Five minutes later, the carriage rumbled down the drive. Harry closed his eyes and tried to focus on the overwhelming gratitude he felt for this second chance and the fact that his mind was clear enough to understand the full scope of the gift. London was full of young men on paths as dissolute as his had been. Few would ever be offered the opportunity he’d been given, through first Lord Damon’s mercy and then Lady Sabrina’s.
When he felt capable of controlling his emotions, Harry leaned forward and removed the nearly finished lap blanket from the basket he held between his feet. He traced the stitches and hoped that after all that had happened between them, Sabrina would still want his gift. He would add whatever rows he could on the journey to London and then send the blanket back with Joshua. He wished he had time to write a letter to accompany the gift; he wished he had any idea what he would say if he had.
Harry knitted while Joshua looked at the countryside sliding by the window. His wide eyes and exuberant expression gave the impression of a young boy afraid he would miss something if he blinked too often.
“Have you ever been to London, Joshua?”
“Not since I was a boy, sir.” He turned from the window to Harry. “I have been to Hayes many times, however. My aunt lives there—she’s married to a cleric.” He grinned proudly, but then his smile fell. “Hayes is very much like Wimbledon, though.”
Harry knitted a few more stitches, but something niggled at him. “Weren’t you with Lady Sabrina the day she found me in London?”
“Oh, no, sir, that was Adam. He is her driver in Town, but he came all the way out to Wimbledon that day. I only helped him bring you up to the room once you arrived. You were in very poor shape, if you don’t mind my saying so, sir.”
“Yes, I was in rather poor shape,” Harry said, thinking over the bursts of memory he had of that day—something he tried not to think about most of the time. Even now, he could feel the panic beginning to bubble, a residue of what he’d felt when Malcolm’s men had attacked him in the alley.
But something pulled at him, and so he walked through the barricades his mind had erected. He was about to face Malcolm again, and it would be wise to go into that meeting with as full an awareness as possible.
“Adam and Lady Sabrina brought me back from London by themselves?” Hadn’t there had been another man helping to put him into the carriage? Or was he confusing that memory with the two men who had beaten him?
“Yes, sir. Adam drove, and she attended to you in the carriage.”
He could feel Lady Sabrina’s hand brushing back hair from his face and whispering that everything would be all right before he drifted back to unconsciousness. He could not picture Lady Sabrina helping to carry him to the carriage, however. He’d been unable to walk, since both legs had been beyond use, but he hadn’t been dragged either.
The memory became a bit crisper.
There had been someone holding him under the shoulders, and another man holding his legs—the broken one hurting so much he kept crying out. Harry could remember the back of that man’s head. Dark hair, with gray shot through. Lady Sabrina would not have been able to hold the weight of his torso, which meant it had to have been another man.
She’d been calling out instructions: “Watch his head . . . Hurry now . . . You must hold his right leg above the knee, Jack.”
Harry startled at the memory of the name. Jack?
The memory moved back to before he’d been carried out of the alley, when he and Lady Sabrina had been alone amid the crates and barrels. He was lying on the ground, nearly unconscious with pain, crying while someone—Lady Sabrina—kissed the back of his hand.
“I need to fetch my man and my driver. They can help you to my carriage.”
Her man.
Jack?
Jack was the name of the man who had led Harry to The Lost Tartan to meet with Lord Damion on that fateful morning.
Was that right?
He thought hard. Yes, the man who had met him at the bridge had been named Jack; Mr. Gordon had said so in the letter he’d sent regarding the appointment. Jack had been slight . . . with dark hair shot through with gray. So, the man carrying his legs had been the same man who’d led him to his appointment with Lord Damion.
“Joshua,” Harry asked.
He reluctantly turned his attention away from the window. “Yes, sir?”
“Do you know a man named Jack?”
“I know several Jacks, sir.”
“This one is thin, bearded, and would know his way around London.”
Jack had led Harry around the streets on their way to the appointment like a man who had lived there all his life. He closed his mouth to stop from asking too many questions—Lady Sabrina’s staff was careful of their mistress. But if he asked in a way that didn’t seem to be about her . . . “I think he might have helped get me into the carriage that day in London. He had a chipped tooth.”
“Oh, do you mean Jack Corbans?”
Harry nodded, forcing himself not to react to Joshua’s confirmation of this connection.
Jack worked for Lord Damion.
Jack had helped Harry as Lady Sabrina’s “man.”
Lady Sabrina’s footman knew Jack.
Harry’s mind became very still and quiet, like when he’d been a boy and come across a fox or some other animal in the woods around Falconridge. Within that stillness was focus, and with the right focus, he would not miss a single movement of the creature that would run if it knew he was watching.
“He seemed like a good man,” Harry said evenly.
“Yes, Jack is an excellent fellow. He was a groom at Wimbledon House when I was a boy. There was some trouble with his son that Lady Sabrina’s brother helped him with, and they set up Jack in London after that. I haven’t seen him in ages.”
“What does he do in London?” Harry asked.
Joshua shrugged. “Don’t know. I haven’t seen him since he left here. I think I was fifteen when he went up to London. Must have found work up there, then. Handy that he was there to help.”
The first night Lady Sabrina had come into Harry’s room to introduce herself, he’d been tense and suspicious. Waking up in an unfamiliar place with fractured memory of what had happened left him at a disadvantage in every way. His entire body had hurt, and he’d needed a drink so badly he’d been too sick to care about manners.
But he remembered asking Lady Sabrina why she had been in that part of London at that time of day because it had struck him as strange. His meeting with Lord Damion had been so early, but her explanation of having a special appointment with a cobbler had seemed reasonable enough at the time.
But Jack had been Lady Sabrina’s groom here in Wimbledon years earlier. That could not be a coincidence.
Did Lady Sabrina know Lord Damion? Was she in league with him somehow, and did they share Jack’s services?
That didn’t sit right. There was something both too simple and too complex about that possibility. But there was a connection.
Both Lady Sabrina and Lord Damion were noble.
Both wealthy.
Both in the same part of London at an unusual time of day.
The only part of Lord Damion Harry had seen was his red gloves. He’d told Ward that Lord Damion was a slight man . . . because he had never considered for a moment that Lord Damion was actually a woman.
Both generous.
Both mysterious.
Both saw a potential in him that no one else did.
Things Lady Sabrina had told him filtered through his mind:
“If there were a guarantee that only good men were in positions of power, it might be different.”
“I believe that as I seek to create a world I would wish to live in, that world becomes more of a possibility.”
From her letter just this morning, she’d said, “I wish you the very best as you begin anew as a better man, capable and worthy of your place in the world.”
And from Lord Damion’s letter: “The world needs
good men. I hope you will choose to become one of them.”
Last night, when he’d said she didn’t know the kind of man he’d been, she’d said, “Maybe I know more than you think.”
A dozen conversations played through his mind. Her asking about his sisters but not his parents, as if she’d already known they were gone. The determination she’d had to dry him out, which was also one of the requirements Lord Damion had set as part of his reformation.
“Joshua,” Harry asked, his breathing quickening, though he hoped it wasn’t obvious. “Do you know a man by the name of Mr. Gordon?”
“No, sir,” Joshua said.
Harry was relieved. Perhaps he was chasing windmills, then. Mr. Gordon worked so closely with Lord Damion that—
“But he seems a nice enough man.”
Harry’s eyes jumped from the blanket in his lap to Joshua’s face. “You do know him, then?”
“I don’t know him. He’s only come to the house that one time, and he was in a hurry so I didn’t get a good sense of him, but, like I said, he seems nice enough.”
“W-when did he come to the house?” Harry held his breath.
“Uh . . .” Joshua scrunched up his face as he thought about the question. “A few days after you came, I think.” He paused. “Early on, though; you were still sleeping most of the time.”
“And he came to meet with Lady Sabrina?”
Saying her name shut down Joshua’s willingness like a gate, as though making him aware that he was discussing his mistress’s personal business. His face closed, and he nodded. He turned back to the window but glanced sideways at Harry, who had the presence of mind to go back to his knitting so it would look as though that was what held his attention now.
His whole body began to tingle, and he fumbled through his stitches, stopping to unpick a solid dozen.
Lord Damion was Lady Sabrina.
Lady Sabrina was Lord Damion.
She had been the person on the other side of the slide that day at The Lost Tartan.
She was the “nobleman” who wanted to hide her philanthropy toward dissolute men from the ton.
How had he not made the connection before? But he knew why—because it had seemed impossible. One did not wonder if perhaps there were fields of pink grass somewhere in the world, because grass being green was an irrefutable fact. One did not verify each morning that foxes ran along the ground and falcons flew on the wind, rather than the other way around. Harry had not woken up expecting his leg to be healed because he knew it wouldn’t be. Just like he knew that Lord Damion was a man and Lady Sabrina was a woman and they were two separate parts of his life that did not touch.
It wasn’t just details of her former marriage that Lady Sabrina had hidden from him—it was Lord Damion. Which meant everything Lord Damion knew about Harry, she also knew. Which meant that last night when he’d pushed her away because she didn’t know just how horrible a man he’d been, she had known.
He had still done the right thing in refusing the advances, and he was sure she agreed with him in the light of morning, but she’d made those advances with a full understanding of the man he’d been. Because she believed that men could change, and she saw the changes he had made. It was not a stretch of his imagination to think that she’d held herself against the building tension between them, that she’d tried to tell him it was normal for men and women not attracted to one another to still be friends.
The bubble of hope he felt amid this remarkable discovery displaced any anger or hurt he might otherwise have felt at discovering her lies. During their conversations, she’d all but told him why a woman would pose as a man in this world. Lord Damion’s motivation was to change the world, one man at a time, but only another man could do such a thing. The young men she rescued would not respect or trust a female benefactor. Yet in that one thing, Harry believed she had been wrong.
Lord Damion had saved Harry by paying off his debts and giving him another chance to make a life worth living, no doubt about it, but Lady Sabrina had been the stronger influence encouraging him to make personal changes in the weeks since. It was Lady Sabrina who’d helped him see his course ahead. Lady Sabrina who had given him confidence that he could rise above the pain of his childhood. Lady Sabrina had been the standard he had set for his improvement: to be as good a man as Lady Sabrina was a woman, to be the sort of man a woman like Lady Sabrina would one day trust enough to share a life with.
Oh, if not for this meeting with Malcolm he would turn this carriage around immediately and kiss her breathless. If she could be persuaded to tell him everything she hadn’t told him already—about her marriage and Lord Damion and whatever other secrets she’d kept careful and safe—they would both know each other better than anyone in the world knew them. That was a connection that would surpass status and money and past mistakes.
This meeting with Malcolm.
The rising tingle was replaced with a flush of fear.
Malcolm.
Mr. Gordon had made this meeting sound simple. Malcolm was insisting Harry pay off his debt in person. Harry would go to Mr. Gordon’s office and collect the payoff amount he and Joshua would then take directly to the appointment. Harry’s goal in the meeting was to complete the payoff and receive an official receipt.
Harry had been anxious about returning to London and seeing Malcolm again, but leaving Rose Haven had been the bigger regret and therefore deadened the reasonable dread for the upcoming confrontation.
If Lady Sabrina happening upon Harry in that alley hadn’t been a coincidence, could he count it as a coincidence that Malcolm’s men had been there too? They had asked him about Lord Damion before they’d broken him into pieces. He’d avoided those memories so strongly for weeks that he hadn’t given that detail enough thought. The letter he’d received from Lord Damion at the conclusion of their meeting had never been found.
A dozen questions piled up in his mind. He considered asking Joshua, but Joshua was his security, and Harry didn’t want to transfer his anxieties to the large footman.
Harry had been sitting still, needles poised but silent as all these bits of information had snapped together in his mind. Now, he began to slowly go back to his knitting, planning how he would approach Mr. Gordon with what he now knew. It would not be the meeting Mr. Gordon was expecting.
Knit.
Purl.
Knit.
Purl.
Click.
Clack.
Click.
Harry was forty minutes late for the appointment with Malcolm but didn’t feel nervous until he recognized the man who stood outside of the currently closed club where the meeting was to take place. The man was one of the men from the alley that morning almost a month ago. Harry caught his breath and felt sweat gathering at his hairline.
He reminded himself that Joshua would be there and that he and Mr. Gordon had gone over every detail—or, well, as many details as they could once Mr. Gordon realized that Harry wasn’t angry and that he wanted to do this to help protect Sabrina.
This will work, he told himself, sitting up straight and taking a deep breath. It has to.
As the carriage came to a stop, Harry thanked the heavens he was no longer a drinking man. If he were, he’d have gone to a pub instead of Mr. Gordon’s office as soon as he’d figured things out and drunk himself silly rather than confront this situation. But he wouldn’t be the kind of man to run away like that anymore. If he could play this out the way he and Mr. Gordon had planned it, then in an hour’s time, he could put this entire experience behind him. Only then could he figure out how to approach Sabrina with what he knew.
“Remember my instructions, Joshua,” Harry said when the man put his hand on the door pull. “Stay close, don’t show fear, and if I tell you to go or bang on the door or the wall or whatever four times, you run for the nearest constable no matter what else is happening.”
“Yes, sir.”
Joshua’s enthusiasm for London had ebbed once Harry had r
eturned from his meeting with Mr. Gordon, serious and intense. He’d given Joshua instructions while they wound deeper into the side streets and alleyways that were Malcolm’s hunting grounds.
Joshua opened the carriage door to let himself out first, removed Harry’s crutches, and then helped Harry descend from the carriage. Harry kept his chin lifted and his attention on everything around him. Malcolm’s man stepped toward them, but Harry kept his eyes on the opening of the street some yards away while purposely taking his time in finding the right position on his crutches.
When Jack walked across the alley as though strolling down that street, Harry felt himself relax. Sabrina’s man had gotten Mr. Gordon’s message and come without question. Jack nodded in greeting, and Harry lifted his chin a touch in acknowledgment. Two other men followed a few steps behind Jack—his boys were taller and broader than their father. Harry’s confidence increased.
Malcolm’s man pushed open the door, allowing Joshua and Harry to enter the club. Harry was tempted to use his crutch to sweep the man’s legs out from under him, but he only had to remember the black club the man likely had hidden beneath his coat to think better of it. He would not win a physical confrontation with this man, but he had to believe he could best Malcolm at this meeting of minds now that Harry’s mind was clear.
His gut churned as he stepped into the club, flooded with memories of how clubs just like this one had chipped away at his character one chink at a time. He did not place all the blame on these establishments—he’d been a willing participant—but they certainly played their part. Not only on the wasting of his life but on the wasting of so many other lives just like his.
Early on during his time in London he’d remarked to a friend how generous it was that the clubs gave free drinks to the patrons. Now he could see that was part of the trap. The women the club kept on hand were another portion, and another set of victims. The clubs were appealing to the worst part of young men, completely capturing their senses and their will in the process.
Once Harry’s eyes adjusted to the dim room, he recognized another man standing next to a door on the far side of the room. As Harry had told Mr. Gordon, he’d only ever seen three individual men with Malcolm and suspected that was all the security Malcolm kept on hand. Certainly not an army, and one fewer man than the four Harry had on his side—though Jack would not come into the club unless they remained inside for fifteen full minutes. Poor Joshua had no idea what was truly happening, but he was sturdy, and Harry felt sure he would be an asset if things went poorly.
Rakes and Roses (Proper Romance Regency) Page 22