by Eva Leigh
“Who’s this?” a girl with thick black hair demanded, staring at Tom.
“A friend.” Lucia straightened, and while there was wariness in her posture, her gaze was warm. Answering warmth flared within him. “He’s come to pay us a visit.”
“Ladies.” Tom bowed with the gravity he’d shown members of the royal family.
A handful of the children stared, but two others giggled. Tom’s heart contracted at the sound.
“You here to learn your letters, too?” the black-haired girl asked. “It’s hard, but Miss Lucia says that worthwhile things are hard.”
Ah, hell. Surely Lucia meant to kill him by bringing him here. Like anyone who lived in London, he saw the faces of poverty everywhere, from crossing sweeps to girls selling flowers outside Covent Garden, to the children who’d hold your horse for a penny. It never failed to move him to pity, heaping coins into small outstretched hands. But to be in this small room with the city’s unwanted girls, seeing their youth beneath the grime on their faces and seeing them at their studies—that was a dagger in his chest. For now there was no pretending that “someone else” would see to their welfare, or ameliorate their deprivation. He was face-to-face with his country’s appalling treatment of the poor—of poor women—and helping these girls wasn’t somebody else’s task. It was his. It was everyone’s.
“I’m sure,” Lucia said, “that our friend would appreciate it if you read to him, Mary.”
When the girl looked uncertain, Tom said, “If you don’t want to—”
“No, I do.” The child pushed up from her desk and, carrying a battered book, marched up to him. She eyed Tom as he towered over her.
Immediately, he crouched down so their gazes were level. God, but her eyes were serious, holding a wealth of experience that he could never possess.
Gravely, she opened her book and in a slow, faltering voice, read aloud. “The prin—, the prin—”
“Principle,” Lucia said gently.
“The principle parts of a flower are the calyx, the corolla, the sta—, the sta—”
“The stamen,” Tom said.
Doggedly, Mary continued. “The stamen, and the pistil.” She shut the book with a decisive snap. “That’s botany. I’m going to be a botanist and study plants.”
“Noble work,” Tom said with a nod, not knowing whether to despair of her chances of making this dream a reality, or applaud her for her determination and ambition.
Lucia approached, and Tom straightened. She set her hand atop Mary’s head. “Everyone’s to continue their studies while I go out and talk with Mr. Tom,” she announced.
“Yes, miss,” the girls chorused. To his surprise, they appeared to do exactly that, dutifully bending over their hornbooks and primers.
When Lucia strode out of the room, Tom followed. They faced each other in the dim stairwell, the light so poor he could barely make out the details of her face. Yet he felt the intensity of her gaze on him, like a hand pressed against the base of his neck.
“They’re like me,” Lucia said. “No family, no home. No one to care about them.”
Thinking on it now, he’d heard a touch of the streets in her voice. She’d lived a life he had never, and would never, comprehend, and the realization humbled him. The woman who stood before him now was regal and proud, having earned every jewel in her crown.
“You care.” He folded his arms across his chest and looked around the stairwell. The floor was warped or missing pieces entirely. “How long?”
She glanced up at the stairs climbing to the next story, her gaze both sad and determined. “I started doing this two years ago. I walked through Bethnal Green, finding girls in the street, the ones that looked the most ragged and neglected. Most of them have one or no parents. They sleep in alleyways or broken-down boardinghouses where they have straw on the floor instead of mattresses, and eat infrequently.”
Lucia rubbed a hand over her eyes. “I said that first day that I’d give them each a seedcake if they came for an hour. They showed up, and some left after that hour. But these other girls, they’re the ones who stayed.” Pride in her tenacious students was evident in her smile.
It was as though a hand gripped his heart. There was so much resolute hope in her smile, so much courage.
No one in Parliament ever wore such a smile.
Then she sobered. “There are always more girls. The hornbooks and primers, the charcoal and paper—those I pay for with my wages from the club.” She exhaled. “It’s not enough. It’s never enough.”
“You’re but one person,” he said gently.
“I’m trying to remedy that.” At his questioning silence, she said, “Since I took over from Mrs. Chalke, the former proprietress, I’ve been saving. Bit by bit, but I’m nearly there.”
He frowned. “Where?”
“To make a place for them,” she said. “A permanent place. Not just a room in a tumbledown Bethnal Green tenement, but a home for them where they can be safe, there’s always something to eat, and where they know that someone believes in them.”
Her voice thickened, and she dashed her knuckles across her eyes. The sight of her tears squeezed him tightly as a vise.
He moved to reach for her, but she stepped slightly away. He pushed back any sense of hurt, understanding that she didn’t want comfort. She wanted to be heard.
“The club is paying for it,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice. “I set aside most of my wages, saving up to pay for rent for wherever the home can find its location. Kitty and Elspeth add a bit when they can. But if the club dies . . .”
In the dimness, her gaze burned him, and he felt it all the way to his marrow.
“So dies the home.” His breath heaved in and out as everything he’d seen, everything she’d said, leveled him with the force of a hundred cannons. He growled, “Goddamn it, Lucia. You play a dirty game.”
“Life’s a dirty game,” she said without remorse. “The question is, how far is anyone willing to go to win?”
He rubbed at the space between his brows, where pressure built and built, threatening to rend him asunder. “What you’re asking . . . to stake my family’s reputation . . .”
“It’s not without risk.” She tipped her head in acknowledgment. “So many rely on me, on the club. And I rely on you.” A note of pleading tinged her words. Taking a step closer, she held out her hand in supplication. “Keep it open. Give the girls in that room the chance to dream.”
He looked toward the open door, and the children within the room, industriously learning. The city was full of girls like them, hawking nosegays and oranges, clambering along the banks of the Thames as they looked for anything that could be traded or exchanged for coin.
“Did you have the chance to dream?” he asked softly.
Her gaze turned melancholy. “It wasn’t easy, finding something to wish for, something to reach toward. There were times when I had nothing—nothing but myself, and even that was a commodity.”
He stilled as understanding hit him.
Oranges and nosegays weren’t the only things girls sold.
“Yes, I did that. First on the street, then in Mrs. Chalke’s bawdy house in Covent Garden, before she brought me on as a server at the establishment.”
His heart thudded. He’d realized, in some distant corner of his mind, that she must have joined the ranks of thousands of females in London who sold sex for money. Yet it didn’t seem fully true. Not until this moment.
“Did you . . .” He wasn’t certain what question he wanted to ask, when so many flew through his mind like startled crows. “. . . Did you enjoy it?”
She lifted her shoulders in a shrug, and said wearily, “Some days, yes. Some days, no. Mostly, it was merely work.” Her eyes narrowed. “And now you judge me.”
He held up his hands. “Men of my class—hell, of any class—we all pay for women’s bodies in one way or another. To sneer at you for providing the service I’ve paid for, that’s hypocrisy. Only—” He felt his mo
uth curve in a rueful smile. “It might take me a moment to regain my sea legs.”
“My past doesn’t matter.” She waved toward the roomful of children. “The present and the future do. What’s your answer?”
He paced away from her, then back again, his thoughts and heart wrestling with each other. Should word get out about his ownership of the club, disaster for his mother and sister would follow. But if he shut it down, what would become of the staff, or Lucia’s hope of opening a home for girls like Mary, who dreamt of becoming a botanist when all that grew in East London were weeds?
Protect his family, or give the girls of Bethnal Green something to help lift themselves out of the endless cycle of poverty? Could he do both? No one’s life was more precious than another’s, and their value had nothing to do with where they lived or who their parents were.
Caring for his mother and sister was his sacred responsibility. This wasn’t a kind world for females, even ones of gentle birth, and so it fell to him to ensure Maeve and his mother’s safety and happiness. Yet could he say that they were more significant and worthwhile than these girls in this shabby room? It smacked of more hypocrisy to pick one over the other.
He stopped abruptly and swung to face Lucia, who watched him with a mixture of expectation and dread. He had to find a way to both safeguard his family’s security and give the Bethnal Green girls some way to escape the grinding millstone of poverty.
“The club,” he said after a long moment, “will remain open.”
Her shoulders sagged and she let out a jagged breath. “Grazie Dio.”
“But no one can ever know,” he said firmly. “If there is even a hint of scandal, the establishment is shut immediately. Do I make myself clear?”
She nodded. “Your father’s secret was safe for over a decade. We’ll keep your confidence with the same certainty.” She took a cautious step toward him, her arms open. “Might I?”
He almost laughed. They’d done wonderfully carnal things with each other, learned every inch of their bodies, and created unfathomable pleasure. They’d known each other for over a year. In a way, they were strangers, yet they were so much more than that.
In answer, he closed the distance between them and wrapped his arms around her. The sensation of Lucia in his embrace shot through him like liquor, heady and hot. Her curved, soft form pressed into his tightness, and knowing that she’d forged herself into a creature of great strength and great heart made the feel of her all the sweeter.
Yet he realized something. “You’re in my employ.”
She stiffened. “I had forgotten.” She stepped back, breaking the embrace, and he felt the loss like a physical wound.
“We can’t forget.” He’d not take advantage of their unbalanced power.
“I wish I could.” Her gaze skimmed across his mouth. “I want to kiss you.”
He smothered a growl. “I want that, too. But it can’t happen.”
A fraught moment passed when he remembered her taste with perfect clarity.
Finally, she said, “The girls need me.”
“So they do,” he said evenly.
But neither of them moved, and he realized that he and Lucia were forever entwined, their lives tangled together in a complex series of knots that he wasn’t certain he wanted to untie.
Deep bass voices echoed off the walls of the Long Gallery outside the House of Lords as several scores of soberly dressed men stood in assemblies of three and four, conversing gravely as they discussed the forging of political alliances and the fate of the realm.
Only Saturday, Tom had been in Bethnal Green with Lucia, and now he stood alone to one side of the lobby, his stomach churning and his mouth dry.
It was as though his life was a choppy sea, and he rode the waves as they crested and plunged. There was no sign of dry land, or the stability it offered.
Tom bit back a curse when he saw the Duke of Greyland enter the Long Gallery. Greyland would demand answers, and Tom had none to give. None that eased the sting of Tom’s conscience.
As Greyland walked into the chamber, several noblemen approached him, eager to have his ear, but he held them back with an upraised hand. His gaze fell on Tom, and his stern expression did not lift as he neared.
“I cannot understand you, Northfield,” Greyland said. “Blakemere’s a veteran. If he was here instead of in Cornwall, he’d feel your blade in his back. You voted ‘content’ on Brookhurst’s accursed bill. How—?”
“There’s more at work than adhering to the principles of my conscience,” Tom bit out.
In the top drawer of his desk in his study sat a letter. A letter that had arrived early in the morning to ensure that Tom read it before coming in to Parliament for the day’s session.
The duke of Brookhurst had made his position very clear.
Your sister and my son have formed a considerable attachment that honors both our families. But it is an attachment that will not survive should you turn from the course set by your father. I have made my position clear to Hugh. He shall not wed Lady Maeve—not if her brother takes it into his head to stand against me.
I trust you will take my words to heart, and act accordingly.
Voting in favor of harsher punishment for transient veterans had caught in Tom’s craw like a poison bone, but he’d had little choice.
The very thought caused nausea to churn through him.
When Greyland directed his frown at Tom’s feet, his gaze was so honed that Tom felt obliged to look down.
“What the deuce are you staring at?” Tom demanded.
“I was determining whether or not you fit into your father’s shoes.”
Guilt and anger stabbed into Tom’s stomach. “Damn it—”
Greyland lifted a brow. “None of that language here.” He glanced around at the elegant Long Gallery, the atmosphere weighty with significance and tradition.
“Ah, Northfield!”
Hand outstretched, the Duke of Brookhurst strode toward him, accompanied by two other senior members of the Lords. The duke was a tall, trim man with a leonine mane of silver hair and a broad brow, his heritage evident in his aloof expression and the set of his shoulders.
He shook Tom’s hand heartily, then sent Greyland a cool glance. “Your Grace.”
“Brookhurst,” Greyland said with barely contained incivility. “My . . . felicitations on the passage of your bill.”
The duke gave Greyland a superior smile. “Yes, despite your efforts to defeat it.” He sent a pleased look toward Tom. “I do hope that soon Lady Maeve will be able to accept callers again. Hugh’s been moping around Brookhurst Hall like some knight errant pining for the damsel in the tower.”
“When she can see callers once more,” Tom said neutrally, “Lord Stacey will be the first one in our drawing room.”
“Wonderful, wonderful.” He patted Tom on the shoulder. “We ought to take supper together. Tomorrow night?”
Was that a command?
“Perhaps,” Tom said. He’d rather dine with an adder, but there was no choice in the matter, and he’d have to swallow his share of venom.
‘O, villain, villain, smiling, damned villain.’
“Very good.” With a final nod, Brookhurst walked on, his silent companions trailing after him.
Tom felt Greyland’s gaze on him. “Now you know. Keep Brookhurst happy, which keeps my sister happy.”
“A thorny thicket,” his friend said grimly. “Navigating it comes at a high price.”
“Sometimes,” Tom said in a dark tone. “there’s little choice but to make a bargain with the Devil.”
“I hope it’s worth it.”
It was as though the walls of Whitehall bore down on Tom, smashing the very life from him. Even Samson was crushed by the temple pillars, and Tom was no biblical man of strength. “As do I.”
Chapter 12
There had been a time, not so long ago, that walking through Mayfair’s elegant streets set Lucia’s pulse to hammering. The tall, impo
sing facades stretching up into the sky made her feel as small as a mouse, the expensive carriages jeered at her mud-stained hem and worn boots, and every face beneath a beaver hat or bespoke bonnet seemed to glare at her in a constant reminder that she was a poor foreigner, an outsider, and always would be.
Today, however, her heart thudded with anger, and her fist clenched around a crumpled newspaper as she stalked up South Audley Street. She passed the incomparable Chesterfield House without giving it a glance.
How could he?
She neared Grosvenor Square, and Northfield House loomed ahead of her. Despite her fury, the front door seemed as weighty as the entrance to a temple. Only once in her life had she ever tried calling on someone using the front door, and she’d been turned away.
More anger snarled within her gut. She’d thought that by now, she would have forgiven her grandparents for refusing to shelter their half-Neapolitan granddaughter years ago—her third heartbreak. But no. Fury and sadness continued to plague her.
Just once, she’d like to knock on a front door and be received like an honored guest.
She headed down the mews, dodging puddles and a pile of horse manure, passing grooms and housemaids and a footman. They gave her a wary nod of recognition, the way familiar strangers greeted each other.
After avoiding a maid furiously beating a rug, Lucia approached the back entrance. The servants’ door stood open, and, after taking one final breath in a futile attempt to contain her rage, she went inside. A handful of maids and two men-of-all-work hurried down a corridor, barely paying her any attention. Sounds of chopping floated out from the kitchen, and distantly, a bell rang.
She knocked lightly on a door that stood ajar.
“Enter,” a man’s voice said.
She poked her head in. “Good afternoon, Mr. Norley.”
The butler was seated at his desk with an open ledger spread before him, but when he saw her, he immediately stood. “Today isn’t the twenty-first.”
“I need to see him,” she said tightly. “The matter is urgent.”
