“My mother taught me to keep my emotions hidden because feelings are the easiest way to manipulate a person.”
“Your mother was right.” And he was learning more about why she kept herself so quiet, so cut apart from the others, even her friends.
“So what did you do to this not-mad George?”
“I didn’t do anything!” He pretended to be insulted. “I merely explained what they were doing to him. And I convinced him he could be his own boss.”
“What? You mean set up his own thieving ring?”
“Good God, no. He wasn’t smart enough for that.”
“Then what?”
“With his help, I gathered all the little ones and the others that I could trust. There were so many of us and only a few of them.” He grinned. “We attacked the ones who were mean, and I took them all to the nuns.” He grinned. “They took us all in, and with George as their leader, they grew up safely.”
“All of them? Truly?”
He shrugged. There were always a few who refused to learn. “Most of them. The nuns praised me all over the place. Said I was the cleverest boy ever and that surely, I had a spot in heaven reserved for me.” He laughed when he said it. If God weighed everything he had done in his life—the good and the bad—he wasn’t sure where his soul would come out. “It helped that I checked in on them. Georgie and I knew how to keep them in line and away from Gill.”
“But surely the man was furious with what you’d done. Didn’t he try to get revenge?”
“The little ones were out of reach. The nuns kept them close with Georgie’s help.”
“And what about you?”
He grinned. “They knew where I was. Figured out I was the boy who protected my uncle’s fruit cart.” He grinned. “But when they came, we were ready for them.”
“We?”
“Me and some older boys, plus my uncle’s cousin and his friends.”
She swallowed. “How bad was it?”
He chuckled. “What do you mean? It was—”
“Glorious? Bloody good fun?”
Well, yes, that’s how he usually described it. But that was the braggadocio of a boy. Thinking back, he’d also been terrified. He’d seen blood gushing from a skull for the first time. He hadn’t been seriously hurt, but some of the others had. Certainly, Gill’s boys had, and the old bastard himself had been killed. It was the only possible fate for a man like that, or so his aunt had said.
“It was necessary,” he finally said. “And we saved over a dozen children who have gone on to live happy lives.” Most of them at least.
She nodded. “What happened to Gill’s boys? Did they live good lives?”
“No. I don’t know exactly, but…” He remembered all that blood. “No.” And he realized now as he had not then, that the people who fought for Gill had been children. Little boys and a few girls who never had a chance. At least one had died that night. Meanwhile, he turned her to face him. “So you understand battle?”
“I have seen the results. Everything from a taproom brawl to a clan skirmish. And I have heard all my life about those who died in Culloden. Good men who should not have been butchered like that.”
He nodded. “And yet you want me to kill your uncle.”
She looked past his shoulder into the shadows. “I am a woman who has stitched wounds, set bones, and comforted widows and orphans. I have held a man’s hand as he died because he punched the wrong man.” Her gaze turned to him. “And yes, I want you to kill my uncle. Or allow me to do it myself.”
He felt strength in her statement. He had assumed she was an angry child or a beautiful debutante who had no idea what she was asking. That image was undercut by the way she fought in Hyde Park, but he had still clung to it. He liked thinking of her as pure or at least innocent.
But he couldn’t cling to that mirage any longer. “You’ve thought about this for a long time?”
“Every day and every night since my mother disappeared.”
“How long ago was that?”
