In unison, Gertrude’s family shouted after him, “Maddock!”
Edwin’s lungs burnt from the fear and exertion, and he stretched his strides. With a thunderous roar, he parted the crowd lined up before his burning townhouse. Servants. His servants. Oh, God. Let her be here. He went down the row of maids and young male servants, their arms laden with . . . cats.
They were carrying cats.
And for the first time since he’d caught sight of the blaze, hope swelled within him. Edwin searched and searched . . . and did not find her.
He caught the nearest footman. “Where is she?” he hissed. Terror darkened the boy’s eyes. “I said, where is she?” Edwin cried, giving him a shake.
The pale servant, his cheeks stained with ash, stretched a trembling finger out.
Edwin followed that point . . . and the earth fell out from under him.
“No,” he whispered. Stumbling back, Edwin gripped his hair and yanked the strands.
Someone rested a hand on his arm.
He jerked back, half-mad, or mayhap the complete madman the world had rightly taken him for.
Cleopatra stared up at him with such terror radiating behind her wire-rimmed spectacles.
Edwin took off running once more. This time, he stormed the residence. Grey smoke filled the foyer, clouding the air around him, making it impossible to see so much as five feet in front of him. Using a rote remembrance of this place, he scanned the area.
Where would she be? Where . . . ?
Just then, Marlow came rushing down the stairs, a metal cage . . . nay, the Mouse House bouncing awkwardly against his side as he ran. “My lord,” he rasped, choking fitfully.
“Gertrude?”
“Her rooms. Rescuing the ca—” Edwin was already taking the stairs two at a time before the remainder of the words left the mouth of his man-of-affairs.
By God, after he kissed her senseless, he was going to shake her mad. Cats. She’d gone after cats?
That was just one of the reasons he loved her. Loved her so hopelessly. So desperately. And he would spend the rest of his damned days proving himself worthy and showing her that they belonged together. Edwin reached the landing and raised an elbow to his mouth and nose.
Thick smoke choked off all attempt to gasp a clean breath. He squinted and, through the thick of it, attempted to gather his bearings. “Gertrude?” he thundered, charging toward her rooms and colliding with her. A torn strip wrapped over her mouth and nose in a makeshift mask; over the tops of them, reddened eyes; one of them revealing shock.
“Edwin,” she whispered, her voice ragged and muffled all at the same time.
The weight of relief nearly brought him to his knees.
“Are there more?” he yelled through the fire’s roar.
She glanced at the cat in her arms and then shook her head. With that confirmation, he scooped her and the cat in her arms up.
“I can walk, Edwin.”
Ignoring her protestations, he cradled her close, wanting her near, needing to assure himself that she was alive and in his arms. They reached the marble foyer and Edwin continued running, and the crisp London air slapped at them. He didn’t stop until he reached the opposite end of the street, where the crowd was thinned.
As he set her down, Gertrude dissolved into a paroxysm of coughing.
And his panic resurfaced.
“You’re hurt,” he croaked.
She stood. “I-I’m fine.”
Soot stained her cheeks. The hem of her gown had been charred black.
He took her by the shoulders. “I thought I’d lost you,” he rasped. “Never, ever put your life at risk. And certainly not for any bloody cats.”
She hugged the cat close. “Well, it’s hardly my fault. If you hadn’t brought me an endless stream of nonstrays, I wouldn’t have—”
Edwin kissed the diatribe from her lips. Her kiss was a homecoming. And he took strength from it.
She was safe. And that was all that mattered. A sob tore from his throat, and he forced himself to break that embrace. “I love you, you daft woman. If something were to happen to you, I—”
Gertrude pressed her fingertips to his lips. “I love you,” she whispered, tears glistening in her eyes. “Marry me.”
He opened his mouth. “What?”
“I want you to marry me, Edwin. I thought of what you said, and you are right.” Going up on tiptoes, she placed a callused palm against his face. “The past does not have to define us. We could begin again, as a family, and I want that with you . . . if you’ll marry me. We’ll sort out every complication that comes with it, but I just want a life with you.”
Edwin gritted his teeth. Bloody hell, he couldn’t even do this correctly. “This was my proposal, madam.”
Gertrude cocked her head. He glanced pointedly over her head.
She followed his stare and gasped.
The Killorans stood in a neat row with Stephen at their center. “It was intended to be a surprise. You were so adamant that I have Charles in my life because he was part of my past, but I want you and your family to be part of my future. I went to gather your family tonight. I wanted them to come ’round so that we could begin again and find peace with them and—”
Releasing the tabby in her arms, Gertrude hurled herself at him.
Edwin grunted and staggered back. His arms automatically folded around her. The pungent scent of smoke and fire clung to her hair, and he breathed deep of it anyway.
“I love you,” she cried.
“I love you, too.” Resting his cheek on the crown of her tangled curls, Edwin simply clung to her, hanging on tight. From over the top of her head, he found Stephen.
His son nodded slowly, approvingly, and then winked. “Slightly better,” he called out.
Edwin grinned.
“My lord?”
He stiffened as that stranger’s voice cut across the moment.
Edwin and Gertrude faced the tall, darkly clad figure. He had a hand about a balding, pockmarked figure.
“My name is Clark Hughes. I was employed by Mr. Steele to watch over your residence. This man was the one caught.”
Edwin peered, seeking some indication that the man was familiar.
“He claims he was paid a sizable sum by a Lord Charles to set the fire.”
Edwin’s eyes slid closed. “No.”
The rotund thug in fraying garments wrestled against the investigator’s hold. “Oi ain’t paying the price. He wanted it lit. Said scare her. I brought you the one really to blame. Lock him up.”
Hughes jerked the other man’s arm up sharply, wringing a scream from him and effectively quelling the remainder of whatever words he intended. “I’ll come around after he’s been properly escorted, to . . . discuss further the situation with Lord Charles.”
Edwin nodded blankly.
That was what this had been. Each attempt on Gertrude’s life had been an orchestrated plot, carried out by the former best friend he’d spent years both resenting and missing.
Gertrude slipped her fingers into his. “I am so, so sorry, Edwin. I know he was . . . will always be a friend to you.”
“He was,” he said, staring off after the departing pair: one man a ruthless killer, sent at his boyhood friend’s request. “But that time of my life, Gertrude? Is over. You are my friend . . . and now family, and . . . I’d form new relationships with your brothers and sisters.”
“I love you.” Another sob ripped from Gertrude as she launched herself into his arms, and as the Killoran clan came forward with his son laughing between them, Edwin found what he’d been yearning for, a gift that this woman in his arms had given him—forgiveness.
Epilogue
In a way, Edwin had come full circle.
He stood in his office, braced for the arrival of the same pair who’d demanded entry into his household just two months ago.
And yet . . . at the same time, everything had changed. Everything. This time, he was not the man riddled with hatred
who’d been twisted into an empty shell of a being after his late wife’s murder and his son’s kidnapping. In the time since Gertrude had entered his life, she’d changed him, in every way. For the better.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t be waiting as he was now for the last people in the world he should wish to see. Standing beside the windows, those curtains, once closed, now drawn proudly back, Edwin searched the busy Mayfair streets.
The gleaming crystal pane reflected the barely suppressed tension that thrummed through him.
What am I doing . . . ? I thought I was ready. I believed I’d found a way to a place of forgiveness.
I was wrong. I was—
Gertrude came to stand next to him; as usual, her remarkably quiet footfalls masked her approach until her arm pressed against his.
Edwin glanced down and forced a smile out of a calm he didn’t feel. However, he couldn’t get any casual response past tense lips.
Her eye glittered with concern, and she passed that probing stare over the planes of his face. Of course she’d see past that false grin. His new bride was too clever. She’d always seen too much. It was, however, that insight into his soul that had seen the fear that had allowed him to embrace the role of madman society had assigned to him.
“Are you all right?” she asked quietly.
Edwin and Stephen answered at the same time. “Fine.”
Only Edwin’s assurance, however, rang with any real conviction.
As one, he and Gertrude glanced over to where Stephen sat perched on the leather button sofa. His tiny frame all but hung from the edge, indicating the child was one wrong word or move away from bolting.
The grey tabby he stroked on his lap was likely the only thing that kept him where he was.
His son was unnerved.
Then this was a power play. An all-too-familiar one. A battle waged with the intention of reminding Edwin that he was powerless. Once that would have sent him into a familiar rage.
Gertrude slipped her fingers into his and gave a light squeeze.
Edwin stared down at their joined hands.
Setting aside his earlier disquiet, burying it for the sake of his son, Edwin faced Stephen. “There is no point in you waiting about until company has arrived—”
“I’m not worried about your meeting,” Stephen muttered, red-faced. “There’s nothing to worry about, Father.” That promise Stephen made . . . was for Edwin. Nor did it come with the previous derision or hatred that had first greeted Edwin after all their years apart. Now there was a concern that staggered Edwin from the beauty of it. He cleared his throat of the lump there.
“If you’d rather find Oliver—”
His son was already sprinting for the door.
Stephen slammed it hard in his wake.
“And I’ll summon you when they arrive,” Edwin finished dryly as the door shook in its frame.
“You do know in sending him off with Oliver you’ve risked them getting lost in some mischief or another,” Gertrude drawled. Stephen, having missed his closest friend at the Devil’s Den, had called in his “favor” from Edwin and asked that Oliver come live with them. Without hesitation, Edwin had agreed to take in the orphaned child, and they’d given the boy a new home.
“There is no point in having Stephen wait about for a meeting that should have taken place thirty minutes ago.” Tension rippled through him. Thirty minutes he’d been kept waiting. Cursing, Edwin stalked over to the sideboard and made himself a brandy. How dare they? Whatever tension there was and would always be between Edwin and them, Stephen was the one who ought to be put first—by each damned adult. Outrage on his son’s behalf pulled him back into one of his older furies. “I’ll rescind the bloody invitation. I don’t want them here. I never—”
Gertrude rested a hand on his sleeve, and nothing more than her touch managed to end the diatribe and free him from his anger. “This is the best for all, Edwin,” she said softly. “It’s not about, and never was about, winning or having the upper hand. It is about finding peace.”
Peace.
Before Gertrude had stormed his household and stolen his heart, he’d have scoffed at the very idea of it. Peace, for a man such as him?
She, however, had shown him the meaning of that word and that the gift was one Edwin was deserving of.
He set his untouched brandy onto the sideboard. “I love you, Gertrude.” She’d restored him to the man he’d been. Nay, she’d made him better in every way.
“I love you, too.” A smile curled the corners of her lips at a mischievous angle. “Even with your outrageous temper.”
His throat moved. “I don’t deserve you.”
Gertrude scoffed. “Don’t be silly. We are both better for having one another, Edwin.” Her lower lip trembled. “My life was incomplete until you.”
Leaning down, he took her lips under his. With a sigh, Gertrude instantly melted against him; her body fit so perfectly to his. She twined her arms about his neck, and their mouths met in a tender union. And Edwin gave himself over to the homecoming that he always found in her kiss: the warmth, the love, and the joy that were a tangible part of her effervescence.
A sharp rap cut across that too-brief embrace.
He stiffened.
“They are here,” she said softly, disentangling her arms from him.
“They are here,” he echoed dumbly. Edwin’s mind went blank, and then thoughts clamored within his head. Of course they were here. You invited them, you arse.
Because of your wife. Because she’d opened his heart and mind to the truest meaning of forgiveness.
“What if it is a mistake?” he asked hoarsely. He’d made so many errors before. Costly ones.
Gertrude smiled. “It is going to be all right,” she promised.
He caressed his gaze over her serene expression. How sure she was. And smiling. “How in blazes are you smiling?” Awe pulled that whisper from him.
His wife took his face between her ink-stained palms. She went up on tiptoes, raised herself until their eyes met. “Because this is a new beginning, and new beginnings are good for the soul.” His awe of this woman and his love for her swelled, leaving him buoyant. Despite the hard life she’d lived on the streets and the suffering she’d known, she had not lost that part of herself.
The servant at the other side of the panel knocked once more. As one, Edwin and Gertrude stared at the oak panel.
“I’ll offer a hint, Edwin,” Gertrude said on a teasing whisper. “This is where you admit our guests.”
Our guests.
Those two words were what allowed him to see through with this meeting. They were partners in life and through everything. That was just another piece of his life that this woman before him had changed . . . he was no longer one dwelling in a self-imposed exile. And as long as he had her at his side, he could do anything. “Enter,” Edwin called over.
Quint Marlow opened the door. “His and Her Graces, the Duke and Duchess of Walford.”
Edwin gave the man, more friend than servant, a pointed look.
The other man nodded and rushed off.
The regal pair swept forward, only as he’d never, in all the years he’d known the pair, seen them. Hands clasped together. That small detail presented them not as Edwin’s adversaries but as a devoted husband and wife, each taking support from the other.
The duchess staggered to a stop. “What is this?” she hissed.
“Pamela,” the duke murmured.
She ignored him. “You did not say that woman would be here.”
That woman. Edwin’s hackles went up, and icy rage coursed through his veins. Gertrude touched his sleeve. “It is all right.” She spoke in nearly inaudible tones that barely reached his ears.
“It is not all right,” he gritted out.
“I’ll not meet with you while she’s here, Edwin.” The Duchess of Walford’s voice came out slightly pitched.
“Pamela,” the older woman’s husband said in soothing tones. The remainder of
his words were lost to the distance between them.
“No . . . ,” the duchess was saying.
The Duke of Walford’s quiet murmurings filled the room, punctuated by the periodic denial from his wife.
“I want them out,” Edwin said, not moving his lips as he spoke.
Gertrude angled her body, presenting her back to the pair, shielding them from seeing her lips move. “They lost their daughter at my father’s hands, Edwin.”
“You’d forgive them for treating you so?” he demanded on a hushed whisper.
“I at least understand it,” she countered. “As you should attempt to.”
What manner of woman was she that she should forgive so readily and accept the anger that had been directed her way over the years, because of nothing more than the blood in her veins? I was that narrow-minded once. It was only because of Gertrude that he’d come to see people . . . and himself . . . in a new light. He clung to that recently imparted lesson and forced himself to face his former in-laws with that in mind.
The duke and duchess had gone silent. They stood shoulder to shoulder, with their hands entwined, facing Edwin and Gertrude. “Shall we sit?” He motioned to the pair of leather wingback chairs that sat opposite the button sofa.
The duchess pursed her mouth and then, withdrawing her fingers from her husband’s, gave a snap of her skirts and swept over to the hearth. Her husband followed at her heels with a dutiful obedience Edwin once would have mocked but now understood.
After Gertrude claimed a spot on the sofa, Edwin slid into the folds of the seat beside her.
“Would you like tea, Your Graces?” Gertrude ventured with the aplomb of one who’d been greeting peers just a smidge away from royalty all her life. His appreciation for her swelled tenfold.
“This isn’t a social call,” the duchess snapped. “We’re only here—” The lady’s husband covered her gloved palm with his and gave a slight shake of his head.
There was a pleading in the duchess’s eyes, and as they conversed in their own unspoken language, Edwin found Gertrude’s hand within his.
The duke cleared his throat. “Forgive us—”
“I do not need you apologizing for me, Tremaine. And certainly not to these people,” his wife snapped.
The Bluestocking Page 32