.
Bile climbed his throat, and he rushed to the young doctor, who followed the maids and closed the door behind them. “How—?”
“The wound has been stitched,” Dr. Carlson cut in and then continued with an accounting of Gertrude’s injury. “The knife did not strike any organs. The edge of the blade sliced through her side. Had the tip of the dagger punctured the flesh, I’d have a very different report on the young woman and her prognosis.”
“Thank God.”
Did that exhaled prayer belong to him or Thorne?
With a swift word of thanks, Edwin rushed around the doctor and let himself into Gertrude’s chambers.
Three pairs of eyes met his: two brown, one blue. Two accusing . . . and one . . . empty.
And that emptiness cleaved him in two. Her anger and outrage would be far easier than the blankness there. Edwin folded his shaking hands behind him. “You are well?” he blurted.
Gertrude nodded slowly. Still silent. Condemning without any words required. She looked to her sisters, who took that unspoken command and filed past him.
Cleopatra Thorne paused when she reached him. More than a foot smaller, she had the height and size of a child, and yet—she touched a finger menacingly against the corner of her right eye. “Careful,” she said. “Or I will end you,” she finished in barely there tones meant for his ears only.
He bowed his head.
The Killoran sisters lingered a moment more and then exited, leaving Edwin and Gertrude alone.
Clasping his hands behind him, Edwin remained rooted to the floor. He cleared his throat. “Stephen is seeing to your animals.” Her expression softened, and he hated that the credit for her response belonged to the thoughtfulness of another man. “Your brother-in-law . . . Mr. Thorne had the thought for him to see to them.”
“Oh.”
One syllable containing so much disappointment.
“Is there anything you need?” he asked quickly. “Anything I can do or provide or—?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m fine. Thank you for allowing my family to come.”
“I do not require your thanks.”
How wooden they were. This awkwardness unfamiliar and hated. And it’s all because of me . . . I created this where there was lightheartedness and warmth.
“Gertrude, I—”
“I heard you,” she interrupted him. His entire body stiffened. “Earlier, that is.” Gertrude plucked at the lace trim of her coverlet and attended her fingers as she did. “You called for the constable. You wanted me found.” She stopped that distracted gesture and lifted her head, meeting his gaze squarely. “You thought I took him.”
So much hurt bled from her gaze and words that his chest ached. “I wasn’t thinking,” he said dumbly, his words meaningless to his own ears. “I wouldn’t have—” He inwardly cringed. What was he to say there? I wouldn’t have had you tossed in Newgate? God, what a failure he was as a man.
“Yes, well, I believe that is the point.” A sad smile curved lips that had only ever turned up in those joyous expressions of mirth. I want those back. I want that laughter and happiness. “I can’t stay here.”
His heart skipped a beat, stopped altogether, and then resumed a frenzied knocking in his chest. “Yes, you can. Or would you rather return to your family and convalesce? Then you can come back when—”
“That’s not what I mean, Edwin,” she said gently. “You know that.”
Yes, he did. But he’d wanted to hope that she spoke of something different than leaving and never returning.
Edwin stormed across the room and made to sit at her side. The bandages wrapped around her middle creased the fabric of her nightshift. He dragged over a nearby chair and sat. “I panicked. I came back and found you gone—”
“And believed I’d stolen Stephen. Edwin,” she entreated, “you were calling the constable on me.”
“I don’t know what I was thinking.” He’d allowed his past and past prejudices to blind him, and he’d atone for it, as Thorne had urged, if Gertrude would but let him. He had to make her see reason.
Gertrude reached for his hand, and he made to take hers . . . but then she drew those long fingers back, denying him that gift. Instead, she twined those long digits together, in a lonely hold. “But that’s just it, Edwin . . . in the moment, you didn’t see”—what we shared?—“anything but who I will always be to you. Diggory’s daughter.”
“Don’t say that. It isn’t true. I made a mistake. I’m owning that mistake, but please don’t let it be the reas
on you leave,” he pleaded. “I want you to s—”
Gertrude pressed her fingers against his lips, silencing him. “It’s not a mistake to feel what we feel. You were always entitled to your anger and resentment, Edwin.” Goddamn it, why should she be so accepting of his betrayal? “I shouldn’t have taken Stephen out. I know him enough that when he sets his mind to something, he’ll not be deterred. I followed him to protect him.”
She’d been looking after his son, and Edwin had questioned her actions and motives. “I was going to tell you, though.”
“I should have listened. I should have trusted that there was a reason you were gone.” But he hadn’t.
That truth hung there, damningly, unspoken, and more powerful for it.
“I don’t care about any of that. Not anymore.” This time, he grabbed for her hand and clung to her.
She didn’t draw back, and he took hope in that. Her next words, however, killed that sentiment.
“You did, and that doesn’t just go away because you’re suddenly worried I might be hurt.”
“You are hurt.”
“I’ll be fine.” There was a finality there that spoke to the double meaning. She was leaving.
“But Stephen . . .”
“He’ll be fine with you. You’ll both be fine together.”
“Not now,” he said bitterly. “Not after this.” Nor could Edwin blame his son. He quite hated himself enough for the both of them in this instance. He was going to lose her. “I love you.”
It was harder to say who was more stunned by that pronouncement. Her lips parted.
“And I’m not just saying that to keep you here. I love you. I want a future with you.”
Joy lit her eyes and brightened her precious face, radiating a pure light that knocked away all the agony of this night. And then . . . it was gone.
“Oh, Edwin,” she said, pityingly.
He winced.
“Sometimes . . . love is not enough. Your marriage was proof of that.”
The Bluestocking Page 28