‘The most important things are always the hardest to talk about, Jim, especially if you are scared, but things are always easier when you do.’
The boy lay staring out of the infirmary window, speaking when spoken to, but answering mostly in non-committal grunts. He refused to talk about his past or his future, his hopes or his fears. Three visits in and he still wasn’t inclined to trust her no matter what she said or did, and Hattie couldn’t blame him. The poor thing had had such a hard life and in his mind, even that was over. She had been to that dark place and wouldn’t wish it on a soul, let alone a child.
‘You do know that you do not have to stay in bed, don’t you?’
‘There ain’t much point in getting out of it, now, is there?’
‘Apart from lying down all day and staring at the ceiling being as dull as dishwater. You must be very bored, Jim.’ She left her chair to walk to the window, using opening it as an excuse to talk to his face rather than the back of his head. She sniffed the warm breeze and sighed, smiling. ‘It is such a lovely spring day... I could take you out in it if you want.’
‘No thanks.’ He lifted his eyes long enough for her to witness the belligerence in them. ‘I can’t walk, remember?’ That was said as if she were a blithering idiot, in the sort of tone that had it come from one of her siblings she would have bitten back. As almost every response she had received in the hour she had been there had been delivered in much the same hostile way, her patience was wearing thin. So she swallowed the pithy retort on the tip of her tongue, that he likely would be able to walk if he stopped being such a stubborn fool and allowed Dr Cribbs to help him. Losing her temper with Jim wouldn’t convince him and would only alienate him further.
‘We could use the wheeled...’
‘I’m not going in that stupid chair!’ He spat that, his freckled face contorted with sheer venom. ‘Not that you could push it anyway, you ugly, lame cow!’
Hattie counted to ten and forced another smile as she perched beside him on the mattress, determined not to allow him to force her away no matter how hard he tried. ‘I could get one of the porters to push it and we could go feed the ducks. I saw some the other day not too far from here on the way to a friend’s, in a lovely little park just off Beaverbrook Square. There are ducklings too and it’s a quaint, secluded spot where nobody would bother us. I find a change of scenery always improves the mood.’
‘I said no!’
‘Maybe tomorrow then?’ She hadn’t planned on coming to the infirmary again so soon but as she had nothing else on except her mother’s knitting circle and she was proving to be the world’s worst knitter, she might as well. It wasn’t as if she was ever likely to produce a wearable sock. ‘If you can be dressed and ready by eleven then...’ Out of nowhere, two furious hands lunged with such force that Hattie was thrust from the mattress before she could brace herself, landing hard on her bottom on the floor. The jarring caused pain to shoot up her damaged leg, acute enough to wind her.
‘I said no, cow! Didn’t you hear me, or are you stupid as well as lame?’ His hands curled into fists on the blankets. ‘You ugly, limping, worthless, do-gooding hag!’
She tried to get up, using the mattress for support and he smacked his fist on her hand, leaving her beached like a whale and feeling so helpless again something snapped inside. She hated being a victim. Loathed feeling powerless with every fibre of her being.
‘I might be lame but at least I am not a miserable, pathetic coward! I am not stupid either, because I had the good sense to accept the doctor’s help and I did that because I knew I was worth more than wasting my life in a bed. You make me sick lying there so bloody minded and angry at the world! As if you are the only person who has ever suffered bad luck!’
Hattie used her good leg to shuffle her bottom around so she could use the windowsill as support, then summoned every ounce of strength to drag herself upright. It wasn’t pretty but she managed it, and by the time she was standing, she was so furious she couldn’t calm down even if she’d wanted to.
‘So your bones got broken? Boo-hoo, poor you, so did mine—then the subsequent infection nearly killed me!’ Tit for tat probably wasn’t the best way to deal with him, but she was past caring. ‘But do I go around talking to people like dirt or thumping them? Of course I don’t because I am not a martyr who feels hard done by but does nothing to help himself!’ Her own fists were clenched now. So tight she could feel her nails digging into her palm. The distant voice of reason cautioned her to count to ten again, but she was so furious she ignored it.
‘I am not sure how to break this to you, Jim, but bad things happen all the time to the rest of the inhabitants of this planet too. Tragic things. Unfair and unjust things. Deaths, poverty, hunger, accidents, abandonments, illnesses and injuries! But thankfully, for every snivelling, gutless coward like you who fills every waking moment with self-pity and takes it out on people who do not deserve it, the rest work tirelessly to find a small triumph in that adversity. They rise above it, make the best of it, adapt, work, help others and fight! And thank goodness, as I shudder to think what this earth would be like if it was filled with bitter and twisted surrendering imbeciles like you!’
She wanted to shake him. Punch a wall. Kick something. Hard. But as kicking something would end up with her on her bottom again she settled for a scathing look of absolute disgust. ‘Shame on you, you horrid, spiteful and lame little boy!’
Hattie didn’t wait for a response and dragged her dratted right leg kicking and screaming out of the room, clomped down the stairs and shoved her arms into the sleeves of her pelisse. Then, angrier than she had been since her own accident had crushed all her dreams, she slammed the front door of the infirmary closed behind her.
She ranted to herself all the way to Long Acre and as she skirted the shabby streets which bordered Seven Dials, and was still fuming by the time she hit Great Russell Street where she realised that she was less than five minutes from Jasper’s house. As neither he nor Izzy deserved to entertain such a grumpy guest, and because she was likely a good hour earlier than they expected, she took herself to the small green in the centre of the square and sat on a bench to calm down. She might have managed it too until she spied her brother’s phaeton leaving the vicinity of the house she was about to visit.
In case he saw her, Hattie darted behind a bush as more anger bloomed afresh when she recalled his lecture at this morning’s breakfast table and put two and two together. If Freddie had done what she thought he had done, then she was going to break his interfering nose for a second time!
‘What did my insufferable big brother want?’ Hattie hadn’t bothered shrugging out of her coat before she marched into Jasper’s study. Behind her Mrs Mimms gave him a wary look as she quietly closed the door and left them to it. ‘And don’t you dare try to tell me the wretch wasn’t just here because I saw him!’
‘And a cheery good morning to you, my friend.’ He should be tickled to have an excuse to use the exact same greeting to two separate angry Fitzroy siblings in the space of half an hour, because such coincidences usually raised a smile, but he was still in the midst of the doldrums caused by the eldest who had only just left. Or at least it seemed as if he had, but with all the fog in his brain and his current tendency to stare blankly at nothing for hours at a time, he could be mistaken. To confirm it, Jasper turned to the clock where the minute hand had only moved on five minutes from when he had last checked it at noon as Freddie left. ‘You are early. I thought we said one?’
‘We did but...’ She let out a frustrated growl as she tossed her gloves on to his desk. ‘It has been one of those mornings, and my idiot brother is, frankly, the last straw.’ In another quirky, ironic coincidence, her pretty straw bonnet also hit his blotter with a thud. ‘I am not angry at you.’
‘I am relieved to hear it as I have already been shouted at by a Fitzroy this morning and it wasn’t pleasant.’
‘Let me guess!’ Angry fingers made short work of the buttons of her pelisse. ‘You sitting beside me again at the Renshaws’ following our cosy tête-à-tête at Lady Bulphan’s has caused idle tongues to wag, and he doesn’t want to see my flawless reputation tarnished by my ill-considered association with a notorious scoundrel with more notches on his bedpost than I have had hot dinners.’ She wagged her finger frowning, mimicking Freddie to perfection in both manner, tone and expression.
‘While society accepts and understands that the male of the species are at the mercy of their urges, Harriet, it holds its females to a different standard and no decent gentleman will marry a girl who appears to have such loose morals and flouts the rules of propriety so openly as to entertain an infamous and unrepentant rake.’ She rolled her lovely eyes heavenwards as she tossed the garment aside and slumped in the wingback opposite.
‘Words to that effect.’ Good grief it was good to see her, and perhaps, because this seemed doomed to be the last time he ever had her alone, Jasper drank in the sight. ‘A tad politer, with no reference to notches and infamy, but perhaps delivered with more malice.’
‘But the gist is you are to stay away from his sister.’
Jasper’s smile was stretched. ‘I believe he managed that line almost verbatim.’
‘I hope you told him to go to hell in a handcart verbatim too, as that is precisely what I did when he dared to lecture me this morning! It is beyond me why he feels he has to behave like my father when I have a perfectly good father already. One who treats me like an adult, allows me to make my own choices and who doesn’t fuss and carry on like Freddie does.’
She snatched up the paperweight near her elbow and passed the glass ball from hand to hand agitated, at home here already and completely comfortable in his company after such a short but enlightening reacquaintance.
That that had happened so fast was staggering really. Finding an unlikely friendship after almost a decade of knowing one another was one of fate’s strange and delightful twists. Which made him all the sadder that the friendship had to end in its current form.
‘What infuriates me is that my suddenly holier-than-thou, straw-for-brains brother seems to have forgotten what a shocking scandal he was before he settled down with Dorothea. Either that, or he remembers every moment of his debauchery with the opposite sex with absolute clarity and therefore believes every other man will behave in the same manner to any woman in possession of a pulse.’
‘To be fair to Freddie, I am as much, if not more, of a shocking scandal than he was.’ And any day now was likely to become more of one because he couldn’t hide Izzy for ever, and for her sake he didn’t want to. Being hidden away and always having to apologise for who you were was not the life his little girl deserved, and he owed it to Cora to ensure she grew up proud and confident. Acknowledged by someone and openly protected. Which meant that Hattie’s brother might have a valid point.
When the news broke—and realistically that was a matter of when not if when the capital had prying eyes everywhere—that Cora’s child also bore his surname and lived under his roof, all the worst speculation from the past would be dredged up and embellished as it was shouted from the rooftops. Such infamy might not harm his business—because conversely his wealthy patrons seemed to want him to be every inch the libertine he was painted—but it would harm his social standing. At least in the short term. He’d become a complete social pariah again as far as the ton was concerned.
The kind-hearted and noble Hattie did not deserve to be dragged down with him and, as much as it pained him to have to bow down to Freddie’s logic, as Jasper knew first-hand, scandals were always worse for a woman, even if none of it was her fault.
While people had patted him on the back during his much gossiped about time with Cora, they crossed the road to avoid her. The gossip about her had been vile and cruel, and he shuddered to think how bad it would have got if they had also learned about Izzy. Which was one of the main reasons Cora had had to leave. ‘My reputation is also far worse.’
‘Oh, I know that.’ Hattie waved that glaring truth away as of no consequence. ‘But to be fair to you, it was hardly your fault that you were disinherited and had to open a gentlemen’s club to make ends meet.’ That she knew that wasn’t a surprise when it had been common knowledge for years. ‘And maybe you did run a bit fast and loose when you were younger, but—’ she gestured to the space around them ‘—you’ve become a successful businessman, have made a good home and are determined to raise your child in it when most of the gentlemen of the ton tend to brush their indiscretions under the carpet. From where I am sitting you seem to have grown up in the last few years, and done so with admirable decency.’
‘Time marches on.’
‘It does indeed and with age comes wisdom and all. And while we are about it, why don’t we add all the rest of the wise old sayings which are supposed to make us feel better but never do.’ She scoffed at them all, her temper calming. That was obvious by the way she gently put the paperweight back in its proper place rather than slamming it down with the same force as she had picked it up.
Part of him wanted to believe his mere presence helped soothe her as hers did him. The other part—the more reasoned and measured part—understood he wasn’t being fair in that wish. Just because she had been there in his hour of need did not give him the right to dominate her hours.
She exhaled as she shook her head, exasperation leaking from every pore. ‘I am certainly very different from who I was then too—except in my brother’s eyes. To him, I am worse than the child I was. To him, I have regressed and changed into the human incarnation of little Izzy’s porcelain doll. So fragile, pathetic with my dratted limp, and so suggestible and ignorant of the harsh realities of life that I must be cosseted at every juncture. It is as if he doesn’t know me at all.’
‘I think I said as much verbatim to him.’
‘Thank you.’ Her smile warmed his soul and destroyed it at the same time. ‘But I doubt he listened. He is too wedded to his outrage. Determined to see seduction at every turn. As if you would seduce me now!’ She scoffed at that, her eyes dipping as she shook her head. ‘Me, of all people! How stupid is he to consider such nonsense?’
Jasper couldn’t decide if she discounted any chance of that because of his reputation, his new circumstances, her lack of attraction to him or her own self-consciousness about her ‘dratted’ leg.
‘So what else did the cretin say when he read you the Riot Act?’
‘That I am not to consort with you alone in public ever again.’
She was silent for a moment then her temper surged afresh. ‘How dare he! How dare he! I am a grown woman, nearing the age of majority, and whomever I choose to consort with is no business of his!’
Jasper reached across the table to cover her hand with his, needing to touch her even though he had no right. As always, the innocent contact still reminded him that he was a man. ‘We have become fast friends you and I, yes?’ She stared at their hands for a moment before nodding. ‘Then as your friend, one who cares deeply about your welfare, I have to concede your brother is right. You are a born rescuer to your core, and I adore that about you, but my life is complicated. My reputation has always been precarious to say the least. With Cora gone it has become more so.
‘When the world discovers Isabel, which they will, not everyone will be as forgiving as you have been about her existence, and you will be judged by association. Your faultless morals will be brought into question and mud sticks.’
‘I do not care about that.’
‘Of course you don’t, because you are a hopeless rescuer. But I do.’ He laced his fingers through hers. ‘So I shan’t be importuning you again in public. I will not add fuel to a fire that could burn you to cinders but only scorch me. You have already been through enough pain, Hattie, and I will not be the cause of more.’
She digested this and went to argue, but thankfully, an excited Izzy burst through the door just then.