The little beggar.
Olly.
The dirty, unkempt creature his wife was determined to take under her wing. The same dirty, unkempt creature he was determined to send to the village.
“And what were you doing, drinking gin,pícaro?” he asked. “You can have no more than eight years of age.”
“Twelve,” said the lad from a far corner of the room.
“Twelve?” he raised a brow, scanning the darkness for signs of the imp. “Surely not. When I was twelve, my voice was becoming a man’s, and I had already begun to grow whiskers.”
He had spotted nothing of the sort in the lad earlier, which was why he had guessed him to be a good deal younger, and he likewise heard nothing of it now.
“My voice is changing.” The lad made an obvious effort to convince him, lowering his voice an octave. “And I am fair-haired. Golden whiskers require more time.”
His eyes narrowed. He stalked deeper into the darkness covering the front half of the chamber, determined to discover where the usurper was hiding. “I remain unconvinced, despite your excuses.”
“What is apícaro?” the lad asked.
“Why are you not abed as a child ought to be at this time of the night?” he countered.
“I don’t like the darkness,” came Olly’s response.
For the first time, Alessandro believed the squatter was telling the truth. “Why not?”
But he was sure he knew already. The darkness always held its terrors. Memories. Pain. The unknown. After he had lost Maria and Francisco, he had spent untold nights staring into the murky blackness of the night, questioning his place on terra firma, the fragility of life, his belief in heaven and evenDiosHimself. He had stared into the inky gloom, alone in his bed, his heart feeling as if it had been severed in two, wondering what death was like. Begging for death to claim him as well and put him out of his misery.
“I aren’t afraid of it, if that’s what you think,” Olly said.
“I am not afraid of it,” he corrected gently, as some instinct within him, previously dormant, awoke and wondered what education this child had received in his short life, if any.
“I didn’t say you was.”
“You were,” he said. “I didn’t say you were.That is the correct way of saying it,pícaro.”
The imp made a rude sound of disgust. “How do you know? You don’t even talk like the rest of us.”
“I was educated here,” he clipped, irritated with the runt as much for the disruption as he was for the ease with which the miscreant hid himself. “I am an Englishman by birth.”
How strange it felt to acknowledge. He had not considered England his home since his mother had died here. But he was now surrounded by all the reminders, the little chains tying him irrevocably to this land, to these people. He wondered how his mother must have felt, torn between her family and everyone she knew at home in Spain and becoming the wife of a wealthy and important English earl.
“You doesn’t sound like one,” said the squatter, his tone dubious.
“And yet, I am.” He stalked toward a chair, convinced that must be where the little devil was hiding. “And the proper way of saying it isyou do not sound like one. How much schooling have you had,pícaro?”
“More than I need,” claimed the little voice in the night. “You never did say, what ispícaro? For all I know, you be calling me horse dung or donkey piss.”
A reluctant laugh burst from him even as he discovered the chair where he had believed the miscreant was hiding was empty. “And why should I call you horse dung or donkey piss?”
“I’ve been called worse.” The child’s voice seemed to have moved. “I’m a bastard, after all. No one wants me, least of all Bramwell. But my mother died and left me with her sister. And then she died along with her husband. A lung infection, it were. They was both gone in one sennight.”
Frowning, Alessandro stalked next to a settee, but it, too, was empty. “How did you come to be with Bramwell? What is his relation to you, and what do you know of him?”
These were questions he would have asked earlier—should have asked earlier—but he had been too preoccupied with Marchmont’s state of abandonment. And, too, he had known he would need servants. Badly. Those had been his first concerns.
“Bramwell be a cousin of my uncle’s. He be’s a rotter and I do not like him.”
He quirked a brow. “That makes two of us,pícaro. Why do you not tell me where you are hiding so I can cease searching the chamber for you like an imbecile?”
