by Carrie Lofty
Alex only grunted, his eyes still hidden. His breathing, however, had returned to a near-normal pace.
“You seem like most of this is . . . well, new to you. But you were married.”
“I don’t hear a question yet, Polly.” His words were tight. A quiet warning she would not heed.
“That’s because you’re being stubborn on purpose. Shall I say it? We know it’ll embarrass you more than it will me.”
“You want to know why a man who was married for six years acts, on occasion, like a virgin lad.”
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
Alex removed his forearm and shifted to face her. The lamp still blazed. Golden warmth bathed his carved features. Oh, how she adored his eyes. So clear and expressive. He could lose the ability to speak and still tell her exactly what was on his mind. At that moment, he was again thinking that their tryst was a mistake. But some greater need pulsed out from his bones. She felt it jittering beneath her hands on his stomach—the need to confide. Her job was to listen. She wouldn’t like any answer he provided, because part of her already wanted him happy.
And this wouldn’t be a happy story.
“My wife, Mamie, was abused by her father. He was and remains a disgusting human being. The worst sort of entitled bastard. That entitlement meant hurting his daughters. At first it was both, but Mamie did what she could to protect her younger sister.” He shivered and punched his eyes shut. “For ten years, maybe longer, she bore the brunt of his . . . perversions.”
“Alex, that’s sick.”
He nodded stiffly. “My father refused to let me marry before I graduated. His reasons were sound, that I would need a reliable occupation to keep her safe. Plus, her family is powerful. I needed his support. So we waited. Each summer when we met again on the beaches there at Cape Cod, she looked even more sunken.” Shoving his free hand through his hair, he choked back a thick swallow. “We married the day after I graduated from Harvard. I took a lesser teaching position in Philadelphia to keep her far from her family in Boston.”
“Jesus.” Realization eased over her in a slow wave as she watched the pain he still concealed. “Oh, God. You kept trying to help her, didn’t you? Learning all those things about women’s bodies.”
Another rusted nod. “It didn’t help. She never . . . She couldn’t, I don’t think. Eventually we just stopped trying.”
“But what about Edmund?”
He reached down and grabbed a blanket from the foot of the bed, draping it across them both. They were hiding from the world. She wanted to do more than that—to keep him safe from these memories. But this was one of Alex’s mysteries. She wanted it solved.
“Mr. Todd, her father—he didn’t like losing. That’s the only reason I can imagine for his doing what he did. We had cut off all contact. For years we lived as we wanted in Philadelphia, away from her family but closer to mine. Mamie organized charity functions and campaigned for female suffrage. I worked to earn my tenure. We didn’t have . . . We slept separately, but sometimes she liked to be held. We made it be enough.”
Polly kept still, kept her mouth shut. Enough. It was a hideous word when compared to what she had just experienced with Alex. To imagine him living that way year after year, constricting his passion into an ever tighter corner, seemed excruciating. No wonder he had been so reluctant—maybe even unable—to let loose. Long habit born of necessity. And that explained why he always appeared so surprised when he did.
“Mr. Todd threatened to force an annulment through the courts, claiming our marriage had never been consummated. It had been. Technically. But our wedding night had been awful. Mamie and I never discussed it, but we never repeated it either.” He shuddered. “I don’t find it arousing to make a woman cry.”
Her heart aching, Polly touched his brow and drew his head down to her breast. To her surprise, he didn’t resist. He simply folded into her and held on.
“Mamie was determined to have her proof. So we made Edmund. Not the most joyous or pure reason to conceive, but she’d never been more adamant about anything. I think . . .” He sucked in a long breath. “I think she wanted to prove that she was free of her father, even if she never would be.”
“That wasn’t easy either, was it? Making your son?”
“No.” His tone stopped her questions. He had given plenty. And she had heard enough.
She shut her eyes against a prickle of tears. What a torture that must have been, with Alex trying so desperately to make it right for his wife. He had done what she wanted—gave her a child—even though it had hurt them both. And eventually, it had taken her life.
Honor and sacrifice. Duty and determination. Even his love for Edmund bore the distinctive stamp of Alex’s impression of love. He was no more suited to being a mill master than she was, but he would never back down. This piece of his past laid bare his reasons for fighting so hard.
“Oh, Christ, Polly. We—” He sat bolt upright. “I didn’t stop.”
Seventeen
What?”
“I stayed inside you,” Alex rasped. “There could be a baby.”
Polly’s eyes went wide and she clutched her middle, where a child might one day grow. The thought was nearly strong enough to steal the strength from his legs. Making those babies. What a joy it would be.
He turned away, utterly dizzy. Frazzled. Wanting to hit something until this confusion ran away screaming.
“I’ll make it right by you. Whatever happens. With or without a child.”
He grabbed his trousers and kept an even pace as he dressed. Not too fast. Nothing to give away the panic that numbed the ends of his fingers. He knew, logically, that one mistake was not necessarily the end of the world. Conceiving Edmund had required four dedicated, difficult months. Chances that Polly might get with child after this lone incident were slim.
But the possibility remained.
The last hour, on top of an impossible evening, was simply too much to process. He needed time. He always needed time to step back from quick or unsettling events and fit them into an order that made sense. Without that opportunity to collect himself, he was left to the mercy of emotions. Right then, looking at where Polly remained, nude and stretched atop his duvet, the emotion he most staunchly battled was possessiveness. He wanted her to stay.
Yes, a factory girl.
Good Christ, a factory girl who had made him feel like a man.
Finally dressed, with his emotions roughly under control, he looked upon her face—which had contorted around unmistakable anger.
“Make it right? That’s what you’d do.”
“Yes,” he said with a frown.
“And if I’m the saboteur or the ringleader you and the other mill masters seek? If I’m as bad as they suspect? If I’m in jail, Alex?” She pulled the blanket over her breasts. “Or maybe it won’t go so far. I’ll just be the same weaver I’ve always been. You’ll ‘make it right’ in the most shameful way possible. Because you’re not talking marriage, are you? You’d keep me.”
“Polly, you’re being ridiculous.”
“Answer me.”
“Yes,” he said tightly. “I’d like you to be my mistress. You’d never want for anything, I swear to you.”
She grabbed her rumpled gown and climbed into its dull fabric. Her underthings remained scattered on the floor. He had actually smiled and joked with her as they shared intimacies, a mere hour before. Now the glib, unguarded words were gone, as were any teasing feelings.
“I’d hoped to keep the memories of this grand, naughty adventure till I’m old and gray,” she said in a rush. “Little chance of that now.”
“What the hell does that mean? What is so wrong with my wanting to care for you?”
“Oh, but there’d be no stopping you then. Soon enough we’d be haggling over costs. Trading favors. You’d buy my parents coal, so I’d feel obligated to suck your knob. I just did it for nothing, you fool!” She jerked her chin up, mouth compressed into a line. “Don’t make such an
offer again.”
Rejection turned his body back into rock. He had survived for years by shutting down any stronger emotion, any more delicious sensation.
“Then forget I did.”
She was dressed now. They stood across his bedroom like enemies across a boardroom table. “If you want to question me about the fire or any other blasted thing, get it over with. I’d like to go home. And you need to check on your son.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way.”
She stared at him, any trace of tears gone. She would do more than glare when she found out what he’d agreed to regarding the weavers’ wages.
“All right,” he said wearily. “Maybe it does. I’ll take you home.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You need to stay here with Edmund.”
“It’s after two. I’m not letting you walk back at this hour. Your neighborhood—”
He froze when Polly did. “It’s my home, and I’d appreciate it if you stopped your insults.”
“Then I’m calling you a hackney. Otherwise I’ll be forced to wake Agnes when I escort you there myself.” The words came out too forcefully. Like a threat.
Her auburn brows drew down. “That’s quite a statement, master.”
Alex forced back a flare of temper. They deserved better than they could permit each other, which almost excused her curt tone,. but that didn’t mean it grated less harshly on his nerves.
She adjusted the bodice of her gown and swept one last loose strand of hair behind her ear. Anyone looking at her afresh would assume she was what she presented to the world: a respectable if poor young workingwoman. One without cares and without a wicked, teasing sexuality ready to burst loose. But she’d flattened Alex as surely as an earthquake.
Pelisse over one arm, she smoothed any sourness off her features and licked her lower lip.
“What if there is a child?” he asked.
“He’ll be raised in Calton. You’ll go back to America in eighteen months.” She glanced at her undergarments but made no move to collect them, as if she couldn’t stand to touch them now. “While I’m going back to the home I know and the family I love. It’s my life. You’re not part of it.” She moved stiffly toward the door. “Good night, Alex.”
“You mean good-bye, don’t you?”
The light gleamed across her eyes. Her smile was the saddest he’d ever seen. “We’ll meet again, I’m certain. There’s too much unresolved between us. But not like this. Never again like this.”
What she hadn’t told Alex was how very much she wanted to be rescued.
Even that notion turned her stomach as she settled into an open-air hackney. The story he’d told about his wife chipped away at the reserve holding back her emotions. Mamie had needed a champion to sweep in and protect her from unimaginable evil. Polly had no such need. To wish for something so utterly foolish would mean turning her back on the traditions that made her life whole—and leave her disappointed when dreams of freedom died.
The cab bumped on along Gallowgate with a grating rhythm of wheels against cobblestones, the driver cursing the entire way. She pressed her head back. Alex’s bed, his house, his strong, needy body over hers . . . She knew her place, and it included none of those indulgences.
Her da had always warned her about men who might want to possess both her and her influence. Surely, desiring a man so far above her station wasn’t the alternative. She didn’t want to be rescued. She wanted to be adored. Given Alex’s history, she couldn’t imagine that he knew the difference.
The cab lurched, then jerked against a hasty application of the brake lever. She sat upright. A jolt of fear tingled down her spine as two constables appeared on horseback. Her hand ached from holding on to the bench so tightly.
“You’re coming with us, Miss Gowan.” Constable Utley, the same who had obeyed Rand Livingstone with unfailing compliance, jerked the hackney’s door open, grabbed her beneath both arms, and wrestled her out onto the cobblestones. “No Mr. Christie here to protect you now.”
Polly screamed, fighting with fists and heels. The man bellowed when she caught his earlobe and yanked hard. She scored a second victory by catching the flesh of his neck beneath her gouging fingernails. Illuminated by the dull orange streetlamps, he snarled foul curses and shoved her to the ground.
With her shoulder blades pressed against the curb, and cold water seeping into the fabric of her gown, she pushed up, but her limbs were drained of strength. Utley had the advantage of position, as well as four stone in body mass. He kicked her sideways. Her spine cracked against the wheel of the carriage. A sob choked out of her chest.
“Don’t move.” Blood oozed down the constable’s neck as he stood over her. “I won’t hesitate to kick you in the gob.”
“I just want to go home.” Her cold, exhausted body shook like an undercooked pudding.
“Not a chance. Not this time. We’ll finish our own interrogation at the station.”
“I’ll go no such place,” Polly replied. “You’ve accosted me on a public street, with no cause or charge. I had an alibi for tonight and you know it.”
Utley hauled her off the wet cobblestones. He nodded to the other constable. “Recognize that?”
Polly peered through the gloom. Her tartan.
“Actually, the charge is prostitution. Or can you deny soliciting an unknown man’s attentions at Old Peter’s last week.”
An unknown man. Oh, God. If they didn’t know it was Alex . . .
No, they would never know.
“I won’t deny or confirm anything.”
The detective wore a heavy mustache in the style favored by his professional brethren, which completely obscured his lips. Polly had never realized how much she relied on watching people’s mouths when they spoke. “And then we’ll talk about the witness who saw your union cronies light the fire at Winchester’s.”
“That’s a lie!”
“Save it, miss.”
He yanked her toward a wagon that pulled along the curb. Polly’s guts dropped. This was such a stitch-up. But after all she’d shared with Alex since sundown, she could hardly distinguish reality from a sick, sluggish nightmare. She glanced down. A heavy cake of mud stained her skirts. She did her best to right her bodice where it gapped at the neck. The detective missed nothing. His mustache twitched in apparent amusement.
“I’ve never doubted it of you, you know. Filthy. It’ll be Lock Hospital for you. We’ll deal with that travesty of a union later.”
Her cheeks heated with a shame she had not earned. Lock Hospital was a notorious old beast of a place where so-called unfortunate females were housed. Some never emerged from the menacing building that served as part prison, part institution.
Yet she would not let this arrogant bastard see her cower. She drew her shoulders back to an excruciatingly proper pose. With such bearing, she was actually tall enough to look the short detective in the eye. “Do as you will.”
The stately grandfather clock in the corridor struck five o’clock. Alex padded on bare feet toward the foyer. With Griggs still abed, he had no butler to answer the summons. Thus he was the ignoble new-money pretender who opened his own front door.
“Mr. Christie, sir?”
“Yes? Wait, you’re Heath Gowan.”
“Yes, sir. Polly never came home.” The young man’s face flushed a vicious red, but he never broke eye contact. “My parents would like to know where she is.”
The early dawn air became infinitely colder. “She’s not here.”
“Did you see her last night?”
The boy’s eye was surprisingly astute—and critical. Alex kept his expression neutral. He was not proud of some of the things he’d said, but he would defend what he and Polly had shared with his dying breath. Behind his back, he cracked a thumb knuckle. “Yes, she was here. She left for your home in a hackney, about two o’clock.”
Rather than berate Alex, Polly’s older brother only nodded. “She’ll be with the police, then.”
“How do you know?” After their argument, Alex had suspected she might want time alone. But her last words had been a reaffirmation of what her family meant to her. “She has no other place she likes to go? To think or find a moment’s peace?”
“We’ve already checked our friends’ houses. No one’s seen her. After the fire last night, we can’t help but think the police got impatient.”
“I told them to leave her to me.”
Heath shrugged. He was nearly Alex’s height, but as thin as a colt. He would be a big man when he filled out those long bones with a man’s brawn. “As if they listen. We don’t want to check the station on our own, sir, if you get my meaning.”
“Wait in the foyer.”
Alex roused Griggs and ordered the carriage readied, then he informed Mrs. Doward of the situation. She nodded from the rocking chair in the nursery. Edmund slept, still feverish, but not with the same frightening heat.
Within ten minutes, Alex changed into his best approximation of a gentleman’s dress—just enough time to process his thoughts. And for his fury to grow into something fierce and stormy. The ascot he’d grabbed was barely tied and he couldn’t find two socks that matched, but he stormed back downstairs, walking stick and top hat in hand.
The drive to the constabulary seemed far longer than it likely was. A mile or two, at most. With Heath as company, Alex stared out the window, his head swimming in a stew of violence. He nearly wore a hole in the top of his shoe by spinning the tip of his formal walking cane against the leather. What he really wanted to do was crack a few deserving teeth, starting with the constables who had likely embarrassed or even hurt Polly in ways that could not be forgiven.
His cane across their faces and against their kneecaps wouldn’t be enough.
Upon arriving at the constabulary, he stormed inside and grabbed the nearest lawman. “Who are you and where the hell is Polly Gowan?”
A slender young constable blanched. His words chopped out in a stammer. “I’m Plimshaw, sir. She’s being held until we can arrange transfer to Lock Hospital.”
“Was she injured, man?”
