Startled by the question, Grace looked up from the letter in her hand—one of the dozens of them she’d snatched from Henry’s uncle’s study. “I beg your pardon?” she asked, with a slow blink.
“I meant no offense,” Henry hastened to say, his blue eyes widening just slightly over the top of his own letter. “I was just…curious. You have got experiences I’ve never imagined.”
“I suppose I have.” Delicately, Grace laid down the letter upon the stack of the rest they’d gone through and picked up a pen to add the amount of the debt outlined therein to the tally sheet they’d been working to complete these last hours. “Unpleasant,” she said at last. “I doubt you’d fare well.”
Henry’s lips twitched with the tiniest fillip of mirth. “Ought I take offense?”
“Only if you wish to do so. But in my opinion—which we mustagree is without flaw—you bathe too frequently to survive it.”
Another minute widening of his eyes. “And you don’t?” His nose twitched as if he were scenting the air in an effort to detect the sour smell of body odor above the sweet jasmine scent of her perfume.
She allowed herself a haughty sniff. “I do, now,” she said. “But then, I was just fourteen, and no, I did not have the indulgence of regular baths. Nor are they offered in jail.”
“Ever?”
The strident horror in his voice wrung a laugh out of her. “I was only in the clink for a week,” she said. “In that time, we were offered a bucket of water to wash with only once—on Sunday—and the water was grey by the time it was my turn to use it. I decided I’d rather be dirty.”
Henry shuddered with all the revulsion of a duchess who had just seen a mouse scurry across the floor. “I can’t say I blame you.”
“That wasn’t the worst of it,” she said. “The cell, which I shared with a great many other women—and rats—reeked of piss and shit. We had no blankets, nor even any cots. We were crammed within for all but one hour a day, during which we were made to walk circles in the yard for exercise. During that time, we weren’t permitted to speak to or look at one another.”
“I hesitate to inquire after the food.”
“In fact, the food was the only bright spot.” At least for her. “We had regular meals, if only of thin soup or gruel.”
A cant of his head, confusion pinching his dark brows together. “In what way is that a bright spot?”
“I rarely had regular meals outside of jail.”
A long pause as he dropped his gaze, abashed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’ve spoken of it before, I know, but I had assumed—hoped—that it was a rare occurrence. That was insensitive of me.”
Not insensitive so much as uninformed. He’d been insulated, for much of his life, from the realities often faced by the lower classes. “I suppose it must be difficult,” she said carefully, “to have to consider things that you never would have done before.”
A brief wince flashed across his face. “It is,” he admitted slowly. “But it is also elucidating. Could I ask…another rather insensitive question?”
The fact that he had asked permission first made it already less insensitive than he probably imagined. And there was the fact that he’d been by to see her every day this last week, despite the fact that she’d told him that she would inform him when Uncle Rafe produced a location for Mr. Cooper.
She thought he must simply enjoy her company. And even though this last hour—longer than he ought to have stayed for a regular morning call—had passed mostly in silence as they read through his uncle’s letters in an attempt to gain a full understanding of the man’s debts, still it had been acomfortablesort of silence.
“Ask away,” she said as she collected another letter.
“How do you handle it so well? Being a bastard, I mean to say. It’s as if…as if it doesn’t matter to you at all.”
“It doesn’t,” she said. “I can’t control the circumstances of my birth. Probably there are some”—many—“who would think it right and proper for me to be ashamed of it, but I will not allow them to decide my worth for me.”
Henry shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “I wish I could do the same,” he said, his voice low and pensive.
Poor man. He hadn’t the luxury of so many protective older sisters and such a large family from which to take strength. From the day she had been welcomed into their fold, no one had ever treated her as lesser, nor allowed her to take to heart the gossip of theTon. These last eight years, she had been surrounded by unwavering love and support—a veritable human shield whichinsecurities had never been allowed to penetrate. She had always known precisely who she was, and if there had ever been a time when she might have faltered, there had also been a dozen or more outstretched hands thrust out to her, ready to lift her to her feet once again.
She asked, “What about you has changed since you learned the truth?”
“Everything has changed,” he said, a quizzical slant to his brows. “My title, my right to inherit—”
“No,” Grace said. “Those have changedforyou. What has changedaboutyou?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Are you a fundamentally different person than you were?” she asked. “Not your circumstances, but yourself? Has your character altered?”
