by Devon, Eva
“Is that what you wish me to know, that you’re stronger than most and more determined?”
“Yes,” he said with a half smile. “And I think you are too.”
She bit her lower lip. “If you would have asked me that but a few days ago, I would have told you, you were mad. But I think you’re right, now. I think I am determined in a way I never thought possible.”
“What are you determined to do?” he asked, leaning back in his chair, the light of the sun pouring through the old glass panels.
“To not be a prisoner.”
“That is no easy thing,” he warned, locking gazes with her. “Most of us live our lives in cages.”
“I still live in a cage, I suppose,” she said, taking up her wine glass.
“You are breaking it apart,” he said.
She lifted her glass in salute. “It is a frightening proposition, but I seem to be determined to do it.”
“There you go,” he said, lifting his own glass in a matching salute. “Determined.”
She pursed her lips, still stunned at how she had come to be with him. “And you think more of me for this, not less?”
“Of course.” He drank, the ruby liquid shimmering on his sensual lips. “Most people are content to live in their cages until the day they die. They are born into this world wondrous beings, and they are born into prisons, and then they stay there.”
“You broke free,” she pointed out.
“I had to,” he sighed. He drove a hand through his thick hair. “If I had not, I would have likely died some horrible death on the street or been worked to death in some relentless job. There are thousands of people in the city now doing just that.”
“There are thousands of people in my area of the world, doing something very similar,” she dared to observe. “Their cages, of course, are much safer and much prettier, but I think their souls inside are withering away.”
He quirked a brow. “Are all humans the same, then? Most people would never argue such a thing, especially an aristocrat.”
“I don’t know enough people to lay such a claim,” she hurried. “But I do think all humans were born to want more than what this life has given us.”
His eyes sparkled with wonder. “Your wisdom is most strange, Lady Mary. I hardly know what to do with it.”
“Wise. You keep saying that,” she scoffed. “A person of my years cannot be wise, but I am certainly curious about what I can do about my situation.”
A loud knock on the door startled them both.
Heath tensed.
Her eyes darted in the direction. “Are you expecting someone?” she asked.
“No,” he stated, shoving his chair back.
She could tell he was tempted to ignore it, but the pounding continued.
Her own heart leapt into her throat, making it difficult to breathe. In an instant, their peaceful accord had been shattered. She already mourned it and prayed whoever it was would hie off quickly. So she could be with him.
At peace with him.
Being herself.
Slowly, he stood, walked down the hall, and she heard the door open.
There was a soft whisper of voices, and then he was coming back towards her, a sheet of paper in his hand.
A look of dread tightened his handsome features.
“What is it?” she managed to ask. “Something has happened in the city?”
“You must go back,” he stated, his whiskey gaze dark and shadowed.
“Something has happened,” he continued. “But not in the city. It has happened in your home.”
“My God,” she said, panic rising in her chest. Had her father hurt her mother? Had her brother. . . Before her brain could rattle away, she urged, “Tell me.”
“Mary,” he whispered, as though he, a man of darkness and danger, did not even know what to say. “Your father is dead.”
Her stomach dropped. “I beg your pardon? Surely, you misspeak.”
“Your father,” he affirmed. “He did not wake up this morning.”
Did not wake up. . .
She swallowed. Could it be true? She looked up at Heath. Her mind rioted, unable to truly latch onto what he’d said. “I do not understand.”
“Your father has died,” he repeated, his shoulders sagging.
And at that moment, she knew she did have to go back.
Even if she did not wish to, even if she longed to stay with Heath forever. Her mother needed her.
She would have to go back now. Immediately.
They remained together in silence.
Her mind raced through all the possibilities.
Could she stay one night? Could she?
But she thought of her mother, alone at this moment, staring down the face of her future, the duke gone. And Mary realized that, no, she could not.
She had come here and done what she had sent herself to do. Even in a few short hours’ time, she was already stronger. It was nowhere near long enough. . . But she knew what road she had to set herself on now.
Wordlessly, Heat went back to the small sitting room, and she heard him picking things up. He came to the kitchen and handed her her gown, and he too began to don the trappings of respectability.
His cravat. . . As he wound it about his neck. . . She almost couldn’t breathe. It felt like. . . The end of something. Something so fine.
Tears stung her eyes, and she blinked them away.
Unquestionably, he knew her decision. It was as if he had read her mind.
She could sense his disappointment, but also his understanding.
This was to have been their moment, and it was gone in one quick decision. Her father’s not waking up, ’twas changing the course of their direction. It seemed impossible to believe their adventure had ended so quickly.
But here it was.
“I want to see you again in the city,” she blurted.
He nodded, even as he seemed to retreat inwardly.
“Will you see me?” she asked.
“If it is what you wish, Mary,” he said quietly as he shrugged on his tailored coat. “I will see you.”
“I-I could not bear to lose you now that I’ve found you.”
“You will always have me to help you,” he said, though his face was all but readable.
“When you need me,” he added. “I will be there.”
She needed him now, and she had a feeling she would need him always.
But life had taken over, and life would dictate her course now.
Chapter 10
Mary strode up the steps to a townhouse that felt completely foreign to her.
It was where she’d spent a significant portion of her life, mostly in terror, but now, that terror was gone. After all, the source of that terror was now dead.
Even from the limestone steps, the house was blanketed in misery.
It permeated every wall, every surface, every floor, but now, at least, that which had been the epicenter of it was gone.
The butler took her cloak, and she hurried into the long salon, faded with the lack of funds to keep it up, at the front of the house.
She spotted her mother, that glorious woman who had once been so beautiful and so full of sparkling life. She sat alone and quiet. Her shoulders hunched, her head bowed, holding a sheaf of papers.
“Mama,” Mary announced. “I am returned.”
Her mother did not respond at first, but after a long moment, she lifted world-weary eyes to her daughter, eyes that were dry, not a single tear filling them. “We are ruined,” her mother said.
No, Mary thought. They were free.
“Mama, we are not ruined,” she gritted.
“We are,” her mother protested, holding up the sheets of paper, shaking them. “Your father has lost everything. There is nothing left. Even worse. . . The amounts owed. . . Dear God, your poor brother.”
It was true.
Undoubtedly, her father had lived rashly, spending every penny, leaving them with nothing. The gowns she wore were thre
e years out of date. Her mother’s own gown had been turned, a great family reduced to nothing, but now, Mary was certain they could rebuild out of the ashes, and she would help her mother do it.
“Mama, you must not worry,” she insisted, determined to lift her mother up from her misery. “We can find a way.”
Her mother raised her worn face, once the envy of the ton, and spoke with brittle reality, “My darling girl, you will be completely lost unless you can find a good marriage.”
There it was. The truth. A fact.
Without a good marriage, she would be impoverished.
She fought a sigh. For she was no fool. It would be an insult to people like Heath to romanticize poverty.
If she could not find funds, she would have a life of poverty, pain, agony. As would her mother.
Marriage.
She wished it was not so, but there was no other course for a young woman like herself. She had no skills. There was no work which would maintain her above crippling poverty for years and years of deprivation until she had worn herself out.
Marriage.
Just hours before, she had contemplated taking a lover and had nearly done so. She had been ready to walk out of this life and never look back, but now, staring at her mother, she knew she had to save her mother too.
So, she would do what had to be done.
Oh, she would not go back to the cloistered cages of her life, but somehow, she would find a way to lift her mother out of this misery as well.
Surely, she could find a way.
“Mama, I promise you all will be well.”
“You cannot promise such a thing,” her mother nearly shouted, breaking her usual composure, even in the face of disaster. “Look at the life around us. Look at what became of me. You must make a wiser choice than I, my darling.”
“Mama, I will,” she promised. “I promise you with every fiber of my being that I shall not choose poorly.”
It struck her as mad that she was saying such a thing, having been held in Richard Heath’s arms but a few hours before. Was the world so wild? Yes, it was.
And for a young woman, there was only one course: to find marriage. To find a role. She would do it, but she would not have to do it the way she would have just a few days before.
Now, she could choose. She would not be pushed and shoved about by her father. At the same time, she felt as if she had lost something. She’d lost the chance to be with Heath. A wave of pain rolled through her, so intense she nearly gasped.
Her mother cocked her head to the side. “Are you unwell?”
“No, Mama, I am perfectly well, given the circumstances. I am simply sad to see you in so much sorrow over the death of your husband.”
Her mother blew out a derisive breath. “I do not feel sorrow at his death. I feel sorrow at the life he has left us. Your poor brother, what ever will he do?” Her grip tightened on those papers. “A duke with no money. A duke who must bear his disastrous family reputation?”
“I am not afraid for Robert,” Mary returned truthfully. “He is a brave soul, and he shall bear up under this just as you and I shall.”
“We shall have to,” her mother said. “It is the only thing we can do.”
“And we will,” Mary said. “Mama, we will.”
Chapter 11
It was a strange feeling, rolling back up to his club.
Richard Heath climbed down from his coach, feeling far heavier than he’d ever felt, and that was saying a great deal.
He’d experienced more tragedy than most.
Seen hell, but somehow, his soul felt empty.
Leaving Mary behind had done something to him.
It was positively preposterous. She was not a woman for him. He’d known it in his bones, and fate had intervened, and he did believe in fate, because life would pick and choose who lived and who died, not just the people in it.
Oh, he could work away and he could endeavor, but there were certain things one could not control, such as the knock on a door, the letter from one of his men, the news the Duke of Blackstone was dead.
That did not mean he would not rail against the heavens.
He was glad for Mary that the old man was gone.
At least now, she would no longer be controlled by him, but her path would be one entirely other than the one he had imagined for her.
He strode in through the double doors of his club, walking through the people gambling and drinking their lives away. . . Feeling both understanding and disdain for them. He’s stormed through to his office and stopped dead in his tracks.
Another man sat there, his feet upon the desk, lolling back in Heath’s chair, a bottle of gin in his hand.
“There ye are,” that rough voice that had never been polished, that refuse to be tamed, cut through the air.
“Jamie,” Richard ground out.
Jamie lifted his bottle of gin. “Aren’t ye glad to see me, brother?”
Richard felt mixed emotions when it came to Jamie.
He loved his brother. One of the few people he did care about and love, but they were not close. Not in the way one would have imagined brothers to be.
They were not full brothers. Their mother had, as he’d come to understand, rarely had a regular partner. . . Only customers.
They’d found each other in the strangest of ways. In a Foundling hospital. The little information that had been left with Richard had matched him with Jamie. They’d clung to each other in the brutal, unforgiving place, where they were bastards, children of sin, children of whores, until they had been expelled onto the streets of London as small children.
They’d fought through rooms packed with other emaciated bastards. Children who were willing to kill, children who’d do anything they could to survive on the streets.
Jamie and he had fought together for so long. . . Until their paths had separated. Jamie, to a life of crime; Richard Heath, to a life of criminal organization.
There was a differentiation.
Jamie still lived by the sword.
Whereas Heath? He managed the swords.
“What the devil are you doing here?” Richard asked.
“Oh, Oi just ’appened to call upon me darling brother.”
“Be done with what you’ve come for,” Heath ordered. “I don’t believe you for a moment. Are you here for money?”
Jamie tsked, his dark brown hair shining in the firelight. Despite the lines upon his face that came with hard living, Jamie was a specimen to behold, a testament to their mother, who must have been beautiful once.
“Never say so, brother,” Jamie drawled with faux hurt. “Oi am capable of taking care of myself, and ye should know it.”
“I do know it,” admitted Heath, yanking off his greatcoat. “But I haven’t seen you in over a year.”
Jamie nodded then took a long pull of the gin bottle, sighing with dramatic satisfaction. “Oi’ve been out and about, doing things. Exploring, venturing through this world.”
“And now you’re back in London?” Heath tested.
Jamie let the forelegs of his seat fall to the floor. “Indeed. Oi thought perhaps ye can use me.”
“Use you?” echoed Heath, wary.
“Yes.” Jamie cleared his throat, perhaps with more difficulty than such a hard man was willing to admit. “A bit of tough around this place.”
“I have enough toughs,” Heath said, hanging his coat on the stand by his door. “I don’t need another man to muscle about. Especially a man like you.”
“A man like me?” Jamie queried, his brows arching.
“Yes.” Heath narrowed his eyes. For all the love he had for his brother, he knew him to be a man whose wound was still open with no semblance of healing. “One who loves trouble and who will strike first and think later.”
Jamie scowled a playful look before he put his hand over his heart. “Ye wound me, Heath. Indeed, you.”
Jamie was that rogue, that ruffian, who smiled, his death dance ever just before him. In f
act, Jamie had had countless close encounters with the Tyburn jig but managed to escape every time.
Tsking, Jamie continued, “Oi don’t like to hear ye speak of me so, brother. Surely, ye can find a way to forgive your errant brother and bring him back into the fold.”
“This is not the tale of the son’s return,” Heath ground out, folding his arms over his chest.
Jamie sighed. “No, Oi suppose not, but ye’d not send me out onto the streets begging now, would ye? Think of the trouble Oi might cause.”
“You’re going to cause trouble whether I take you in or not,” Heath stated.
Jamie laughed. “True,” he said. “But don’t ye think we’d make a fantastic pair, ruling London together?”
Heath tensed.
He was not about to share in the power he had, especially not with Jamie.
Jamie was the sort of man who would unleash blood on the streets of London with gang wars and trouble between men.
“No, Jamie. I’m not about to—”
“Hear me out,” Jamie rushed. “Oi think Oi’m done with being a highwayman. It’s too much trouble, and that way of life is dying.”
“I’m glad you know it,” Heath said, listening but unconvinced.
“How could Oi not?” Jamie snorted. “The men who ensure my line of work is dwindling are out for my blood, and Oi have decided that Oi quite like living. I’m not ready to give it up.”
Heath drove a hand through his hair, feeling between a rock and a hard place. Jamie had kept him alive on more than one occasion when they were small.
The truth was, he was glad Jamie was coming to such a realization. Perhaps age had tempered him a bit, but Jamie would always be unpredictable.
“So what is it exactly that you envision?”
“Envision, is it? We have increased our vocabulary,” Jamie drawled, well-read himself. For some reason, they’d both clung to words. Newspaper scraps. Signs. . . And once they’d stolen enough, books. “Oh, a place to sleep, a good meal.” Jamie’s eyes burned like twin coals. “A chance to do a bit of good, to learn how to live civilly.”
Heath eyed his brother skeptically.
Jamie had always been wild, by far the wilder of the two, but the inescapable truth was, as small children, Heath would never have survived without his brother. So he did not think he could turn his back on him, as tempting as it was.