A Mother's Trust (26 page)

‘Teddy.’ He shook his head. ‘Who named him that?’

‘My mother wanted him to be called Edward. It was her dying wish.’

‘My name is Edward,’ Ned said slowly. ‘I was named after my father. He died many years ago, leaving Rogue and me to fend for ourselves.’

‘My heart’s breaking for you,’ Ethel said with a sarcastic curl of her lip. ‘Never mind about the Paxmans, Phoebe. Where’s my daughter? I want her back where she belongs.’

‘She’s safe and happy and she doesn’t want anything
to
do with you, Mrs Fowler.’ Phoebe picked up her shawl which had fallen to the floor. ‘She doesn’t want to come back to London. Who could blame her?’

‘Slap the little trull, Ethel.’ Minnie reached out to tug Phoebe’s hair. ‘You’re a troublemaker just like Annie. You deserve a good walloping.’ She dodged behind Ethel’s back as Ned raised his hand to her.

‘Get out of here, you harpies. If you’ve got a grievance against Phoebe sort it out somewhere else.’ He took a swipe at Ethel but she dodged and he caught Minnie a glancing blow on the side of her head which sent her reeling.

‘Very brave, hitting a woman,’ Ethel hissed, backing away from him. ‘I’ll set me dog on you next time you come my way, Ned Paxman.’ She hoisted a tearful Minnie to her feet. ‘I’ll get even with you.’

‘Get out before I throw you out,’ Ned roared, fisting his hands.

Phoebe rose from her seat to face Caspar, who had been watching with his arms folded across his chest and a smirk on his classic features. ‘I hope you’re satisfied, Caspar Collins. You’ve done your worst so don’t you dare pester me any longer. I won’t work for you and that’s final.’

Ned turned on him, his teeth bared and his nostrils quivering. ‘What have you been saying to Phoebe, mister? Her mother was my woman and I’ll not stand by and see Annie’s daughter bullied by a toff like you.’

Caspar’s eyes opened wide in surprise. ‘How dare you speak to me in that tone, my man? Do you know who I am?’

‘I don’t bloody care who you are, mate. If Phoebe says she don’t want to go with you then that’s enough for me.’ Moving with the grace of a panther, he caught Caspar by the collar and the seat of his well-cut trousers and frogmarched him through the taproom, much to the amusement of the men drinking at the bar. Kicking the door open, Ned ejected Caspar from the pub with the toe of his boot. Wiping his hands together, he returned to Phoebe’s side. ‘Come on, ducks.’

‘What?’ She stared at him dumbfounded. ‘Where are we going?’

‘To see me son, of course. Did you think I’d turn me back on my own flesh and blood?’

Someone cheered and was instantly hushed by his companions as Ned shepherded Phoebe out of the pub without giving her a chance to protest. But outside in the street she came to a halt, refusing to move. ‘You can’t come to the house. My grandmother is there and she thinks that Teddy is mine. It was the only way I could explain his birth without giving Ma away.’

He studied her face, frowning. ‘So you were going to keep my son’s birth a secret from me forever?’

She nodded. ‘You’ve heard of vendetta?’

‘I’m not afraid of a parcel of hokey-pokey makers.’

‘Perhaps you should be. It wouldn’t just be my family who would come after you and your brother. There would be out and out war between them and their supporters and your gang. Do you really want that?’

He took her by the hand. ‘Come with me.’ He started off in the opposite direction to Saffron Hill.

‘Where are we going?’

‘To find Rogue. I’ll not do anything without asking his opinion.’

‘Please don’t. Can’t you just forget all about this? If it hadn’t been for Caspar you would never have known.’

Still slightly breathless from the walk to the Paxmans’ four-storey terraced house in Wilderness Row overlooking Charterhouse Green, Phoebe was astonished to find them living in a respectable area with a tailor’s establishment on one side and a watchmaker’s on the other. It was hardly the sort of dwelling that she might have expected to be inhabited by the leaders of a street gang. Visions of dingy rooms in old-fashioned rookeries would have seemed more appropriate to their nefarious calling. Even more surprising, a fresh-faced maidservant wearing a clean cotton print dress and spotless white mobcap opened the door and ushered them into the entrance hall. The gleaming oak floorboards smelt of beeswax polish and wet dogs. This latter fact was confirmed by the sudden appearance of two springer spaniels who leapt at Ned, yelping ecstatically and bouncing about spraying droplets of water from their damp coats. At his command they came to heel. ‘Follow me,’ he said, beckoning to Phoebe. He strode into the front room and she was left with little option other than to comply. She could not help feeling that her place in the scheme of things was slightly lower than that of his dogs, and she might have refused such a curt order, but her curiosity was aroused.

The oak-panelled room more closely resembled a gentleman’s study than the hub of a gang leader’s
operations
. A charcoal portrait of a distinguished-looking gentleman caught her attention and his eyes seemed to follow her as she crossed the floor to where Rogue was seated behind a desk, poring over some kind of ledger. He closed it with a snap when he saw her, and rose to his feet, frowning. ‘Ned. What’s the meaning of this? Why did you bring her here?’

‘I can explain,’ Ned said, motioning the dogs to sit. They obeyed instantly, tongues lolling out of their mouths and their eyes shining as they looked up at him.

‘Miss Giamatti, please take a seat.’ Rogue waved his hand vaguely in the direction of two armchairs, upholstered in brown leather, set on either side of the fireplace.

Phoebe perched on the edge of the one nearest to her, feeling suddenly detached from the proceedings as if the whole matter had been taken off her hands. The truth had come out in the worst possible manner and there was very little she could do to limit the damage caused by Caspar’s vindictive revelations. The brothers were talking in low voices and she found herself more interested in her surroundings than in listening to what they were saying. The ambience of the room was masculine but she could see a woman’s touch here and there. Her attention was drawn in particular to four gilt-framed watercolours depicting country scenes which adorned the far wall, and the tasselled velvet curtains at the windows. ‘Our mother executed those,’ Rogue said, as if reading her thoughts. ‘She was a lady of gentle birth and considerable talent.
Those
are just a few of the paintings she did when she was a girl living in the country.’

‘They’re very pretty.’ A vision of a blue-eyed young woman with soft nut-brown curls flashed into Phoebe’s mind, but she banished it with difficulty. She must not start thinking of the Paxman brothers as being anything other than villains.

‘The charcoal drawing on the far wall is a portrait of our father. A gentleman by birth and a farmer by nature, but he was no businessman.’ Rogue hesitated, clearing his throat as if embarrassed by revealing too much. ‘Anyway, that’s not relevant to what’s occurred today. I think you’d better tell us everything, Phoebe. I’m not here to judge your mother or Ned, or you for that matter, but you’d better start at the beginning and go on from there.’

Haltingly, Phoebe began once again with her mother’s ill-advised visit to Snape’s lodgings and their subsequent flight to Brighton. Visibly moved by her account of Annie’s death, Ned paced the floor, but Rogue remained seated, his gaze never wavering from her face.

‘What is this Collins fellow to you?’ he demanded when she had finished her explanation. ‘Why did he pursue you to London, and why did you lie to me about the boy? Why didn’t you tell me that he is my brother’s child?’

‘I should have thought that was obvious,’ Phoebe said stoutly. ‘This is just the sort of situation I was trying to avoid.’

‘He’s my son.’ Ned came to a halt in front of her. ‘I have a child but you were never going to tell me.’

She looked him in the eyes and was surprised to see hurt, puzzlement and genuine distress in their blue-green depths. Teddy’s eyes would be almost exactly that colour when he was older. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked anxiously. ‘You can’t take him away from me.’

‘Why shouldn’t I? I’m his father. I’ve every right.’ Ned turned to his brother. ‘What do you say, Rogue?’

‘That depends on you, but we can’t look after an infant.’

Phoebe shot him a grateful glance. ‘That’s right. Teddy’s just a baby. He needs proper care and attention.’

‘But he’s a Paxman,’ Ned said stubbornly. ‘I’m not having him brought up to be an Eyetie hokey-pokey maker, or worse still spirited off across the Channel never to be seen again.’

Phoebe leapt to her feet. ‘You can’t take him away from me. I’ve looked after him since he was born. I’ve been up at night, walking the floor with him when he’s cutting a tooth. He’s my flesh and blood too, and I love him.’

‘But you’ll marry Gino,’ Rogue said evenly. ‘And you’ll have a baby every year. You won’t have much time for my nephew. He would be better off with us.’

‘Better off with two criminals? What happens when the law catches up with you? You could both end up dangling on the end of a hangman’s rope. Who would take care of Teddy then?’

‘It won’t happen like that,’ Ned said firmly. ‘We keep the law sweet. The coppers won’t get us.’

She turned on him in amazement. ‘You mean that you bribe the police?’

Ned tapped the side of his nose. ‘You never heard me say that, ducks. Now take me to that hovel you call home. I want to collect my boy.’

‘No.’ Phoebe faced him squarely. ‘If you try to take Teddy from us you’ll stir up a hornet’s nest. You can’t begin to imagine what vendetta does to a community. I’ve heard my grandfather speak of it, and it’s terrible.’

Ned bared his teeth in a sarcastic grimace. ‘If they want trouble, then that’s what they’ll get from us and it will be twice as bad as anything the Eyeties can hand out.’

‘Shut up, Ned.’ Rogue rose to his feet. ‘This is getting us nowhere.’

‘I’m not giving in to her just because she’s got a pretty face, or because she’s her mother’s daughter.’ Ned loosened his neckerchief, running his finger round the inside of his collar. ‘I did care for Annie in my way.’ He met Phoebe’s curious gaze with a vague shrug of his shoulders. ‘Yes, I know. There’s no need to give me that look. I wouldn’t have married a woman who was ten years older than me, but we had a good time together and I was genuinely fond of her. I may be a bad ’un but blood is blood, and I want my son.’

Phoebe turned her back on him, holding her hands out to Rogue. ‘Please don’t let him do this. At least wait until after I’ve married Gino. When we return to London next spring I’ll make sure you see Teddy whenever you want to, but please allow me to bring him
up
in a respectable family. When he’s old enough to choose I won’t stop him if he wants to come and live with you.’

Rogue nodded his head slowly. ‘That makes sense. I can see you’re a woman of your word, Madonna. I trust you.’

‘Madonna?’ Ned spat the word out as if it left a bad taste in his mouth. ‘What nonsense is that? Have you gone soft in your old age, brother?’

‘No, I haven’t. I’m using my brain, Ned. Try using yours for a change. We’ve got enough on our hands fending off the high mob. We can do without having the Camorra on our backs as well. If Phoebe is sincere and she’ll let you see the child on a regular basis, then I say leave well alone.’

Phoebe smothered a sigh of relief. ‘I will honour my promise, and Gino won’t try to stop me. He knows you’re the father, Ned. But he’s the only one apart from us who’s in possession of all the facts.’

‘And Collins?’ Rogue’s tone was clipped and his eyes suddenly ice cold.

‘I don’t want anything to do with him. He’ll have to find someone else to help him in his act, for it won’t be me.’

Rogue met her earnest look with a hint of a smile. He turned to his brother. ‘Then it’s up to you, Ned. What do you say? Is it going to be war with the hokey-pokey makers or are you going to see sense?’

Reluctantly, Ned nodded. ‘I suppose so. But I won’t agree to anything until I’ve seen the boy. I want to be sure that she’s telling the truth and that he is my son.’

‘He’s just a baby,’ Rogue said impatiently. ‘How will you know?’

‘I’ll feel it in my bones. And if he’s got black hair and eyes then I’ll know for sure that he’s not mine. I’ll take you home, Phoebe. Then you can show him to me.’

Once again, panic seized her. ‘No, please don’t do that. I don’t want any of my family to see me with you. I’ll meet you later and bring Teddy with me.’

‘All right, but if you don’t …’

‘I will,’ she said hastily. ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’

‘That can be arranged too,’ Ned said grimly. ‘Bring the boy to the Charterhouse gardens then at four o’clock. I’ll be there with the dogs. No one would suspect our meeting was anything but a coincidence.’

‘I’ll see you out.’ Rogue crossed the floor and ushered her into the entrance hall. He hesitated at the front door, turning to give her a searching look. ‘You meant what you said, I hope?’

‘Of course. I don’t lie and I don’t cheat. I know that my mother really did love your brother, and I’m certain he’s Teddy’s father. He has a right to see him.’

Rogue opened the door. ‘You’re a remarkable young woman, Phoebe. I hope that Gino is worthy of you.’ And to her intense surprise he took her hand and raised it to his lips. ‘Goodbye, Madonna.’

Shocked by the sudden change in his attitude, Phoebe went slowly down the front steps. She started off in the direction of home and quickened her pace. She could only hope and pray that the Paxmans would keep their word, and that Ethel Fowler and her sister
would
be too drunk by now to remember the details of their encounter in the pub. She had reached the corner when someone grabbed her from behind and a hand clamped over her mouth as she opened it to scream.

What happened next was always a bit of a blur when Phoebe tried to recall the exact sequence of events. One minute she had been walking along, minding her own business, when suddenly she had almost been throttled by an unseen assailant. She had struggled, of course, but then everything had gone black and the next thing she knew she was lying on the pavement gasping for breath. All around her there were the sounds of scuffling, raised voices and running footsteps. Someone helped her to her feet and then, before she had completely recovered her senses, she was bundled into a hansom cab.