“You were an only child, like me?”
“I was an orphan, unlike you.”
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
He shrugged. “My parents were gone from my life long before I had a chance to know or miss them.”
Somehow, she suspected this was not fully true. He might never have known them, but that did not mean they hadn’t left mother-and-father-sized holes in his heart all the same.
“You were raised in an orphanage?”
“For a few years. Chimneysweep by the age of five, and a damn good one until I grew too big to fit into tiny spaces. They tried to feed me less to keep me small, but when a body decides to grow… They found other tasks for me.”
“‘They’ meaning the orphanage?”
“I’d left that place far behind. ‘They’ meaning, whichever band of morally questionable vagabonds happened to take me in.”
Her jaw dropped. “You became a criminal?”
“I became adept at any number of ethically dubious exploits designed to fill my belly and my pockets.”
“But you could have been sent to gaol!”
“And I was, several times, before the age of twelve,” he agreed, as if admitting to a fault no more noteworthy than not having tied his cravat correctly. “I turned out to be very good at many things. A cutpurse, a ruffian, an enforcer in the criminal underworld…”
Tabitha narrowed her eyes. Every word carried the ring of truth, yet she could not help but suspect Mr. Frampton was doing his best to convince her that he was not the sort of man she ought to be alone with—or even in whose company a lady of her status ought to spend any time at all.
Yet she’d never felt safer or more at peace than she did right now, beside this babbling brook, perched on a fallen log next to an admitted childhood felon, who had grown into a man so burly and powerful he struck fear into the hearts of everyone unlucky enough to catch his eye…
Except on the occasions when he happened to exchange his usual battles for the bank of a river, upon which he shared plums and biscuits with a runaway whose rose-colored dress he had taken great pains to match with the embroidery of his waistcoat.
“How did you go from footpad to reputable man of business?” she asked.
He looked at her in amusement. “What makes you think I’m a reputable anything? My utility for my employer lies in the fact that I see and do things that others will not. I have made fortunes for us both many times over. He cannot lose me. Not until he learns to stop spending the riches I bring him.”
“You’re rich?” she said in surprise.
“As Croesus,” he agreed.
She tried to reframe what she thought she knew of him. “Then why work for anyone?”
“It amuses me. I like the challenge. And I fully admit, the only reason the best opportunities cross my desk is because I’m Viscount Oldfield’s man of business.”
That made sense. Being the right hand to a lord would put Mr. Frampton in the thick of things in a way he’d never have access to without that connection.
“Besides,” he continued, “If you’re imagining I could become the sort of idle gentleman you’re accustomed to seeing in the ton, get that notion out of your head right now. Entrée in the beau monde is determined by blood, not by the size of one’s pocketbook.”
She scoffed. “There are countless nouveau-riche heiresses whose dowries come from—”
“Fathers who shimmied up chimneys and picked pockets? I doubt it. If their coffers contain enough gold, the door to the haut ton might open slightly to allow in those who stand just one rung below them on the ladder of aristocracy. But you will never find a scullery maid or a stable boy holding court with lords and ladies.”
That was true, but… not the whole truth. It was as if Mr. Frampton were trying to scare her off.
Or trying to put himself in his place.
“You rub shoulders with the aristocracy,” she reminded him. “You’ve been present at several of the same gatherings as I have—”
“As a member of staff, not as an honored guest,” he pointed out dryly.
