by Gaelen Foley
His mood was a trifle irritable after another poor night’s rest spent tossing and turning with wanting her. Charade within charade, he thought, determined to go on playing the plaster saint, beyond temptation. In a brisk, businesslike manner, he returned at one o’clock, as promised, to escort her to the Fleet. It was none of his business, but Hawk had half a mind to tell Mr. Hamilton precisely what he thought of his stupid folly.
Belinda had gone out shopping in the morning and had bought her father an assortment of gifts for his comfort, one of which was today’s copy of the Times. As Hawk’s town coach rolled down Faringdon Street toward the sprawling prison, she opened the paper.
“Just.. . checking,” she murmured as she scanned the gossip page.
He had noticed that she had been tense throughout the drive as she sat across from him in the coach. She looked as pretty as the spring day in her high-waisted blue gown, light spencer, and white gloves. She paled, quickly shutting the newspaper again and throwing it away from her with a grimace.
“Bad news?” he asked.
“We’re in there.”
He snorted and shook his head. Why did the world care, anyway, who was courting whom? Was there no such thing as privacy? When they arrived at the Fleet, she left the Times behind and stepped down from his coach. She hooked her hand through the crook of his arm and lagged behind as they walked toward the great arched entrance.
To look at her ashen face, one would have thought she was being led to her execution. Her gaze climbed up the mighty, stone-block wall while her hands twisted the ribbons of her reticule so tautly that they nearly snapped. On the right the fortresslike walls of the prison yard loomed, spikes set in their tops to prevent escapes. These, too, she studied in shrinking trepidation.
“Come, Belinda, I’m sure there is nothing to fear,” he said rather impatiently. He was not eager for this to take any longer than necessary. The place was unpleasant and he had to be at the House of Lords by two.
She glanced at him. The footman stared blankly ahead, standing behind her, laden with the presents for her father.
“We don’t have to go in if you don’t want to,” he said more gently. “I can send my servant—”
“No. I have to see Papa,” she forced out. “I’m all he has.”
He touched her under the chin, realizing that it must be quite a humiliation for her to reveal her family’s disgrace to him. “Your loyalty is very sweet. I only wonder if he deserves it.”
“He is my father. Of course he deserves it. Robert, you said you would do this with me. Don’t abandon me now—”
“I’m right here,” he said softly, puzzled by her near-panicked countenance. And then it came to him that he was presently undergoing some kind of test, in her eyes. He stared at her, wondering just what was required of him. “I’ll be right there beside you, Belinda. Are you ready?”
“Yes—yes. I owe you for this, Robert.” Her smile was tepid at best as she pulled up her poke bonnet and took his arm again. “Remember, he doesn’t know ... about me.”
“I’m aware of that,” he replied tersely. Lord, how had he gotten himself into this? Never in his life did he imagine that he should have been forced to meet the father of his courtesan mistress. This was surely a bad idea, he mentally grumbled as he led her inside. Demirep or not, she was a gently bred young woman and had no business exposing herself to such a place. Still, he had to admire her sense of a daughter’s duty.
He could feel her trembling slightly. She stayed huddled close to him as they walked in together, clinging to him when they passed the office of the warden of the Fleet. The door was ajar. Belinda was walking on the opposite side of him, her face hidden behind her poke bonnet, but Hawk glanced in curiously at the sound of rough shouting.
A scarred brute—obviously the warden—was dressing down one of his cringing subordinates. He shook his head. What a hellhole, he thought.
A guard led them through various corridors. Everywhere the prison was cramped and foul smelling, chaotic and noisy, with prisoners begging and cursing at them through the bars. Grimly Hawk clenched his jaw and put his arm around Belinda’s shoulders, pulling her closer under his arm, wishing he could protect her from the filth.
On the far end of the corridor they were brought to a more decent ward. His defensive stance eased only mildly when they were led up a flight of stairs to where the more genteel debtors had private rooms.
When they stopped at a solid wooden door before one of the private cells, Belinda pushed back her bonnet. Her face was a sickly shade of white. Hawk pursed his mouth and hung back, not sure if she wanted him to follow her inside or wait. Belinda stared straight ahead. He saw her lift her chin; he saw her plaster on a smile. Something inside of him wrenched at the way her slender shoulders squared.
The jailer opened the door, and her face suddenly beamed.
“Papa!”
She threw out her arms and rushed into the cell with a laugh that sounded oddly brittle. Hawk stepped into the doorway and saw her throw herself into the arms of a white-haired, bespectacled man.
“Lindabel! Oh, welcome back, dear, welcome back! You are looking better than when I saw you last. Must be the French food that agreed with you, hey, hey? So tell me— how did you like Paris?”
For no apparent reason and entirely without warning, she burst into tears. The old man pulled his spectacles up higher on his nose and peered at her. “What is this foolishness, you little watering pot?”
She was quite too hysterical to answer. Hawk decided it was time to take matters into his own hands. He cleared his throat to make his presence known and strode into the room, swept off his top hat and gestured his footman in with the goods.
“Mr. Hamilton, I presume?” He offered the old scholar his hand. “Robert Knight, at your service.”
Her father shook his hand hesitantly, peering up at him. “Mr. Knight, you say? How do you do? Are you a friend of Bel’s, and if you are, can you tell me why the chit’s crying?”
Belinda hung around her father’s neck. “It’s just that I’m so happy to see you, Papa. I missed you so while I was in”—she looked pleadingly at Hawk—“Paris.”
Hawk furrowed his brow and stared at her, then abandoned his attempt to make sense of it. “Your daughter has brought you a few trifles for your comfort, Mr. Hamilton.”
“He’s not a mister, Papa. He’s the duke of Hawkscliffe. He’s very modest. To a fault,” she whispered, sniffling.
“Oh!” Alfred laughed with delight at his error. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace.”
“It is of no consequence.” Hawk knew he was turning imperious and curt, but he couldn’t help but glare at the old scholar for the wretched look on Belinda’s lovely face. What was the man thinking? Illuminated manuscripts over this precious girl?
“I’m sorry,” she sniffled. “You’re right—I’m being quite absurd. I just missed you, you old enchanter. Now have a look at what I’ve brought you.” Wiping her tears away quickly, she moved to the cot where Hawk’s servant had placed the gifts. “See here, Papa? A new pillow and blanket, brandy and some snuff—”
“Do I like snuff, Lindabel? Why, I don’t recall!” He laughed as though his empty head was the funniest thing in the world.
Hawk scowled and turned away.
“I don’t know, Papa, but you can bribe the guards with it, if nothing else.”
“Oh! Right. So clever, my girl! You didn’t happen to bring me any, er ... books, did you?” he asked, fidgeting like a child on Christmas morning.
“Of course I did.”
Father and daughter proceeded to coo over the trio of new books she had brought for him, exceedingly dull treatises on medieval and classical history that made Hawk and his footman exchange a nonplussed look.
At last the old fellow turned to him. “Your Grace, why don’t we open the brandy Bel has brought and give it a nip, hey?”
For his easy, gentlemanly manner, one might have thought they were standing in Hamilto
n’s study rather than his jail cell.
Hawk smiled blandly. “No, sir, but thank you for the offer.”
“How, er, do you know my daughter, by the by?” he asked almost gingerly.
Finally the man showed a glimmer of sense.
If it were his daughter showing up dressed in finery with a strange man by her side, that would have been the first question on his lips, after perhaps knocking the man to the ground. Hawk drew breath to answer but Miss Hamilton didn’t give him the chance.
“His Grace has been the soul of kindness, Papa. His maiden sister, Lady Jacinda Knight was one of the students I chaperoned to Paris.”
“Ah,” the man replied, smiling cheerfully at Hawk. “How nice.”
Hawk furrowed his brow. He could not recall telling her his sister’s name.
“Bel, my dear,” Alfred continued, “will you be teaching at Mrs. Hall’s Academy again next year?”
Hawk’s left eyebrow shot up. Teaching?
Belinda scrupulously avoided his gaze, moving about the room at a fidgety pace.
“I will if there’s a need, Papa. I don’t mind the work, but by next year, we shall surely be back in Kelmscot. I almost have all the money saved.”
“Oh! Right, right. Right you are. Well done, daughter! Isn’t she a clever thing, Mr.—I mean, Your Grace?”
Hawk stared at Belinda, feeling as though he were seeing her for the first time.
As though she could feel him mentally plodding through the nonsensical conversation, unraveling things she’d never told him, she shot him a glance full of mixed warning and plea.
“Did you convey the girls to Paris, Your Grace?” her father asked him hesitantly.
“Of course not, Papa,” Belinda answered for Hawk with a scolding smile, flicking her father’s arm. “His Grace is much too important a man to be carting little debutantes around the Continent.”
With a nervous laugh that sounded nothing like the aloof, impervious star of the demimonde, she turned away again and began making up her father’s cot with fresh linens, spreading the new quilt over it and plumping up the expensive goose-down pillow she had bought.
Hawk watched her with his heart breaking. It would have been easy, so very easy, to go to the magistrate and get her father out of debtor’s prison, but he knew he would not.
The sum was a pittance to a man of his means, but the feather-brained fool deserved his confinement as punishment for his daughter’s suffering. Besides, if he were to spring Hamilton from the Fleet, Belinda might no longer choose to stay with him and, hang it all, he needed her. Needed her to solve the mystery of Lucy’s death. Needed her in his house, sitting at his out-of-tune piano.
When the jailer came back and said the time allowed for their visit was up, Belinda hugged her father good-bye and promised to come again in a couple of days. She asked him if there was anything he needed; old Hamilton said he should be delighted to have more paper and ink. Then he turned to Hawk with an ingenuous gaze.
“It comforts me greatly to know my daughter has a trusty friend in that large world beyond these bars, Your Grace. I’m in your debt.” His artless words of thanks were spoken so disarmingly, Hawk nodded and shook his offered hand.
Turning away from her father Belinda sent Hawk a fleeting look of soul-deep gratitude as she passed him on her way to the cell door. That look made it all worthwhile. Huffing with irritation at his own softheadedness, he pivoted and followed her out of the cell. His now empty-handed footman brought up the rear of their trio as they followed the jailer back the way they had come in.
Now that he had met Hamilton, he could see why Belinda had taken such drastic measures to keep him in the prison’s cleaner, warmer, and healthier upper regions. The old gentleman would not have survived in the crowded and violent mass cells.
Still, he didn’t know what he was going to say to her when they were alone. A finishing-school teacher? The only sense he could make of it all was that she must have been teaching at Mrs. Hall’s, waiting for her soldier boy to come home from the war to marry her, had eventually given up on both and decided on a more lucrative career to save her father and herself. Right now he didn’t even want to think about her relationship with Jacinda.
Suddenly they heard the sound of fighting and furious shouts up ahead. As they turned the corner into the next dim echoing corridor, they came upon a brutal scene. The scarred warden whom Hawk had seen downstairs, a grizzly giant of a man with a huge key ring clanging at his waist, had thrown a defiant young male prisoner against the wall. The great brute was dealing out ruthless discipline with his bludgeon.
Hawk put out his hand, stopping Belinda. He knew the warden was only doing his rough and dangerous job, but he certainly didn’t want her to see it.
“Halt, darling.” He swiftly scanned the area with a glance. “Is there another exit?” he began, turning to the guard, but the man was already in motion, running to assist his superior officer.
Then Hawk noticed Belinda.
She was standing in a state of eerie calm, her face pale and expressionless as she stared at the graphic scene of punishment. In the dark corridor she was as pale and silent as a ghost, or an angel hovering by, looking saddened yet detached from it all. Blond tendrils of her hair waved softly in the draft down the corridor.
Hawk clenched his jaw, determined to get her out of here now. He would have to find another way out. He reached for her hand and clasped it.
“Come, darling,” he murmured, but she didn’t move.
“I’m not running from him,” she said, and her voice fell as softly as rose petals over the screams of the prisoner.
Holding on to his hand like a child, she ignored his protest and began walking forward.
There were no cannons firing in her war, no bullets’ blast. The armies that clashed in that moment were within her, fighting as though they would tear her soul apart, but she refused to run. She knew she must stand now, not cowering in the shadow of her powerful protector, but passing, look the monster in the eye and let him see she would no longer fear him. Perhaps he would not even comprehend, but she would know she had done it, and that would be enough.
I will not run. I will not run. I will not run, she thought over and over with every step, though the jangling of his keys rasped through her consciousness like broken glass.
It was that sound that rang through her nightmares.
She was afraid—so afraid—and shaking, icy with fear down to her fingertips. But she had risen again after he had torn her down and now she had an ally, his hand in hers.
“Belinda—”
“It’s all right,” she heard herself say distantly, over the rushing of her blood in her ears. God bless Robert, he didn’t understand, but he went with her.
Either the unfortunate prisoner had ceased to give offense or the warden became aware of their slow approach. In any case, he straightened up, moving with lumbering weight, the bludgeon in his hand—hard, cruel, smeared with blood.
And then he turned and looked straight at her.
Bel felt her throat close with panic. Everything moved slowly, like that night in the alley. Time bled to a trickle. She wanted to flee, bolt like a horse for the barn in a thunderstorm. But staunchly, she held her ground—nauseous, shaking, and freezing cold. Her body trembled with hatred, her jaw was clenched so hard that it hurt.
A slight, bestial smile thinned the warden’s mouth and she could see him waiting for her to flinch or to betray what he had done. She did neither. Her stomach twisted in a hard knot, but her face remained impassive. She willed herself to find steely-nerved grit somewhere amid the pain that she had learned to live with. Robert said she had ballast in her hull. She’d remember that.
She advanced.
This surprised the warden, she could tell. His mean-eyed gaze flicked to Robert.
Bel suddenly wondered if she had just led her keeper into danger—but when she looked up at him beside her, she saw Robert deal the man a lordly look of distaste. She s
miled faintly in cold satisfaction as it dawned on the warden that she now had a powerful friend. Protector. He came from a line of warriors and his name was Knight. Who could best him?
The warden glanced suspiciously at her again, realizing, she supposed, that they were at a stalemate—her silence of his crime in exchange for her father’s safety. Little did he know he needn’t have worried. The thought of Robert or any of her admirers finding out that she had lost her virginity to this ogre filled her with terrorized shame. Fine dresses and haughty airs had fooled them into thinking her such a prize. How she had duped them—she, the frigid courtesan, dirtier and less than a whore. Why, even to Robert, she was merely bait.
Without a word exchanged, her protector and she and the footman passed the crumpled prisoner, the warden, and the guard.
She knew she had won this battle, but the warden took the last jab at her in the form of a snicker that followed her down the corridor. He jangled his keys with jaunty nonchalance, and the sound of it was nearly her undoing.
She released Robert’s hand and walked ahead heedlessly when, at last, she was just a few steps from the arched entrance of the Fleet. Gasping for breath, she pushed through the door. She looked up at the reeling sky, her head woozy, black rings exploding across her field of vision. She felt Robert’s hands steadying her. She clutched his forearm, holding on to him and fighting not to faint. He slipped a supportive arm around her waist.
“Belinda, you look positively ill, are you all right?” His cultured baritone seemed to come to her through a thick wall of glass.
A wave of pain washed through her. God, how she wanted him to reach her—shatter the glass box she had sealed herself into and lift her out of it—and hold her to him, his naked chest to hers, nothing left to hide. But that would never be. Not love. Not for her.
“I’m—fine,” she forced out, pulling away as she slowly regrouped. “Thank you.”
She heard him mutter an order for the footman to go for the coach. He paced on the pavement while she waited in stony silence for the coach to come.