Chapter Nine
Gideon’s heart shot into his throat the moment he arrived at St. Brigid’s Orphanage.
The mere sight of the well-maintained gray-stone building stirred up a wealth of feelings, some he would like to forget.
Perhaps this was the reason he had not been back in almost twenty years, or why he could not find the courage to step out of the hackney carriage just yet.
Most of his employees or tradesmen he hired were orphans out of St. Brigid’s. But it was Bonham who had established the connection and always Bonham who attended meetings or conducted interviews with those orphans about to be sent out into the world.
Indeed, he never seemed troubled by returning here.
The reason could be that Gideon’s friend knew who his parents were and knew they had loved him.
He had arrived here because they had died and there was no family left to take him in.
While they had both been raised in the orphanage, Bonham had not grown up with a gaping lack of knowledge regarding his existence.
Different circumstances and different perspectives.
Gideon shook out of his morose thoughts.
The building looked smaller than he remembered. But he had lived here as a child. Everything must have looked big and daunting back then. He had left this place at the age of fifteen along with the other boys his age.
Along with his best mate, John Bonham. The two of them had been best friends from their earliest days here and vowed to conquer London together.
Well, they had done all right for themselves.
Berry was standing on the front steps looking like a shimmering angel amid a circle of sunlight that brought out the vibrant gold of her hair and tinges of strawberry mingled within.
Gad, she was beautiful.
She had waited for him, perhaps wanting them to enter together. Not for her sake but for his. She must have thought her holding on to his arm would reassure him as he reentered a world he had longed to escape.
He laughed inwardly. This was such a Berry thing to do.
Her smile as he finally stepped out of his hackney and strode toward her was like a stunning burst of sunshine. “I just arrived here myself. You got here fast, Gideon. What happened with the hackney carriage lurking near Duchess Square?”
“The driver took off the moment I started toward him.”
She nibbled her fleshy lower lip. “Then we were right to be suspicious.”
“Yes, and my next stop will be to Mr. Barrow’s office on Bow Street to engage his services. At a minimum, I’ll request one investigator to follow Hawthorne and another to keep an eye on whoever comes in and out of Duchess Square.”
“I’ll let Lord Berwick know what you are doing when I see him tonight. This is a valid expense of the trust and you ought to be recompensed.”
“I’ll be at the museum soirée, too. And no, Berry, he is not to reimburse me. I do this for myself.”
She arched an eyebrow. “It sounds an awful lot like you are doing it for me.”
“I’m doing it for me because I want to protect you,” he said with a grin. “Come on, let’s go inside.”
She held him back a moment. “Gideon, there is something more.”
“What is it, Berry?”
She let out a soft breath. “There is something I wish to do for me because I want to protect you.”
Bollocks.
She was going to do a tender Berry thing for him, and with it steal his heart.
Well, she had no need to steal it. He had already lost it to her, hadn’t he? His feelings for her were becoming impossible to deny to himself, much as he wished he could.
“Would you let me look at your file?” she asked.
“Here? At the orphanage?” What was she trying to do? Grab his soul, too? “Forget it. Do not look at it.”
“Why not? I would keep whatever I learned in strictest confidence. Upon my honor. And there may be something in there, a clue as to—”
“You’ll find nothing about my origins. Do you think I have not looked?
I was desperate to find someone, anyone who could tell me who I am or where I came from.
It is too late now. I no longer wish to know.
More important, whoever abandoned me does not deserve to know anything about me.
I do not need them coming around and leeching off me once they learn I have made good. ”
“I see your point. I’m sorry I raised it, especially since it is so hurtful to you.”
“It’s fine. I don’t begrudge you because everything you do is out of kindness. Let’s meet the headmistress and then you can take me on a tour. I suppose you engage with the children whenever you are here. What exactly do you do with them?”
“I read stories to the little ones,” she said with a smile, obviously liking her role here. “I chat with the older ones. However, I doubt the older children will pay any attention to me now that you are here. They will be excited to meet you, St. Brigid’s greatest success story.”
He did not know why he was dreading this moment. Perhaps because he did not want to disappoint Berry or those children.
Since coming out of the orphanage, Gideon had faced street gangs and some vicious thieves straight out of the Seven Dials.
He’d taken beatings, usually giving as good as he got.
He’d even been stabbed a time or two and had the scars to show it, one on his arm and one on his leg.
He’d endured freezing nights, and days when he had gone without a meal. Not even a crumb to fill his belly.
But none of what he had faced felt as bad as his feelings upon returning here.
It wasn’t the orphanage to blame. He had been safe here.
It was this rage he felt toward those who had abandoned him.
These feelings of anger and resentment had always simmered within him and now rose up like a fire-breathing dragon bent on destroying whatever got in his way.
Berry placed her hand on his arm. Just a light, reassuring touch. “Gideon?”
He nodded.
Her touch and the sweet sound of her voice was enough to get him back in control.
It was not well done of him. He could not walk in angry or he would scare the children, and most of them were scared enough as it was.
Like him, they had been abandoned.
Well, most had arrived here for reasons similar to Bonham’s and knew who their families were. But there were others like him, forced to make up their own identity because they were just tossed away and given no clue as to their lineage.
He had survived and succeeded against all odds.
So why was he wallowing in rage and pitying himself?
“I’m good,” he said quietly.
She cast him an indulgent and encouraging smile. “Not just good—you are the best.”
Gad. Kitten.
He walked through the halls that had remained unchanged for decades, and spoke to the older children who immediately crowded around him.
He asked them questions about their plans as they prepared to leave the orphanage.
Most of them were scared, although some tried to hide it with obviously false bravery.
Some showed academic aptitude, and he made a note to discuss the possibility of setting up scholarships for those children who should be helped in continuing their education.
He was pleased to hear that almost all of those who were about to leave the orphanage because they had come of age did have a place to go.
There were ten boys and five girls in this situation.
Some would go into service as maids or footmen, others as apprentices to tradesmen.
Five of them were to start in his employ.
“Unfortunately, we are always left with one or two who are hard to place,” the headmistress, a kindly woman of middle age with graying hair by the name of Miss Prescott, confided. “It breaks my heart, but we cannot save them all, no matter how hard we try.”
Gideon did not remember seeing the headmistress during his time here. She must have been hired not long after he had left. Perhaps starting first as a teacher. “By your comment, I presume you have a couple of misfits here,” he said.
“Yes, just one this year. A very difficult child by the name of William Dexter. He is always angry, always the troublemaker.”
If out of a group of fifteen children, all but one had been safely placed and given the chance to make a future for themselves, then this was not a bad result, Gideon thought.
But why not try for a perfect fifteen?
“Would it help if I spoke to him?” he asked. “Not today, for I must leave soon. But I could come back another day this week or next.”
Miss Prescott was delighted with the idea. “Yes, please do. If anyone can inspire him, break through in any way, it will most likely be you.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“That is all we can ask for, Mr. Knight.” The headmistress bustled off to attend to other matters concerning the orphanage.
“She is a gem,” Berry said. “She sincerely cares about the fate of each child.”
“So do you.”
She shook her head. “Yes, but Miss Prescott is here every day, working from sunup to sundown. I toss money at her and come by once a week to read to the little ones. It isn’t quite the same.”
“Both are necessary. Do not make light of your importance.”
Gideon stayed on a little while longer to listen to Berry read to the youngest children.
He felt a viselike grip to his heart as he realized her mother had done the same thing when she was alive, and Gideon had been one of those children sitting enthralled at her feet while she read to him, Bonham, and their mates about knights and magic, dragons and princesses.
He tried to recall her mother’s face.
Sadly, he could not. What he remembered was her kindness, and how he and his mates always felt good whenever she visited them.
And here was Berry, another sweet angel carrying on her mother’s tradition.
He saw the looks on the faces of these young ones. Yes, they were feeling the enchantment.
When she was done, Gideon took her aside. “I had better leave now. I dare not put off hiring Mr. Barrow, and it is already getting late.”
“All right. I have a few more things to do here before I go,” she said, suddenly fidgeting with a string of her reticule.