She shook her head. “Not so long ago, Finn. Why did you not send word to me?”
“I thought it was what you wanted. To be rid of me. That when it came down to it, you had decided you didn’t want to be associated with a bastard.”
“Ah, Finn.” She brushed her fingers through his hair. “I wanted nothing else other than to be with you. Miriam had managed to pack so much so tightly into this carpeted satchel—”
She was struck nearly dumb as a possibility reverberated through her mind. “Oh, dear God, she knew. Could she have told my father?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, Vivi. I was careless bringing Sophie around after... just after.” After they’d first made love. “Maybe a stable boy saw us.”
“The stable boy didn’t know we were running off at midnight. Miriam did. I trusted her, told her everything. And it cost you dearly.”
“Cost us,” he said somberly.
Dear God, but it had, and she couldn’t reveal to him the true extent of what it had cost them, not now, not when she knew the truth of all he’d paid for loving her.
He glanced around. “Your woman’s not going to show, and you’re trembling from the cold. Let’s get you somewhere warm.”
He shattered her heart once more. After all he’d suffered, all he’d revealed, he was worried about her taking a chill. While she was indeed shaking, it had nothing to do with the cold surrounding her, but rather the devastation of learning what had truly happened that fateful night.
His arm came snugly around her, pressing her against his side as he led her out of the alley and down the street. Fewer people were about; the revelry had diminished. The quietness suited her mood. Her world had once been bright with promise, and now it seemed it was condemned to forever being shades of gray. How much darker it had to be for Finn.
“Oi!” he called out, releasing her hand and stepping into the street, barring a hansom’s way. The driver pulled to a stop. Finn gave the man the address for the foundling home as he bundled her into the carriage and followed her inside. His hand, so warm, so strong, came around hers and placed it on his thigh, as though he needed to have some contact with her.
“I was so stupid, Finn. It had to be Miriam.”
“Why would she betray your trust?”
She wanted to crawl onto his lap and hold him near, protect him from all that he had to have suffered. “If I ran off, she’d have lost her exalted position as lady’s maid to the earl’s daughter, who she expected to be a duchess. She’d have been simply another servant. She was looking out for herself. And because I was too stupid—”
“You weren’t stupid.”
“What else would you call it? I was so caught up in myself that I didn’t even consider that she might see my happiness as an end to hers. And it cost you. My God. My God.” The tears returned with a vengeance as she envisioned him locked in a cell, kept away from his family. “How much you must have hated me.” Much more than she had despised him.
A strangled burst of laughter escaped from her. “Yet still, after all that, you’ve come to my aid twice.” With the hand he was not holding, she cradled his jaw. “All that kindness in you, I’m glad they didn’t kill it.” Or at least they hadn’t managed to kill all of it. She couldn’t deny there was a harsher element to him now. “I’m sorry I hit you the other night.”
He placed his hand over hers, turned it slightly, and pressed a kiss to the heart of her palm, all the while his eyes locked with hers. “You thought I’d abandoned you. I’d have understood if you had skewered me.”
She buried her face in the curve of his shoulder, welcomed his arms coming around her in the tight confines of the conveyance. Silence eased in around them, comforting in its peacefulness. How often had they been together and not needed words? Now it was as though they each traveled through their individual memories, striving to see that last night differently as though viewing it through a kaleidoscope, turning the end so the pieces assembled themselves into something else entirely. What she’d always known, what she’d always believed, was not at all the truth of that fateful night.
Finally, they reached their destination and disembarked. With her hand nestled in his, she led him through the gate—the sisters never locked it; they were a trusting lot—and around to the back, to the kitchen where she’d left a solitary lit lamp on the table that was mainly used for preparing food. The sisters had no servants but tended to everything themselves.
When the door was closed, rather than releasing his hold on her hand, he pulled her toward him as though on the verge of leading her into a dance. His hands came to rest lightly on the small of her back, while hers folded around his upper arms. She had to tip her head back slightly to hold his gaze, to look into those brown eyes that reminded her of warm cocoa.
“I could put on a kettle,” she said quietly. “Tea always makes everything better.”
“So my mum says. I’ve found whisky usually works best though.”
“Afraid you won’t find any here.” Reaching up with shaking fingers, she gingerly touched the bruise on his jaw, a reminder she had struck him. “I’m so sorry, Finn.”
“No more apologies, Vivi. Neither of us was at fault. We were both wronged.”
She wasn’t quite certain she could accept that. If only she hadn’t told Miriam. “I want to know, understand, everything.”
Within the depths of his eyes, she saw a myriad of emotions and knew there were some things he wouldn’t share. “Let’s sit, shall we?” she offered.
With a nod, he released her. Without bothering to remove her pelisse, she sat at a chair on the side of the table, indicating he should take the one at its head. Once he was settled, she placed both her hands, palms up, on top, grateful when he placed his over hers. She closed her fingers over the raised veins and corded muscles that indicated his strength. She released a long, drawn-out sigh. “I can barely breathe when I think of you in prison.”
“Then don’t think on it. I didn’t tell you so you could imagine the horrors of it. I needed you to understand where I was. Why I wasn’t there.”
