“I grew up in a far humbler home than Carmine House. And for the last few years, I walked into the East End to mind children and wore a badly dyed dress twenty years out of style because I could not afford a new one—youknowthat,” Genevieve urged. “I lived in a hole underground with nothing but what I kept in my pockets to my name. We are not all that different. If our house is not for you, then it can’t be for me.”
“Don’t be fooled by a grand façade,” Kendrick said. “The truth is that for years, the house that is now mine was an unwholesome pit of despair.Itis the thing that is unworthy of my wife and of you, Fletcher. But we are in the midst of a great work to mend what is now in ruins.”
Fletcher shook his head, his gaze darting around the room. “Still?—”
Kendrick pressed, “But if I tell you that beyond our need, beyond any apparent worthiness, that wewantyou to stay with us?—”
“You don’t want me, guv!” Fletcher blurted out.
Kendrick saw the tremble in Fletcher’s lower lip that he tried so hard to stiffen. The bravado had cracked. Just a little, but enough.
“Fletcher,” Genevieve said, her voice anguished. “Yes, we do! We do!”
He reddened but stiffened his shoulders. “You do, but he don’t! I ain’t his son.”
There it is, Kendrick thought. He propped his chin on his fist, staring at Fletcher intently. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“You—you don’t want a cove who ain’t your blood—who don’t even know who his people are?—”
“Don’t tell me what I want,” Kendrick said flatly. “You think you’re unworthy because you’re not our blood? Are only sons of the blood allowed to lodge with us? If so, Genevieve and I will have a very empty house. Didn’t I make you promises, Fletcher? Didn’t I swear to lodge and protect you? Perhaps I imagined you accepting my hospitality in return.”
Fletcher swallowed hard, his shoulders hunched. “You only did that ’cause she asked.”
“Be very careful,” Kendrick said, leaning forward. “You come perilously close to calling me a liar, Fletcher. A man’s honor and reputation are the most important things he possesses. Tell me what I have done, in word or deed, that led you to believe I don’t want you.”
Fletcher’s mouth opened and closed, finally at a loss for words.
“You think I don’t want a superfluous child underfoot, perhaps taking Genevieve’s attention? Let me tell you something, Fletcher. In days long ago, a lord would send his son to be fostered, raised by a tenant or another lord, and would take in another man’s son and raise him in order to strengthen the bond of kinship and alliances between them. Families are not forged by bonds of blood alone.”
“Are you having me on?” Fletcher demanded.
“My father wrote about it in his bookThe Banished,” Genevieve said. Her eyes were shining with emotion.
“I’ll show you when we get home tonight if you are still calling my honor into question.” Kendrick sharpened his eyes on Fletcher and waited.
It did not take long. Fletcher’s chin trembled. “You don’t know what I done,” Fletcher burst out. “I nicked from costermongers. I stood lookout for cracksmen. I told off mutton shunters, picked pockets, piked off?—”
“You walked Genevieve back from the East End for months in the dark. You looked out for children who weren’t as canny as you when you were only a little older than they were. You survived hell on your own. But you don’t have to anymore. Don’t you know you’re our boy? We want you to stay with us, Fletcher. If pride demands you be useful, fine. But we want to be your home.”
A gamut of emotions passed over Fletcher’s face as he blinked hard, fiercely trying to keep tears away.
Kendrick stood and gentled his voice. “You’ll always be able to choose, but a hard-hearted man it is who turns his back on a warm hearth to walk back out into a storm. Come inside, Fletcher.”
Fletcher swallowed. “You’re not witching me? You really want me to stay?”
“I’ll never lie to you, Fletcher, and if I were ‘witching’ you, you’d be in front of the fire with a cup for wassail already,” Kendrick said dryly.
The last of Fletcher’s defenses broke. With a sob, he threw himself at Kendrick.
He wrapped his arms around the small scrap of vital humanity and held him tightly.
Genevieve had had to hold herself back as Kendrick had spoken to Fletcher. Her mind had been thrown into a spiral at the idea of the boy going back to his itinerant and uncertain existence. Fletcher couldn’t go, he justcouldn’t. It had been different when she had had to leave him to return to her own precarious and dangerous existence.
But she had a home now. A safe place to land. A guarantee from Kendrick that vampire households would be protected and safeguarded. How could Fletcher want to go back? And to leave his dog?
It was fear, she realized halfway through the conversation with herself. Fletcher was just as afraid as she was. But she was afraid of losing him. He was afraid to hope.
She knew all about that sort of fear.
