“It doesn’t,” Jamie said. “We’ll do it your way,once. But there are other methods for getting the boy, if you choose to go down that path.”
Doyle spread his hands wide in a gesture of peace. “It won’t come to that, milord.” His gaze slid toward Hortense. “Once a eel, always a eel, pet.”
She flinched, as if winged by a hard object. Jamie grabbed her arm in case she needed steadying. Her gaze met his for a flash, but what he saw surprised him.Fear.When he’d first met her, he’d thought her immune to the feeling. Yet, somehow, he sensed it didn’t render her weak. Instead, its weight informed her every decision and made her stronger.
She pivoted neatly on her heel and was already halfway up the stairs by the time he caught up to her. On their progress through the house—or whatever function this structure served, he suspected it had many—they encountered boys scattered about here and there. But it was one boy he sought. Not three feet ahead—for that was as far one could see—he detected a lanky form, and his stomach gave a lurch. It was the boy.Hisboy.
Without thought, he stepped in that direction. Fingers wrapped around his arm, staying him. He glanced down to find Hortense’s cerulean gaze steady upon him. “Now is not the time,” she murmured.
“What is to stop us from taking him now?”
“Me, fer starters,” the boy said in a voice that was pure guttersnipe as he dug a shoulder into the wall and shifted his weight against it. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere with ye.”
Rafe stared out with the same thick-lashed, gray eyes that Jamie encountered in the mirror every day. But these eyes held an impudence, a hardness, that one didn’t expect to find in one so young. First the workhouse, then Doyle, when had this boy the luxury of being a child?
“Let us leave now,” Hortense said, low, steady.
Still, his feet remained rooted in place, stubborn.
“Jamie,” she said, a plea weaving through his name.
She’d never called him Jamie.
It was enough to pull him into reality.
It went against every fiber of his being to leave the boy—hisboy—behind. Through the door. Into the chill London night. Just as Hortense had led them here through the warren of Whitechapel streets, alleys, and byways, she led them out. It wasn’t until they hired a hackney on Fleet Street and were ensconced in its noisome interior that she broke the silence from the bench opposite. “Marriage?”
The whirl of Jamie’s racing mind came to a complete standstill.Marriage.
He’d proposed marriage to this woman. Panic should be rioting through his body. But of all the twists and turns and matters weighing heavily on him, surprisingly, this wasn’t one of them. “Aye.”
Her head canted to the side. “Surely a false one.”
“Nay.”
“I know a document forger who can make anything.” She was utterly serious.
“It will need to be real.” For whom wasn’t quite clear.
Her eyes went wide with incredulity. He’d flummoxed her. “But…butwhy?”
“Nick would not stand for me besmirching your honor. He would have my head on a pike.” It was the truth. It might still be the truth even after the marriage.
“Nick can be talked around.”
“Society will know if it isn’t real. The rumor of a special license for the Marquess of Clare will spread through Society like wildfire.”
She released a long breath before nodding slowly. “Giving us a little notoriety and panache.”
“Aye.” There was yet more on the subject of their marriage that needed to be said. “In name only. It doesn’t need to be more than that.”
“I never planned to marry,” she said.
His presumption struck Jamie hard. Marriage was nothing to him, but he hadn’t considered it might be something to her. “But you might someday. If you met the right man.”
Why was he trying to talk her out of it?
She shook her head. “I’m a thoroughly independent woman, I’m afraid. No man would tolerate me. I can’t cook. I can’t clean. No interest in needlework beyond darning the odd stocking. I’m useless as a woman.”
