“Hell, no.I certainly don’t want to be.”
Elizabeth stepped back, her expression serious.“I admit that I am curious.I would like to hear your story.Perhaps, we could take a walk after this tour?Big Ben told me you like to walk everywhere.”
He nodded.“It’s left over from when I couldn’t afford conveyance, not even a horse.I ran the streets as an adolescent, and I suppose that it seems natural to walk where I need to go.”
“I feel the same.I don’t need or have the extra money to have a horse or carriage at my disposal.My feet work just fine.”A grin spread across her face, and he couldn’t resist pressing a brief kiss on her lips.
Before she could sputter about him taking liberties, he pulled her across the stage.“Let’s finish the tour.I’m sure you have a million questions for Mr.Howell as well.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
What was shedoing walking along through Covent Garden at night beside the one man she had firmly decided not to ever see again?Matthew slipped his hand into hers and squeezed gently.Elizabeth sighed.Why was she so weak of conviction in his presence?His strong grip felt right in hers, and she didn’t pull away.
After the tour of the Seven Stars, Mr.Howell had invited all of them to dine.It had been an entertaining evening full of laughter and tall tales from the theater’s history.At least, she assumed they were exaggerations.Certainly, some of the debauchery couldn’t actually be true.Everyone else had stayed to watch the opening show.But she needed to get home.She wanted to be able to tuck Robert into bed.“Don’t you need to be at the club?”
“Yes, but it is early yet, and I have excellent staff.”
They walked east for a while before he pointed to a narrow house with peeling paint and crooked shutters.
“That is where I lived for a number of years with Seaton and a few other boys from the Newgate gang.Four of us shared a one-room flat on the top floor, but it was still better than the prospect of being sent home after Harry died.”They paused and looked up at the building.“When I was ten, I woke from a deep sleep where I dreamt that I was drowning, gasping for breath underwater.In reality, my brother was sitting on top of me with a garrote at my neck, trying to choke the life from me.Stella, barely a year old, began crying from the crib in the corner.Nanny came in and was able to intervene and pull Jonas off of me.”
“Dear God,” she murmured.
“Luckily for me, this was Jonas’s first attempt at killing a person, and he didn’t understand the force it would take.The thin wire cut me as he was pulled off of me.”He lifted a finger and drew a line across his throat under his chin.“I still have a scar here.”
He began to walk again, and she followed along.The street lamps flickered in the gathering darkness.She didn’t feel frightened; Matthew would not let any harm come to her.
“I remember sitting next to my mother as she petted my head and soothed my sobs.My father angrily paced the length of the carpet in his study.It was my mother’s suggestion to send me to Harry.I have recently begun to understand that they were trying to keep me from further harm, but all I could feel afterward was confusion about why I had been sent away.The confusion morphed into anger.Why had my father chosen to keep my brother close, but so easily discard me?”
He sighed.“I was angry for a long time.And after Harry passed, I found a new family belonging to the gang.Seaton and I became close as brothers.His mother was a prostitute, and he was often set loose in the city as a boy when she entertained clients.He and I had similar goals—to save enough quid to open our own place one day.To have enough money that we didn’t have to answer to anyone.And that is the sad tale of young Matthew, who took his uncle’s surname to keep from being found by his real family.Though I doubt they even cared enough to wonder what happened to me.”
Elizabeth stopped and faced him.“For once, I am at a loss for words.”She cupped his cheek, watching various emotions race across his expressive features—anger, sadness, resignation.She pressed a soft kiss to his lips.“What a brave boy you were.”
Matthew looked off to the left and then, with his hand still in hers, began to walk.“I think the more apt word would be scared.I was terrified by that night when my brother attacked me.The only time I have ever been home since was for my mother’s funeral.And even then, I stayed hidden in the trees outside the churchyard.A year ago, when my father was killed in that explosion on his yacht, Stella turned up at my door.She was frightened to be alone with Jonas, and rightly so.He has been discreetly looking for her using a private investigator.”
“What do you suppose he wants with her?”
“Who knows?My guess is he sees her as his property and is angry to have lost her.He would have total control over her.Could marry her off to whomever he pleases or keep her locked in the house.I don’t care to imagine what goes on in his broken mind.He doesn’t know where I am or even if I am alive, so Stella is safe at the Blue Angel with me.She saved my life once, and I will protect her with mine.”
It was indeed a sad tale.She understood that Matthew’s mother would have wanted to send him somewhere where he would be safe.And that the Viscount would have let his son be raised by a man in the theater business, family or not, said volumes about how he had also feared for his son’s safety.But it was certainly telling that Matthew’s father had been so worried over how his family would be viewed if it came out that his heir was mentally unstable that he would keep a viper in the bosom of the family.A secret worth killing over; and kidnapping a duchess.Elizabeth would bet anything that Hartwick’s father had all the details written in that damn book of secrets.
Elizabeth glanced sideways at Matthew as they walked up Broad Street.This turned everything she thought she knew about him on its head.He hadn’t grown up a spoiled, pampered spare to a rotting aristocratic tree.Instead, he’d had to make his own way in life.She admired that.But, nevertheless, he had been a criminal, a street thug.And now he made his success in the ruin of others.Hardly the type of man she wanted around her young son.And yes, she was wildly attracted to him.But the daring, wanton woman she had been a few nights ago was not truly her.She was a businesswoman and a mother, first.She had been foolish to think that she could have a simple affair.
As they approached the square, she tugged him onto the lane that ran behind the houses.“My neighbors are nosy.I would prefer not to arrive at the front door with a strange man.”
He nodded.
When they reached her house, the back gate was ajar.“That’s strange.We always keep this closed.”She hurried into the back garden.“Oh Lord,” she gasped.The back door was also open.Matthew swept past her as she stood frozen in place, her mind racing over all the possible reasons why.
“This lock has been forced.The latch is broken.”
His comment spurred her into motion.“Robert.”She hiked up her skirts and raced past him into the kitchen.It was empty.In the shadows, it looked undisturbed.Her heart beat too fast in her chest as she hurried up the short staircase to the main floor.“Mrs.Todd?”she called out.“Robert?”
Matthew was right behind her.He opened the sitting room door, and they found the fire low and Mrs.Todd’s knitting on the arm of one of the chairs.Next, Matthew strode across the small entryway.“The front door is unlocked as well.”
She crossed to open the door to her workspace.It was dark, the moonlight spilling over empty desks.Spinning around, she headed up the stairs.“Mrs.Todd!Robert!”she called again.
Each flight of stairs felt endless as fear twisted in her chest.She had to find her son.She called out his name again and again.Matthew kept pace right behind her.When she reached her son’s room, she burst inside.“Robert!”
