An Honorable Thief (19 page)

She pulled a face. "Oh, sad stuff. I could as soon read a guidebook."

He sighed. "You are a very exacting task-mistress, Miss Singleton. Very well, it is a very pretty place, very green, with rolling hills and woodlands."

"Thank you, Mr Guidebook. It is all very interesting, of course." Her laughing eyes belied that. "What I really want to know about is your home, what you did as a boy, where your special places were, who you played with
—that sort of thing. Not stuffy industries and such. I like to collect stories of other people's homes. I never had one, myself, you see, but I used to dream about the one I wished to have and make up stories to myself of how it would be, the furniture, the cosy rugs, a fire at night and a family gath—"

She broke off suddenly.

"You never had a home?"

She gave a hasty, brittle laugh. "Well, of course I did
— everyone has a home, don't they?" she said, a little too emphatically, he thought. "I meant an English home. I used to make up stories about England—you know, as an exile does. Of course I had a home!"

He looked at down at her searchingly, but could not read her face. She was staring across the park at some children sailing a tiny boat on the pond. When she'd spoken of a home, there was a note in her voice that caught at his heart...

Had she never had a home of her own? He had no reason to suppose anything of the sort...except for that odd note in her voice...

He suddenly recollected his purpose in asking her for a drive
—to learn more about her background. He had not anticipated this. He needed facts, not emotions and stories and nebulous things such as a tone of voice.

"Where was this home of yours?" he asked.

She laughed and shook her finger at him. "No, no! I asked you first. You must tell me of your childhood home and I will add it to my collection. And then, perhaps, I will tell you of mine."

"I cannot tell you very much of that. For most of the day I was under the strict supervision of a rather harsh, unimaginative tutor, who believed Latin and Greek were all a small boy needed to learn, and for the rest of the time, I was left very much to my own devices."

"But surely... What about your family?"

"My mother died when I was six."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Mine too." She laid a soft hand on his knee. "I know what that was like. Did you miss your mother terribly?"

"No," he said. "I never saw her much. She preferred London." Her touch was light, but he was terribly aware of it. He wanted to lay his hand over hers. He did not move. Such things were not done in public.

"Oh. Well, then, tell me about your brother, Lord Norwood's father. Were you very close? What games did you play together?"

Games? Hugo thought of the numerous occasions where his half-brother had thrashed him under the pretext of playing a game. He could not recall a time he had not been aware that his half-brother despised him. His father ascribed any vulnerability or weakness of the child Hugo as evidence, not of his tender years, but of his inferior breeding. His half-brother was a young thug, a bully and he soon discovered that their father was indifferent to anything he might do to the little boy twelve years his junior. He was the heir, the golden one.

"Oh, my half-brother was a good deal older than I, and we had not much to do with each other. He was not interested in the same things I was, so I kept fairly much to myself." Wherever possible.

Hugo was starting to feel uncomfortable, relating such things about his childhood. When spoken of in such bare terms, it sounded too much like a sentimental tragedy-tale for his liking. It was all in the past now, and nothing to be done. It was best to forget such things and get on with life. And her hand was still resting, oh so lightly, on his knee. Yes, the present was so much more pleasant than the past.

"In any case there is little further to be told, for my father died when I was nine, and my half-brother was killed in a hunting accident the following year, leaving a widow and infant son, and, soon afterwards, I left Shropshire."

"Oh, how sad. Where did you go?" She seemed suddenly aware of where her hand rested and snatched it back, looking faintly self-conscious. He pretended not to notice. His knee felt cold, now, where before her hand had warmed him.

He shrugged. "My father and half-brother had left things in a shocking financial mess, and so my sister-in-law returned to her father's home in Kent with her infant son."

"And you went with them, of course."

"No, that's when I was sent to sea."

She looked surprised. "I take it that was a family tradition."

"No."

"Did you want to go to sea?"

An image came to his mind of a ten-year-old boy, clutch-j ing a small bundle of belongings and shivering with fear j and cold as his brother's servant walked away down the gangplank. "I wasn't consulted."

She frowned thoughtfully. "You were only ten, were you not? It must have been very frightening, to be sent so far from all that was familiar." She touched him again, softly on the arm. She was not aware she was doing it, he realised.

Hugo shrugged. "I became accustomed to it." He did not wish to think about those early terror-filled months; sleeping in the damp, dark hold with rats gnawing at his toes, the cruelties of the harsh captain, the early fears of being made to climb high in the rigging. He did not like to dwell on the past. It made him feel...he was not sure what, but he didn't like it. There was nothing he could do about the past. He preferred to dwell in the present. In the present, he was in control of his life. He glanced at the young woman beside him and his lips quirked. Control?

"I do not understand this habit English people have, of sending their children away to strangers when they are still so young. A little boy of ten still needs to be loved, even if he thinks he is old enough to be a man. I would never send a child of mine away," she said vehemently.

Her words sank deep into some hidden place deep inside him. He swallowed. His chest felt oddly heavy. He did not feel comfortable with such talk. It was too intimate.

"I have a house in Yorkshire now," he said quietly. "A new house; one I built myself."

"What is it like?"

"Quite plain, really. I have no taste for fussy embellishments and knick-knackery." He'd wanted a new house, one with no memories. A house for the future. It was a beautiful house, with spare, elegant lines and he was very proud of it. So why did it suddenly seem a little bleak and empty?

"Oh, what a shame! Nothing at all Egyptian? Not even one tiny crocodile-legged sofa?" she said, in mock sorrow. Her eyes twinkled and he knew at once she had similar taste to his, in that, at least.

He smiled. "You would like Yorkshire, I think. It is quite wild and yet beautiful. A man can feel free there, not closed in, like one feels at times in London. The moors are...a little like being at sea." But he was not here to talk of his home, he recalled. "So now, Miss Singleton, it is your turn to tell me of your home. Where did you live?"

She half-turned on her seat and faced him consideringly. "I think that is enough talk about the past for the moment,'' she said. "We are becoming a touch melancholy, and it is such a beautiful day. Oh, look, over there is Lady Norwood, your sister-in-law. Should you not stop and greet her?"

Hugo cursed under his breath. He looked in the direction she was indicating and groaned silently. Amelia was standing, staring at them with a peculiarly triumphant look of outrage. Catching him out in the act of stealing Thomas's heiress. And with the heiress's hand on his arm.

Hugo sighed. If they spoke to Amelia now, he could not vouch for her discretion: she had a hasty, impulsive temper. "Yes, I suppose I should stop and greet her, but I...I do not care to keep my horses standing in this fresh wind. Would you mind if we returned to Dorset Street?'' A feeble excuse. She would never swallow it. They both knew the horse would take no damage standing a moment of two, even in a freezing wind. And today was a beautiful calm day with a slight pleasant breeze.

"Not at all," agreed Miss Singleton dulcetly. "I would hate to be the cause of injuring such beautiful steppers by keeping them out in such conditions." Her lips quivered, trying not to smile.

Hugo tried not to think about kissing them.

He ought to offer Miss Singleton some excuse for his impoliteness towards his sister-in-law, but he couldn't think, not with her sitting beside him, her eyes brimming with laughter and her lips quivering so temptingly.

He had to get away.

He needed to think. He was in danger of slipping under the spell of the smile in her eyes. And the one trembling on her lips.

His head was aching. He lifted a hand to touch it gingerly, to see whether the bump had gone down at all. She stared at his raised hand and he was suddenly aware of an odd, concerned, almost guilty look on her face.

She was chock-full of contradictions
—a teasing minx one moment, a solicitous siren the next.

He didn't know what to believe. Or who: the wistful-voiced girl who yearned for a home, the indignant virago protective of children or the minx who made up stories and teased him.

He was supposed to be investigating her background. Not that there was any need, now that Thomas was wedding Miss Lutens. But he had been seized by a compulsion to know all about her. He finished what he started.

Once or twice something she'd said
—or not said—had set off an alert inside him. But then her smile or her scent or a thoughtful look in her eyes had distracted him.

He had to go home and think about Miss Singleton, in an atmosphere of calm; to a place where he was not distracted by laughing blue eyes, warm lips and the faint perfume of rose and vanilla. He needed to concentrate on his investigations.

They swept past Amelia at a brisk trot, bowed politely and headed for the exit. She stood glaring indignantly after them.

"I don't like this, Miss Kit," said Maggie sombrely. "Surely it's gone far enough."

Kit continued changing her clothes. As she discarded each item, she folded it neatly and placed it on a large square of oiled silk which lay on the carpet. "I wish I'd never taken you into my confidence, that's what I wish."

Maggie made a disgusted noise. "Couldn't hardly avoid it, could you, not when I caught you at it." She sniffed disapprovingly. "If I'd know'd what you planned to do, missy..."

Kit tugged the top over her head, wrinkled her nose, then sneezed. "Pah, I hope that hot water is ready. I am in dire need of a bath."

"It is, and it's no use pretending ye didn't hear what I said. I don't approve, miss, and that's final." She turned and made to leave the room.

"Maggie." Kit put out her hand to stop her maid leaving. "This is what Papa trained me for, from the time I was a small girl."

Maggie sniffed disapprovingly.

"You know it is."

"Aye, I know, but knowin' and approvin' are two different matters. It's not right, Miss Kit, ye know it ain't."

Kit's brow furrowed. "Oh, please understand, Maggie. I made a promise. A deathbed promise."

Maggie rolled her eyes. "To a man who never kept a promise in his life!"

"But I am not Papa. I won't break a promise, not to anyone, let alone a dying man. And besides, he was my father.
Honour thy father and thy mother.'
Kit looked at her pleadingly. "What would you have me do?"

"I'd have ye do what's right!"

"But what
is
right?" said Kit softly. "On the one hand I must keep a sacred promise. A promise, what is more, to retrieve my father's
—my family's honour."

"But to go and
—"

"Yes, I know, but it is not
truly
wrong, Maggie. They stole what was rightfully my father's. Stole it from him wrongfully, out of jealousy and small-mindedness and spite. Men who conspired together and ruined his life. They Turned him into the unhappy lonely vagabond he became. They forced him into exile. Don't you see? The flawed and bitter man you knew
—it is all because of what they did to him, back then."

Maggie looked troubled, her face crumpled with anxiety. "I dunno, Miss Kit, I dunno. I'm just worried about ye, that's all."

Kit laid her cheek against Maggie's affectionately and hugged the older woman. "Don't worry about me, Maggie dearest. I can look after myself."

Hugo Devenish lay in bed, trying to get to sleep. He had been trying to sleep for some time now, but his brain would not allow it. Over and over his tired sleepy mind tumbled the thoughts; fragments of the other mornings conversation, of things she had said during today's drive; impressions, wild thoughts, suppositions chased themselves round and round, giving him no peace.

A vision of her laughing blue eyes came to him. Beautiful eyes. Such mischief in them. And yet such sweet concern about his injured head.

Hugo sat up in bed and stared at the faint chink of moonlight coming in between the curtains.

She'd asked, "Is your head very sore?", not "Have you hurt your head?"

She'd known about bis injury already. He recalled the odd flash of guilt he'd seen in her expression. Why on earth would she be feeling guilty about it?