by Anne Gracie
“How old were you?” Hope asked softly. He must have been just a young boy. She wanted the girls to realize it.
He glanced at her. “Twelve.”
She nodded. “The same age Dorie is now.”
He stared at her as if wondering what possible relevance his age had. “Yes. I was older, of course, when Dorie was born. Papa had . . . died, by then.” He paused. There was something he wasn’t telling them, Hope realized, something about his father’s death.
“Didn’t you have any relatives to turn to?”
“No, Mama wrote, but . . .” He shook his head. He contemplated the fire again, brooding. “Dorie was born a few months after that.” He jerked his chin at the pianoforte and added, “That song you were singing before, Mama used to sing it to Cassie over and over while she waited for Dorie to be born.” He stared into the fire for a moment, watching the flames dance, listening to the hiss and crackle, lost in memories.
“If your father was dead, how did you live?” Hope prompted. She had a feeling that if she didn’t ask, he would skip over the most important part—the role of Sebastian Reyne, hero. She wanted his sisters to understand what hardships he had faced and how very young he had been. If they did, they would surely stop repudiating his care, and perhaps some of that haunted look he carried would fade from his bleak, gray gaze.
He shrugged uncomfortably and muttered, “I’d always managed to do an odd job here and there, and help out at the market.”
Hope had seen a ragged urchin at a market once, picking up bruised fruit and vegetables from the gutters. That was how Sebastian Reyne kept his family alive?
“But I got a job in one of the mills after Papa died—he wouldn’t let me take a proper job before—‘Not fitting for one of our class!’” His mouth twisted.
Hope suddenly understood the source of the vehemence with which he occasionally referred to the ton.
“I got Johnny a job soon afterward. Luckily, Dorie was born in the middle of the night, otherwise we’d have been at the mill, working, and Mama would have been alone.”
Hope glanced at the Reyne girls and said for their benefit, “So you and your younger brother supported your mother and two babies.”
He grimaced. “Supported was hardly the word. And we didn’t do a good enough job. Mama died while Dorie was still a weanling.” He swallowed and said in a voice that grated with emotion, “After that, I took you two babies to Widow Morgan and paid her to look after you for us.”
“You were only, what, fourteen? And Johnny twelve?” Hope asked, her voice suddenly husky as she imagined a young boy, alone, desperately struggling to keep their family together. “How could you afford to pay her and keep yourselves?”
Judging by the discomfort he showed at the question, it was another area he’d been about to skim over, Hope thought.
He shrugged awkwardly, “Johnny and I slept at the mill so we didn’t need to pay rent for a room anymore.” He looked at his sisters and said, “But I looked in on you at Widow Morgan’s every morning and every night, to check for myself that you were all right.”
Cassie stared at him and whispered, “You still check on us now, morning and night.”
He grimaced wryly and nodded. “I can’t seem to break the habit.”
“How did you come to lose us then?” Cassie asked.
His face contorted briefly, then he mastered himself and said baldly, “Johnny died. An accident at the mill.”
Cassie and Dorie glanced at each other. They were clutching each other’s hands tightly. Cassie said, “Johnny died? What happened?”
He shook his head as if unwilling to talk about it, but his sisters were staring up at him, and Hope could see he was trapped. He twisted his hands and spoke. “It was at the end of a shift. Most accidents happen then, for the children are tired.”
“After working for twelve long hours,” Miss Hope prompted.
He shook his head shortly, “The shift was fourteen hours in those days. Anyway, Johnny was tired, and it made him slow, clumsy. I tried to keep an eye on him, but they’d put me in the office by that time—I’m good with figures—and I didn’t see how tired he was. I did come out to check, and I saw it happen . . .” He kneaded his big, scarred hands painfully as he told the story. Hope noticed Dorie watching them.
“I tried to help, but Johnny was . . . just . . . gone.” He shuddered, and Hope knew at once that it had been a particularly ugly accident.
She’d read a description of such an accident once: in seconds the machines had ripped the body of a twelve-year-old girl apart, leaving it scattered about in bloody chunks. She’d felt sick just reading of it. And Sebastian Reyne watched it happen to his brother. She wanted to go and comfort him, but he sat there, a big, dark, lonely man, fiercely independent, determined to show no emotion, as if emotion was weakness. And she did not have the right to comfort him.
His sisters sat opposite, watching him with painful intensity.
“That’s how you hurt your hand, isn’t it?” Hope said.
Cassie and Dorie stared at his hand, and she could tell by the change in their faces that they understood more than he was telling them.
He immediately shoved his hand in his pocket and said in a hard voice, “After Johnny died, there was less money to pay Widow Morgan. It—it didn’t seem to be a problem at first. She knew I’d pay her in the end, and she seemed fond of you girls . . .” His face twisted with remorse. “But one night, a few months after Johnny . . . when I went to do my usual check on the babies, I found Widow Morgan gone, along with you two. She’d never given so much as a hint she was leaving. She knew I’d never let her take you away . . . We’d worked so hard to keep you . . .” His voice broke.
Hope’s eyes were swimming with tears. She blinked them back.
He compressed his lips fiercely and said after a moment, “I searched everywhere. One neighbor thought she’d gone to stay with her brother on a farm, another said the brother lived in London . . .” He shrugged, the movement carrying an echo of that long-ago despair. “Nobody could agree: some said a farm, either in Yorkshire or Leicester-shire, some said London. Another said she’d gone back to her husband’s people in Ireland. Wherever it was, I’d lost you. June sixteenth, 1807.” He looked at them. “I’m sorry. I did my best . . . It wasn’t good enough.”
Cassie looked uncomfortable. She said, “But you found us in the end.”
He nodded. “Morton Black did, nearly six months ago.” He looked down at the girls and, with a soft look in his eye, put out a hand as if to touch them. It almost broke Hope’s heart when he hesitated, then put his hand away.
Even after what he’d told them, he still blamed himself, still didn’t expect to be forgiven.
She could see now why he was so tough, why he drove himself so hard. He’d done more than any young boy could have been expected to do, and yet he still believed he’d failed them, failed the girls, failed his brother, and probably his mother, too, and for all she knew, his late wife as well. No wonder the man looked so bleak and grim.
“Where did Widow Morgan take you girls?” he asked. “Now it’s your turn to explain.”
Hope looked at him in surprise. He’d found them, and yet he didn’t know where they’d been?
He caught her look and said bitterly, “I know where they were found, but they can’t have been there all their lives.” He glanced at his sister and said gently, “Cassie, I only want to know where you spent your childhood. Not about—not about the later part.”
Hope frowned. She was missing something here. There was something he wasn’t talking about, something Cassie knew, too. Something he, at least, wanted kept secret. Something terrible.
The silence stretched. Cassie hunched her shoulders, uncomfortable with the sudden focus on her.
Suddenly Grace said, “Tell us about the knife, Cassie.”
Every adult in the room gasped. “Grace, you should not—” Hope began.
“But we all know she’s got it, and I for o
ne think it’s very clever of her. If I’d carried a knife strapped to my leg when we lived with Grandpapa, I would have felt much braver! Wouldn’t you?”
Hope and Faith looked at each other. Faith said, “She’s right, twin. It would have made me feel braver.”
Grace added, “We probably wouldn’t have used it, but at least we could have dreamed of cutting his liver out and feeding it to the dogs!” She said it with such ghoulish relish that Hope and Faith couldn’t help but burst out laughing.
The three members of the Reyne family stared at the three Merridew sisters in amazement. Did all London ladies routinely carry weapons? Sebastian wondered whether he should have sought governesses from London instead of the north.
Hope noticed Sebastian’s stunned look and explained, “You must think it very odd, but I assure you we are not such bloodthirsty creatures as you probably imagine. We were all born abroad and traveled a great deal, which was often dangerous. Even our mother carried a pistol with her, so we do not think it unladylike. And our grandfather was—”
“Here we all are then!” declared a loud, jolly voice from the doorway. They all jumped at the sound. Lily bustled in carrying a large tray on which rested a cloth-covered basket, plates, cutlery, and cups. A footman followed, carrying a large pot of chocolate and a bundle of long toasting forks.
“Lovely chocolate, steamy hot, so don’t gulp it down at once, girls,” she said, dumping the tray on the table. “And muffins, all ready for toasting. And there’s butter and honey and strawberry jam. Miss Grace, if you could take the forks from James there, you and the other little misses can set to toasting muffins.”
They all stood up. Cassie came closer to Sebastian. Regarding him with narrowed eyes, she said slowly, “So you are truly our very own brother, and you really did lose us when we were little?”
Sebastian nodded. The admission still flayed him. “Yes.”
“And now you’ve found us.”
“Yes.”
“And you want us to be like a family.”
“We are a family.” He almost growled the words. “You don’t have a choice, Cassie. You are my sisters, and I am your brother, and I’ll never, ever lose you again.”
She sniffed, as if it was something she might be prepared to think over. Her next words surprised him. “You talked about me as a baby. What was Dorie like?” she asked, a cautious expression on her face.
It was some sort of test, Hope saw, and he knew it, too.
Sebastian glanced at Dorie, who had turned back to watch him intently. He said, “She was small and sweet and not nearly as noisy as you. She didn’t cry very much at all. But Dorie did cry. Good and loud on occasions.”
Hope caught the implication. Dorie had a voice in those days.
Cassie nodded, apparently satisfied. She turned away, but Sebastian caught her by the arm and said in a low voice, “We are a family, Cassie. And though I haven’t done a very good job of taking care of you and Dorie for the first twelve years, it will be different in the future, I promise you.”
She gave him a long, thoughtful look, then shrugged in her usual care-for-naught manner and hurried to the tea table to collect her muffin and toasting fork.
The room suddenly took on a party atmosphere as girls scurried to skewer muffins on long forks and crouched in front of the fire to toast them, chattering as if nothing significant had taken place.
Sebastian felt lacerated, exhausted. The telling of the story had raked up all the old grief and guilt he’d tried to suppress for so long.
He watched as Cassie passed Dorie a muffin. She was so protective of her little sister. It was to her credit, of course, but he could not stop wondering about the cause of it. Who or what had Cassie needed to protect Dorie from? When and why did Dorie stop speaking? And had anyone protected Cassie?
Hope Merridew touched him lightly on the arm, interrupting his thoughts. “Don’t worry. They need time to take it all in. You have just turned their world upside down.
He shook his head.“I don’t think so.” He nodded at them. “They are as they were before. I don’t think they care at all.”
The scent of toasting muffins filled the air.
She shook her head. “Believe me, they care. It’s only pride holding them back. And perhaps a little fear.”
“Fear?” He frowned. “But I have never, would never—”
She interrupted him, squeezing his arm. “Not that sort of fear. They fear that you are too good to be true. It’s very powerful, you know—the thought that someone strong and good, like you, claims them and wants them and will protect them, through thick and thin.”
Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. “That story you told, no one could hear it and remain unmoved. They want to believe they are part of a family again, but deep down they are frightened of believing. But those girls know what you did for them. They know you were just a boy, only a little older than Cassie is now, and carrying the burdens of the world on your shoulders. No wonder they are so broad and strong.” She gave a shaky breath, and her voice broke as she whispered, “Those girls know, as I do, that their brother is a true hero, the likes of which few of us meet in this life.”
He made a gesture of repudiation, but she said, “If you want to understand how hard it is for Cassie and Dorie to show they care, just you think about how hard you find it to forgive yourself. Because you still blame yourself, don’t you?”
He stared at her, shocked to have his mind read.
In a low, intense voice she said, “You blame yourself for Johnny’s death, you blame yourself for losing the girls, you take the blame for all they have gone through, and you are haunted by what they might have experienced.” She placed her palm on his chest over his heart and said, “In here, you believe that a lone, desperate fourteen-year-old boy should somehow have managed better.”
She paused to let him think about it. And it was true. He did think he should have managed better. But when she put it like that, “a lone, desperate fourteen-year-old boy,” well, it sounded different to the way he’d always seen it.
“You are mistaken, Mr. Reyne. That boy was a hero. And he has grown into a fine, strong, heroic man. And those girls will come to love you. They probably already do, secretly. You need to forgive yourself, as I’m sure they have already forgiven you.”
Sebastian swallowed and covered her hand with his. His face was working with emotion, but he couldn’t control it, and somehow it didn’t seem to matter. She understood. Of all people to understand what was in his heart, the feelings he found so hard to explain to his sisters . . . that it should be she. His innocent silken elf . . . a flesh-and-blood woman who could look into hearts and read them.
She said softly, “What you said to Cassie just now about being a family was perfect. It was exactly what they needed to hear.”
“You think so?” His voice grated. He could feel her soft warmth pressed lightly against him. He wanted to gather her hard against him.
“Oh yes.” Her voice was husky and tender and full of approval. “You claimed them in no uncertain terms. All people, but especially young girls, need to belong, need to feel wanted and loved.”
He looked at her doubtfully. That was true . . . for some people. “I’m not sure that’s what Cassie and Dorie feel, though.”
“They care. They’ve spent years building up a protective shell of indifference to hide their vulnerable feelings, and they are reluctant to expose them. But those two little girls desperately want to belong. You just keep telling them you want them and love them, and it will all work out, I promise you.” She paused, then added in a low voice, “Believe me, Mr. Reyne, no female in the world could resist you loving them.”
Sebastian felt as though the breath had been knocked from him. He wanted to wrap his arms around her, wanted to bury himself in her warmth and sweetness, to seek release and oblivion and an end to the relentless loneliness of his life. Too choked up to speak, he covered her hand with his.
Hope gazed dee
p into his eyes and shivered at what she saw there. Hunger. Possession. Passion.
She shivered, recognizing the source of that hunger, recognizing, too, the instincts that forced him to leash it in, to hide it behind stiffness and stern words. She understood him so much better, having had a glimpse of the boy he’d been. He would think it a weakness, that sort of hunger . . .
Hope knew. She’d hungered all her life. She’d had her sisters to love her, of course—her twin in particular. But there still remained that aching void, deep inside her. To be loved and wanted, just for herself. To find her soul mate.
And he—he’d had no one. The story he’d told had wrenched her heart. If she hadn’t already been in love with him, that story would have done it. She ached to hold the lonely young boy he’d been, ached to comfort him, but she could only comfort the man, hold the man, love the man.
She pressed against him, lifting her face.
“Oh no, you’ve dropped it!” Cassie’s exclamation startled them both. Dorie crouched in front of the fire. The others, having already toasted their muffins, were seated around the tea table devouring them, but Dorie’s muffin had fallen off its fork into the fire. As they looked, she reached toward the flames to try to retrieve it. Hope and Sebastian leaped forward, as one.
“Don’t!”
Faith, Cassie, and Grace were closest to the fire, but Sebastian reached Dorie first. Yet as he stretched his hand to prevent her burning her fingers, she cringed away from him, and he froze. He straightened and said stiffly, “Let the muffin burn, Dorie. It doesn’t matter. There are plenty more.”
Dorie stared at him with big gray eyes, and he added in a gruff voice, “Your fingers are more important than muffins.”
The gruffness and the frozen look on his face ate into Hope. She hurried forward. “Yes, of course there are plenty more muffins. Don’t worry about it, Dorie, dear. My muffins always fall off their fork, too, the wretched things.”
