Chapter Fourteen #2
“Because—because—” An awkward shrug pulled at her shoulders.
“Because I know what it is to be helpless. Because I have got a skill which I once used for the wrong reasons which might now be used for the right ones.” Uncle Chris was listening intently now, perhaps even more so than Henry.
“Because my sisters once rescued me when I needed it, when they owed me nothing—less than nothing, even. They could have sent me to prison with Mama, and they didn’t.
And I would like to extend that same grace, wherever possible. ”
“Aw, hell, Gracie.” Uncle Chris scrubbed at his face with one hand. “What am I meant to say to that?”
“That you’ll help,” Grace said. “Please. You’ve read the letter. You know we haven’t very much time. There are lives hanging in the balance.” She pursed her lips, inhaled sharply. “We need to know about the sender of the letter, and where he might be found.”
Uncle Chris pinched the bridge of his nose.
Above the clasp of his fingers, his eyes narrowed, landing squarely upon Henry.
His voice was clipped, syllables perfectly enunciated: “I am holding you personally responsible for Grace’s safety, Lockhart,” he said.
“Anything at all happens to her, and it’s your head.
” His free hand fisted upon the silver head of his cane.
Not an idle threat, then. Grace swallowed hard.
So did Henry. “Understood,” he said. “I won’t let her come to harm.”
Uncle Chris heaved a sigh, ducking his head and raking his fingers through his hair.
“I knew the bloke,” he said. “Cooper, that is. Years ago. Don’t rightly know where ‘e is now, and don’t particularly care to.
But I can give Rafe a proper description o’ the bastard, as well as some of his usual haunts—leastwise, what once were ‘is usual haunts.”
“Will that be enough to find him?” Henry asked.
“I’d lay odds on it.”
“Thank you,” Grace breathed in gratitude as she stepped forward to embrace him. “Thank you. I just knew you would help.”
“Tell yer sisters I did, and I’ll deny it to my dyin’ day,” he said, tilting his face to receive the kiss she planted upon his cheek. “Remember what I’ve always told you, hm?”
“Drunkards have got the easiest pockets to pick?” Grace suggested.
“Don’t get cheeky, brat,” he said fondly, and tweaked her nose for her temerity. “Never get yerself into trouble ye can’t get yerself out of. Now get out, both o’ ye. And Gracie—next time ye bring him to supper, it had damned well better be to ask my blessing.”
∞∞∞
Henry breathed a deep sigh to find himself once more out in the hall, with a great, thick, mahogany door separating him from Mr. Moore. “I can’t believe he agreed,” he said, feeling his shoulders wilt with relief. He felt faintly light-headed, almost drunk with it.
“I told you he would,” Grace said, sounding rather pleased with herself. “Now there is only to wait.”
Mr. Moore had said he’d lay odds on Lord Rafe Beaumont tracking down Cooper in time. Could his judgment be trusted? No; he wasn’t going to let himself devolve once more into knots of anxiety and stress. For once, he was going to allow himself to believe there was a chance.
Still, he pressed one hand to his coat, over the interior pocket in which the queen of hearts rested, and hoped that finally something lucky would come of this. That Lord Rafe Beaumont would come swiftly through with the answer they needed.
“Here,” Grace said, beckoning him further down the hallway rather than toward the stairs. “Follow me.”
And as his feet moved of their own accord, he was reminded of that strange thought he’d had only yesterday—he would have followed her anywhere. Into Hell, even. Only because she had asked.
“Where are we going?” he asked as he trailed along behind her.
“To the balcony. It’s just here. You look as though you could use a little fresh air.” She cast open the doors at the end of the hall and swept out into the night, disappearing from view as she strolled along the balcony. “And look. If you stand just here, you can see Hieronymus.”
Right. The terrapin. The night air cooled the sweat that had broken out on his brow as he walked through the doors, following in her footsteps.
And sure enough, in the garden below there was a crudely-dug pond and when he squinted, he could just make out the shape of a turtle dozing upon a large rock within it.
Grace had paused just there at the edge of the balcony, bracing her arms upon the balustrade as she leaned over. “Better?” she asked, with a tilt of her head that sent a single gold curl tumbling down her back.
“Yes. Thank you.” Henry sucked in a huge breath, felt a bit of tension leave his shoulders. “Your family is…rather unconventional.”
She laughed lightly, and a dimple carved itself into her cheek. “Yes,” she said. “They are. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Henry found a space there at the balustrade beside her. “What did you mean,” he asked, “when you said your sisters rescued you?”
A long silence drew out. Not cold; not unpleasant.
More contemplative than anything. At last Grace lifted her head, peering up at the sky, at the glow of the moon behind the cloud-cover.
“I was sixteen,” she said, “when I met them. I didn’t know about them; Mama had never told me she had had other children before me.
I met them because—because Mama was extorting Felicity. And she used me to help her do it.”
“That’s—that’s—” Unconscionable. Vile. Beyond cruel.
Grace shrugged. “That was my life,” she said.
“Mother noticed my aptitude for theft early on and exploited it often. And because I was so very young, if I was ever caught, most shopkeepers were not inclined to charge me with theft provided Mama returned the stolen item, scolded me for it, and promised them she’d keep a closer eye on me.
Of course she would scold me even worse later for being caught at it, so I grew very good, very quickly.
I did many things at Mama’s command that I’m not proud of,” she said.
“Though it wasn’t as if I had another choice.
I was always—so afraid she would leave me again. ”
“Again?”
“She had a habit of it,” Grace said, her voice lowering, softening, as if the words themselves were painful to speak.
“She kept me when she needed me. And left me when she didn’t.
That is to say, whenever she’d found a new husband, or a wealthy lover from whom she might ply money.
Which was often.” Another shrug, jerky, faintly ashamed.
“She would leave me at orphanages, workhouses—wherever was convenient. Sometimes she didn’t come back for weeks or months.
But she would come back for me, when the money had run out, when she needed my quick fingers to steal for her.
And the money always ran out. I was…her contingency, I think.
Not a beloved child. Only a tool; a thing to use so long as it was advantageous. ”
“But you were her daughter.”
“So was Charity. Felicity. Mercy. Them, she abandoned them completely. They—we—lost every bit of her attention the moment she grew bored, or we ceased to entertain. I doubt she gave any of us a second thought unless and until we might prove useful to her. I was her daughter only when she’d run out of money, when she needed me to steal or to deceive.
” With one hand she swiped at her face, and an ugly little laugh eked out of her throat.
“I think that might well have been the only thing of value she ever taught me. To always have a contingency plan.”
Henry wondered if Grace’s mother had not been kinder to her elder sisters, in the end. To have a swift, complete break, rather than a child left wondering if this would be the time she would be left on her own forever after.
“The, er—the men she married. They didn’t welcome you into their family?”
“I don’t believe many—if any—even knew about me,” she said.
“Mama was careful about such things.” She folded her arms, bent to settle her chin atop them.
“There was a man, once,” she said softly.
“I don’t know if he was my father. I don’t know if even Mama knew whether he was my father.
But I remember that he felt like one. I remember he would pick me up and hold me on his shoulders, and sing me to sleep.
And then one day he was gone, and I never saw him again.
I suppose he must have died. I think I would have been about three years old.
” She turned her head toward him, pillowing her cheek upon her folded arms. “My surname is Seymour,” she said, “but I don’t know where it comes from.
Whether it was my father’s name, or an invented one Mama devised, or the name of one of her husbands who was no relation to me at all. ”
How terrible it must have been for her, to have only that tattered memory of a father, of a prior affection that must once have existed. To have only a dreadful excuse for a mother at such a tender age. “Did she ever care for you at all, as a mother should have done?”
“No,” she said. “Not really; which is not to say that I ever knew the difference. But then, I don’t think she cared for anyone so much as she cared for herself.
I can’t recall her ever making a meal, or feeding me—though I am certain she must have done at some point, when I was too young to fend for myself. ”
Fend for herself. A child! And—hadn’t she once told him she’d spent a week in jail over the theft of a penny bun? “She made you steal to eat?”
“And for other reasons,” she said. “But hunger is a constant, you know. A spectre lurking around every corner. Have you ever been truly hungry?”
“Of course I’ve been hungry.”
A little laugh, half smothered within the bend of her elbow. “Really, truly hungry,” she clarified. “The sort of hunger that sticks to your ribs and claws at your guts. The sort of hunger that pulls at the fringes of your mind until it’s all you can think about.”