But this was completely different.Even in the dim light she could see the angry crisscrossing of puckered skin, averitable lattice of cruelty.With shaking fingers she reached out, traced one particularly deep gouge.He didn’t so much as flinch; rather he was preternaturally still, allowing her to explore, to take it in.
“It must hurt still,” she murmured thickly.
He shrugged.“Some.The skin is tight and needs frequent stretching.”
She swallowed hard.“What happened?”
He turned back to her then, his lips hitching up in one corner, though there was a shadow of pain in the expression.“It’s not an uncommon story,” he said, voice rumbling in the dim room.He pulled her against him, giving a small sigh as she settled against his side.“I was winning at the tables of a seedy hell, and handsomely, too.I’m uncommonly good at cards, you see.It was how I supported my family after my father abandoned us, the one bit of talent I could use to keep us from starving.”
He huffed a small, humorless laugh, and Heloise tightened her arm about his waist.“The owners didn’t like it one bit,” he continued.“They claimed they didn’t have the blunt to pay me and gave me a gold watch worth far more than my winnings.I, fool that I was, accepted it, thinking only of what it could provide to make my mother’s life easier.But the owners of the hell cried theft.I was arrested and whipped as punishment.”
“They more than whipped you,” she said through a tight throat, the image of those scars burned into her brain.
Again he laughed, though there was something bitter in it now.“It seems the man in charge of my punishment liked his job a bit too well.I nearly died as a result.”
“And Mr.Teagan and Mr.Parsons were there for you,” she said quietly.
“Yes.And after as well, when my mother died from thestrain of it all.She was already unwell from the stress of my father leaving her; my own misstep pushed her over the edge and finally killed her.”
“Oh, Ethan,” she whispered into his chest, tears burning her eyes at the echo of self-hatred in his voice.“It wasn’t your fault.”
But besides the faintest tightening of his fingers on her arm, he gave no sign of hearing her.“Teagan and Parsons helped me feed and clothe my brothers and keep a roof over their heads until I was healed enough to work myself.”He paused.“They have been by my side for every moment of my life since I first met them until now.I would be a fool to forget that.”
She frowned.Why did he seem to be explaining the whole thing to himself as much as he was explaining it to her?As if he was trying to remind himself of something in the telling of it?
But as they lay there wrapped in each other’s arms, the cacophony of the club a distant buzzing in her ears, she couldn’t help wondering how a man who had been so horribly wronged in the past could lower himself to cheat his own patrons.It made no sense, no sense at all.Was he as much of a victim in this as Julia was?It was a thought that both made her weak with relief and consumed her with a bitter guilt because, no matter the truth, she had to see this infiltration of his club through no matter the cost.Even if that cost could break her heart.
19
Iris,” Heloise called out the following day as she burst into the small greenhouse at the back of the Wimpole Street house.“Are you here?”
A curly blond head popped up over a particularly bushy shrub, one that Heloise would never be able to identify but that Iris no doubt knew every detail about from the tips of its shining deep green leaves to the ends of its twining roots.She blinked myopically, brushing a strand of hair from her cheek, leaving a smudge behind.“Heloise?What is it?”
Heloise stepped around a collection of heavy pots and made her way down the brick path, even as she recalled with vivid clarity the image of Ethan’s heavily scarred back from the night before.Though now she had the added memory of the way he’d moved just that morning while dealing with the sundry things needed for the boxing match and the masquerade, how he’d occasionally stretched his arms or given a barely perceptible wince when the skin on his back was pulled.With Iris’s knowledge of medicinal plants, she might be able to help alleviate some of the discomfort he felt from his scars.And, she belatedly reminded herself, something of that sort was certain to get him to further trust her.
“Do you have anything that would alleviate pain or tightness from old scars?”she asked now as she reached the other woman.
“Old scars?”Iris’s frown quickly cleared, understanding making her eyes go wide and her mouth form a perfect oval.“Is this for Mr.Sinclaire, then?”she asked, excitement infusing her voice.“I can finally help?”
An affectionate smile curved Heloise’s lips, her chest warming at the enthusiasm lighting her friend’s moss green eyes.“Yes, you can finally help.”
“Wonderful!”Iris exclaimed, clapping her hands together, sending a puff of dirt into the air.Then, before Heloise could so much as blink, she darted off, racing for the washbasin at the side of the greenhouse.In a matter of minutes she’d hung up her tools, removed her apron, and washed her hands.And then she was hurrying from the greenhouse without even a glance back, leaving Heloise to stare after her.Bemused, Heloise followed.By the time she reached Iris’s rooms, she had already taken down a good quantity of notebooks from her overflowing shelves and was flipping through them with a speed that made Heloise dizzy.
“Just give me a moment,” she murmured, eyes scanning the close, cramped text before her, fingers hurriedly turning over page after page.
Not knowing if Iris’s idea of a moment constituted minutes or hours, Heloise moved to one of the many bookcases that lined the wall.A hodgepodge of items crowded the shelves, weighty tomes and sketchbooks and framed color prints of plants in various stages of development all interspersed with small jars of seeds, displays of pressed flowers, magnifying glasses and shears and tweezers.It was as Heloise was inspecting a peculiar large green metalcylinder with a strap that had been propped in the corner that Iris gave a loud exclamation of delight.
“I’ve found it!”She looked up at Heloise, her excitement palpable.
“Have you truly?”Heloise asked, coming closer.
Iris grinned.“Yes!And it will only take a little over a week to complete.”
Heloise, who had begun to grow as excited as Iris, deflated in an instant.“A little over a week?”
Iris nodded happily, returning her attention to the open notebook before her.“If I can locate the necessary materials quickly, then yes.”
“But that will be much too late.The boxing match is in just over a week, after all.And I will need it well before that.”
