Fredrick nodded, the same intense solemnity as earlier removing all traces of boyhood joy from his face.
Gareth tousled the boy’s hair and then put his knuckles on the ground, leaning to the side to heave his left foot up. He stood, looking back and forth between the two children. “You two appear to have a plan brewing over in that field. I did not intend to interrupt.”
“We are looking for newts.”
“Newts? Whatever for?”
“Lillian says I cannot catch one. She caught one and I haven’t yet. So I need to. And there are logs and muck for them to hide in.”
Gareth looked to the little girl still hiding along Nicolina’s skirts. “You must be quite quick with your hands to catch a newt.”
A shy smile came to Lillian’s lips and she nodded.
“Well, do not let my presence stop you. Run ahead.”
Both of the children looked up to Nicolina, pleading with their eyes.
She nodded. “Just stay within my sight, and five steps or more from the water. I will be following.”
Fredrick ran around Nicolina and grabbed his sister’s hand, and they ran, foregoing the winding pathway and cutting a straight line to the tall grasses.
Nicolina stepped back onto the pathway, starting forth without inviting Gareth to join her. Invitation or not, he fell into step alongside his wife.
“Cunning of you.” Her green eyes were trained forward, watching the progress of the children. “Approaching me in front of the children and in the park where I cannot yell at you.”
“I thought it might keep your inevitable ire restrained. I was right.”
“Yet you have sent them out of earshot and we have yet to part ways. You are more of a fool than I thought if you think to be clear of my ire.”
He nodded and clasped his hands behind his back. Several steps went by in silence. He glanced down to her left hand clutching her reticule. Her ring finger was bare. Only a ring of black ribbon encircled her pinky finger. “You lied to them, Nic.”
She glanced at him, her right eyebrow raised.
“About my name.”
Her gaze went forward to find the children. “I did not want them to question our association. Fredrick is astute and painfully polite. He would have immediately inquired if you were my brother or cousin or uncle. I was not prepared to have the conversation with them about how you are my husband and you abandoned me.”
She had not lied about her anger, and it sat there, simmering under each word she spoke.
“Nic—”
Her eyes remained fixed on the children as she interrupted him. “What are you doing here? You are the one that demanded I walk away. So what do you think to accomplish here?”
He bit his tongue back. He wanted to demand her back into his life. Back into his bed. She was his wife, for devil’s sake. She shouldn’t be taking care of another man’s children. But he had no right. No right to her. Not after what he had done.
But that wasn’t going to stop him from trying.
“Strike that, Gareth. What are you doing in London? You are here working as a guard? No—not even that, don’t tell me that—tell me why you are alive—alive—and you left me with nothing.”
His feet stopped. “Nothing? Nic, why did you think I was dead? I have been sending money—every month, to your brother to give to you.”
His words made her halt and she spun back to him. “What? To Norton? No.” She shook her head. “He knows you’re alive? Impossible. There is no money. He would have told me. He knew that when the money you always sent stopped coming, it was the surest indicator you were dead on a battlefield.”
No money? Her ne’er-do-well brother took it?
Gareth shrugged to cover a surge of fury. “Well, I’m not dead, Nic. And I never stopped sending funds. Every month, without fail, I send them to your brother with direct instructions they be given to you.”
“Every month? Still?” Her face fell, air leaving her in a long exhale that curled her body as realization hit. “Norton took the money? No. He couldn’t have.”
Her hand flattened on her stomach as she gasped a breath, and then her head jerked to the side as she looked about to find her charges. It took her a long moment to form words, and her head started to shake. “Norton never would have let me think you were dead. Never. He saw what it did to me.”
Gareth cringed, his chest tightening at the thought of her believing he was dead—the pain it would have caused her. All he had seen in his wife was her current anger, but he had not considered that—what all of this would have done to her. What his death would have done to her. If he knew nothing else, he knew Nicolina had loved him once. That his death would have been devastating.
Her look whipped to him, her eyes still fighting the truth of what Gareth had said. “He never—no—there has been no money. None. Norton said there was nothing left. That was why I had to take the position as a governess. There was nothing.”
Gareth’s hand flew out, lightly grabbing her arm. “Nic, what do you mean there was nothing left? Even without the money I sent, what about your uncle’s foundry?”
Nicolina’s eyes closed as her right hand lifted to her forehead, rubbing it. “No…no…Norton…what did you do…” Her voice had dropped to a whisper.
But Gareth heard the words.
“What the hell did your brother do to the foundry, Nic?”
Her shoulders lifted as she took a deep breath, then fell as she exhaled it slowly. “He—he said the foundry wasn’t making any money. I couldn’t believe it, but he said it. And Uncle Felix left it to him to do with what he pleased, so he would not listen to me—would not answer any of my questions.” Her hand dropped from her forehead and she looked at Gareth. Her cheeks had turned ashen, the black ribbons of her bonnet stark against her skin. “So I talked to the workers and they hadn’t been paid in weeks, and then one day, no one arrived at work. It was empty—empty of everyone. Then a week later everyone came to work again. They said they had been paid. But then Norton told me he sold it. And I don’t know where the money went. I think he lost it, Gareth.”
“He lost the foundry?” Gareth could barely bridle the rage in his voice.
She nodded.
“How? How could he—your uncle had built a fortune with it. It was his legacy.”
Her bottom lip slipped between her front teeth. “Norton refuses to admit to it. But he gambles, Gareth. He has since you left for war. He gambles and he loses. He said he sold it, but there were never any funds from it. I don’t know where they went. And if you had sent money…” Her voice cracked.
“The bastard.”
Her eyes narrowed at him.
Gareth forced calm into his voice. “Your uncle wanted so much more for you. For all of us once we were back together.”
“I know. And I was just as angry, but I have not even had time to think on it. I have been far too busy securing employment and watching the children. And now this.” Her hand motioned in a circle in front of her. “You appear when I think you are dead. You tell me Norton has been lying to me about you for the past year. I don’t even know what to do with this—my dead husband alive—much less with the fact that Norton took the money you sent.”
“Is Norton in London or still in Berkshire?”
“London.”
Gareth set his other hand on top of her shoulder, unable to stop his fingers from drifting inward to brush against the back of her neck. She didn’t jump away, didn’t jerk from the touch. An achievement.
His voice dipped low, vehement. “I never stopped sending the funds, Nic. I have always been taking care of you—or at least I thought I was. I never should have…”
Her eyes went wide, her voice suddenly sharp as she took a step backward, breaking contact. “Never should have what, Gareth? What would you have done? Stalk me from afar?” Her head shook, her words turning bitter. “Even if you sent the funds, it all comes back to one thing, Gareth. You have been back for a year. A year. It comes back to
the fact you abandoned me.”
She gasped a deep breath, her arms folding across her stomach—to hold herself upright or to block him he wasn’t sure.
“An abandonment is an abandonment, regardless of the money, Gareth.” Her voice went raw, her words slow, pointed. “And you abandoned me.”
For a long moment she looked at him, her eyes searching his face, the green of her irises haunted.
With a quick shake of her head, she turned from him, walking toward the children.
He didn’t dare follow.
{ Chapter 7 }
Impossible.
Nicolina saw it from down the street, but couldn’t believe it. Not her brother.
Not after how they had been forced to live those first few penniless months when they had come to London. Not with their stay in the decay of St. Giles. Not with the squalor they had endured.
With every step she took, she prayed she was mistaking what was happening. That the atrocity in front of her was her imagination.
Impossible. It couldn’t be her brother badgering that woman in a threadbare dress clutching a babe. Threatening her. No. Impossible.
Norton didn’t see her coming. Didn’t see her until she stepped in, wedging herself between him and the crying woman.
Shock overtook her brother’s face.
Making herself as wide a shield as possible, she looked over her shoulder to the woman—a girl even, she looked so incredibly young. “Do you have a man?”
The woman shook her head. “Dead.”
“He”—Nicolina poked a finger into Norton’s chest without looking at him—“is this man demanding your rent?”
The woman looked past Nicolina’s head to Norton, instant fear flooding her face.
“Do not look at him,” Nicolina demanded. “Look at me. Is he demanding your rent?”
The woman gave a shaky nod, her hand tightening around the back of her whimpering babe’s head, trying to calm it to her chest.
Nicolina turned, shoving at Norton with her shoulder as she spun to the woman. Only a half-head taller than Nicolina, he had to take a bracing step against her motion. She untied her reticule from her wrist and pressed the bag alongside the babe into the crook of the woman’s arm. “Take this. Pay off your debt and there should be enough for a new start in a safer area.”
The woman nodded, her tears drowning out the gratitude trying to form on her lips. Only able to nod her appreciation, the woman slipped backward through the frame of the doorway and drew closed the ragged sheet currently being used as a door.
Nicolina whipped back to Norton. “This is what has become of you? A common thug?”
“How did you find me, Nicolina?” The vein that cut at a slant across Norton’s forehead had started to throb, his cheeks filling in with a mottled pink. Color had always shown easily through Norton’s skin, his body not able to hold any fat or much muscle.
“I asked old Mr. Thompson if he had seen you. He knows where you gamble. From there it was not hard.” Her thumb pointed over her shoulder. “Truly, Norton? This is what you have sunk to? Threatening widowed mothers for their rent coins?”
“I don’t have choice in the matter, Nicolina. I have my own debts to worry about. To pay off.”
“And this is how you pay them off? You’ve become a dunghill thug? Who do you owe so deeply that you would sink to this wretched level of thievery?”
“Bournestein.”
She gasped. “Bournestein? I thought you daft before—but now, you are truly an idiot, Norton. You know how dangerous that man is.”
Norton sighed, his thin fingers running through his unkempt brown hair. “Why did you find me, Nicolina? Don’t you have some brats to tend to?”
“Gareth is alive.”
Norton went still. “He is?”
“Don’t you dare.” She grabbed his arm, jerking him to the alleyway to her left. Her voice pitched to scalding. “You bloody well know he is. You’ve been taking his money—his money meant for me. The funds he has been sending every month. You told me it was gone—that he was gone. Dead, Norton. Dead. For a year you made me think that Gareth was dead.”
“No, no—I never said that. I never said he was dead. You assumed that.”
“I assumed that because the money stopped, Norton, and you know that. You insinuated it. And then did nothing to correct me. You could have told me, but instead you lied. Lies on top of lies.”
He leaned in, trying to use his slight height advantage to overwhelm her. “I am just trying to survive here, Nicolina. The same as you.”
“Survive?” Both of her hands flew upward. “What have you had to survive, Norton? Not a war—you didn’t go there. You had the responsibilities of Uncle Felix’s foundry to keep you from that—you had everything, the estate, our house, the foundry—and this is what has become of you? All of that wasn’t enough, so you’ve been taking Gareth’s funds every month and doing what with it? What? Gambling? Was it the same for the foundry—did you lose it in a bet as well, Norton? Is that really what happened? You squandered it away—for what? A few hours at a table? Because you’re stupid? Because you’re too weak?”
The back of his hand struck her across the face. Fast and brutal. It sent her flying and she had to catch herself on the brick building next to them.
She shoved off from the wall, the sharp taste of blood flooding her tongue. She paused as her eyes closed and she lifted her fingers to her instantly throbbing left cheek.
Her eyes opened slowly, her look skewering him. She let her fingers fall from her cheek and she seethed a breath, reining in her fury until her voice was icy in its control. “That one. That one I will let slide, Norton, because you are my brother. But do not test me. You may be stronger than me, but you never could best me with a blade—and I still carry mine.” She welled up a wave of derision into her eyes and slowly looked him up and down. “I imagine you lost yours long ago.”
Before he could utter another word, she pushed past him and started walking toward the hack she had hired to wait for her.
“Nic—Nicolina, I’m sorry.” His voice cut through the din of the activity on the street. “Nicolina, please…I’m sorry...I’m working on something…something big. I need you for it. Nicolina…I’m sorry…” His voiced trailed.
She heard the remorse in his voice. Heard it echo in his weakness.
But that was what Norton was. Weak. Scared. Scrambling through life hoping not to get caught. She had always suspected it of her brother, the cowardice of his soul, and now she knew it to be true.
His remorse held no weight. Not anymore.
She didn’t slow. Didn’t turn around.
She couldn’t afford to with tears of rage brimming in her eyes.
She had believed in her brother for too long, and it had cost her everything.
~~~
“I haven’t seen you glance at a dram of brandy even once since you came to work here, Callison.”
Gareth’s eyes flickered up from the short glass of brandy sitting on the table in front of him. Logan moved into the wide room set aside specifically for his men in the lowest level of the Revelry Tempest. “Has the evening started? Am I needed upstairs?”
“No. Not for a few minutes. I have that new guard you have been training standing at your post.” Logan lifted and set a simple chair sideways, then sat down across the square wooden table from Gareth, draping his forearm wide along the edge of it as he leaned back. He nodded with his forehead to the brandy. “Not one swallow have you considered in all this time, yet that is one full glass before you now.”
“So?”
“So you poured it, but you haven’t touched it.” Logan’s middle finger tapped the rough wood of the table. “You were in that same spot an hour ago.”
Gareth’s gaze drifted down to the glass. “I haven’t needed it since you dragged me into here and made me a guard.”
“Which means something has changed.”
Gareth nodded, his fingers itching to wrap around t
he glass.
“Would this have anything to do with the woman I untied in the stable the other night?”
Gareth’s look whipped up to Logan. “You untied her?”
Logan shrugged, looking off to the low flames in brick fireplace in the corner of the room. “She wasn’t freeing herself in any other way.”
“She would have.”
“How do you know that?”
“She is good at wiggling out of knots.”
“And you know this how?”
Gareth sighed. “She told you I was her husband, didn’t she?”
Logan gave him a quick glance and then his steel grey eyes went back to the fire. “Aye. She did.”
Long seconds passed, the only noise the distant cacophony from the floors above them filling with the ton’s elite arriving to game the dark hours away. It was due to be a busy night.
Logan’s continued silence was both a blessing and curse. It told Gareth that Logan was not about to judge him. But in that moment, Gareth rather wanted to be judged.
Gareth reached out, wrapping his fingers around the smooth surface of the glass. Familiar. Soothing. But he couldn’t lift the tumbler. “For a long time I haven’t looked at anything beyond the four walls surrounding me at any given moment.”
“And?” Logan leaned forward as his gaze travelled to him, his eyes pausing for a second on Gareth’s hand around the glass of amber liquid.
“There is a whole world that went on without me since the time I left this soil. Fortunes lost. Choices that have been forced upon people.” Gareth paused, his fingers tightening around the tumbler. “And I haven’t seen any of it. Haven’t wanted to see any of it. Couldn’t bring myself to care.”
Logan nodded, his grey eyes solemn. “Hiding from the world has consequences just the same as living in it does.”
Gareth lifted the glass from the table. The rim halfway to his lips, he paused, looking to Logan. The man’s gaze was boring into him. Gareth’s eyebrow arched. It was the first time he had ever seen a modicum of judgement on Logan’s face. “What?”
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