“By all means, find a husband. I’ve scores of eligible bachelors working here. Choose one of them. Any one you please. Choose Baker. He’s a good worker.”
She pressed a hand to her breast. “A good worker. My heart. I can hardly bear its pounding.”
“He’s all his teeth, and a brain in his head.”
“High praise, indeed.”
“I don’t know what women want.” Georgiana Pearson seemed to be interested in nothing but a title.
Not that he cared what the woman wanted.
What had he been saying? Ah. Yes. Cynthia.
He waved a hand at the door. “Choose any man in the building. Just don’t make me go riding today.”
“I’ve half a mind to take you up on that, just to see you change your mind.” She swung her cloak around her shoulders. “You promised, Duncan.”
And there, for a moment, she was the five-year-old he’d scooped onto that horse twenty years ago, promising her that they’d go somewhere safe – somewhere their life would be better. Where they would be strong.
He’d made good on those promises.
And so he would make good on this one.
Within the hour, they were in Hyde Park, barely moving in the crush of the afternoon ride. Rotten Row – aptly named, in West’s estimation – was filled with the throngs of aristocrats and landed gentry who had returned to London for the season, dissatisfied with their pallid, whiled-away winters in the far reaches of Britain, and desperate for color – a blush of gossip.
West nodded to the Earl of Stanhope, who came alongside the carriage on a stunning black horse. “My lord.”
“West. I saw your editorial in the News in favor of the Factory Act. Well put. Children shouldn’t work more than we do.”
“Children shouldn’t work at all,” West replied. “Though I shall take the act’s passage as a sound first start – if word of our combined voices does not frighten away those who might otherwise be inclined toward our views.” The earl was known for his impassioned speeches on the floor of the House of Lords.
Stanhope laughed. “Think of the damage we could do if you’d run for a seat in the House of Commons.”
A wind whipped through the park, as though the universe knew the truth – that West could never run for a seat in the Lower House. That he would not be allowed to converse with earls if his truths were known, and that at some point, at any point, his secrets could become public. For a secret was only a secret until two people knew it.
And in his case, two people knew it. “Too much damage, my lord.”
The earl seemed to sense the shift in the conversation, and he tipped his hat in their direction before heading off down the path.
West and his sister rode in silence for long minutes, until another wind blew, and Cynthia decided to lighten the mood in the curricle. Holding on to her enormous hat, she smiled wide at a passing group of doyennes of the ton. She spoke with a bright, happy voice. “It’s a beautiful day for a ride.”
“It’s grey and threatening to rain.”
She smiled. “It’s London in March, Duncan. That’s practically blue sky.”
He narrowed his gaze on her. “How is it that we are siblings and yet you are so damn impractical?”
“You say impractical, I say cheerful.” He did not reply, and so she offered, “I suppose the gods were smiling down upon you when they delivered you a baby sister.”
The gods were doing no such thing at the time of her arrival. But he still remembered that day, covered in tar, blisters on his young hands, sent into the laundry where his mother lay hidden in a corner on a makeshift pallet of old blankets, holding a tiny baby.
The memory came without warning. Go on, Jamie, hold your sister.
He had, taking the little mewling bundle. She’d been wrapped in the master’s shirt, one in need of mending. He’d barely seen the baby for that shirt. He’ll be angry that you’ve ruined his shirt.
There’d been sadness in his mother’s eyes when she’d replied, You let me worry about him.
He’d unwrapped the shirt then, to get a good look at this little creature that had been identified as his sister, with a headful of brown hair and the bluest eyes he’d ever seen.
He extinguished the memory before it went too far. “You looked like a goblin.”
She turned shocked eyes on him. “I did not!”
“Maybe not. Perhaps it was more like an old man – all red and blotchy, as though you’d been in the sun or in your cups for too long.”
She laughed. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”
“You grew out of it.” He shrugged one shoulder and added, so no one nearby could hear him, “And the first time I held you, you pissed on me.”
“I’ve no doubt you deserved it!” she said, indignant.
He smiled. “You grew out of that, too, thank goodness.”
“I’m beginning to think that I should not have invited you for this ride,” she said. “It’s not nearly so rewarding as I thought it would be.”
“Then I have achieved my goal.”
She scowled at him before her attention turned to two ladies riding ahead of them, heads bent in the telltale sign of gossip. “Now shush. Those two look like they have something to say.”
“You realize that your brother has the line on all the significant gossip of the ton? You receive at least three gossip rags to the house a week.”