Then the snappish words that woke me return to mind in a sickening rush.Nasty ingrate. Disgusting!They were hurled by Sabine toward this toothpick of a boy with the longing eyes and the wise, tender face.
Cecil’s shaking now, poor dear. I’ll simply have to postpone the trip. Cancel it, perhaps.
I sit cross-legged and pull him onto my lap. How fragile his thin body seems. “What would you say to living with me?”
He pulls back. “Truly?”
I nod. “It was to be a surprise, but it’s such a nice one I cannot wait any longer to share it.”
This was the largest blow to Sabine. Not only had her mother named Cecil heir instead of Sabine, but she’d left control of Cecil’s trust—as well as a respectable allowance—to her lowly companion—me. “You’re to live with me, you know. Only, it’s taking some time to clear the matter up. When it’s over, I’ll come for you straight away.”
“Promise?” His eyes are haunted with all he’ll have to bear in the meantime. Sabine has a passionate dislike for all men and she cares even less for the smallest ones. Especially those in need of some extra tenderness.
I pull his head against me, smoothing the erratic hair. “I rescued you once, didn’t I, little man?”
I’m a broken human. I live with that awareness every day. But broken rocks still make a foundation, and I am determined to be one to this boy. No one deserves a solid place to stand more than he.
Cecil nods against my shoulder. “You’ll do it again. I know you will.”
“Even if I have to knock you over a second time.”
He giggles. Snorts. I smooth his glossy hair.
The clocks in the house begin to ding in a glorious symphony. They’ll chime nine times, which marks the hour I’m to leave. I kiss the top of his head, aching to sweep him up and walk out the door. “Just a week or so, dearest. Then I’ll fetch you home.” Wherever home is.
He clings harder.
A horse whinnies and carriage wheels crunch. We scramble to the window and below, a large, familiar carriage sits just outside the portico—the asylum transport. I close my eyes and instantly see Cecil’s father on that day, his striped nightclothes hanging on his frame as they wrestled him into the wagon.
I yank the boy away from the window, but he’s seen it. I can tell by his face. “Who this time?” he asks.
He threw himself onto the gravel drive that day, begging them not to take his father.
Sabine had summoned them the moment an ailing Lady St. Laurent had informed us Cecil was to be her heir and Eric, his father, trustee of the boy’s holdings until he came of age.He’s as fit as a limp washrag, Sabine had told the staff, and of course no one had disagreed with her. No one ever dared.
Cecil had to be subdued with a tranquilizer normally reserved for the full-grown patients.“Your father isn’t mad,”I whispered to the unconscious boy as I carried him up the stairs to the nursery with a pounding heart. “Grief has merely tangled him up.”He’d lost his beloved wife—his lifeline—not six monthsprior. But Sabine could have convinced you a bird should live in the ocean, if she’d seen fit.
I lay my hands on Cecil’s shoulders, kissing the top of his head. Surely Sabine wouldn’t send achildto the asylum—but I won’t chance it. “Go down to the mews. Stay with Gregory until I sort this out. Don’t let on you’re there, even if someone comes looking for you, understand?”
Chapter 6
Sabineisspeakingtoa man whose voice I don’t recognize. Downstairs, I edge the door open with my foot and keep to the shadows.
“She just married yesterday, did she not?” asks the man.
Sabine laughs lightly. “Yes. Pity, that.”
Sabine never belonged in quiet, privileged Cheltenham’s old money families and their traditional ways never suited Sabine. She has the fire of a suffragette in her veins and the cunning of a card shark.
“That does complicate things legally,” the man’s voice is saying.
“He has vanished, and nothing has been signed. I hardly call that a complication.”
My hazy mind embraces the truth slowly. Ansel.AJ has vanished. I grab the back of a chair as my knees buckle. AJ…gone.
I see the rooftop in my mind. That delicious moment when AJ’s face appeared so close to mine, refusing to simply allow meto walk away. His gold-flecked eyes that snapped with humor. The lightness of my heart around him.
His achingly handsome face.
