Julie Anne Long - [Pennyroyal Green 08]
Page 20
Jonathan was both horrified and enthralled by the story.
“Dead?”
“Probably not,” she said indifferently. “I stabbed him in the thigh, which was as high as I could reach. Unless somehow a splinter found its way into him and he died a slow painful death from infection.” She seemed to brighten a little at the possibility. “He screamed like a little girl and I ran like a spider out of that place. I remember hands grabbing at me; they missed. I knew the area now, and even though they sent out dogs, it was much too late. I kept to the river. They never saw me again. It took some doing but I returned to London—it’s about a day’s walking, and the roads are marked. I did have friends to look after me, after a fashion, and I knew where to find them—in the very building where I live today. I ran a bit wild, living from hand to mouth, on scraps I could steal, and on what charity was extended to me.”
“And yet you don’t sound as though you were raised in the gutter.”
“Well, I wasn’t. Not entirely. My mother once did the Countess of Mirabeau a good turn, and she’d wanted to return the favor. When she learned of were I was living, she got hold of me, made certain I acquired some polish, the sort of polish my mother had tried to impart, and a little education. I loved to read, and she found a few books for me. She’d like to see me settled, I know. But I think she has in mind for me a life like my mother’s.”
The unspoken words being, “But it’s not what I want.” He recalled her vision of a little girl running into the arms of a man at a town house.
“So the celebrated Tommy de Ballesteros is in truth a fugitive from justice.”
“They called me Thomasina Bell, back then. And yes, I suppose I am. Are you going to turn me over to the authorities?”
“I might, if you force me to accompany you on any more jaunts like this one.”
She laughed at that, knowing he was lying.
But he didn’t say anything else.
“It’s all the same, isn’t it?’ she mused. “If you’re a mill owner and you’ve enough money, you can buy children by the handful from the workhouses. Society has to do something with them, so why not put them to practical use?” It was all said very sardonically. “I was promised I would learn to be a fine lady there, and I was bid to sign a paper and given a shilling to seal the bargain. And the so-called bargain gave them the right to me until I reached the age of twenty-one. And I was eight years old when I made that decision.”
The thought of it was unbearable.
“It’s wrong.” His voice sounded gruff, abstracted in his own ears. Such pallid words. He wanted to unsay them the moment he’d said them. “There are laws . . .”
“But they aren’t sufficient, and they aren’t enforced well enough. What are you going to do about it, Jonathan? Destroy every mill?”
“Perhaps.”
She quirked the corner of her mouth humorlessly.
“It’s the sort of thing a man like the Duke of Greyfolk can influence,” she said. “He could help make laws. He has that sort of power and wealth and position. Someone needs to make it stop.” Her voice was quiet but fierce.
He noticed then she was gripping the bloody medal again. A good luck charm?
He thought he’d better tell her.
“Tommy . . . that mill is for sale, and The Duke of Greyfolk wants to buy it. As does my father. But the solicitor has the final say over who purchases it, and he seems to have decision-making criteria known only to him. So now my father is trying to woo the duke into the Mercury Club Investment Group, I suppose because their combined wealth and influence couldn’t help but sway a lowly solicitor,” Jonathan concluded dryly.
Tommy took this in thoughtfully. “Jonathan . . . you and I can only help one child at a time. But someone like the duke . . . with his power and name and money . . . oh, Jonathan. Just imagine. What if . . . what if I told him about what became of my mother, and what became of me . . . surely he’d listen. It would be unconscionable not to see him. It’s time to stop being a coward.” She glanced down at her medal.
God, how he hated the words, “you and I can only help one child at a time.” How he chafed at his limitations, and youth, and how his ambitions were so hobbled by his resources. He could protect her from sinister doctors or from drowning in the Ouse. But he hadn’t the power to change the whole world for her, and people like the duke and his father . . . almost certainly did.
And likely wouldn’t.
“You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met,” he said with low ferocity.
Her eyes went wide at that, and then she smiled, a beautiful flush of pink entering her cheeks. And she turned away, abashed a moment, considering herself in this new light.
“And if you do go speak to the duke . . . I hope the meeting is everything you want it to be.”
“I’ll go tomorrow,” she said quietly. He saw her knuckles tighten to whiteness over the medal.
Next to Tommy, Charlie muttered in his sleep, rolled over, and farted.
Jonathan sighed. “Did you have to rescue such a determinedly fetid one?”
“I’m sure you always smell like starch and soap and bay rum.”
It startled both of them into a moment of awkward silence, the sudden inventory of how he smelled.
“You left out, ‘and a certain ineffable manly goodness native only to you.’ ”
She rolled her eyes. But he saw the blush at her collarbone.
He was on her mind. Right there at the surface. Of course he was. For she was on his. More specifically, he lingered in her senses. And in all likelihood, at night, when it was dark and they were alone in their respective beds, she thought about how he smelled, and how his hair felt against her hands, and the cognac and satin—cognac and satin!—taste of his mouth. Because he knew he relived again the feel of her skin, the silken slide and give of it beneath his palms, and the way her body fit against his, how lithe she was, how wild and alive and hungry she was when he touched her. He hadn’t touched enough of her, not anywhere outside his imagination, anyway.
And he didn’t know about her, but he knew what he did while he was thinking of her at night.
When really, he ought to be counting blond heiresses instead of sheep in preparation for choosing one.
The silence between them was different now. Both more peaceful and less. He realized this secret of her scars, that unspoken part of her history, had created a subtle tension between them.
The remaining tension had to do with how he smelled, and how she knew how he smelled, and all the associated unspoken things. But they weren’t going to discuss that.
Because they were friends.
“Jonathan . . . I know it’s new to you, and difficult to hear. But everything that happened to me was such a very long time ago now that it’s almost like a dream to me. And it’s a blessing, really, in many ways. Because of it I’m no longer really afraid of anything, that there’s very little I can’t do, and that I’ll do whatever I need to do in order to get what I want.”
Her smile was serene. Her spine straight.
Jonathan stared back at her and realized: She believes it. She actually believes it.
Oh, Tommy. You’re afraid of so many things, and you don’t even know it.
And it was an odd moment, knowing this so definitively about her. Tommy was so very clever, so worldly-wise, so cynical. He was sometimes uncomfortably in awe of her. But there was innocence left in her: her expression when he’d dragged his fingers along her jaw, that fire and yearning and amazement and fear that she was human after all, and could get lost in someone, and could get hurt. Her expression when she’d asked him about her father—that uncertainty, that hunger to belong to someone. She was the bravest person he knew, but there was a world of people—people like the Duke of Greyfolk, or his own father—of whom she had no knowledge. Whom she ought to fear. Who had the impersonal powers of destruction possessed by an iceberg. She truly had no idea, for nothing in her existence had yet prepared her for them.
But he couldn’t help but say it gently, which won him a faintly suspicious frown.
“What makes you think I don’t want to do that?”
He snorted.
But he had a terrible suspicion that if she should choose to do that, he’d help her.
Chapter 21
JONATHAN PEERED IN THE window of Klaus Liebman & Co. to make sure no Diamonds of the First Water were sitting in the posing chair.
And then he pushed the door open, and the bell jangled merrily.
“Klaus! I’ve brought you an assistant.”
Klaus turned around, saw Charlie, beamed, then rattled off something enthusiastic in German. Charlie stared up at him with enormous fascinated eyes. The only word Jonathan understood from all of it was “kinder.”
“He doesn’t speak German, Klaus,” Jonathan said wryly. “He’s an English child. And his name is Charlie.”
“My apologies. I am pleased to meet you, Charlie.” He bowed.
“You can bow to Mr. Liebman.”
The boy did, albeit a trifle cheekily. The way, Jonathan had discovered, he did nearly everything.
“Can you handle a broom, Charlie?” Jonathan asked.
“Can I handle a broom?” he snorted to his invisible audience. “I brushed beneath wheels, guv.”
“Charlie,” he said firmly. “A gentleman answers questions when one is addressed to him. Shall we try again? Can you handle a broom?”
“Aye. I can handle a broom.” Still cheekily, but at least he’d looked the two of them in the eye.
“Thank you. Excellent. Do you think you can handle tea, crumpets, and guinea fowl for dinner?”
The boy flinched, as though he’d been jabbed by a hot poker. His eyes flew open wide, and his gaze swung between Klaus and Jonathan.
And then to their astonishment, his face crumpled and he began to weep bitterly.
Jonathan exchanged a bewildered look with Klaus, who shrugged uncomfortably.
Argh. He wished Tommy was here.
Jonathan dropped to his knees. “Charlie, Charlie, look at me. What is it? What is the trouble? You can tell me.”
Charlie peered up at him with watery woeful eyes. “Dinna tease me, guv,” he begged. “I’ll be good. Oatcake is just fine. Ye needn’t say the rest. I’ll stay and work and be good.”
“Tease you?” Jonathan was bewildered. “Charlie, tell me what you mean.”
“There willna be crumpets or tea.”
“There will,” Jonathan said firmly. “But what makes you say that?”
“They told us there would be before they took us to the mill. Just oatcake, guv, and a bit of milk. Nivver tea. Nivver butter. Never anything else. Dinna tease me guv. I’ll eat the oatcake.”
Oh, God. Lies on top of lies on top of lies had been used to exploit these children.
Jonathan looked up at Klaus and gestured with his chin. Klaus turned on his heel and disappeared into the back room, where they kept the food.
And Jonathan contemplated Charlie. And he felt it again: that swooping sense of vertigo, the consciousness of what a perilous condition childhood truly is. And that willingness to trust . . . it was a gift. In a way, a child’s trust blessed anyone to whom it was given.
What a heinous crime it was to exploit it.
You and I can only help one child at a time. He’d hated hearing those words from Tommy.
But she was right. One at a time just wasn’t enough.
“Charlie . . . listen to me. You will work and sleep here, but you will have a comfortable bed of your own. You will have three meals a day and more. You will have bread and cheese and tea, and you will have cakes now and again. You will listen to Klaus and do as he bids and learn to be a gentleman and you will never be hungry. And you will learn to play cricket.” Jonathan had added that impulsively. Because Charlie was fast, and wouldn’t it be fun to teach a cocky, quick little boy how to play cricket? “Do you believe me? I will never lie to you.”
Jonathan hoped that was true. He’d never tell a big lie, anyway. An important lie.
And he realized everything he’d just said was tantamount to a sacred vow. There was no way he could say these thing to this child’s face and not somehow remain a part of his life.
The idea, he realized, wasn’t repellant.
Klaus emerged with tea and what appeared to be cheese and bread on a tray.
“We shall eat, all right, Charlie, and come to know one another? And then I will show you how to help me here.”
Jonathan raised questioning brows at Charlie.
Charlie nodded. He opened his mouth to say something, and belched. And giggled.
Jonathan sighed. “He’s all yours, Klaus.”
ODD TO REALIZE that it required considerably more of her nerve to go in the front door of this enormous building than it had to slip through a wrought iron gate at midnight, creep around the back, and spy through French windows.
Tommy’s palms were icy inside her gloves. She gave herself a little shake, to rouse her bravado. She inhaled deeply and exhaled, and then she did again.
She squared her shoulders.
One would think meeting one’s father for the first time was an athletic event.
If he would see her.
She suspected her name, if anything else, when she presented it to the butler, would at least rouse the man’s curiosity.
She watched, as if in a dream, her hand reach up and grip the knocker.
And she watched, as if in a dream, as she stood waiting for the door to be answered rather than turning around and fleeing down the stairs again after she’d rapped the knocker.
She jumped a little when the door swung wide. “May I help you, miss?”
The butler was a tall, gray, impassive man with a spine rigid as a ship’s mast. It was clear from the swift professional sweep of his eyes over Tommy that he hadn’t the faintest idea how to place her. She was well dressed, but not ostentatiously so. She was young, but she wasn’t the bred-within-an-inch-of-her-life aristocrat with whom he’d be familiar.
She cleared her throat. “I wondered if I might speak to his Grace, the Duke of Greyfolk?”
He didn’t blink.
“And who may I say is calling upon him?”
She hadn’t a card, of course, and this would reveal more about her station to the butler than her clothing.
“Tell him, if you would, that it’s Miss Thomasina de Ballesteros. And that my mother’s name was Carolina de Ballesteros.”
“If you would please wait here.”
She stood on the steps, and couldn’t decide what she wanted more: to be let into the house, or to be told to leave.
The choice was taken from her.
“If you would come with me, please, Miss de Ballesteros.”
And she was inside, and the door was closing behind her.
Her head felt a bit as if it was floating above her body as the butler led her through the house. It smelled of wealth, of wax candles and linseed oil and profligately burned wood. Light ricocheted from the aggressively polished furniture, which looked as though no one sat upon it. The house was probably filled with dozens of parlors similar to that one.
She craned her head as they passed a room of heart-stopping grandeur, carpeted in swirling gray and blue. Over a white marble fireplace that climbed nearly to the soaring ceiling was a painting of the duke. In it he was slim and dark haired, as he must have been when her mother had been his mistress. He wore an expression of proud satisfaction, while a beautiful blond woman rested her hand on his shoulder, and two little blond children, a boy and a girl, leaned against his knees.
She tripped over her feet. Then righted herself as the butler glanced behind him, one brow upraised.
Her heart in her throat, she craned her head toward the portrait as she was led up a marble staircase to a
room.
“Miss Thomasina de Ballesteros, Your Grace.” The butler bowed low, and ushered her inside.
He was seated behind a desk vast as a ship. She could see herself in it, and what she saw made her straighten her spine.
It was a moment before she remembered to curtsy.
He rose at what appeared to be his leisure and bowed only slightly. A begrudging bow, as if he’d only a limited supply of them to spare.
“Have a seat, Miss . . . de Ballesteros.”
It was the first time she’d heard his voice. His Spanish—the liquid rolling treatment of that “r”—was impeccable. He’d served in Spain. She wondered if he spoke Spanish to her mother, and her heart gave a little leap at the thought.
“My father’s voice is very commanding, with a gruff edge. Exposure to gunpowder in the war, you know. He won a medal for distinguished service.” She imagined saying this to friends and acquaintances.
Her thoughts were jerked back to the portrait in the other room.
He’d had a family the entire time. Another whole family. She had siblings.
She stared at him. It seemed impossible he was real, that she would no longer need to—or be able to—simply imagine him. He did have green eyes. Pale, not quite like hers, but nevertheless. He was a hard handsome man. The lines of him—chin, cheekbones, nose, lips—were all clean-drawn and unforgiving. As if life had worn away any softness he might have once possessed.
And there was no denying the voice was as impersonal as the cold wind she’d bundled against.
She sat, slowly, gracefully. She’d dressed carefully, in a gown with a subdued neckline, covered in a pelisse of brown, all of which nevertheless flattered her coloring.
“My daughter is lovely,” she imagined he might say to someone else. “She looks well in brown. She has my eyes, but her nose is her mother’s.”