Annie had had to stay awake in order to be sure she wouldn’t miss meeting the old woman and she’d not been able to rest in the back of the rickety cart. The blanket she’d sat on had been used more by animals than by people, and she’d be glad to get away from the scent.
The darkness had lingered and Annie rested with her reticule held close while she leaned on her satchel. The wheels on the cart must have nearly worn off the axles because it wobbled with a regularity that Annie had become accustomed to after an hour. They took a detour from the main road and the cart stopped at the ragged camp, but it was a true home. The grass had been worn away. Wood gathered. Chickens were scratching about. Stumps had been cut for seats around the fire. Canvases had been stretched at another firepit, making a three-sided enclosure to trap the heat and keep whomever might sit under it warm. Firewood was stacked just inside and around the edges, adding to the walled feeling of it.
When the cart stopped, she put her reticule on the satchel and pushed them to the edge of the cart, then jumped out. The old woman walked to Annie’s side and Annie snatched the reticule close.
The woman’s eyes glittered and she took the satchel. ‘You act as if I might steal.’
‘I think you no different than I am,’ Annie said.
The woman cackled. ‘Then I will keep my eyes on my silver,’ she said.
She put the satchel down by a stump.
‘Pardon me,’ Annie said, walking to the woods. ‘I shall need a chamber pot.’
‘Behind the canvas,’ the woman said. ‘It’s hidden by the ivy. I wouldn’t get too close as there are stinging nettles there and you’ll be itching all the way to Scotland.’
Annie took the reticule with her and hurried as much as she could. Then when she returned, the woman seemed to have forgotten her presence.
In an hour or so, the soup was done and she handed Annie a bowl.
‘Ed will travel with you on the mail coach,’ the old woman said as they sat around the camp eating their breakfast.
‘A mail coach?’ Annie took a bite of the rough stew, trying to force her teeth tight enough to gnaw the last bite of meat softer. It didn’t work. She swallowed the chunk.
‘Yes. Tomorrow you’ll both take it and when you arrive in Scotland, you’ll be able to find your sister.’
The old woman’s eyes darted to the road. A rider on a horse was on the road, moving in their direction.
The men in the camp moved closer to the central part, all eyes focused on the road.
The man slid from his horse, still too far away for his face to be clear. Annie lowered the bowl.
The man walked closer, his hat and the riding boots making him appear taller than any of the men around her. It wasn’t only the width of his shoulders that made everyone in the camp take notice. She knew it. He walked with the assurance of having an army behind him, or maybe within him.
She’d recognised Barrett in the dark, she realised. As she’d known she would.
She could feel her body becoming smaller as he strode towards them.
She took in air, forcing herself still and to sit straight, waiting.
‘Appears you have a parcel that I’ve been looking for.’ His words were to the crone, but his eyes were on Annie.
He kept moving nearer and placed himself with nothing between the two of them. She realised he’d led the horse a few steps closer to the men. A barrier on four legs.
‘My daughter. She’d be for sale, but you likely don’t have any coin on you.’
Barrett didn’t move. ‘How much did she pay you to take her?’
‘My daughter pays me nothing and she won’t stop eating. She costs more than she’s worth, but I feel like a matchmaking mama and wouldn’t mind seeing her with a man such as yourself.’
‘You should keep to your own business,’ Annie spoke to Barrett, keeping her words strong.
‘Right now that is you. Let’s go,’ he said to Annie. ‘I’m tired. Your parents are worried. Your mother has had to send for the physician.’
‘Tell her I’m fine,’ Annie stood, walked behind the fire and put the bowl on a stump. ‘The physician will take care of her. I’m not leaving.’
‘You will.’
The men around her stood.
‘I’ll take you all on one at a time, or together. That’s best. It’s over quicker.’
‘Don’t get his blood on the rug,’ the old crone said, looking at her men and kicking up dust. ‘I just cleaned it.’ She cackled.
Annie crossed her arms and stared at him. She forced all her strength into her legs and her glare. ‘I’m going to be with my sister. She needs me more than my parents do. And if she wants to return home, I’ll find a way to get her there.’
‘Your sister, Honour, is going to have a baby in a few months. She fell in love with the man—Reginald—who brought wares to your father’s shop. They ran away to Scotland to marry.’
Annie took a step back. That was true. Honour had told her Reginald was taking her to live with relatives while he found a house. His uncle in Scotland had work for him.
‘How do you know?’
‘I stayed several days in your home. Your father told me every bit of family lore and tale he knew. A letter to a man in Manchester who knew Reginald verified your father’s suspicions.’
The thought of Honour having a child while being so far from family hit Annie in the pit of her stomach. ‘I must get to her now. I have no choice.’
‘You do not even have her correct location. I do.’
‘I can’t believe you.’
‘You can. I paid quite well for that information,’ Barrett said, reaching out to her. ‘You can’t help her. You’re only risking yourself. I’m taking you back to your home.’
She swung, arm extended.
He darted his head back, but she grazed his hat, causing it to fall. It plopped down on to a patch of mud, settling into the mire. He stared at the mud a moment, then back at Annie. ‘I should have just let you hit me.’
‘I can help my sister,’ she said.
‘If she needs help getting a hat off her head.’ He shook his head, momentarily distracted.
‘I told you to not swing the arm. And don’t aim at the skull.’ He pointed to his nose, his temple, his jaw and his chin. ‘Four points to hit.’ He held up the fingers on one hand besides his thumb. ‘Four.’
‘True love,’ the old woman said and laughed. ‘A man teaching his beloved how to hit him.’ She looked at Annie and moved her arm wide. ‘A child hits like that.’ Then she moved her fist straight. ‘This is how a woman says good morning.’ She laughed again.
‘Eyes speak louder than words and yours said plenty. You learned nothing I taught you. You did not practise at all,’ Barrett said.
‘I practised.’
‘Not enough.’ He gazed at her. ‘Go back with me and I’ll see that your sister has more help.’
‘Why didn’t you do this before?’
He shrugged. ‘It didn’t occur to me and I didn’t need to. You can’t change the path of every leaf that falls from a tree. Your sister is where she needs to be for now.’
Annie turned and the old woman lifted Annie’s satchel, holding the bag out to her.
‘What’s in it?’ he asked the woman.
‘Nothing of value,’ the hag answered. ‘At least, not any more.’
‘That’s not true. It has my jewelled pin.’
The woman poked out her bottom lip. ‘I am certain it does not have a pin inside. You must have left it behind.’
Annie stalked forward, opened the case and looked inside, rummaging. Then she glared at the old woman. ‘It’s gone.’
‘Ah. Must have fallen out.’
Annie looked from the woman to Barrett.
‘I don’t have it.’ He lowered his chin, eyes still staring at her, and held out a hand to indicate she leave.
‘My pin.’ She looked at the woman, pointing. ‘I have had it since birth. It was my grandmother’s.’
The woman raised both hands. ‘I do not have jewels for my hair. The other women would be jealous.’
‘You thief.’
‘Yes.’ The woman nodded. ‘I have a skill. And you, miss?’
Barrett reached in his waistcoat pocket and held out a coin. ‘I want to buy a jewelled pin.’
‘Fancy that,’ the woman said. ‘I have one for sale.’ She pulled it out of the folds of her dress, blew on it, then wiped it on her skirt before exchanging it for the coin.
Barrett took the bauble and tucked it in his waistcoat pocket.
His eyes challenged Annie to ask for it back. Instead, she turned to the old woman.
‘You were paid to take me to my sister.’
‘Of course.’ The woman batted her lashes. ‘And if you are still here in the morning, we will do just that.’ She glanced at Barrett. ‘Sound fair to you?’
He didn’t answer the question, but turned to Annie, grabbing the satchel. ‘Let’s go. You can verify everything I said about your sister by writing to her when I get you back to your home. I’ll help your sister if you leave with me,’ he said. ‘Consider your odds, your sister’s welfare and your own. You only have one good option. But it’s not my choice to make.’
Annie looked at him and then at the old woman. Then she tossed her reticule to the woman. The woman caught it, almost dropping it, shock in her eyes.
‘There’s the rest I owe you. Thank you very much.’
‘You are such an innocent,’ Barrett said. She should never have given the woman more funds.
‘Yes, I am,’ Annie said, stalking beside him. She turned back, shouting to the men. ‘Make sure she shares everything with you. I had two jewelled pins in my satchel.’
Barrett opened his mouth, but she had a look of too much innocence. If there was another pin, he wasn’t staying to find it.
He looked at the bedraggled miss and his body reacted. Instantly, he swore at himself. This was not how he was supposed to feel. Something had gone wrong in his head the moment he’d seen her wrist and it still grew inside him like a wound that wouldn’t heal. And he’d never had a wound that wouldn’t heal.
He tugged the ribbons on his horse and stepped towards the road. Her footsteps sounded at his side.
The inn they’d passed earlier would make a good place to get the mud and filth off him and keep her safe while putting distance between them.
For the moment, he had to get her safely away from the camp.
They traipsed along without speaking until they reached the main road.
‘Why could you not stay in your warm house with your servants?’ he spoke, the words echoing in his mind.
‘I did not ask you to follow me. Why didn’t you stay in your warm house with your servants?’
A thousand answers entered his mind. None acceptable to him, but all hinging on the same fact that Annie had been traipsing off after her sister without any chaperon and the woman could not disable a gnat.
‘My horse needed the exercise,’ he said. ‘It would have been unacceptable to get my stable master out of bed that early to do what I had hired him to do in my stead, like exercise my horse.’ He softened his voice. ‘Don’t you agree it would have been very bad manners on my part to make the poor man traipse out in the countryside this early?’
‘Positively. I would never do such a thing. I would get up myself and tackle the problem.’
‘You are so thoughtful and considerate.’ His face was away from her and he knew she couldn’t see him look to the heavens and frown. ‘You did not make me ride all the way to Scotland. I appreciate that.’
She grumbled, a choking cough sound. Apparently his sarcasm hadn’t been well disguised. A faux pas. Perhaps her ire was not of the intensity that he felt inside himself, but he’d ruined a hat and his boots weren’t doing much better on the muddy path.
The road was little more than a rut and would remain the same until they reached the inn and nothing would change that.
But they’d make faster time if she rode.
He tightened his hold on the ribbons in one hand, then walked back and reached for Annie’s arm, but stopped midway and let his hand drop. He didn’t need to be touching her. Inwardly he cursed himself.
‘Come on.’ He stepped over another mound of dirt and turned to see that she followed.
Annie gathered the sides of her skirts, taking a broad step over the uneven ground, and he saw the slippers she wore. Those had never been out of London before the journey.
He pulled the horse even with her and tied the satchel to the saddle. ‘You can ride?’
‘Not very well,’ she said.
‘I’ll get you situated.’ Although it would be impossible without touching her. Well, it couldn’t be helped.
She put her hand on his arm and he grabbed her waist and turned, sweeping her off her feet and holding her in the air, putting the horse right in front of her.
He tried not to feel anything through his fingertips. But he could feel so much naked skin through the layers of dress and corset, and—no—his mind was going in the wrong direction. Chemise. Chemise, those shapeless bags of a garment that only had any form when they touched the skin underneath and called out for a man’s eyes to take note.
He sat her so she could grasp the pommel.
He took a second, keeping his eyes locked on hers while he mentally pried his fingers from her waist, releasing, he knew, his nearness to a well-formed, feminine garment that could have taken a good hour of his time just to explore. Forget about how much time he could devote to everything near it. ‘I’m not happy with you. I do not like being your chaperon.’
Because if he hadn’t been her chaperon he was blasted sure he could get her away from any other chaperon on the face of the earth.
Turning his head, he only kept the barest glimpse on her so she could slip her opposite foot into the stirrup. She perched sideways on the saddle and he stepped back.
‘Can you hang on?’ he asked, reaching again for the ribbons.
‘I think...not.’ The horse took a step and he caught her as she slid into his arms, her foot dangling in the stirrup. His nose told him she smelled more like a saddle blanket than a woman, but everything in his hands screamed female to his inner and outer extremities. And his brain wafted the scent of bedcovers in front of him.
He put her down quickly, but the damage was done. He shoved away the thoughts of breasts, of hips, of soft curves tangling around him.
He gritted his teeth and stepped closer to the horse, taking in a big whiff of sweaty beast, leather and manure. Hoping to cleanse his mind of the scents that were dancing along inside him.
‘My parents never let me ride,’ she said. ‘They didn’t want us trampled.’
‘That’s thoughtful of them.’ Very thoughtful, but not for him and not in this situation.
Oh, hell, it was out of his hands. At least she was, for the moment. A good thing. Certainly. But he could still feel her waist. And the chemise. He was certain it had been washed so many times that it had softened and now caressed her, hugging close.
His feelings pounded into his body and his head was trying to talk some sense into him, and it was getting him nowhere. He imagined his brain shrugging its way into the size of a peanut and telling him he was on his own.
His intentions vibrated from one side of his thoughts to the other, but his mind focused on her legs. It was as if he still touched her. He tried to push his imaginings a different direction with his words. ‘Your parents need to hire a companion for you. One with eyes in the back of her head and who does not mind chasing after you in the night.’
She squared her shoulders and raised her face to look at him. ‘You did not have to come after me. I was fine until you did. I’m not enjoying listening to your complaints or looking at your sour face.’ She lifted the edge of her skirt to move forward. ‘And I could have helped my sister. It might have taken me longer, but I could have.’
‘If one of the ruffians you ran away with decided to do you harm, you would have been at their mercy.’ He followed at her side, pleased for an argument. Anything was better than the thoughts of her chemise.
And then he thought of Annie being damaged at the hands of her companions.
‘Do you see?’ His body shook. His voice thundered. ‘Do you see what you just did? You left your safe house to travel with people who would steal a pin.’ Or a man who would notice softness and curves.
‘It’s not my fault. I am an innocent, apparently, and can make friends with all sorts of low types.’ She swaggered her shoulders and he took the jab as she began to walk straight through the muddiest part of the road.
He steered her to the edge where the grass kept the mud at bay.
‘Your mother is terrified she will never see you again. I am not used to being summoned by a distraught mother. Nor do I wish to take care of someone who does not know to be happy with all the baubles of life.’
The road was dryer and he kept walking. Even with the horse, he had to walk. Riding two abreast with an arm around her and her legs dangling down from her skirt would likely do what a hundred jabs at Gentleman Jackson’s hadn’t been able to do. It would take him to the ground. He switched hands with the ribbons and walked fast enough so that he could move the horse between them.
‘Life is not about baubles.’ She walked in the road and Barrett again steered her to the more stable grass. He had no idea of what it was like to live in a cage with only two others to be friends with, then to lose them.
She loved her family. She loved her parents. She didn’t like having her mother at her elbow at every dance, smiling at eligible men. She was certain her mother had scared away all the ones she didn’t deem eligible for her daughters by giving them that sweet drop dead, you big hairy beast smile. A few of the eligible ones had certainly noticed how well the Carson sisters were guarded and kept their distance.
Oh, goodness, her mother would have abhorred it if a man spoke more than four words to Annie if he’d not been someone her mother deemed worthy of matrimony.
‘You have been eating too many confections.’ Barrett held a limb back so it would not hit her as she walked by. ‘It makes you believe in nothing but sweetness. The world is not so simple. I learned that at my father’s knee.’
‘He should have taught you about more than that.’
‘Oh, he did.’
‘I dare say you would make a horrible tutor, unless it is for boxing.’ She lifted the edge of her dirt-caked skirt.
Her shoes were not made for anything more uneven than a few cobblestones and he’d begun walking faster. She pulled her dress up and scrambled to keep up with him. Now, he didn’t seem to care if he left her behind. He was in a foul mood.
She’d never heard a man curse so much. In fact, she’d hardly ever heard a man curse. He strung the words together in such a way it almost sounded as if he spoke a foreign language. It didn’t seem the time to remind him she was a lady and one didn’t talk so in front of a lady. She wasn’t even sure if one spoke so in front of another man.
And legs. She didn’t know why he cursed legs.
‘Would you stop with the foul language?’ she asked, scurrying to keep abreast, lifting her skirt higher so it wouldn’t drag on the uneven ruts. ‘I do not even know what half those words mean.’
He stopped. He looked at her. He cocked his head. ‘You just need to be quiet. I am not used to having a woman around. My apologies for the language, I’m just damned...’ He paused, took in a breath. ‘It’s just not something I’m used to. Other people take care of my—female problems.’
‘Well, I’m not used to being around a man and you don’t hear me swearing.’
‘Oh, by all means, go right ahead. It will make the trip go faster.’
‘I don’t think it really would.’
‘This is why you are kept locked away in your parents’ house. You don’t understand a man’s thoughts.’
‘You can’t tell me you planned this.’
‘Miss Carson. It seems you are the one who planned this, if you remember.’
‘Well, I did.’
‘You take off with a woman who is a stranger—’
‘She’s got the highest recommendations. The servants have spoken of her for years. She saved the rag-and-bone collector’s life with one of her herbal mixtures. And she sells the best shawls, which surprises me given that she dresses in rags.’
‘Spare me.’
She hurried along behind him. ‘I didn’t ask you to come after me. In fact, I waited until you were gone before I left.’
He paused, then looked at her. He took in a breath, then he smiled. ‘Thank you for that consideration. I take full responsibility. And I take full responsibility for getting you safely home which may be more than a mere mortal can handle.’
‘If you can manage Gentleman Jackson’s, I should be no problem.’
‘You are.’
He turned and strode away, and she kept up with him even though it meant that she had to take the straighter course which was through the mud. Her slipper mired in the road. When she raised her foot, the shoe stayed behind. She turned, putting her toes down, holding her dress out of the muck.
She twisted the tail of her skirt, draped it over her arm and bent to pry the shoe out of the mud, hearing the gasp as it released its captive. Her stockings would never be white again.
He continued walking along and she stood holding her skirt tail over one arm and a muddied shoe in the other.
‘Mr Barrett.’ Her voice rose. ‘Mr Barrett. Wait up. You are leading me through a mess.’
He turned, his mouth widened and he stared. She dropped her shoe, ignoring the squish of putting a foot inside it, and fisted her hands on her skirt and took off after him, the shoes flopping in the mud.
She caught up with him. ‘I wore my sturdiest shoes, but I did not expect to walk in a swamp.’ She raised her chin and wiped her muddied hand on her dress. ‘Your arm, please.’
‘This is not a soirée,’ he said, looking at the mud remaining on her hand before holding out his elbow. ‘Trotting out in the night like a babe walking right into the fire. Stumbling headfirst into it. Unable to pull yourself back until it is too late.’
She’d trusted a stranger. Him. She’d left the woman she’d hired to take her closer to her sister and trusted him.
‘I have money for you to give to my sister,’ she said.
She paused then, reached to open her coat and searched her spencer for the pocket she’d sewn inside. She pulled out folded notes. ‘There’s more.’
He took the paper, turned it over and examined it. ‘How did you get this?’
‘I’ve been selling the dresses my sisters left behind. No one has noticed.’
‘I am impressed. You do have a skill.’
‘I was taking the money to my sister.’
He mumbled a growl under his breath, but didn’t speak at first. He held the notes up, then paused. ‘Is that all you have?’ He held the notes steady, then thrust them back at her. ‘Keep them.’
‘I shall.’ She snapped them from his hand.
He just stood there, shaking his head as she tucked the money inside her spencer.
‘I do not know how anyone could be so protected as you,’ he said. ‘I can’t figure out who is the aberration. You or me.’
‘In my life, it would be you,’ she said.
‘Same here.’
‘I made a mistake.’ She moved forward, her words quietened. ‘Yes. I made a mistake. I see that now. I should have hired you at the beginning, but then, one doesn’t hire a viscount’s son.’
‘No. One does not.’ He raised his hand, and extended a finger and pointed to the trees canopying the road. ‘You left a house of people who care for you and ran off. You risked your entire future. Your life. For what? To chase off after a sister who has no more sense than a sheep without a shepherd?’
‘She is having a baby.’
‘Your sisters were senseless. Your parents want better for you.’
‘I’m sure they do,’ she said. ‘So do I.’
‘You left with an old man and old woman who could have sold you to anyone.’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No. I know of her. She would do no such thing. Many other women in London have hired her for help.’
‘How much do you really know of that old bag of tricks?’
She shook her head, not answering. The woman had helped Honour. Honour had made a mistake and decided that she could only redeem herself by marriage and the woman had helped her travel without anyone finding out.
‘Your risk was too great,’ he said.
She walked faster, catching up to him. ‘Try to stop me. I have practised defending myself,’ she said, moving forward.
He reached out, dropping the ribbons, one arm clamping on her like a vice.
She stopped and let herself stumble sideways into him, then she slammed her foot near his boot. He moved his foot aside and she bent her knees, causing him to step forward with the pull of her weight. Then she pushed back her head, not hitting him, but stopping then to turn and look at his face.
‘Elbow,’ he growled at her ear.
She regained her footing and slammed her elbow straight back, and it brushed his coat as he moved aside. ‘Try bending one knee next time.’ He remained behind her. ‘Drop one knee. Lower, twist and slam.’
She tried it, turning into the elbow punch. He caught her as she stumbled and kept her upright. He felt sturdier than her house and she felt more secure in his arms than she had in her own room.
‘Better,’ he said, his voice husky. Her skirt tangled around his legs and he held her close with both hands.
‘If I’d not been expecting it, you would have connected well.’ He shook his head. ‘But the sad truth is that you don’t have much strength in that little elbow.’
He stepped away, but he touched the small of her back with one hand. With his other, he clasped hers, helping her make a fist. ‘Next time, hold it with your other hand and shove back with all your might.’
His breath brushed her cheek and his eyes changed. Everything stilled as he continued to hold her. ‘Did you notice that you keep throwing yourself into my arms?’
‘Not on purpose.’ She thought of the sparring. ‘Entirely.’ She felt a sudden burst of warmth in the air around her. ‘And did you notice you keep catching me?’
A smile slipped on to his face. ‘What else am I to do?’
‘You have little choice there.’ She shrugged. ‘My pardon.’
But she didn’t know if he would have done it for any woman, or just for her. ‘I suspected you might come after me,’ she said.
‘Your parents were worried. I would do that for anyone,’ he said. ‘Well, or I would have sent someone else after them.’
All the relief at seeing him—all the pleasant thoughts of him coming to her aid—vanished.
‘You would?’ she asked. ‘Anyone?’
‘I could see how much your father and mother care for you.’
‘Of course they do.’
His head bent closer to hers. ‘There is no of course about it.’
He turned and strode away, leaving her to catch up.
She couldn’t speak at first, thinking, and just putting one foot in front of the other as she trekked. Of course. Of course parents cared for their children. They might not always show it. It was nature that parents care for their children. Like mother birds care for their baby birds.
‘Some parents care more for their pets than they do their children and some people do not even care for their pets,’ he said.
He’d somehow become jaded, perhaps because he didn’t have children of his own and never would and it had made him angry. ‘How could you grow up so?’ she asked.
‘I had no choice. It was root hog, or die.’
‘Root hog, or die?’ she asked.
‘It is from the Americas. Some people let their pigs loose in the woods to fend for themselves so they will not have to feed them and only see them when it is time to butcher them. If the pigs do not root out their meals, they die.’
‘But you were fed.’
‘Of course I was fed, our servants being well trained.’ He met her gaze. ‘Do you have any idea what it was like the first time my father used me to break the glass around him? He found a certain joy in picking me up and using me to clear the top of a table, delighting in the disarray. I think there was game in it for him. A certain skill in sliding me across the table to completely clear it. Finally, no breakables were left on the tables except for mealtimes and the servants placed the lamps on shelves on the wall.’
‘No.’ She clasped his arm.
She felt off balance and, even though her body didn’t touch his, she could feel him along the length of her. He put his hand over the touch she had on his arm.
He smiled, dark and light mixed. Laughter and anger. ‘It became almost a game to me as well. I learned to land on my feet or roll, mostly. Father’s rages were the Sunday afternoon entertainment. Better than any theatre. It became so routine and so much blustering and rage it was a little like theatre. A farce. I didn’t hate it or dread it. I accepted that it was the way things were.’
‘Someone should have stopped that.’
‘Who?’ he asked. ‘My beloved grandmother? She instigated it, often as not. My father calmed some after she died. He said he wished he’d not buried her in a crypt so he could have danced on her grave. He would have, too, and hired a fiddler.’
‘Still, someone should have stopped it.’
He paused. His eyes became bland. He seemed to have no thoughts behind his words. Barrett looked at her. ‘Someone should have stopped it, you say. No one was there to stop it, Annie. Sometimes there isn’t anyone there to stop things. That is what I am trying to tell you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
He looked into the distance, then back at her. ‘Don’t be. It made me stronger.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. I don’t feel pain the way other people seem to feel it. I don’t care the same way other people care. I just don’t. I didn’t realise it until I saw the others at Gentleman Jackson’s. A man’s face paled from pain. Another cast up his accounts. I could not understand it. I thought them just weak. Then someone noticed how I reacted and told me I was the aberration.’
‘I think that isn’t a good thing.’
‘I am content with it.’ He shrugged. ‘It is easier to play the game when you cannot be touched. When they cannot make you suffer and you can make them suffer, and they know it.’
He kicked at a stick that had fallen on to the road, moving it from their path with his boot.
‘You have some kindness in you. You care about my safety.’
He looked at her. ‘Until this moment, I thought I had no weakness left in me. But I see how I have let soft feelings grow in me. A mistake. They’ll do me no good. They’ll make me no richer.’
‘Does everything have to be about wealth?’
He looked away, arms still at his sides. ‘How could it be otherwise?’
Annie touched his sleeve. ‘Perhaps it could be about people. Deep in his heart I’m sure your father cares for you.’
‘No, Annie. For him it’s all about money, more money, and the power it buys.’
She held the cloth of his coat in her hand. She had to let him know that he was mistaken. That even though his father didn’t appear to care for him—all fathers cared for their children. They might not show it, but the love was there nonetheless.
She caught his eyes and it seemed as though she could see straight past the man into the child beneath all the whiskers and rough edges. And she wasn’t certain the boy would have been less jaded. In fact, she feared he might have been more.
He stopped moving, reaching up to clasp the leather from the horse’s bridle. Annie held his arm. He’d never seen such an innocent before. Not even in a cradle.
How could he tell her that she endangered herself with her soft-coloured view of the world? He couldn’t. No one could. Her parents did right to keep her within their reach.
Annie stumbled. He steadied her and pulled her closer as she walked. ‘I can’t imagine living like you must have,’ she said.
‘Just as well. It’s the past. It died away after my father realised I was bigger than he was.’ He laughed softly. ‘A handy thing to have. Size. And then I went to Gentleman Jackson’s and studied the sport of it. Another fortunate thing is the way I learned to take a punch and land easily. It seems I have known it all my life. Like walking and talking.’
She wrapped her arms around his, her face at the cloth where his coat covered his shoulder. He needed to distance himself, but it would hardly be possible without hurting her feelings. Besides, he liked the odd feeling of walking along as a couple.
It had a feeling of...he wasn’t sure what. Of companionship. Of togetherness. Of sharing a journey together rather than being alone. Perhaps even of weakness. He sighed internally.
‘I can hardly walk another step,’ she said. ‘I didn’t remember how far away the inn was.’
His footsteps slowed, making it easier for her, as he realised he’d probably been walking too fast for her.
His voice barely sounded through the air. ‘This morning, did you leave your house for the adventure or for your sister?’
She shook her head. ‘A little of both. I wanted to see my sister, and then I got angry at her for leaving us. Why did she not trust us enough to stay? Why didn’t she trust us to take her secrets as our own?’
‘Secrets,’ he said. ‘The eternal tie that binds families.’
‘You understand that?’
‘Yes. That, I understand.’
‘How could I risk her not having family around when the child is born? And how can I live the rest of my life with my parents watching me as though I am the last bit of porcelain in a treasured set? They have made certain I am the wallflower at any event. My mother stands at my side and does not dance because someone without connections might swoop in upon me and whisk me away. And the ones she picks for me are insipid.’
‘Life is a business and your parents want you to be well off. They care for you.’
‘They wish me to walk exactly on the path they have chosen for me.’
‘We all have to walk the path we were born into.’
‘I cannot help being the way I am.’ He heard the apology in her voice.
‘I want you to stay the same, Annie. Though I understand that it’s not possible.’ His words flowed with the softness of knife covered with a soft cloth. ‘You have a right to go out among the other people in the world. Even if the world may disappoint you.’ The briefest of smiles. ‘And the world will disappoint you.’