She quickened her pace. He followed suit. “You can’t outrace me.”
Stopping abruptly, she swung around and plowed her fist into his shoulder, knocking him back two steps. He furrowed his brow. “Where did you learn to land a punch like that?”
“None of your business. Now leave me be.”
“You just happen to be going the same way I am.” Since he was planning to go the same way she did. He despised his curiosity, his need to once again know everything about her. Mentally, he shook his head. He hadn’t known everything about her before. He’d only thought he had.
“Then cross the street. Walk on the other side.”
“What’s the matter? Finding it difficult to resist kissing me?”
“It’ll be a cold day in hell before I ever kiss you again.” Once more, she began marching forward, a soldier on her way into battle—or striving to leave the battle behind. But he was spoiling for a fight, had been from the moment he’d first clapped eyes on her after eight long years.
It irritated the devil out of him that she was more beautiful now than when he’d last seen her and they’d made promises to each other, promises broken mere hours later. The years, maturity, had added a grace to her that she’d not possessed at seventeen when he’d declared his love for her. It further vexed him that his body—his traitorous cock—reacted to her nearness.
Once more he fell into step beside her, heard her harsh sigh, took perverse pleasure in knowing his presence upset her. Good. He began to whistle a tune he’d tried to forget, one he’d heard at a ball when she had waltzed in his arms. He wondered if she remembered the moment with fondness or if it ripped into her heart the way it tore into his. She’d played him for a fool. No memory of her should be pleasing to recall but there were still nights when he lay awake in his bed, staring at the ceiling because when he closed his eyes he saw her.
Five years of his life spent in isolation and the only thing to keep him company, to keep him sane, were memories of her. They’d sustained him. Originally, he’d called them forth to fuel his need for revenge, for retribution, but the loneliness had increased until he transformed the memories into dreams of what his life would be after prison. They gave him hope that love awaited him somewhere, that a woman would again smile at him, laugh with him, fill him with joy.
He hated her because she’d filled him with so much joy and then snatched it away. Spoiled, pampered daughter of an earl.Not looking so spoiled now though, was she?
He should leave her to the thieves, drunkards, and miscreants. But the thought of any man laying so much as a finger on her filled him with a fury that shook him to his core. She was no longer his, had never really been his, and yet a foolish part of him couldn’t forget that once upon a time she had very nearly been, couldn’t forget the girl she’d been.
“How did you know I was here?” she asked.
“Pardon?”
She sighed with irritation, but he didn’t know if she was irritated with herself for asking or with him for making her ask it again. “How did you know I was here? Thornley tell you?”
“No. Gillie did.” The duke had given his sister a miniature of the woman who’d left him at the altar because Gillie had been striving to help him locate her. All they knew was that she’d come to Whitechapel. Not why or exactly where.
“So why seek me out?”
He hadn’t a clue. Perhaps he’d thought if he saw her, just one more time, he could stop thinking about her, would no longer be haunted by memories of her, of what they might have had together.
“Why don’t you return home?” He nearly groaned in frustration because he was the one who asked a question, when he wanted her to think he didn’t care. Still, he carried on like a dimwit. “Thornley is married. They can’t force you to wed him now.”
“They’ll force me to marry someone else, some other duke. Mother is determined I’ll be a duchess.”
“I thought that was the dream of all ladies of quality—to land a duke.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice. He shouldn’t blame her for deciding she wanted someone other than a commoner, a bastard. But he did find fault with her for the way she’d gone about ridding herself of him.
“You of all people should know that a title mattered not one whit to me, and if you think it did, then you didn’t know me at all.”
“I knew you well enough to get you to welcome me into your bed.” His pride spit out the words.
He saw her flinch, but other than that, she reacted not at all, said nothing at all. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“Striving to put an end to the practice of farming out children, or at the very least see that it’s licensed. You must have a license to kill a horse but not to oversee the care of someone else’s child? It’s ludicrous. It makes no sense that we strive to protect beasts more than we do humans.”
A couple of times he’d followed her to a darkened alleyway and watched her standing around for a couple of hours, sighing heavily now and then. Then last week, a woman had joined her and placed three children into her keeping. He’d been curious regarding her actions but hadn’t trusted himself to approach her without giving away how fiercely her betrayal had wounded him to the core. He’d been so cocky regarding her feelings toward him, certain he’d won her over for all eternity.
Unfortunately, the longer he was in her company, the more the anger he tried to hold at bay was beginning to seethe, to seep out of the crevices into which he’d attempted to chase it. He wanted her to believe him unmoved, even as his burgeoning resentment threatened to overtake his good sense. He hadn’t gone to her before, because a part of him had feared the answer: she’d turned her back on him because of the circumstances of his birth. He’d fought his entire life to convince himself his illegitimacy didn’t matter. But in the end, perhaps it had mattered to the one person who had meant the most to him. Yet she’d taken up the cause of children born into the same circumstance as he. Was she acting out of guilt for turning her back on him? “Why do you care?”
“Again, Finn, it seems you knew me not at all.”
They reached the gates of the wrought iron fence that enclosed the foundling home. The barrier was designed to keep children inside, not to keep anyone with ill intentions out. He could scale it in a blink.
Ignoring him, not even having the courtesy to thank him for his escort, she shoved open the gate, its hinges squealing in protest.
