Ever His Bride (48 page)

“Damnation, Claybourne!” Meath was on his
feet behind Hunter. “It isn’t our business who these people
arc—

“They are children, Meath, and mothers, and
hardworking fathers.” And Felicity was their champion,
his
champion.

“I can’t help that they breed like rabbits,
Claybourne. I didn’t bring them into this world. To hell with you
and your opinions and your bloody-minded wife! You have been
censured here, sir. And I, for one, will enjoy seeing the
Claybourne Exchange slide into the muck of the Thames.”

Hunter held his breath and fixed his focus on
the watery windowpane. “That will never happen, Meath. Not while
I’m alive. I have given each of you my word to protect your
interests, and I am here to deliver on that promise.”

“Ballocks!” Meath was at Hunter’s back.
“You’re a traitor, Claybourne. A bloody traitor to your class.”

Traitor.
Hunter swallowed back the
knot in his throat and stared out onto Threadneedle Street. It
looked as it always had, absorbed in itself and prosperous,
tolerating thieves and tycoons in equal numbers. He had been both
in his time, and now he was neither. A stranger even to
himself.

Damn you, Felicity.

He would play their game because he must, and
because he’d forgotten how to play any other. He’d tried to explain
to her the practical balance of business, but she wouldn’t
listen.

Then her hand was in his again, as tangible
and warm as if she stood beside him.
They will know compassion,
Hunter, and will reach out gladly—
Irrational little fool.
She’d deluded herself into thinking that he was a respectable man,
a good man.

“Gentlemen,” Hunter said, his voice
remarkably steady as he turned from the window and the woman he
loved, to face his accusers. “I am prepared to offer you
absolution.”

“How?” Lanford stood beside his chair, his
face a mask of indignity. “How do we repair this kind of
damage?”

“By confessing your part in it.”

“What’s that?” Meath staggered backward a
step, his balance stolen by too many brandies.

“By confessing your horror and revulsion at
finding such loathsome, disgusting activity going on at your own
apprentice schools and at your factories.”

“Have you gone mad?” Now Sir John was on his
feet again.

“No, my lord. You will deny prior knowledge
of any such villainy. And vow to rid your holding companies of the
men who have violated your personal code of ethics. You will set up
a charitable foundation to remedy the situation immediately.
Publicly voice your concerns for the wretched poor, for the
crippled children.” Hunter knew then, that if he’d ever had a soul,
it was lost to him now. “Gentlemen, you’ll emerge from this filthy
pit as patrons of the poor, not rogue capitalists. I will begin by
pledging thirty thousand pounds of my own.”

The noise in the chamber rose swiftly as one
man turned to the next with sudden smiles, the peace of divine
clemency in their eyes.

Lanford was at Hunter’s side, pumping his arm
and calling him brilliant. Meath even offered him a grudging
nod.

And Hunter’s head reeled. He closed his eyes
and she was there inside him, whispering her own kind of
absolution, complete and absolutely calamitous.

You’re a good man, Hunter—far better than you
know.

Damn the woman!

She’d given him back his name, and he’d worn
it into battle as his shield, only to find that it no longer fit,
that it pinched and offended him.

Damn you, Felicity!

“‘
A
nd so the good
Robin Hood let fly his arrow and split the sheriff’s bolt in
twain.’”

Felicity looked up from the storybook, across
the eager faces and shiny cheeks. Gran was sitting in the
upholstered armchair beside her, her lap overflowing with snuggling
children. How dearly she loved the old woman.

Lady Meath was at the back of the room,
contentedly combing Betts’s hair. She admired the woman for her
courage; for ignoring Lord Meath’s prohibition against returning to
the school. Lady Oswin was washing up one of the endless piles of
dishes, something she knew the woman had never done at home. These
ladies of delicate sensibilities seemed as ruggedly committed to
the Beggar’s Academy as she was.

Indeed, there were miracles left in the
world.

“Please, please read it again, miss.” Andy
pried the book open to the page she had just turned. “Here! Where
Robin Hood beats the sheriff.”

Now the other children were calling out for
the same, and Felicity resigned herself to a third go-round for the
archery tournament.

She was grateful for the distraction.
Anything to keep her thoughts off Hunter. He’d been so cold that
afternoon, so unlike the man she’d come to love and respect. She
cleared her throat of her tears and began to read again.

“‘There came the day when the bandits of
Sherwood Forest. . .’”

Hunter had Branson drive him directly from
the Claybourne Exchange to Shoreditch Road. He stepped down from
the carriage into a caustic evening fog. He clutched his breast
pocket and found the document in place, the ink barely dried, and
his heart raging inside his chest.

He was doing the best thing he knew how. His
business with his wife would be quick. A simple signature, and he
would be done with it, made whole again.

Shoreditch was clogged with rattling carts
and gravel-voiced costermongers, people shoving and pressing their
way home. The alleyways feeding onto it sluiced their foulness into
the brew.

“I’ll wait here, Mr. Claybourne.”

Hunter raised an unsteady hand to Branson and
took a last unadulterated breath before he started through the
stream of foot traffic.

He hesitated at the mouth of the alleyway,
holding back taking his first breath, fearing the black, blinding
headache that would surely swamp him. He dizzied for lack of air,
caught hold of the green-slick wall, then hung his head and let his
lungs fill to bursting.

He gagged as the decay and the hot memories
washed over him. The pounding came to his head in a surging rush,
drawing bile high into his throat, spilling its scalding bitterness
into his mouth, and sending him whirling back to his boyhood.

She had done this to him. Forced him to
remember it all: the scurrying between piles of refuse; the
bitterness of a withered turnip, sauced in whatever muck he’d found
it in. She’d brought him back here to face his torment, to name it,
to grind it into his skin, into his nostrils.

He spat the bile from his mouth and stumbled
forward into the dimness, cursing the dry heaves that racked him
and his water-shot eyes that blurred and disoriented him. He
crashed into a stack of crates and a man cursed him.

He dodged the flying cudgel that would have
felled him, disgusted with the strength of his native-born instinct
that pulled him deeper into the alley, following a foul, ghastly
memory so deeply rooted he could track the twisting course without
sight.

All this because of her, his wife.
Felicity.
She was his beacon, and his abyss. His past and
his future. And he wanted to be done with all the misery.

He broke out of the stifling alley onto a
tightly spoked intersection of five streets, ill-lit and
hostile.

But he knew the place. It was seventeen years
gone from his life, and yet nothing had changed. Not the smell or
the taste, or the empty faces.

Two more lanes and he was standing in front
of the Beggar’s Academy, a boy again, frightened and sweating,
knowing there were better dreams for him somewhere else.

Knowing that he had to go inside to find
them.

Something prickled Felicity’s spine and made
her raise her eyes to the door.

It was Hunter. Her pulse took off and left
her breathless.

He was huge, and filled the small, sagging
portal like a mountain, his fingers white-knuckled and seized-up
around the doorframe. His eyes were damp and darkly shadowed,
unreadable in the wobbling light of the candles. His coat hung
askew, and he was breathing as if he’d run all the way from
Cornhill Street.

But he said nothing, so Felicity went back to
her reading, stumbling over familiar words and smearing the tears
with her fist as they fell upon the page. When he finally moved
from the doorway, she watched him from under her lashes, followed
the sound of his uncertain footfalls as he skirted the room and
came to stand behind her.

“May I see you?” he asked, his voice craggy
and deep and tugging at her.

She stood up and turned to him, aware of her
every nerve, every breath between them.

“What is it you want, Mr. Claybourne?”

“Your signature,” he said in that flat,
fiscal tone of his. He was stern-faced and still winded as he
lifted a document from an inside pocket and handed it to her.

The bound paper was folded thickly and tied
off in red ribbon, coldly official. Separation papers, no doubt.
She had expected his solicitor, not him. And not quite so soon.

“What is this, Mr. Claybourne?” Angry that he
would take precious time from the children to serve these on her,
she finally looked up at him, ready to chasten him.

But his eyes were soft and red-rimmed. His
lower lip was damp and chaffed. “It’s a transfer of title, Mrs.
Claybourne.”

A strange name for separation papers. But
leave it to Hunter to equate the end of a marriage with the
transfer of property. If he’d come to punish her, he’d found his
way.

“I’ll only be a moment, children,” she said,
trying to keep her voice steady. They wouldn’t understand at all if
she broke down and wept. Their dark eyes were fastened on the
stranger beside her, their mouths agape, and Robin Hood
forgotten.

For all but Giles. He had fit his fingers
through hers, and he was watching her face with a stern
countenance. “You don’t have to go with him, miss. I’m here, y’
know.”

“I know that, lad.” She squeezed his hand.
“I’ll be all right. Will you keep reading for me, Giles? Come, Mr.
Claybourne. I will sign your document.”

Choosing not to look up at Hunter, Felicity
touched Gran’s shoulder to gain a measure of strength, then stepped
away to find a more private corner. Giles brusquely took up the
story of Robin Hood.

She reached the table and turned, only to
find Hunter still standing where she’d left him, looking almost
forlorn. He was scanning the room, his eyes never resting on
anything for more than a moment.

The Beggar’s Academy—

She’d forgotten entirely that this had been
his school, the place he had reviled and then forsaken. His gaze
was unyielding as he studied the room, frowning as if he remembered
each plank and every post and was paralyzed by the memory. She
could almost see the boy again, a tender spirit, so easily and so
often wounded.

Tears welled in her eyes for the scarred man
he’d become, and she wanted him gone from here.

“Please, Mr. Claybourne,” she said, in her
most efficient voice. “You can see that I’m busy.”

But then she saw his gaze meet with Lady
Meath’s. He reared back in surprise, shaken from his reverie. He
looked ready to bolt, but then offered both women a half-smile.

“Good evening, Lady Meath, Lady Oswin.” His
voice sounded raw, but steady.

“It’s very good to see you here, Mr.
Claybourne. You ought to come more often.” Lady Meath nodded and
then whispered something to Lady Oswin that drew girlish giggles
from them both.

The pallor was gone from Hunter’s face, and
his color had risen dark against his crisply stiff collar. But he
was breathing like a charging horse.

And Giles was still attempting to read,
although his audience’s attention was fixed on Hunter.

“Who’s that man standing behind you, Giles?”
Jonathan was on his knees pointing at Hunter.

Giles stopped his reading and scowled deeply
at Jonathan. “He’s—”

“I’m Mr. Claybourne,” Hunter said, swallowing
hard to keep the unrelenting sob from escaping his throat.

The room and all its vile memories had nearly
swamped him at the door. He’d nearly ran away. But she’d been
sitting there among the children, his remarkable wife, blessing
them with her love, healing them of their cares, and so he had
stayed. He cleared his throat, then raised his voice and spoke to
the children sitting on the floor beneath him.

“I am Mrs. Claybourne’s husband.”

Felicity’s suspicious, sea-green eyes were on
him as he stood rooted to this very painful and electrifying brink.
She was frowning, and must have thought him a lunatic. He doubted
his own sanity as he teetered here between his past and his future.
One more step, and he would be free.

Did these children know how fortunate they
were to have her looking after them? Fresh paint, sunlight, new
windows, her soft hands cooling a fevered brow. She had gifted him
unselfishly, and yet he had scorned her.