by Julia London
“What about me?” he asked.
“Well . . . you’ve done very well for yourself.”
He shrugged indifferently. “Did you expect less?”
She looked slightly taken aback by his question. “No. I suppose I didn’t expect anything at all.”
That sounded as if she’d suffered no guilt for what she’d done, that the consequences had not weighed heavily on her heart. Tobin felt a tiny tick in his heart, a warning to remain calm or risk the bloody spell. He silently cursed his body and willed himself to hold it at bay.
“No?” he asked with a smile. “Surely you do not mean to say you never wondered what became of Joseph Scott’s family . . . do you?”
“No!” she said, looking appropriately horrified by the suggestion. “I have wondered a great deal about that, naturally. I meant only that you were the last person I would ever expect to see after all this time.”
“Yet here I am,” he said, abruptly stood, and moved to the sideboard. He waved the footman off and pretended to study the bottles there. “I’ve asked cook to prepare some Scottish venison for us this evening.”
“Not grouse?”
He smiled. “Not grouse.”
“I have wondered why you came back,” she said thoughtfully.
He was feeling a bit clammy. It was too warm in here. “Why not?”
“Precisely because you have done so well for yourself. One might think you would prefer to be someplace else, given the events that happened here.”
Tobin downed the wine in his glass and poured more. Rise up. Press on. “I came back because I had some unfinished business.”
“Ah, yes. Ruining Ashwood.”
He actually laughed at that and turned to face her. She was smiling, albeit ruefully. “I prefer to call it clearing my father’s good name. You do know, do you not, that he didn’t steal the jewels for which he was hanged?”
Lily’s lashes fluttered; she looked down at her lap, turning her head slightly.
“It would seem that you do,” he said quietly as he admired her profile.
“I don’t know any such thing at all.”
“Well, I do,” he said. “What sort of son would I be if I did not wish to restore his good name?” Dwelling on his father’s demise created that strange, feverish breathlessness in him. He could feel it churning in his gut. “Perhaps we should move on to more pleasant subjects.” Lily. She was far more pleasant, if only to look at.
Tobin felt his body relax a little, and he put aside his wineglass and walked back to his chair. He sat, then reached for her hand, taking it in his. Lily flinched, and held her arm stiffly, but she did not pull her hand away.
Tobin turned her hand over so that her palm was facing up. He could see a patch of her skin through the tiny keyhole where the glove buttoned around her wrist, and he pressed this thumb against it, feeling her pulse flutter like the wings of a small bird. He lifted her hand and blew softly into that little circle of flesh.
When he lowered her hand, Lily was staring at him. “What are you doing?” she asked low.
“Admiring you.”
Lily pulled her hand free. “You are so different now, Tobin.”
“So are you,” he said sincerely.
Lily said nothing to that and continued to study him. “Have you been to the cottage at Uppington Church since your return?”
“I have ridden by once or twice.”
One corner of her mouth curved up. “I have very fond memories of the cottage,” she said softly. “Memories of a boy who indulged a silly girl and accepted any part she desired in her little fantasies. You were very kind to me then.”
Here it went again, the warmth of his skin, the sign of the spell. He settled back, his gaze on the fire at the hearth. He did not intend to stroll through their shared memories.
“Do you recall? When I desired to play alone, you sat on the rock and read your books. So many books, too—I was always fascinated with your appetite for reading.”
“Yes, well, I had the luxury of attending school then.” Breathe.
“I truly adored you,” she said distantly, and sighed. “Were you aware that I did?”
Adored him? “I do not recall that you adored me in the least,” he said with a smile. “Perhaps you have imagined so when seeing the cottage after all these years.”
“Oh, I’ve not seen it.”
“No?”
She shook her head. “I think I would find it too painful.”
Impossible. She had lived a charmed life. “What could you possibly find painful about your time at Ashwood?”
She looked surprised. “Everything,” she said. “It was a time in my life that I cherished. I loved my aunt Althea and my life with her. I loved to play at the cottage, for it was the one place on this earth that I was completely free. And then it was suddenly all gone, and . . . and in a very dreadful way.”
Tobin wanted to tell her what was gone for him, and how very dreadful it had been to see his father at the end of a rope. But as the words formed in his head, his throat felt as if it might constrict if he tried, so he remained silent.
“I know it was far worse for you, Tobin,” she said. “I cannot imagine how you endured—”
He suddenly sat up and caught her wrist. “Lily . . . do you really think you will dissuade me from our bargain with these memories? They only strengthen my resolve.”
Her lips parted with surprise, but she did not respond, for Carlson chose that moment to announce that supper had arrived.
With supreme effort, Tobin calmly rose and offered his hand to Lily. “Shall we dine?”
She reluctantly laid her hand in his. It felt small, its weight ethereal in his palm. Small and breakable, like the rest of her. The warmth in Tobin’s blood seeped into his neck and his throat as they moved to the table. He swallowed as he handed her into her chair at the table, then took his chair across from her, gripping the seat to fight down the spell.
He had a moment to collect himself as Carlson swooped in to serve soup. Tobin picked up his spoon. Lily hesitantly did the same. She kept her gaze on her meal, daintily tipping her spoonful of soup into her mouth.
Tobin kept his gaze on her.
She was clearly aware that he did—he could see the color in her swanlike neck, and she shifted in her seat. “The soup is delicious,” she said politely. “Who is your cook?”
Who was his cook? He thought he’d met her once. Charity had found her, and Tobin rarely ventured into the kitchens. “She is from London. She cooked at Marlborough House.”
Lily’s brows rose with surprise. “You lured her away from Marlborough House?”
Tobin lifted his wineglass in a mock toast. “I suppose I have a way of luring women into any number of occupations.”
“And a way of boasting about it, too, it would seem.”
Tobin couldn’t help but laugh.
Carlson appeared to remove the soup bowls, then served plates of venison and roasted potatoes. “I suppose you went to London after that summer?” Lily asked as Carlson busied himself at the sideboard.
Tobin was beginning to find the conversation exasperating. “You insist on this, do you?”
“I would like to know,” she said with a slight shrug. “We were companions once.”
“Companions!” he scoffed, and swallowed hard.
“Yes,” she said, appearing confused by his reaction. “Companions.”
Tobin sighed. The woman had no sense of the truth. “Carlson, leave us,” he said, drumming his fingers on the table as he waited for his butler and the footman to quit the room. He took a steadying drink of his wine and put aside the goblet. “Very well, Lily. I shall oblige you and your endless questions. What happened to us is the sort of thing that happens to families that have been made pariahs. Obviously there was no work for us in Hadley Green, no income. So my mother moved us to London.”
“To live with relatives?”
He laughed. “The relatives wouldn’t have us either.”
He gestured to her plate. “Please,” he said, and picked up his fork.
Lily picked hers up, too, but she was still looking at him as if he were some sort of curiosity come out of the Indian markets. “What happened then?” she asked, as if the Scott family had gone to London on holiday.
“What happened then is that my mother took in piecework, but it was a mean income. My young brother, Ruben—the baby, you will recall,” he said, glancing at her, “expired from a pleurisy or something like it within the first year, and my mother died shortly thereafter.”
She blanched and cast her eyes to her plate. “Oh, dear. I am so very sorry to hear it.”
Tobin shrugged. “It was a long time ago,” he said, and felt nothing. He’d repeated the story of his family so many times now that he could recite it without emotion.
The black mud in him oozed, shutting out all air and light.
Tobin tasted the venison, thought it was excellently prepared and quite succulent. He paused to sip his wine and noticed that Lily was not eating.
“Is the venison not to your liking?”
She looked at her meal as if she’d only just noticed it. “I am certain it is delicious,” she said, and finally forked a bite. “I thought that perhaps . . . might I ask, after your mother died, who took you and your sister in?”
“There was no one to take us in.”
Lily had the decency to look appalled at the thought of two children cast out into the world, but still, Tobin felt nothing at all. Nothing. “I could not keep a roof over our heads, as you might imagine,” he said cavalierly, then drank more wine. “I took Charity to a church nearby. She was lucky to find work as a scullery girl in some rich man’s house.”
Lily’s eyes widened with astonishment.
“Oh, come now, Lily, don’t look so shocked. What did you think might have happened without anyone to provide for us?”
“I-I don’t . . . I can’t say,” she stammered. “Poor Charity.”
“You must not fret for her. She was quickly graduated to cleaning chamber pots.”
Lily’s face fell. “Is she . . . is she well?”
“She no longer cleans chamber pots, if that is your concern. She is well enough, and resides with her daughter Catherine in my Mayfair home.”
“Then she is married,” Lily said, looking up brightly.
Tobin sighed at Lily’s ignorance. “No. She is not married.”
Whatever Lily thought of that, she had the good grace to hide it behind a generous swallow of her wine.
“A toast,” Tobin said. “To old acquaintances.”
“Don’t tease me,” she murmured. “You may as well tell me what happened to you.”
“Me?” He stabbed at his meat. “As I said, I could not keep a roof over my head and I had to find work. I went to the docks looking for it.”
“The docks,” she repeated, as if testing the word. “Loading things onto ships?”
Here again, her knowledge of the world beyond the ivy-covered walls of privilege was astoundingly thin. “Not loading things, although I would have been happy to do anything for a shilling, I suppose. I went to sea.”
“You became a sailor!” She seemed almost pleased.
“Not precisely. I was brought on to assist the ship’s cook. Forced on, I should say. Lone lads on the docks are easy prey.”
She frowned. “Is that true? Or do you wish to shock me?”
Tobin said, “I had every intention of getting aboard a ship one way or the other. As it happens, Bolge rescued me from the ruffians who had me.”
“Who is Bolge?”
Tobin grinned at the thought of his old protector. “You saw him—the big jolly fellow with the bottomless appetite. At the time, he was a cook who was as dangerous as any man I ever met—with his hands and with his stew.”
Before he realized it, Tobin was telling Lily how Bolge had taken him under his wing aboard the Flying Saxon, and about his first year aboard the ship. He was surprised that he was talking as much as he was; it was unlike him. But there was something in Lily’s expression—interest, sympathy, he hardly knew—that compelled him to tell her more.
He hadn’t thought of those years in so long. He told Lily of the awful seasickness he’d suffered as he’d worked to earn his sea legs. And of the malaria that had swept through the crew and had left him and Bolge to work beyond the kitchen, and how he’d learned to trim sails that summer. He told her about some of the ports of call, of the vast world that had opened up before an English boy.
Lily listened, spellbound.
“It’s remarkable,” she said quietly when he paused, “that you have survived as well as you have.”
“By all rights, I should have died many years ago,” he agreed. “I knew a few lads who failed to navigate the choppy waters.”
Lily ate a few bites, her expression thoughtful. “It astonishes me to know all that has befallen you and to see you now.” She smiled at him with an expression full of sympathy—or worse, pity. Tobin did not care for that look. It made him feel weak.
“May I ask, how did you gain all this? And your title?” she asked, gesturing to the room around them.
“I bought it.”
She rolled her eyes. “I may be naïve, but I know that titles are not bought and sold.”
“You are indeed naïve, madam, for this particular title was bought and sold in Denmark.”
She colored slightly, making her complexion look like rose petals in this candlelight. “I see.”
“I doubt that you do,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Denmark has been under constant threat of war these last few years. Everyone is desperate for money and will do most anything for it.”
“Including selling a title to an Englishman,” she said skeptically.
He laughed softly. “It is no man’s desire, I assure you. But I made the chap an offer he could not refuse, and then paid a Danish court handsomely to see it done.”
“What sort of an estate is it?”
“Of little consequence,” Tobin said with a dismissive flick of his wrist. “It was not the estate I wanted but the title.”
“But why?” she asked curiously. “You obviously have a great deal of wealth.”
He snorted. “Is it not obvious? A title gives me entry into society that I would not otherwise enjoy. It allows me to look into the eyes of the people who condemned my father.” Tobin could almost see the light dawning in Lily’s eyes before she looked away. “What is it, Lily?” he asked curtly. “Do you disapprove of my methods? I was not so fortunate to have inherited as you were.”
“I do not approve or disapprove,” she said. “But neither do I hold society in such high regard as you.”
He laughed outright at that. “I do not hold society in high regard. Quite the opposite, really.”
She looked confused. “Then why would you go to so much trouble to be part of it?”
Explaining his deepest desire to her was futile—she would never understand the desire for redemption, the desire to punish those who had inflicted such hardship on his family. “I won’t attempt to make you understand.” He smiled. “I am doing you a great favor in that, I assure you.”
“I understand that you have suffered cruelly, yet somehow you have managed to become this . . . this gentleman and lord with riches and connections. I do not understand why you would have worked so hard to gather the wealth you need to become this person if you do not desire to be this person.”
“Ah,” he said lightly. “You are curious as to how my wealth came into being.”
Lily shook her head. “I really do not care, to be frank.”
“Ask me,” he insisted. “You want to know all about me? Then ask me.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I do not need to know more. You only want to astonish me further.”
“You are quite right, so I will tell you nonetheless. I have made a vast fortune trading arms.”
Lily did not look horrified. She looked confused. “Arms,” she said c
arefully. “Do you mean guns?”
“Guns. Muskets. Cannons. Instruments of war. I trade in death. Whatever a government may need to wage war against another government, I provide.”
Now Lily was clearly stunned.
“Ah, I have offended your tender female sensibilities.” Satisfied, he picked up his fork and finished off his venison.
She seemed genuinely at a loss for words.
“Honestly, love, what did you think would become of me?” he asked, enjoying the opportunity to stun her. “Did you think some Good Samaritan would take me under his wing and pay for my schooling? Did you think my mother could provide for us, that my brother would survive the conditions in London? Did you think the earl might have bestowed a title on me?”
Lily suddenly stood, tossing her linen napkin onto the table. “I will not remain here and allow you to treat me so poorly,” she said angrily. “You want to shock me and hurt me, and I do not care for it.” She whirled about and started for the door, but she hadn’t taken as many as two steps before Tobin was blocking her path. “There now, do not be angry. Finish your meal. Cook has outdone herself.”
“Why?” she demanded. “You despise me in every way and have no qualms about showing it. Why would you want to dine with me? I do not understand why you want anything from me at all!”
She tried to move around him, but Tobin put his hands on her arms, trapping her between him and the table. “Perhaps you have forgotten that we have an arrangement, Lady Ashwood,” he said, pushing her up against the table. The wine goblets toppled over, and something slid off the table and landed with a thud on the carpet.
“Step aside, Tobin,” she snapped and shoved against his chest.
Tobin would not move. “I ask you again—what did you think would happen to the Scott family once you saw my father hanged?”
Lily looked terrified and furious at once. She leaned back away from him. “I was eight, Tobin. I didn’t know what to think about any of it! I didn’t know what to think when I saw your father riding away in the rain that night. I didn’t know what to think when the earl threatened to hang my nurse or my governess, or any servant for that matter!” she cried. “I hoped and prayed for the best for you and your family. I know that is little comfort to you. I know that you would have given your own life to hear someone say your father was not at Ashwood that night. But he was, and I saw him, and I said what I did to save the people I loved! If the truth leads you to want to abuse me, then for God’s sake do it and stop taunting me!”