Toby drank the last of the liquid in his glass and lowered it to the bar gently. “Good day to you, Liam.”
“Lord Corbyn.” Liam nodded.
Turning, he saw a table to his right. Seated there were two men. Both looked at him. Toby nodded and left the Gill. Who were they, and had he been imagining that Liam was nervous around them?
Once he was back on the street, he studied the scene before him. Where were the children? He saw none running about the place shrieking. Nor people milling or laughing. His father used to say Bidham villagers were the jolliest he’d ever met, yet not today.
Why did I leave it so long to come back here?Toby had no answer for that, other than he’d wanted to shut out his past. He’d drawn a line between before he’d left to live in Blackwood House, and after.
He shouldn’t have come here. It was opening him up and making him feel. Looking around, he thought about leaving, but then what did that say about him? Nothing good, that was for sure.
Toby went into the blacksmith’s next. Heat from the forge slapped him in the face as he searched for whoever was running it. He found a man seated on a three-legged stool.
“Good day to you, sir.”
The man lowered the file he held, and rose to his full height, which was a few inches above Toby’s.
“My lord,” the man bowed.
“Good Lord, Mr. Bentley?”
“Indeed, it is me, my lord,” the man said in a solemn voice. From memory, he’d rarely smiled but had been kindhearted. “Is there anything I can help you with, my lord?”
“Just reacquainting myself with Bidham, Mr. Bentley. How have things been?”
The man rocked back on his heels, still clutching the file in one hand. “Well now, Lord Corbyn, it’s been a good many years since you were here, and much has changed.”
More guilt. “I shall make sure to return often then,” Toby said.
The man looked from left to right, and then directly at Toby. “We’d be grateful, as things are not as they were, my lord.”
“What has happened, Mr. Bentley?”
He clamped his lips together, looked right and left again, then shook his head, which told Toby precisely nothing. But he knew hewould learn no more here today.
Toby left the blacksmith’s. He got nothing from the grocers and only hostile stares from the apothecary, so he decided it was time to visit Potter’s bakery. Some food may sweeten his mood, although he very much doubted it. In fact, he couldn’t rule out someone putting something in it at this stage.
Moving to one side, he watched a cart roll toward him. The man who drove it looked at Toby, touching the brim of his hat. The eyes beneath then widened in shock… or was that horror? He searched his memory for the name to go with that face but couldn’t find one. The cart rolled by. Looking at the back of it, he saw a cover tied over what was beneath. Barrels was his guess by the shape of them. Toby wondered what was inside?
Shaking his head for no other reason than he felt a need to, he walked on as another memory slid into his head.
He’d been seven when his father had given him some money to buy a treat for him and Mathew. They’d run down to the bakery, eager to get a wedge of warm gingerbread. A group of children had been outside. Four boys and two girls. The boys were teasing a girl about how ugly she was. She was crying. The other girl had stepped in front of her, drawn back her fist and punched one boy hard in the nose.
Toby felt a smile tug his lips at the memory. The boy’s rage had him charging at her. Toby had stopped the boy and demanded he apologize. It was the first day of his friendship with Liberty. A friendship born of two children from the same world of privilege.
Looking to the bakery, he watched two women walk out the door laughing, and he suddenly couldn’t move.
Her.
Lady Liberty Talbot was with her maid, Helen, who had been the girl the boy had been teasing that day. Toby watched as she pushed her glasses up her nose.When had Liberty started wearing eyeglasses?Shecertainly hadn’t when he’d seen her in society. As if sensing him, her head turned, and their eyes locked on each other.
Liberty was a duke’s daughter, and she’d once been his best friend. The shock of seeing her had him stopping right there in the middle of the narrow street, his eyes taking her in.
Dressed in soft mint, over which she wore an emerald velvet pelisse, she was every inch a lady now. Her bonnet was matching, the ribbon tied in a bow to one side. Under that would be hair the color of burnished copper. Hair she’d always passionately disliked. He couldn’t read the expression in her cool glacier-blue eyes, but knew it would be empty.
After Toby had walked away from their friendship, he’d not seen her again until she’d entered society, many years after she should have. He’d wondered what stopped her from coming to London when she came of age to do so, but had not asked after her. Toby had ensured he had no rights to this woman ever again.
This was her third season, with no engagement forthcoming. He wasn’t sure why, as the girl he’d known had a sharp wit and intellect. She’d drawn people to her, and he’d been one of them until leaving to attend school.
