Something akin to fear skittered up Connor’s spine. He ruthlessly shoved it aside. Children cried. It was just something they did. There was no reason for panic. No reason at all, he silently repeated as he stepped forward, then back, then forward again. And he repeated it yet again after he finally managed to cross the room, only to stand and stare helplessly at the top of the boy’s head like a towering idiot.
“Don’t do that.”
In deference to the child’s age, Connor issued the order in what he measured to be a gentle tone of voice. Evidently, the child did not agree. George looked up, widened his eyes, and burst into an earsplitting wail.
“Good God.” Connor wiggled his jaw, half expecting his ears to pop. “Don’t do that either.”
He crouched down, which seemed to have a calming effect on George, who traded his wails for sobs. Emboldened by the small victory, Connor took a deep breath, reached out, and gave the boy a bolstering pat on the arm.
George slumped to the floor like a deflated soufflé.
Mother of God.
Now there was reason for panic. He gripped George by the shoulders and quickly tried to right him again. George crumpled back to the floor.
He tried again with the same results. “Bloody hell. Sit up.”
Wincing, he berated himself for the slip of tongue. First he’d knocked the child to the ground. Now he was swearing at him. Well done.
Where the devil was his staff? Where the devil was Adelaide?
“Stop this . . . George . . . This is no way to behave. Do you want the maids to think you’re an infant?”
The sobbing came to an abrupt stop. Slowly, and to Connor’s considerable relief, George pushed himself into a sitting position and sniffled loudly. “Not infant.”
“Certainly not,” Connor was quick to assure him. In truth, he was prepared to agree with anything the boy cared to say. Anything at all. So long as it kept the crying at bay. He put his hand out to pat the child, then quickly snatched it back. “Not an infant.”
George sniffed loudly and tilted his head in a quizzical manner. “Naughty.”
“Are you referring to me or yourself?” He shook his head at George’s blank stare. Odds were he meant the swearing, and the sooner that was forgotten, the better. “Never mind. What’s put you in such a state?”
When that failed to produce an answer, Connor tried rephrasing. “What’s wrong, George? . . . What is the matter?”
Nothing. The child just sat there, staring at him with big, wet eyes, sopping cheeks, and an objectionable amount of fluid leaking from his nose.
Connor tried enunciating each word slowly and carefully as he pulled out a handkerchief and mopped George’s face. “Why . . . are . . . you . . . ?” He stopped, a disturbing thought occurring to him. “You haven’t . . . You’re not still in nappies, are you?”
“Ouch,” George said all of sudden. He threw his elbow up, nearly catching Connor in the chin, and pointed to a patch of skin on his forearm.
Connor pulled back and stared at the spot. He couldn’t find a damn thing wrong with it, which left him guessing at what he was suppose to do next. But least it wasn’t a dirty nappy.
“I see,” he lied.
Oh, hell. Was he suppose to kiss it? He hoped, fervently hoped, he would not have to kiss it.
“Kiss.”
Damn.
“It appears to be a mild injury, George. Why don’t we find your aunt—?”
George’s lips trembled. “Kiss.”
Connor kissed it and was rewarded with a wide grin from George.
Well . . . there you go, he thought. That wasn’t so difficult. Nothing to it, really. And since no one had been about to witness the moment, nothing lost.
“Well done, Connor.”
He turned, slowly, and found Adelaide standing in the doorway, her soft brown eyes laughing.
“How long have you been standing there?”
“Not long.”
But long enough, he imagined, to have spared him the indignity of playing nursemaid. “You might have said something.”
“Yes.” Her lips curved up. “I might have.”
Gaining his feet, he sent her a surly look. “Am I this irritating when I’m being smug?”
“Twice as,” she assured him.
“Excellent.”
Adelaide laughed softly and crossed the room to George. She scooped him up, planted a kiss on his arguably injured elbow, and then gave him a reprimanding scowl. “Do you know why you have an ouch, darling? Because you were poking about in here instead of sleeping in the nursery as you were told.”
Connor doubted the boy fully understood what was being said. But the word “sleep” seemed to hit a chord.
“No! Down!” He squirmed in Adelaide’s arms, but to no avail.
“Oh, yes. Down.”
Ignoring the new round of wails that followed, she walked over and tugged on a bellpull. Connor glowered at the rope. Why the devil hadn’t he thought of the bellpull?
He was still glowering a moment later when a maid answered and relieved Adelaide of her loud burden.
“You’re still not entirely comfortable with him, are you?” Adelaide asked after the maid left.
The comment made him feel unaccountably defensive. “I am fond of him.”
“Yes, I know. I didn’t mean it as a criticism.” She walked over to the bed and leaned against one of the posters. “Merely an observation. Didn’t they have small children in Boston?”
“Yes.” He wanted to roll the sudden tension out of his shoulders. “But they were different. They weren’t quite so . . .”
“Quite so what?” Adelaide prompted.
His, he thought. They weren’t quite so his. “Innocent.”
“All children are innocent.”
“You’ve not been to the back alleys of Boston.”
“All children,” she repeated, and then studied him with a quiet intensity that made him uneasy. “It must have been hard for you there. You were hardly more than a boy yourself.”
The tension grew, pulling taut. “I was a teenager, not a child.”
“Debatable,” she murmured. “How old you were when you met Gregory and Michael?”
She asked the question casually, but he knew she was pressing for information about his past. “Still a teenager.”
“You don’t remember, exactly?”
He remembered; he just didn’t want to encourage the line of questioning.
“I was nine months past my fifteenth birthday when I escaped the ship,” he replied stiffly, hoping a quick response would put an end to the topic. “And two months past seventeen when I met Gregory and Michael. Life before them was difficult, but life after was not. I had food, shelter, and two savvy adults looking out for my welfare.”
“Will you tell me what it was like in the press-gang?”
“No.” Hell, no.
“Why not?”
“Because you can imagine it for yourself.” The hardships and deprivations impressed sailors experienced were hardly secret. There were no shortage of other men who were willing to speak of the constant hunger, the brutal cold of winter and stomach-churning heat of summer, the endless hours of hard labor, and the biting humiliation of knowing you were as expendable as the powder stuffed into the cannons. If she wanted specifics, she could find them somewhere else.
“You don’t like speak of it,” she guessed.
“Remembering is not always best.” He’d come to terms with those dark months, banished the fear and nightmares that had plagued him for years after his escape. Damn if he would invite them back so her curiosity might be assuaged.
He waited for an argument, but she surprised him by nodding as if she understood. “Will you tell me of Boston, then? Of you and Gregory and Michael?”
Bloody hell, she was like a dog with a bone. “You want to know what sort of business we ran,” he guessed.
She titled her head at him. “Is there a reason I shouldn’t know?”
If Adelaide didn’t care for the answers to her questions . . . Well, there wasn’t much she could do about it now, was there? She’d signed the contract, said her vows, and taken her fifteen thousand pounds. It was too late for second thoughts.
Adelaide watched with uneasy fascination as the man she’d witnessed kissing a little boy’s ouch transformed into the remote, apathetic man she’d met in the widow’s cottage. A coldness settled over his face as he moved to lean a hip against a writing desk and fold his arms over his chest.
“Forgeries,” he said suddenly and gave a careless lift of his shoulder. “We made forgeries.”
Her eyes widened. She’d expected something a mite untoward, not wholly criminal. “You said you weren’t wanted for any crime in any country.”
“I’m not. We were never suspected of wrongdoing, let alone charged.”
“Oh.” She blew out a short breath, with the ridiculous hope it might ease the tight knot in her belly. “Well, what sort of forgeries did you make?”
“Deeds. Wills. Even a marriage certificate once.” Another shrug. “Whatever the customer was willing to pay for.”
“Did . . .” She swallowed past a ball of fear in her throat. “Did you forge money?”
His mouth hooked up in a patronizing smile. “That’s counterfeiting, love. Different skill, entirely.”
She gave a small, breathless laugh. “Needleworking and horsemanship are skills, Connor. Forgery is a crime.”
In some cases, like counterfeiting, it was a hanging offense. The thought of Connor being dragged back to prison and then onto the gallows made her mouth go dry and her stomach roll. Hoping to relieve the discomfort, she straightened from the poster and walked to the nearest window.
“You’re pale,” Connor said, sounding more angry than sympathetic.
“Well, what did you expect?” She pushed the window open and let the fresh air cool her skin. “This is disturbing news.”
“It’s too late for you to back out of this marriage.” His voice took on a hard edge. “I won’t allow it. Do you understand?”
She turned to face him, stunned not by his sudden anger but by the whisper of fear she heard beneath. At first glance, he looked to have not moved an inch. But upon closer inspection, she saw that he’d lowered his head, just a little, and his fingers were digging into the fabric at his sleeves.
“I have no intention of backing out of this marriage,” she said carefully, certain her words were important, even if she wasn’t certain why. He had to know she wouldn’t leave. For pity’s sake, she’d married him after he’d broken into Mrs. Cress’s home—which occurred very shortly after he’d been cleared of chargers of highway robbery—for the express purpose of stealing another man’s intended through trickery and deceit. What was a bit of forgery tossed into that unholy mess?
“But you’d like to,” Connor guessed with a sneer.
“What I would like is for you to cease making assumptions long enough for me to get a thought in edgewise,” she snapped, losing patience.
His lips curved up, but there was no humor in the smile. “What is it you want say?”
“To know, actually. I want to know if that is how you acquired your entire fortune.” Is that where her fifteen thousand pounds had come from? Is that how he paid her brother’s debts and bought manors like Ashbury Hall? “Are you still making forgeries?”
“You can rest easy, wren. We made a small profit as criminals, but it was shipping that built our fortune. I’ve not sold a forgery in more than a decade.”
Oh, thank heavens. “Why did you stop?”
“We were careful, but there is always risk. Once we had the funds to invest in other ventures, it made sense to be rid of the risk. Simple as that.”
She found herself picking at the folds of the drapes and forced herself to stop. “You are very cavalier about it.”
“Why shouldn’t I be? I don’t regret my actions.” He studied her a moment, then straightened and moved toward her. “And I’m not inclined to act the remorseful sinner for your benefit. I’d not be a legitimate man of business now if not for the profits I turned as a criminal. I did what was needed to secure my fortune.”
She wasn’t sure if she agreed with that assessment, but he didn’t give her an opportunity to comment one way or another. He stopped just inches from her, his tall frame towering over her.
“It’s your fortune as well, you’ll recall,” he reminded her. He lifted his hand and trailed a finger along the green velvet trim at the neck of her gown. The dress was new, expensive, and purchased with Connor’s money. “Willing to give it up now that you know the unsavory truth of its origins?” He let the back of his hands brush across the sensitive skin at her collarbone and gave her a cold, mocking smile. “What say you, Mrs. Brice? Shall we hand it all to charity in the name of making amends? Or do you suppose you could scrounge up the fortitude to stomach my ill-gotten gains a while longer?”
Adelaide studied him with curiosity. With every second that had passed, every word that was spoken, he’d grown more callous, more contemptuous. He wanted her anger, she realized. He wanted her to proclaim him a hopeless rotter and toss her hands up in defeat. And she might have obliged him, if she’d not heard the fear in his voice only moments before.
Holding his gaze, she reached up and placed her hand over his, trapping it in place. “May I ask why you are going to such pains to be offensive?”
“Merely reminding you who it is you married.”
“I know who I married. I watched him wipe the tears from a little boy’s cheeks not ten minutes ago.”
A wariness settled over his features. “Is that who you think I am?”
“It is part of you.”
He slipped his hand out from under hers. “The part you like.”
“I like it better than this.”
He caught and held her chin; his eyes burned into hers. “I am not ashamed of any part of who I am, nor anything I’ve done.”
“I can see that.” There wasn’t a hint of remorse in him, not one iota of regret, but there was still the fear.
It dawned on her then that it wasn’t his own judgment that he feared. It was hers. She remembered something he’d said to her the first night they’d met, when she’d admitted that she was willing to marry a man for his fortune.
“Perhaps the shame is that you were given no other choice,” she said quietly and waited while the anger in his eyes faded and the grip of fingers relaxed. And then, because she wasn’t quite generous enough to absolve the man of all his sins, she added, “In Boston.”
Connor blinked and released her. “In . . . I beg your pardon?”
“You should be ashamed for what you did at the house party.”
Astonishment, and the first light of humor crossed his features. “So, my misdeeds are perfectly acceptable, so long as they didn’t touch you and yours, is that it?”
She pretended to consider. “Yes, I believe so.”
He ran the back of his hand over his jaw, eyeing her with frank amusement. “Well, well, Mrs. Brice. How self-centered of you. I’d not have guessed you capable of it.”
“We all have parts,” she said softly.
Slowly, his humor faded. His gaze drifted from hers and landed on a distant spot on the floor. After a long moment, he whispered, “I suppose we do.”
She’d rather see him smiling, but this new pensiveness was an improvement over his earlier mood. For now, it would have to be enough.
Believing he might like to be left alone with his thoughts, she ran a hand down his arm before stepping away.
“Shall I see you at dinner, then?�
�
He gave a small nod without looking at her, and she turned for the door. She had one foot in the hall when his voice fell on her back.
“My father caught a poacher on the grounds once.”
Slowly, she turned around again and found him standing, still as a statue, staring at the same spot on the carpet.
“I was twelve, nearly thirteen,” he continued. “He handed the man over to the magistrate, who sentenced him to two years on a prison hulk, at my father’s request.”
She stepped back into the room, drawing the door closed behind her. “That seems severe.”
“My father could have had him shot. He fancied himself a compassionate man.” He moved, finally, but only to turn his eyes toward the window. “I remember . . . He sat me down in the library and explained to me that there was room in the world for mercy, but none for leniency. He told me that a demonstrable lack of morality was indicative of a weak mind. Thieves like the poacher were to pitied for their inferior make, but not coddled lest they fail to understand the purpose of the punishment and revert to their shameful ways.”
“He was wrong,” she said quietly.
“He was, and a hypocrite to boot, as his own life was hardly free of iniquity.” He was quiet a long moment before, at last, he turned and looked at her. “I loved my father.”
And he would have remembered every word of the lesson, Adelaide thought as her heart twisted. Even after he’d known those words to be false, they would have retained the power to turn every bite of stolen bread into sour paste and every successful illegal endeavor into a bitter accomplishment.
She ached for him, unable to imagine what that must have been like, having to chose between the fear of hunger and the fear of shaming a lost, beloved father. She wished she had the words to soothe away those memories, wished she could assure him with some confidence that his father would have been proud of the man he’d become. Failing those, she wished she could go back and give the baronet a piece of her mind.
Because none of those were possible, she did the only thing she could think of. She crossed the room, laid her hand on his chest, and stretched up to press a soft kiss to his lips.
“I’m not ashamed of you,” she whispered. And then, because the want to see him happy again was almost painful, she patted his cheek with exaggerated condescension. “But you are exceedingly inferior of mind if you honestly believed I would give up this gown.”
An Unexpected Gentleman (The Haverston Family Trilogy Book 2) Page 23