Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
“You seem distracted,” Lily said as she sat beside Ada while she took a quick break.
Ada was practicing with Emmaline’s women’s football team, Lily watching from the sidelines with her daughter.
Lily had never been particularly interested in playing football, but she had always done whatever she could to support Emmaline in the endeavor.
Ada wasn’t quite as enthusiastic as Emmaline, but she enjoyed the freedom of playing, of doing as she wished instead of following someone else’s agenda.
“I’m fine,” she said, her eyes on the field.
“Are you really?” Lily asked, her blue eyes all-knowing.
“Very well. I have a few things on my mind.”
“Does this have anything to do with a particular man?”
“Perhaps.”
“One that isn’t David Carter?”
Ada rolled her eyes. “The only thing I am concerned regarding David Carter is how to break my engagement with him.”
“Would you even call it an engagement?” Lily asked, tilting her head.
“No, I do not suppose I would,” Ada said. “But there has been more pressure lately for us to finalize things.”
“What are you going to do?”
Ada sighed. “I don’t know. But I cannot marry him.”
“Any new reasons for that?”
Ada stole a glance at her, finding Lily’s eyes twinkling.
“Just say what you want to say.”
“Very well. How much does Jonny Tate have to do with this?”
Ada cringed. “How do you know about that?”
Lily laughed. “Oh, Ada. The two of you can hardly be in the same room without the tension radiating off both of you. Everyone can feel it. That man is in love with you.”
Ada scoffed. “In love! Lily. You are right. He might want me. But that’s the extent of it. He told me clear as can be that he wants nothing to do with me and I should marry David.”
Even as she said it, however, she knew that she was lying. Jonny might not love her, but he did feel something for her. He had practically admitted it the night he had told her that he could never allow anything to happen to her.
“And how do you feel?” Lily asked.
“I feel… like I want nothing more than to be with him, yet he frustrates me to no end.”
“Sounds like a man,” Lily said with a nod, and Ada laughed.
“Ada, get back on the field!”
They both smirked at Emmaline’s command. On the football field, she was as forceful as her husband.
“We will resume this later!” Lily called out after her as she ran away, and Ada could only shake her head. She had no doubt they would.
She had decided one thing when she had been trapped with Jonny last night. She wasn’t going to continue living her life this way. She needed to break free of it all — but at this point, she had no idea just which path forward would take her there.
She had to discover it soon, however, for there was one thing she knew. Her heart was nearly gone, given away to Jonny Tate.
Whether either of them liked it or not.
“Ma? Maggie?” As usual, Jonny didn’t knock before he entered his sister’s house. He paused, waiting for the usual warm welcome, but received only silence.
He frowned. That was odd.
“Ma?” he called again, before he finally heard her voice from one of the back bedrooms.
“Coming!”
Finally, she emerged, a smile on her face when she saw Jonny. She slowly walked over and placed a kiss on both of his cheeks. “It’s good to see you.”
“How are you?”
“All is well.”
She led him over to the kitchen table, motioning for him to sit, then walked to the small cooking area, where stew was simmering.
“You don’t have to cook for me,” he attempted, knowing his protests were futile. Feeding her children was one of the many ways she showed them how much she loved them. He supposed he shouldn’t take that away from her.
And he was hungry.
“Where are Maggie and the kids?”
“They are at George’s parents’ house for dinner,” she said, referring to Maggie’s husband’s family.
“You didn’t go with?”
“No,” she said, pausing, and Jonny caught the wince on her face. “I had plans.”
“Plans?” he said, furrowing his brow. “What kind of plans?”
Before she could answer, the door opened and another voice called out just as Jonny had minutes before, “Ma?”
Will.
Jonny’s gaze shot to his mother.
“Why didn’t you tell me he was coming?”
“Because I knew you would leave,” she said, biting her lip as Will walked into the room.
“Ma, how are you?” he said, kissing her cheek before turning to the table — and stopping when he saw Jonny sitting there.
“Jon.”
“Will.”
They stared at each other, saying nothing more. Jonny was still confused about the night Will had told him and Ada to run, even after he had come for them himself.
He wanted to ask him just what was going on — why these conflicting messages — but he didn’t know how to voice it aloud.
“I’ll go,” Jonny said, attempting to rise, but his mother placed a hand firmly on his shoulder.
“Sit,” she said. “I made you food. You will eat. Then you can decide whether or not to go.”
“But you had plans—”
“And these are better,” she said, putting a bowl of stew and a plate with crusty bread and cheese before him, a similar setting in front of Will.
“Where is your food?” Jonny asked his mother. He would not eat what she had prepared for herself.
“I have my own,” she said, gesturing to the pot. “But I’m going to eat in my bedroom.”
“Why would you do that?” Jonny asked, aghast.
“Because,” she said, pointing her spoon at first Jonny and then Will, “the two of you are going to sit here, have a meal together, and figure out just what has gone wrong between you. Then you’re going to decide how to make things right.”
“Ma—” Will began, but she shook her head, standing strong and stubborn.
“This has gone on long enough. No children of mine should not be speaking to one another. I raised you better than that. Despite what else you learned at far too young an age, we stay together. Now. Speak.”
Picking up her bowl, she set her shoulders back and practically stalked from the room, leaving Jonny and Will to sit there staring at each other.
“Might as well eat,” Jonny said, picking up his spoon and starting on the stew of beef and root vegetables.
Will just sat there, looking at him.
“What?” Jonny said.
“Aren’t you going to ask me why I told you to leave the other night?”
Jonny desperately wanted to, but he refused to give Will the satisfaction. “No.”
Will crossed his arms over his chest. “Ma’s right. I don’t want to fight with you, Jonny.”
“Then why don’t you leave me be?” Jonny asked, throwing his arms out to the side, fed up with it all.
“I don’t want to work for Sharpe. I got free of Blackwood, and I don’t want to be sucked back down.
To have men show up at my work, or my football games, practices, or the tavern.
And making it seem like I stole from Lady Harcourt? That was low, Will. Real low.”
Will was silent for a moment. “When you left, Jonny, it hurt. Hurt a lot.”
“I told you to come with me.”
“I couldn’t. Blackwood said he’d come after the family.”
“He wouldn’t say that to you,” Jonny scoffed, although a flicker of panic shot to life within him. “Why’d he let me go, then?”
“He said you were getting soft, after you wouldn’t go after the family of the man who owns the munitions business.”
Jonny stilled. “Jones. But you agreed we shouldn’t.”
Will nodded curtly. “Yes, but you told Blackwood it was your doing. He took that to mean you wouldn’t do his bidding anymore.”
“When people don’t do what he wants, he usually sends them to the bottom of the River Irwell.”
“That’s where you were headed.”
“But?” Jonny raised his brows. He had known it was a risk, but he had decided to take it. Once he had made Manchester Central’s club, he had guessed that people knew him too well for Blackwood to risk coming after him.
“But…” Will looked to the side as though he didn’t want to discuss the rest. He lowered his voice. “I made Blackwood promise not to hurt you.”
Jonny placed his spoon down, studying Will, not wanting this to be true, but knowing, somehow, that Will wasn’t lying.
“What did you do, Will?” His voice was low, intentional, fraught with concern that here, this entire time, his little brother had been the one who had sacrificed. That he hadn’t wanted to live that life but had forced himself to. For Jonny’s sake.
“I did what I had to, to keep you safe.”
“What did you do?” Jonny repeated.
His heart was hammering as he knew that his brother had made some kind of impossible deal. If what he was saying was true, he would have had to.
“I made an agreement with Blackwood. As long as I continued to work with him, to do anything he asked me to do and made sure you were no trouble for him, he had to leave you and our family alone.”
Jonny’s heart ached. He knew Will could be lying to him, but he also knew his brother, and from his actions the other night…
this was the truth. Which was much harder than if Will had been lying.
For it meant that Will had sacrificed his own life for Jonny’s.
That Jonny had been harboring a grudge against Will for years for the absolute wrong reasons.
“Why did you do that?” he practically choked out.
“Because you had spent your whole life protecting us, Jonny. When our pa got himself, and later us, involved, you always made sure that I didn’t have to do anything that would have put me at risk. You looked out for me, made sure I was safe, did all the things you knew I could never handle.”
“If you had only left with me—”
“Then he would have come after both of us. And Ma. And Maggie.”
Jonny dropped his head into his hands. He had been such an idiot. All this time, he had blamed Will, had thought him to be coming for him, working with Blackwood and now Sharpe, and in the meantime, Will had sacrificed everything so that the rest of them, including Jonny, would be safe.
He stood, walked around the table to Will’s chair. Will stood himself, confusion reigning on his face.
“Jon?” he said. “What are you—”
He let out an “oof” as Jonny reached out and, uncharacteristically, wrapped his arms around him and pulled him into an embrace.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice muffled in Will’s shoulder.
“Sharpe’s different, though, Jonny,” Will said once Jonny finally let him go and returned to his seat.
“He doesn’t care about the agreement I made with Blackwood.
He thinks that you know too much, that if he doesn’t bring you back in, you’ll tell someone about all that you know, and it will bring everything to an end. ”
“I wish he had just stayed in London,” Jonny muttered.
“Me too,” Will said enthusiastically. “And sorry about the whole theft thing. Sharpe forced it, but I made sure to wait until you were with Ada so you’d have someone who could vouch for you. Plus, I left my scarf.”
“Finch could have come after you.”
“Could have,” Will said with a shrug. “But I did it, so it would have been right for him to do so.”
“What do we do now?” Jonny said. “Ada wants me to go to Finch with all of this, but I don’t think I can do that. It will be the same as before — Sharpe will go down, and then someone else will take over. Someone who could be even worse.”
“Possibly,” Will said, a contemplative expression on his face. “But I have an idea.”
“What’s that?”
“Before Sharpe returned to Manchester, there were talks about who would take over. It could have been Garrick,” he said, referring to Blackwood’s main enforcer, “But too many people blamed him for Blackwood’s death, plus his hand was so badly injured, thanks to the girl, that many didn’t think him capable. My name came up.”
Jonny lifted his brows. “So, you’re thinking you could make a play for it again.”
Will nodded. “And then once I’m on top, bring it all down.”
Jonny smirked. “You were always the smart one.”
“Or the stupid one,” he said with a shrug. “Could go both ways.”
“Just tell me what you need from me,” Jonny said.
“Well,” Will began. “You and Ada—”
“No,” Jonny said, shaking his head. “She stays out of this.”
“I think she could help. Draw out Sharpe. He’s decided that he doesn’t want to wait for her father’s cooperation any longer. He wants to take the business for himself.”
“The munitions company?”
Will nodded. “That and the iron company.”
“The Carters’,” Jonny hissed. “How does he propose to do that? From what I know, they’ve always kept their hands clean.”
“I don’t know it all,” Will said. “But I do know he plans to use Ada. That’s why he wanted her the other night.”
Jonny’s eyes widened as his mother walked into the room.
“Judging by your full plates, I see you’ve had plenty of time to talk,” she said, sitting down between them in a third chair. “Now, time to eat.”
She looked at one of them, then the other, with a soft smile on her face. “It’s good to see my boys together again.”
Jonny and Will exchanged a look, understanding passing between them.
She was right. They had to do this.
Together.