She tilted her head, and suddenly there was a world of understanding in her eyes. “Part of the attraction of being a spy was living a life you could create. A past you could pull from whole cloth so you would forget the truth.”
His nostrils flared at her observation. She was far too sharp and smart and wonderful for her own good. Certainly far too good for him. And yet she was here. And he loved her.
“Yes,” he admitted.
She sat up slowly and edged closer. Her mouth dropped gently and she brushed her lips to his. “I would rather know the truth. Ugly and cold and hard as it may be, it isyours. It means a great deal to me if you are willing or able to share it.”
His breath hitched as memories hit him hard and fast now. “When I didn’t work fast enough in the chimneys, he would light newspaper at my feet. Once when he was angry with me, he left me up in a chimney for three hours and told me if the people who owned the home returned, he would let them burn the fire with me trapped inside.”
Tears flooded her eyes, but she didn’t allow them to fall. “Too much smoke.”
He tiled his head in confusion. “I’m sorry?”
“You once told me London had too much smoke. Now I understand those words and the look on your face when you said them.”
He drew back. He was shocked she remembered such a detail. But of course she would. She was Celia, after all.
She sucked in her breath harshly. “How could he do that to a little boy?”
Clairemont shrugged. “He had been an apprentice himself and this was how his master treated him. He was also a mean drunk who beat me when we got home.”
“So you lived like this for your entire life?” she asked. “How in the world did you come to be at the War Department?”
“Not my whole life,” Clairemont said. “The bastard had the good grace to drop dead when I was ten. I was so thrilled when it happened, I knew I’d go straight to hell.”
“That’s where he went, not where you would go,” she said. “It was perfectly natural for you to celebrate his death.”
“Well, I celebrated until a day or two later when I realized I had no one to feed or house me. I was on the street with no money and no prospects. I was too big to apprentice for another sweep, and collectors came and took my former master’s horse and things as payment for a debt. I was left alone.”
“Oh no,” she whispered.
“Luckily we were close to London, so I came here,” he said. “I hated it, but there were more opportunities.”
“What did you do?” she asked. “At such a tender age?”
“I begged,” he admitted, color flooding his cheeks as he tried to picture what Celia would have been doing at ten in comparison to him. Her life had not been easy either, but if she had met him then, she would have turned away from him in horror, he was certain.
Her gaze softened. “And then?”
“How do you know there was an ‘and then’?” he asked, holding her gaze evenly.
“I know you,” she said. “I can see it. You’re afraid I will think less of you because of whatever you did. But let me reassure you—” She scooted closer and wrapped her arms around him. “—whatever you did, I will fully approve of. It kept you alive, it brought you here to me.”
He looked around him slowly, at this comfortable room where he didn’t belong. At the bed that contained a woman he certainly didn’t deserve. In clothes that had been made specially for him. He hadn’t had an empty stomach for years, nor gone without a roof over his head except for very specific instances where a case required it.
He had risen above his beginnings. And she said she didn’t care how he’d done it. But then, she hadn’t yet heard the truth. Perhaps that would change.
“I didn’t know anything more,” he began, trying to soften the words he would say. “I didn’t have skills or empathy. Hell, I didn’t have the ability to read. So I—I stole. For years I ran from hovel to hovel and I stole anything that wasn’t nailed down. I got good at it, too, sliding my hand into a man’s pocket and coming out with blunt.”
He shivered at the thought of those nights when pocket full of coils had been cause for a celebration. Even now he sometimes sized up the men around him to see if he could steal from them. He never did it, of course, but he knew his marks. Like it was an old habit, like he somehow feared he’d need those skills again someday so he kept them sharp.
“Of course you stole,” she said softly. “You had to eat.”
He drew back. “How can you not judge me for that?”
“There were times, looking out my window at night, that I thought about running away,” she said. “Certainly my situation with my grandfather was nothing like yours, but if I’d thought I was strong enough to do it, I would have tried. And I’m certain a young lady on the street must do far worse than steal to survive.”
Clairemont gritted his teeth at the thought of Celia doing such a thing. It turned his stomach that her childhood had been so difficult that she’d considered surrendering herself to the dirty, harsh life he had been thrown into. It made him hate her grandfather all the more.
