“It doesn’t make me love her any less.” Arthur took a deep breath and marched outside.
Phineas was sitting on the steps. “The butler wasn’t letting me in to get a statement about the warehouse fire. I thought maybe you’d give me one.”
The last thing the Croomes needed was to be dragged into the papers. “Phineas, I have a better story for you. One that should’ve been told by now. But for the exclusive, you have to leave the Croomes out of the paper.”
“I have to investigate the fire, but I’ll protect them as much as I can. You have my word on this. But what is your story? And why do you look like your best friend died? Is Mr. Croome—”
“If you want the scandal of the season, follow me to my flat. I’ll tell you everything.”
Arthur walked down Fournier Street to the mews. It was time to stop living a lie, and if he could tell his scandal without hurting the Croomes, he would. The pain of his past, of hiding, was nothing to the gut punch of losing Ester, the woman he loved.
Chapter Twenty-One
What Light Breaks a Heart?
A knock woke Ester from her light sleep. Her bedchamber at Nineteen Fournier was dark, only lit by the moonlight. She punched her pillow. It was hard to get comfortable without Bex’s shoulder to lie upon or the rumble of his snores teasing her ear.
And she still fretted that he would put himself in harm’s way.
Was he well?
Was he out risking his life at more abolition rallies, or running into burning buildings?
Was he sleeping?
Or had the newspaper men robbed him of that?
In the week since she’d asked him to leave, his horrid connection to theZhondahad been printed in every paper. Headlines likeWarehouse Fire Claims Lives and Unmasks Herowere everywhere. The vile Countess Devoors had suggested he, too, was a murderer. Poor Bex.
Ester rolled over but couldn’t find comfort. Papa was no better, and Mama had gone silent again, only rousing from her blank-faced knitting to check on Papa or to go with Ester and Mrs. Fitterwall to bring food to the women widowed by the fire.
Heartbroken, unable to sketch anything, she turned over again and put her face in the pillow.
Another tap made the window creak. It sounded as if it would break.
Ester sat up. Her pulse raced. At her window stood a man.
A few blinks revealed a tall, muscular outline, and she struggled to breathe.
Bex. He was outside her third-floor window.
“No.” She leaned over and lit a candle then pulled the curtains back fully.
The crazed man was on the ledge. She stared, transfixed, at his lips. He mouthed her name, and she felt his voice rip through her heart, even before she heard it.
He wasn’t moving away, and Ester feared he’d fall, so she opened the window.
One of his big legs plowed in first. Then the rest of him in a costume—tights, a pointed hat, and a leather mantle that looked like what he’d worn as Romeo in Shakespeare’s play. Had he just left the stage to come to her? “I thought you were to be Antony ofAntony and Cleopatra?”
He smoothed his rumpled shirt sleeves. “I’ve a bit part right now. I lost the general’s role. It seems the theater owner didn’t want a slaver’s son in the part.
“You’re not that, Bex.”
He stepped an inch or two nearer. The heat and hurt in his eyes pained her soul, made her almost pant. “Details don’t matter when a scandal is available. This room is very pink. Pink suits you. Yellow does, too. Pity you’ve taken off your wedding ring.” He leaned and spun the gold and emerald band on the coral necklace she wore. “Forget me so soon?”
Like that was possible. She tugged at her salmon-colored nightgown, covering her throat and her vulnerable heart. She wished she had on a robe to hide from his gaze.
But her own expressions probably gave her away, for he was gorgeous and tall and here. She pinched at her cheeks. “Why have you come?”
