Page 88 of Never a Duke
She would ask that, and she deserved an answer.
Stephen Wentworth had confessed to his Abigail that he’d committed murder, and that good lady hadn’t batted an eye. Walden had been facing the noose for taking a life when Jane had agreed to wed him. Duncan Wentworth, when he’d been as bruised in spirit as he was vigorous of intellect, had captured the heart of a duchess.
Even the half-daft Rothmere brothers had found safe havens in the arms of their respective wives.
“I am a thief,” Ned said, “a housebreaker, pickpocket, shoplifter, and safecracker.”
“Youwereall those things,” Rosalind said, folding his handkerchief and tucking it into her reticule. “Those descriptions no longer apply.”
“And at the time,” Ned said, “those were my better qualities. My brother died because of me, and even that’s not the worst of it. We should leave this place.” Though nobody was setting up a hue and cry, no mamas were appearing to whisk loitering children back indoors.
A pair of mongrel hounds snored away in the shade, crows strutted about picking at the gutter before the house across the road. The signs of a neighborhood going about a normal day were all in evidence, if Ned recalled how to read them.
Rosalind took him by the hand. “We should leave this place and go where? Papa will pack me off to Derbyshire if you’re seen taking me home, and I will not part from you without saying what I have to say. Is the Dog and Dam halfway respectable?”
“Of course. The fare will be simple and the company humble, but it’s a decent enough place.” At this time of day. “Besides, you aren’t interested in the food. You want to linger at the window and watch for a crested coach to pass, but Rosalind, whoever had you kidnapped won’t be that foolish. They’ll slither away unseen and resume their mischief once you’ve been banished again—banished because of me.”
Ned wanted to spirit her off to the Walden residence, there to keep her safe, except that would be kidnapping, and Woodruff would probably have him arrested and hanged for it.
“Let’s have a pint,” Rosalind said, “and you can tell me how horrible you are.”
Ned toddled along at her side and felt the old partitioning in his mind take hold. He was both hand in hand with Rosalind and drifting a short distance from himself, watching with bemusement as Lady Rosalind Kinwood sat down to enjoy a lady’s pint at an ancient and none-too-grand dockside tavern.
A few streets away, Reggie Sharp was waking up with one hell of a headache, and doubtless trying to concoct a story that would explain how a blindfolded woman had walloped the daylights out of him.
“Tell me about your brother,” Rosalind said, when a loaf of warm bread, along with butter and cheese, had been brought to the table. “What was his name?”
Tell me about your brother.The Ned vaguely noting that Rosalind was abroad without a bonnet—surely a cause for dismay—heard her command as a novelty. Nobody asked about a boy done in on the end of a rope years ago.
The part of Ned who could not remain at a distance from Rosalind for long heard an invitation to put down an old and heavy burden.
“We were named for kings and saints,” Ned said. “Edward and Robert. Ned and Bob, and we were thoroughly rotten boys.”
“Of course you were.” Rosalind buttered him a slice of bread and passed it across the table. “How did he die?”
“I let him down. We were doing a jostle-and-bump. The better thief picks the pocket, then passes off the take to the boy who most convincingly looks earnest and innocent. The hue and cry follows the thief, who cannot be found guilty of anything because no stolen goods are located on his person. The other boy has long since left the scene with the goods. His job was simply to walk along, looking late for an appointment with a meat pie.”
“Which you doubtless were.”
“I was constantly ravenous. We’d sometimes go three or four days without eating, and in winter…”
He ought not to be telling Rosalind this. She was a lady, and for all the tribulations she’d endured, Ned hoped she’d never known hunger like that. Hunger that turned a boy into a beast.
“In winter?” she said.
“I tried to sell my boots, but the cobbler wouldn’t take them. He knew I could go another day without food, but not another day without boots. Gave me a piece of bread with butter. Told me an army does not march on its belly, it marches on its feet. I split the bread with Bob, and it was the best…”
Ned had to look away from the steady regard in Rosalind’s eyes. Had to look away from the memories, from the half a loaf sitting on the cutting board in the center of the table.
What that boy had nearly done for a crust of bread…
“Bob was taken up, because I fumbled the handoff. He kept the take, though the crowd was already shouting. He could have passed me the goods, and I would probably have been shown leniency because of my age if the constables had thought to arrest me. I didn’t see him again until he was hanged.”
“You saw that?”
“I did not want him to be alone. I owed it to him to be there, but I could not get to the front of the crowd. I saw enough. I heard enough. I hope he knew I was there.”
As spindly as Ned had been, as thick as the crowd had been, he hadn’t seen the actual hanging, but he’d heard the platform drop, he’d heard the crowd. Some had decried the execution of a boy, most had jeered.
