Читать книгу The Historical Collection - Stephanie Laurens - Страница 29

Most people wouldn’t consider kittens to be harbingers of doom. But then, most people weren’t Gabe.

He had a bad feeling about this errand.

It began when she overruled him on their mode of transportation. He offered his carriage, but she insisted on taking a hackney cab. “I won’t have any of your grumbling if one of the kittens claws the barouche’s upholstery.”

They piled into a hackney, three hampers of kittens between the two of them. Keeping them all contained proved to be an impossible task. They clung to his coat like burrs, and as soon as he plucked one from his shoulder and stuffed it back in a basket, another was scaling his trouser leg.

Meanwhile, Penny sat across from him—completely unmolested and laughing at his predicament.

“You could help.”

“And ruin the amusement? Never.”

Cursing, Gabe unhooked a miniature, translucent claw from his waistcoat embroidery.

“Perhaps they’ve mistaken you for a tree,” she said.

“Perhaps you tucked a mackerel in my hatband.” A set of tiny, predatory teeth nipped at his earlobe.

“We’re nearly there.”

Nearly there. Nearly where, exactly? Gabe craned his neck to look outside the cab. While he’d been fending off a feline siege, they’d traveled well into the East End.

He frowned. “What the devil are we doing in this neighborhood?”

“Taking the kittens to their new home.”

The hackney came to a stop.

“This will be us, then,” she announced.

“Here?”

“Yes, here.”

She plucked one last intrepid kitten from his sleeve and tucked it into a hamper. The button on Gabe’s cuff was left dangling by a thread.

They’d stopped before a building with a simple brick façade. It appeared to be well-tended, considering the environs—but Gabe didn’t trust appearances.

“If you mean to release them into the streets, they’ll find no shortage of rats hereabouts.”

“I’d never dream of doing such a thing.”

He knew she wouldn’t, and that left him all the more disturbed. Loving homes in this warren of crime and drunkenness came scarce, and not only for kittens. A young, defenseless creature would find no comfort here. Only cold, hunger, and fear.

When Penny moved to exit the cab, he held her back. “Oh, no, you’re not.”

“Don’t be silly. It’s perfectly safe.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Gabriel.” Her eyes widened in disbelief. “You’ve truly never visited the place?”

Why would he have visited this place? He looked around, searching for street names or numbers, any signs posted overhead. He saw only a window with an astonishing number of faces smashed against the glass.

Children’s faces.

The truth crept over him. Penny, what have you done?

She’d already alighted onto the pavement, carrying hampers in either hand and leaving him with the third. She beckoned him with a tilt of the head. “Come along, then.”

“Wait.”

He scrambled down from the cab to catch her. Stop her. But she’d already rung the bell. “Hammond told you, didn’t he? It couldn’t have been anyone else.”

She gave him a gentle nudge with her elbow. “Don’t be anxious.”

“I’m not anxious,” he lied.

“Don’t be frightened, then.”

“I’m not frightened. I’m livid. I’m going to sack that sorry excuse for an architect before he’s—”

“Nonsense. You’re not angry with Mr. Hammond. You’re just put out that I finally found it.”

“Found what?”

She gave him a smug little smile. “Your soft underbelly.”

The door opened, and they were greeted by a woman of middle age, wearing a white smock over a dark green dress. Upon seeing Penny, she broke into a wide smile. “Lady Penny. What a delight to see you again. Do come in, come in.” She waved them through the door.

“I’ve brought the surprise for the children, as we discussed.” Penny lifted a hamper. “And I’ve brought a surprise for you, as well. Mrs. Baker, may I present Mr. Gabriel Duke. Your elusive benefactor.”

“Mr. Duke?” The woman clapped a hand to her chest in shock. She turned to Gabe. “You are most welcome, sir. Most welcome.”

Gabe mumbled a perfunctory greeting in reply. This Mrs. Baker wanted to make him welcome, and all he wanted was to make a half turn and walk out the way he’d come in. Next they’d be insisting he take some god-awful tour of the place.

“Perhaps you’d be so good as to give us a tour of the place,” Penny suggested.

Gabe intervened. “That won’t be necess—”

“Nothing would give me more pleasure,” Mrs. Baker replied. “Please, this way. Mr. Duke, I hope you’ll find everything to your standards.”

It seemed there would be no escaping this.

As they proceeded down the corridor, Gabe spied a small, red-cheeked face peeking at him from behind a door. When he realized he’d been noticed, the child disappeared at once. The boy had been designated a scout, it would seem, judging by the flurry of whispers from behind the door as he went by.

“We have two-and-thirty children in residence at present.”

Despite her evident pride in the place, apparently Mrs. Baker didn’t believe in lingering—a quality Gabe appreciated. She led them through a bustling kitchen and scullery, then through a dining hall with long rows of tables and benches. They emerged into the corridor, and the matron immediately mounted a flight of stairs.

When Gabe hung back, Penny motioned impatiently for him to follow. He had no choice but to join them, unless he wanted to look like a mulish schoolboy dragging his feet.

“This floor is all bedchambers,” Mrs. Baker said when they reached the landing. “Girls to one side, boys to the other. Four to a room.”

At her urging, he looked in on one of the chambers. Simply furnished, but neat as a pin. Beds, a washstand, and a row of pegs on the wall on which coats were hung, in diminishing sizes. Beneath each coat sat a pair of sturdy boots, sized accordingly.

Gabe couldn’t drag his gaze away from those boots.

Mrs. Baker noticed. “The children do have other shoes for every day, sir. Those are for church and outings.”

“Yes, of course.” He cleared his throat.

“Come back here, you little scoundrel.” Penny hurried after a black kitten who’d escaped his hamper. She lifted the little explorer by the scruff.

Mrs. Baker laughed. “He’s eager to meet the children, no doubt. We had best go upstairs straightaway.” As Penny and Gabe followed, she forged ahead to the landing. “The younger children have a nursery to the left. The schoolroom is to the right. Naturally, many of the children come to us behind in their lessons, or unused to lessons at all. We’re fortunate to have found patient tutors.”

She clapped her hands for attention. The pupils bolted to their feet and stood straight. “All gather in the nursery, please. Our guests have brought us a treat.”

The children left their slates behind, scrambling over one another to be first to the nursery.

Penny turned to Gabe. “Do you want to do the honors?”

“Why would I want that? They’re your kittens.”

“Yes, but the children are your charges.”

“They are not,” he said firmly. He gave this place money. He didn’t take the children into his care.

“As you like.”

Penny and Mrs. Baker went to the center of the circle and began lifting kittens from the hampers. Upon glimpsing the little balls of fluff, the children cried out with delight.

Boys bartered and argued over which kitten belonged to whom. Penny stepped into the fray, matching feline personalities to human ones.

Gabe disentangled the striped ginger kitten who’d found his trouser leg and looked about for somewhere to deposit it. Over to the side, a younger girl hung back, clutching her knees to her chest and watching the happy mayhem with longing in her eyes.

“Here. Have this one.” Gabe placed the kitten in her lap.

When the girl remained hesitant, he crouched at her side and gave the cat a gentle stroke. “Behind the ears, like so. There aren’t many creatures who don’t like a scratch about the ears.”

The girl snatched her hand away. “It’s growling.”

“Purring,” he corrected. “Means he likes you.” The tiny creature rubbed and curled in her arms. “You’d better give him a name.”

As he stood, Gabe felt eyes on him. When he met Penny’s gaze across the sea of furry mayhem, she was wearing that sweetly smug expression he’d come to expect.

The little smile that said, I told you so.

Damn it. He would never hear the end of this.

She didn’t waste any time starting in on him, either. Upon leaving the charity home, they walked toward a busier street to find a hackney cab back to Bloom Square. They weren’t halfway to the next corner when Penny stopped on the pavement and turned to him.

“Gabriel Duke. You are a complete hypocrite.”

“A hypocrite? Me?”

“Yes, you. Mr. I-Know-a-Hidden-Treasure-When-I-See-It. You said you know how to spot undervalued things. Undervalued people. And yet you persist in selling yourself short. If I’m the crown jewels in camouflage, you’re a …” She churned the air with one hand. “… a diamond tiara.”

He grimaced.

“Fine, you can be something manlier. A thick, knobby scepter. Will that suffice?”

“I suppose it’s an improvement.”

“For weeks, you’ve been insisting you haven’t the slightest idea what it means to give a creature a loving home. ‘I’m too ruthless, Penny. I’m only motivated by self-interest, Penny. I’m a bad, bad man, Penny.’ And all this time, you’ve been running an orphanage? I could kick you.”

“I’m not running an orphanage. I give the orphanage money. That’s all.”

“You gave them kittens.”

“No, you gave them kittens.”

“You sent them gifts at Christmas. Playthings and sweets and geese to be roasted for their dinner.”

“It was the only business I could attend to on Christmas, and I don’t like to waste the day. All the banks and offices are closed.”

She skewered him with a look. “Really. You expect me to believe that?”

He pushed a hand through his hair. “What is your aim with this interrogation?”

“I want you to admit the truth. You are giving those children a home. A place of warmth and safety, and yes, even love. Meanwhile, you are stubbornly denying yourself all the same things.”

“I can’t be denying myself if it’s something I don’t want.”

“Home isn’t something a person wants. It’s something every last one of us needs. And it’s not too late for you, Gabriel.” She gentled her voice. “You could have that for yourself.”

“What, with you?”

She flinched at his mocking tone. “I didn’t say that.”

“But that’s what you meant. Isn’t it? You have this idea that you’ll rescue me. Bring me in from the cold, put me on a leash, have me eating out of your hand. I’m not a lost puppy, and I don’t need saving. You’re being a fool.”

Her chin jutted toward him. “Don’t mock me. Don’t you dare mock me just because you’re afraid.”

“You think I’m afraid. You don’t know the meaning of fear. Or hunger, or cold, or loneliness.”

“I know the meaning of love. I know that you deserve it. I know you are too good a man to be alone.”

“Don’t say such things,” he warned her. “Don’t make me prove you wrong.”

She put her hand on his arm. “I’m not wrong.”

He tipped his head back and cursed the sky. There was nothing for it. He couldn’t convince her with words. She’d never understand unless he showed her the truth.

“Come along, then.” He pulled her arm through his, roughly. “We’re going to take a little stroll, you and I.”

She pulled against his arm. “Where are you taking me?”

“On a tour of Hell.”

Penny stumbled as he pulled her around a corner, off the bustling street of shops and onto a smaller, crowded lane. Passing women eyed her with a mix of curiosity and contempt. Men raked her with lascivious gazes.

“Stay close.” His voice was dark and bitter. “This is where the ladies of the evening hawk their wares, and in a neighborhood like this one, it’s evening ’round the clock.”

Penny’s face heated. As they stepped off the pavement, she lifted her hem to keep it out of the muck.

He clucked his tongue. “Mind you don’t raise those skirts too high. Another inch, and you’ll be mistaken for one of them.”

The air was foul with the stench of filth and gin. People called and whistled to them from glassless windows and doorways on either side of the lane.

“Let’s have a little tour of my childhood, shall we? I was likely conceived in one of the many rooms above this street. Fathered by a man who could be any of dozens, and born to a prostitute who was a slave to gin. Nonetheless, she made a better mother than many. She didn’t abandon me to die of exposure. Not as an infant, at least.”

Together, they weaved through a dense warren of twisting, fog-smothered passages. Derelict buildings crowded either side of the alleys. Streets so narrow, one couldn’t see the sky.

Penny could have never retraced their steps. If he left her alone here, she would wander helpless in the fog forever.

But Gabriel never paused—and she didn’t suppose it was because masculine pride made him reluctant to ask for directions. He knew precisely where he was going. Every twist and turn belonged to a map etched in his mind.

They passed a beggar woman with her palm outstretched for a farthing. Penny slowed on instinct, but he tugged her past.

“There’s a cellar down that way that used to have a broken window.” He tossed out the observation as if he were pointing out a church with unremarkable architecture. “I spent a winter sleeping in it. Along with a great many rats.”

She tripped on a stone, and her boot sloshed into a shallow river of … well, of things probably best left unidentified. Gray gutter muck splashed her hem.

They ventured farther into the maze of tenements and doss-houses. Every minute or two, he paused to point out, in a tone of complete indifference, a doorway that could offer as many as six huddled urchins shelter from the wintry wind, or the baker’s shop where it was easiest to steal bread. It wasn’t difficult to imagine him here as a child. Everywhere they turned, she glimpsed the pale, grime-streaked face of a boy dressed in rags. A face that could have been Gabriel’s, once.

By the time he brought them to an abrupt halt, Penny’s feet were aching, her lungs were burning, and her heart was in tatters.

“Here’s the best part.” He took her by the shoulders and turned her to face the other side of the street. “That gin house, right there … ? That’s where my mother sold me.”

“Sold you? A mother can’t sell her child.”

“Happens in the rookery all the time. Husbands sell wives. Parents sell children. I was sold to the pub’s owner.”

“You said you were in the workhouse.”

“I was, after the owner pushed me out the door. But not before I spent three years in that gin house. Hauling coal, carrying water, scrubbing vomit from the same floors I slept on at night.”

“Gabriel …” She wanted to beg him to stop, but that didn’t seem fair. She couldn’t refuse to hear it, when he’d lived it.

“Do you want to know what those years of my life were worth? Can you guess the price a mother sets on her own child?”

Penny suspected she knew the answer. A sick feeling gathered in her stomach as he reached inside his coat.

“A shilling.” He produced the coin from his pocket and held it up for her to see. “That’s what I was worth. A single shilling.”

“Don’t say that. You were always worth more than a shilling.”

“You’re right,” he said. “A shilling was an absurdly low price. If she weren’t so desperate to buy gin, my mother could have haggled for as much as a half crown.”

“I won’t listen to you speak that way.” Penny wrested the coin from his hand and tossed it on the ground.

“Oh, you will. You will listen, and you will hear.”

He grabbed her by the wrist and led her down a dark pathway scarcely wide enough for the two of them to walk side by side. When they’d reached a place out of view, he turned to her.

“Do not speak to me of homes or comforts or love,” he said through gritted teeth. “There is nothing the two of us could share. Nothing.”

“Why not?”

He tugged at his hair. “Look around you. We’re not in Bloom Square, Penny.”

“I don’t care whether you were born in a gutter or a palace, whether your mother was a beggar or a queen. It doesn’t matter to me.”

“Perhaps it matters to me. Have you thought of that? You’re so enamored with the idea of deigning to be with a lowborn man, you haven’t stopped to wonder if I want anything to do with a highborn lady.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in class distinctions.”

“This isn’t a matter of different classes. We come from different worlds. When you were eating buttered toast and jam for your tea, I was starving. While your nursemaid was dressing you in crisp white pinafores, I went without shoes. While you had candles burning in every room, fires laid every night, quilts heaped atop a warmed bed—I shivered in the street, in the dark. Waking at the slightest noise, ready to flee at any moment. I couldn’t trust a soul in the world, and you’ve lived to the age of six-and-twenty believing every problem can be cured with a goddamned kitten.”

“I do not believe every problem can be cured with a kitten. I do believe in love. And perhaps love can’t cure every problem, but it makes the wounds heal a bit faster, with fewer scars. I understand why you don’t believe that. How could you, if you’ve never known it yourself? But perhaps you should give it a try. Let someone care for you, Gabriel. It doesn’t have to be me, but—” She broke off. “No. Forget that last. It does have to be me. I’m generous, but I’m not that generous. When it comes to this, I’m not willing to share.”

“Penny, I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re on about.”

“I love you.” She exhaled in a huff. “There. Is that simple enough?”