Mr. Moore had said he’d lay odds on Lord Rafe Beaumont tracking down Cooper in time. Could his judgment be trusted? No; he wasn’t going to let himself devolve once more into knots of anxiety and stress. For once, he was going to allow himself to believe there was a chance.
Still, he pressed one hand to his coat, over the interior pocket in which the queen of hearts rested, and hoped that finally something lucky would come of this. That Lord Rafe Beaumont would come swiftly through with the answer they needed.
“Here,” Grace said, beckoning him further down the hallway rather than toward the stairs. “Follow me.”
And as his feet moved of their own accord, he was remindedof that strange thought he’d had only yesterday—he would have followed her anywhere. Into Hell, even. Only because she had asked.
“Where are we going?” he asked as he trailed along behind her.
“To the balcony. It’s just here. You look as though you could use a little fresh air.” She cast open the doors at the end of the hall and swept out into the night, disappearing from view as she strolled along the balcony. “And look. If you stand just here, you can see Hieronymus.”
Right. The terrapin. The night air cooled the sweat that had broken out on his brow as he walked through the doors, following in her footsteps. And sure enough, in the garden below there was a crudely-dug pond and when he squinted, he could just make out the shape of a turtle dozing upon a large rock within it.
Grace had paused just there at the edge of the balcony, bracing her arms upon the balustrade as she leaned over. “Better?” she asked, with a tilt of her head that sent a single gold curl tumbling down her back.
“Yes. Thank you.” Henry sucked in a huge breath, felt a bit of tension leave his shoulders. “Your family is…rather unconventional.”
She laughed lightly, and a dimple carved itself into her cheek. “Yes,” she said. “They are. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Henry found a space there at the balustrade beside her. “What did you mean,” he asked, “when you said your sisters rescued you?”
A long silence drew out. Not cold; not unpleasant. More contemplative than anything. At last Grace lifted her head, peering up at the sky, at the glow of the moon behind the cloud-cover. “I was sixteen,” she said, “when I met them. I didn’t know about them; Mama had never told me she had had otherchildren before me. I met them because—because Mama was extorting Felicity. And she used me to help her do it.”
“That’s—that’s—” Unconscionable. Vile. Beyond cruel.
Grace shrugged. “That was my life,” she said. “Mother noticed my aptitude for theft early on and exploited it often. And because I was so very young, if I was ever caught, most shopkeepers were not inclined to charge me with theft provided Mama returned the stolen item, scolded me for it, and promised them she’d keep a closer eye on me. Of course she would scold me even worse later for being caught at it, so I grew very good, very quickly. I did many things at Mama’s command that I’m not proud of,” she said. “Though it wasn’t as if I had another choice. I was always—so afraid she would leave me again.”
“Again?”
“She had a habit of it,” Grace said, her voice lowering, softening, as if the words themselves were painful to speak. “She kept me when she needed me. And left me when she didn’t. That is to say, whenever she’d found a new husband, or a wealthy lover from whom she might ply money. Which was often.” Another shrug, jerky, faintly ashamed. “She would leave me at orphanages, workhouses—wherever was convenient. Sometimes she didn’t come back for weeks or months. But shewouldcome back for me, when the money had run out, when she needed my quick fingers to steal for her. And the money always ran out. I was…her contingency, I think. Not a beloved child. Only a tool; a thing to use so long as it was advantageous.”
“But you were her daughter.”
“So was Charity. Felicity. Mercy. Them, she abandoned them completely. They—we—lost every bit of her attention the moment she grew bored, or we ceased to entertain. I doubt she gave any of us a second thought unless and until we might prove useful to her. I was her daughter only when she’d run out of money, when she needed me to steal or to deceive.” With onehand she swiped at her face, and an ugly little laugh eked out of her throat. “I think that might well have been the only thing of value she ever taught me. To always have a contingency plan.”
Henry wondered if Grace’s mother had not been kinder to her elder sisters, in the end. To have a swift, complete break, rather than a child left wondering if this would be the time she would be left on her own forever after.
“The, er—the men she married. They didn’t welcome you into their family?”
“I don’t believe many—if any—even knew about me,” she said. “Mama was careful about such things.” She folded her arms, bent to settle her chin atop them. “There was a man, once,” she said softly. “I don’t know if he was my father. I don’t know if even Mama knew whether he was my father. But I remember that he felt like one. I remember he would pick me up and hold me on his shoulders, and sing me to sleep. And then one day he was gone, and I never saw him again. I suppose he must have died. I think I would have been about three years old.” She turned her head toward him, pillowing her cheek upon her folded arms. “My surname is Seymour,” she said, “but I don’t know where it comes from. Whether it was my father’s name, or an invented one Mama devised, or the name of one of her husbands who was no relation to me at all.”
How terrible it must have been for her, to have only that tattered memory of a father, of a prior affection that must once have existed. To have only a dreadful excuse for a mother at such a tender age. “Did she ever care for you at all, as a mother should have done?”
“No,” she said. “Not really; which is not to say that I ever knew the difference. But then, I don’t think she cared for anyone so much as she cared for herself. I can’t recall her ever making a meal, or feeding me—though I am certain she must have done at some point, when I was too young to fend for myself.”
Fend for herself. A child! And—hadn’t she once told him she’d spent a week in jail over the theft of a penny bun? “She made you steal to eat?”
“And for other reasons,” she said. “But hunger is a constant, you know. A spectre lurking around every corner. Have you ever been truly hungry?”
“Of course I’ve been hungry.”
A little laugh, half smothered within the bend of her elbow. “Really,trulyhungry,” she clarified. “The sort of hunger that sticks to your ribs and claws at your guts. The sort of hunger that pulls at the fringes of your mind until it’s all you can think about.”
Something was clawing at his guts now, but it wasn’t hunger. It was sympathy for the little girl who had once suffered it. “No,” he said. “Not like that.”
“I have,” she said. “I have been starving. Every person in the world is no more than a few missed meals away from theft. Because when youarethat hungry, you’ll do anything to assuage it.”
Henry believed her. Not because he had had any experience with it, but because shehad. Because the trauma of it lived with her still. Because she used that pain to serve others who knew it just as intimately as she once had, used the lightness of her fingers to fleece the cruel and the arrogant of their petty trinkets, and poured those ill-gotten gains back into the hands of those who suffered.
