Page 44 of A Murder in Bloomsbury

Something flickered behind his eyes—surprise, perhaps, or the small, unwelcome recognition of being addressed as a person and not a parcel. He weighed me a moment longer.

“Will,” he said. “Mam called me Will. I’ll not answer to William.”

“Then Will it shall be.” I let a small pause settle. “Would you like something to eat? You must be hungry.”

He eyed the plate of sandwiches with suspicion. “Nah.”

I needed to talk to him in private. “Croft, I think Master Will and I want a moment alone. If you’ll excuse us.”

“Right, my lord.” He made to go.

“Take the food and drink through to the morning room.”

“Thank you, my lord.” He left with the tray.

“Now, Master Will. You found some objection to the sandwiches.”

He shrugged. “Don’t matter.”

“It matters to me. I’d rather not guess wrong. What would you like?”

He chewed the inside of his cheek. “Bread and butter,” he said at last, with the air of a witness conceding ground under cross-examination. “And milk, if there is any.”

I opened the door to find Dawson waiting outside. “Bread and butter for Master Will, and a glass of milk.”

“Very good, my lord.”

Will’s gaze followed him out. “He called you my lord.”

I closed the door and turned to him. “He did.”

“Are you a lord?”

“I am.”

His mouth tightened. “Mam said my father were a great gentleman who’d not claimed me. Was he a lord and all?”

I had been a soldier. I had been shot at, bayoneted, knocked half off my feet by a shell that killed three men at my side. I had stood at my grandmother’s grave, and my brother’s, and Lydia Gray’s, and had taught myself to feel none of it where it might be seen.

I felt this. It struck like a blow to the ribs, inward and graceless, and I allowed myself the smallest moment to take it before I answered.

“He was,” I said. “My elder brother. He died of a fever months ago. I am sorry he did not claim you, Will. He should have done.”

The boy’s chin came up. I knew the defiance in his face; I had worn the same look in my father’s study at twenty-three.

“I don’t want owt of his,” Will said. “I don’t want his name. I don’t want his money.”

“You need not take his name. You shall have what you need to live, and you shall have it, not as a kindness, because it is owed you. That distinction matters to me. In time, I hope it may matter to you.”

He stared at me. “You talk like a book.”

I bit back a grin. “So I am told. I shall try to mend it.”

Will’s gaze moved over the library. The whole of the cottage he had come from might have fit inside it. “Am I to live here?”

“For now.”

He drew into himself. The answer had frightened him. I cursed my clumsiness.