“Yes, or my ear cut right off,” Gabe agreed. “I had a lucky escape.”
“Mama has a cut like that in her ear, too.”
“What?” Gabe stared at him. He hadn’t noticed. Her hair had been loose over her ears. “How did that happen?”
“Someone ripped it.”
“She was attacked?”
The boy nodded, frowning. “I’m not sure if I’m supposed to talk about it in England.” He bit his lip. “I prob’ly shouldn’t have told you about the bad men, either. The thing is, I’m not perfectly sure what I’m supposed to say and what I’m not.”
“I won’t tell a soul.” Gabe checked the saddle, feigning indifference.
Nicky thought for a moment, then, apparently deciding he could talk about it after all, said, “Mama told me later it was just some thieves after her earrings…One earring did get ripped out. It bled everywhere. Mama said it didn’t hurt a bit.”
Mama had lied, Gabe thought to himself, and wondered where Papa had been at the time.
“But I think she was just saying that so I wouldn’t worry. Mama does that sometimes.”
Gabe’s brows rose. A perceptive lad for one so young.
Nicky fiddled with the reins that he was holding. He darted Gabe a solemn, fugitive look. “I don’t think the men were thieves, either.”
“You don’t?”
The boy shook his head. “They were after me. Only Mama stopped them.”
“Has that happened before?” Gabe asked him.
“Yes, I was kidnapped once, for three days, but they got me back. I don’t really remember; I was little then.” He shrugged. “Men are always after me.”
“Are men after you now?” Gabe said quietly. It certainly explained a lot of things that had puzzled him.
The boy hunched his thin shoulders. “We don’t know. Mama hopes not. That’s why—” He bit his lip.
“Why you came to England,” Gabe finished for him. And why she had been so mistrustful of him last night, he thought. “Well, I don’t know who these men are, Nicky, but I promise you this—if they do come after you or your mama, I’ll do my very best to stop them.” He added, “I’m pretty good at dealing with bad men, you know. I’ve been a soldier at war for the last eight years.”
The child gave him a long, considering look, then nodded, as if satisfied.
Gabe mounted and swung Nicky up in front of him. “Time to go back,” he said. “Your mother is worried about you.”
“Yes, and I must see how Jim is.”
They moved off at a walk. The cliff-top path was too slippery with mud to go much faster.
Nicky frowned. “I did the wrong thing, didn’t I? Hitting him with the stone.”
“Yes,” Gabe confirmed. “Why did you do it?”
“Well, he did not fight as gentlemen do in my country, and he was beating me and I remembered how you told Mama to hold a stone and to go for the nose, and you are a gentleman, so I thought that was how it was done in England,” Nicky concluded.
“It isn’t,” Gabe said ruefully. “I told your mother to do that because a lady should never have to fight, and she is smaller and weaker than most men, therefore not subject to the rules a gentleman is.”
“So I should not have hit Jim?”
“Not with the stone, no. But it was not wrong to fight to defend your mother’s possessions. And if he was fighting with gutter tactics, your move was understandable. You should not blame him for it, either; he has not been trained as a gentleman has.”
Nicky considered that. “I am not sure what I should do—whether I should apologize to him or not.”
