Chapter Thirteen #2
“Are you off to negotiate prices for wax candles at Lucifer’s Fall or some such today?”
She looked up at him, surprised, when he didn’t reply.
Finally he said, “I usually visit my son on his birthday. And his birthday is today.”
He’d looked away from her. His voice had gone gruff.
Her mind blanked in shock.
“Your son,” she repeated carefully.
Her capacity for absorbing surprises was nearing its limit.
A half-dozen distinct emotions collided in her chest like billiard balls, all painful and unsubtle. From sort of a surprising
and nearly unbearable, melting tenderness to curiosity to stunned amazement.
But the worst, the most distinct, the most shocking and unworthy . . . was jealousy.
It, in fact, pressed the breath from her.
Who had borne him a son?
When?
Where was she now?
Suddenly so many things she’d noticed about Marchand made more sense. His kindness to the boys from Bethnal Green, his deftness with
Daniel Peck. The baby. Missing pieces of the picture of him were flowing into place.
“My son,” he confirmed, again.
He did not expound, and the way he’d said it called to mind a door being firmly shut.
“I . . . I . . . didn’t realize you’d been married.”
He turned toward her and tipped his head with a wry “come now” expression, as if she ought to have known better. Then shook
it slowly.
One day she would not blush when he matter-of-factly revealed such details of his extraordinary life, and that was the day
her mother would roll over in her grave.
Today was not that day.
“Silly me. Wedlock. Such a quaint notion.”
“It’s not a quaint notion,” he said shortly. “But he was born out of wedlock. As was I. As I’m certain you’re aware, it’s not generally a cause for rejoicing. But these things happen
commonly enough.”
Not in her world, they didn’t. Her parents would have been horrified to know with whom she was casually conversing. These
things were disastrous and scandalous in her world, though even she had heard the cautionary tales of girls who had been seduced
and abandoned. It was why girls—the aristocratic ones, anyhow—were so scrupulously guarded.
The girls born and raised in St. Giles must be so terribly vulnerable.
She wanted to know all about it, and yet she wasn’t certain she could bear hearing it for a dozen complicated reasons, all
of which were less of a revelation to her than they ought to be.
Despite everything, she appreciated how Marchand never made excuses and never apologized for himself.
“Your son . . . so he’s not the boy I saw in your office?”
He shook his head.
A new thought rattled her. “Mr. Marchand . . . are you married to anyone now?”
She didn’t know why she’d so blithely assumed that he wasn’t. Suddenly there seemed no reason he couldn’t be, for when had
Marchand behaved in an expected way? What did she really know about the rules of the demimonde?
But the sickening plummeting sensation in her stomach was well-nigh unendurable.
She waited what felt like a gruesome eternity for his answer.
“No, Ginny,” he said almost gently. “I’m not married. If I was, I wouldn’t be gallivanting around with the likes of you.”
He paused. “Probably.”
She transferred her gaze to her thighs, confused and unnerved by the relief that gusted through her. She felt unworldly and
young and off-balance.
He noticed. He was quiet.
“So,” she finally said. “Your son. I take it you’ll be making a quick visit to Newgate Prison to visit him?”
That was a risky joke even for her.
He turned to study her.
“I’ll be going to visit him where he’s been since he was five years old. Under a stone at Broadview Cemetery.”
Holy. Mother. Of God.
She squeezed her eyes and fists closed against the brutal jolt of shame. It was like being dropped from the top of a building.
She sincerely wished she were under a stone in Broadview Cemetery. Anything, anything to avoid experiencing the excruciating aftermath of her hideous glibness.
Her entire torso was on fire from mortification.
There was literally nowhere to hide from her own awfulness.
“Mr. M-Marchand . . . my God . . . I’m . . .”
She cracked her eyes open. His eyes were brilliant with wry hilarity and crinkled at the corners. He shook his head to and
fro. To and fro. The bloody man was mercilessly, thoroughly enjoying her discomfiture.
“I would never want you to be anything other than who you are, Ginny.”
“A perfect arse?”
“That, too.”
She exhaled a gusty breath and squeezed her eyes closed. “I really am terribly sorry. About what I said and about—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. I know you are,” he said affably enough. “Thank you.”
But he wasn’t all right.
He’d been handed a baby last night and what she’d witnessed was a man struggling not to come apart in front of other people.
He’d bolted from that room because he’d needed to be alone with the enormity of his memories. He was suffering stoically,
but greatly, such that his usual aplomb was no match for it. It showed. Only a little, but it was revealed in the tension
in his face and the shadows beneath his eyes.
She was suddenly frantic to do anything she could to help ease it.
“Well, let’s go and visit him,” she ventured softly. “Unless you’d rather go by yourself . . . because you think I’m too much
of an ass.”
He quirked the corner of his mouth. “Don’t you have a busy schedule of annoying people today?”
“Do you really want to risk letting me wander about the ton on my own?”
A smile briefly haunted his lips. He didn’t move, and he didn’t reply.
She was stunned to realize that he was, in fact, steeling himself for the journey ahead of him.
And it slashed her heart.
She rested her hand softly on his arm. “Gabriel,” she said gently.
He glanced down at her hand, then slowly up at her. His expression suggested wonderment. His breath was held.
“I’m coming with you,” she said.